Documenting Practices - Fieldwork Self User Story

We recently helped Simon White document a significant shift in his practice at agency Formation London.

“The ‘how’ of our work is as important to us as the ‘why’ of our work. Constant feedback loops enable us to get better, to refine, and to learn.

With this in mind, we commissioned Fieldwork to help us fully understand a new set of working practices that we had begun to implement at Formation London. This new way of working is a significant shift from the types of project we had previously undertaken – seeing us move away from creative and communications and into projects that define behaviour, culture and process.”

Simon used our Fieldwork Self service, which in its simplest form is a way to document day to day working life with a camera and notebook.

“Fieldwork gave us a disposable camera, and a small booklet with a series of prompts, which we were to employ across the duration of the project.

The act of photographing and capturing the thoughts around that action were both liberating and constricting. The constraints brought us focus; the creative thinking behind what we photographed was incredibly open to interpretation.”

We followed up the documentation with a storytelling session, Simon talking us through his photographs and notes, unearthing detail and depth.

“We also spent two hours with Curtis from Fieldwork, discussing the insights. There was plenty of illuminating thoughts surfacing during our chat; more than this, there were points to take back to our client about their own practice, which was an additional benefit we hadn’t considered.”

Simon talks a lot more about the process in this personal blog post, it's well worth a read.

If you'd like to speak with us about something you need clarity on, let us know.