Data Sources

3.2.1. Interviews

Key informant interviews were the primary source of evidence used to reveal the TDET’s design process. Babbie and Roberts’ (2017) method of in-depth interviewing was followed closely, “asking open-ended questions, listening to and recording the answers, and then following up with additional relevant questions” (p. 293). I interviewed a total of nine people, seven of whom were part of the team of TDET designers, managers, content creators and

facilitators. Some interviewees are identified by their initials (e.g., JB) while others are identified only as e.g. Interviewee #7, as they requested that their anonymity be retained. See Appendix A.1 for details.

The recruitment process for interviews used the snowball sampling technique. After each interview, I asked for a name or two, which would provide the source for the next interview.

Recruitment carried on until a reasonably full picture emerged, keeping in mind the timeline

27 As Zeisel (1984) states “What were the designers’ original intentions and how did they try to implement them?

Answers to such questions can be used to re-organize design teams, improve designers’ control over the effects of future design decisions, and test theories on which design decisions are based” (p. 46).

needed to complete a thesis. Interviews ranged from one to two hours. I sent each interviewee a set of the potential questions approximately a week beforehand.

During the interviews I used probes which, as Zeisel (1984) defines, “are primarily questions that interviewers interpose to get a respondent to clarify a point, to explain further what she meant, to continue talking or to shift the topic” (p. 140). Indeed, probes are an essential device in interviews “when one person is interested in precisely what another has to say” (Zeisel, 1984, p. 140). In this case, a range of probes were employed: (1) Transitional probes were used to ensure that the respondent discussed a broad range of salient issues; (2) Situational probes aimed to stimulate the respondent to specify the parts of a situation that prompted a response;

and (3) Reflecting probes were used to determine, in a nondirected way, which of “the topics presented in the interview were significant to the respondent and which new ones to add because they were overlooked” (Zeisel, 1984, p. 140). Once each interview was completed and recorded, it was transcribed. Some interviewees required re-interview in order to reach a level of detail and accuracy on an issue that could not be clarified by another interviewee.

As such, this research attempted to re-create the events that influenced, and led to, the creation of a public learning environment through the memory of those who participated in its process. The technique, however, has its limits.²⁸ As Zeisel explains “often so much time elapses during a design and so many people work on a design project that asking decision makers what they intended creates a problem of recall” (Zeisel, 1984, p. 46). To resolve it, recollections of events by interviewees were triangulated with documentation of the design project explained in the next section.

3.2.2. Documentation

The documentation shown in Table 3 below served as a secondary source to support interviews, triangulated to confirm the inter-relation of particular events.

28 The search for data through interviews clearly has its limits. As Zeisel (1984) states “we can think of assessing the reliability of a method in the same way we think of assessing the reliability of a child’s memory about an event. We cannot re-create the event, but we can test his memory of it in order to share in his experience” (p. 78).

Table 3: List and types of documentation used in Chapter 4

Meeting Minutes

Meeting minutes were a strong source of evidence for the design process, as they provided documented transcriptions of negotiations for approval of the development permit for the TDET’s execution. The meeting minutes were found through the City of Vancouver

database, and given by City of Vancouver through correspondence. They were referred to by Interviewees #4, #5, and #7 (all present at the meetings) as essential to their recall and description of the negotiation of interests among the organizations involved.

Planning/Policy Documents

This category includes city planning documents such as interpretive plans, policy

statements, statements of significance and Development Board reports. As explained: “Research organized on the basis of systematic plan analysis is likely to include essential design questions,

especially small-scale ones, that might otherwise be overlooked” (Zeisel, 1984, p. 48). These documents were important to the strengthening of claims made in interviews. Some of them, such as the Creative Brief (Science World, 2009), were essential in recreating the design process of the TDET, setting the outline and pedagogical goals for each exhibit. These were generously shared by Science World’s Research Evaluation Team.

Design/ Architecture / Engineering Plans

This category includes conceptual design sketches, executable design plans and other spatial representations of the TDET designs. Providing clear evidence of the ‘presenting’ phase, they were also essential to an understanding of what was being designed and its visual

appearance: “Other useful sources for understanding designers’ behavioural implications are presentation drawings...that present places in perspective drawings as designers see them, often including people. Visual documents like these are particularly fruitful because they represent a designer’s overall image of life in the future setting” (Zeisel, 1984, p. 48). Some of the most significant plans were found in the Development permits. For future researchers, persistence is absolutely essential to receiving such critical documentation. The payoff -- a significantly deeper understanding -- can be worthwhile. ²⁹

Historical Archives / Google Satellite Street view / Photography

This category of data includes photos found in the Vancouver Archives, on historical websites, and documents which gave a tangible reality to the conditions preceding development of the TDET. Photographs of the TDET in use were taken personally in 2019. In order to gain evidence of the construction process of 2010-2012, I relied on Google Street View archives.