24 JANUARY 2000
MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITY: MAKING PLAITED CORDS
PROTOTYPING RESEARCH REPORT 22
Dates of evaluation: 14 December 1999
Brief for evaluation
The Museum needs to test the instructions for the Plaited Cords activity to make sure that
they are clear. This piece of research is about the content rather than the design.
Description of prototype and testing situation
A table, with stools, was set up in the Best of British Gallery. On the table was:
• a tray containing threads and scissors;
• a pictorial instruction sheet for making a Double Strip pattern cord and a Double V
pattern cord;
• a replica page from a 1600’s book describing and illustrating fashionable plaited cords
of the time;
• a board with an upright peg around which the starting loop for a cord could be looped
and a cord, already started, looped around the peg.
The peg allowed visitors to pull their work tight as they knotted a cord. The activity was
tested using four threads - firstly four threads of two colours and then four threads of four
different colours.
Visitors were invited to undertake the activity and the instructions and other items on the
table were pointed out to them. The visitors were observed while they undertook the
activity. Explanations and directions were given to visitors when requested.
Description of sample
Number of people
Gender
Age
17
Male = 6
Female =11
Under 25 yrs = 5
25-34 yrs = 2
35-44 yrs = 5
45-54 yrs = 2
55 plus yrs = 3
English as first language Yes = 15
No = 2
Visitors were from UK (11), USA (4) and one each from France and Australia. Eight
people were interviewed in a group of two.
Findings relating to brief
Visitors did not always find starting the activity to be easy. This was partly due to lack of
confidence as, once underway, some began to work quite quickly while others were
happy to chat about the activity and the instructions provided while working. The most
common beginners’ errors were knotting under the neighbouring thread rather than over
it and not using the same thread to knot across the other three. Some visitors knotted too
loosely and then could not see what they were doing. When this happened, visitors were
invited to look at the instructional diagrams. If they failed to help the visitor, the method
of working was explained verbally. Visitors worked for several minutes in most cases but
this is not sufficient time to complete more than a centimetre or so of a thread. No-one
attempted the double V pattern.
Suggested amended instructions based on observations and explanations given to
visitors
1. Start with your four threads looped over the peg.
2. Take the left hand thread over and across the other three, trying two knots over each
thread as you go. Always start the knot by bringing the knotting thread over its
neighbour. Each time, pull the first knot tight before making the second.
3. Stay with the same knotting thread till you have knotted it over the other three and it
has become the right hand thread.
4. Please finish a row of knots so that the next visitor can start with a ‘new’ left-hand
thread.
The diagrams should be retained.
Instruction 2, third diagram, Double Strip pattern, has confusing text. It states ‘Threads
switch places’. If text is still required it should be along the lines of ‘Continue using the
knotting thread’.
Notes made during observations.
• Two people can plait a thread each while sitting side by side. Both sets of threads can be
looped around the same peg. Visitors in pairs chat to each other while knotting.
• The Anchor Perle cotton tangled in the tray very quickly. The DMC Tapestry Cotton
works well and should be specified.
• A peg placed 35 centimetres from the working edge of the table allowed visitors to
adjust to a comfortable working distance.
• Teenage boys were willing to try the activity.
• A left-handed visitor had no problems.
• Instruction 2, first diagram, on the Double Strip pattern mistakenly shows three white
threads and one blue, rather than two white and two blue.
• Using four different threads, each of a different colour, was definitely easier for visitors
than using two threads of different colour looped in the middle to give two blue
working threads and two white ones. The use of four colours allowed visitors to work
without confusing the knotting thread with another one of the same colour. Four
colours also allowed for a quicker appreciation of a developing pattern so visitors
could begin to anticipate and think ahead. If it is decided to change the instructions to
the use of four threads the first diagram will have to be changed to show the knotting
of a single loop at one end of the four threads.
• The use of four different coloured threads in the instruction diagrams would make them
easier to understand and, hence, all the suggested alterations to text may not be
needed.
Visitor comments
Appreciative comments
• Quite therapeutic. Very nice.
• It’s good. Oh! Sixteen hundred. That’s interesting.
• It’s something to do instead of just looking at things. (Sixteen-year-old boy)
• It’s good actually. Yeah. All right. (Fifteen-year-old boy)
• You’re learning about the culture of other times while you’re doing it without knowing
you are. It’s good. (Fifteen-year-old boy)
• Enjoyable. It’s very good educationally to have activities.
• It’s very strong (the thread). I enjoyed doing it. Keeping the handicrafts going is
important. You need dexterity.
• Lovely. Enjoyed that! I think it is rather good. I can think of lots of things I could use
that for.
• Very enjoyable. A lot of people would enjoy it.
• I’ll bring my thirteen year-old-son to do it next week when he is on holiday. (Chinese
visitor was given four lengths of thread so that he could show his son the activity at
home.)
• It’s enjoyable.
• It’s nice to do. I used to do things like this at summer camp. It’s good for the brain to
focus on something different. Very interesting.
• Really good. That’s very good. It’s nice. Very relaxing.
• Is this sort of book (replica page) sold?
• It’s interesting to do. Beautiful. Looks nice.
Visitor comments on their activity
Some visitors addressed comments to themselves, some to the evaluator. Contextual
information explaining visitor comments is in brackets in italics.
• Blue or white? What next? (Two colours; visitor did not carry knotting thread across
others)
• When you’ve got the rhythm, the instructions are OK.
• It’s a bit hard to do - then you get the hang.
• I don’t know if I did that right.
• After the first two knots, do I keep that thread?. The fourth picture is not necessary - it’s
confusing. It’s clearer if you see doing two knots and then again without the bits in
between. You need to say ‘Pull the knot tight’.
• It’s fascinating to watch. I wouldn’t have been very good at this. I’d definitely have
employed someone to do it. I definitely didn’t do this in an earlier life. (All addressed
to a companion, who was also plaiting, beside the visitor) The instructions need to say
definitely how the knots should be done - I’ve done two kinds.
• It’s tempting to knot the under-thread. (The visitor had not pulled her first knot taut and
had moved her fingers. She could not see clearly which thread she was working with)
If I was doing it I’d push it up all the time. I knotted with the pink all the time - I
hadn’t got the message before.(When she began, the visitor had come back on a
second row as if she was knitting. Subsequent work was OK)
• That’s basically what I do? Two knots here? Ah! Now I see. I’m tying across the
threads. I tied the knots too early and looped over there at first so it’s a bit
ropy.(Visitor had not tied knots tightly and just under the previous work)
• The number 3 (on instructions) does not show a knot. Very elegant. You need to keep
the thread taut so it does not get caught in the knot.
• That’s doing OK (visitor had started with two twists around thread instead of two
knots) There is a lot of technology in the design.
• You have to say ‘Pull the first knot tight before doing the second.’ (Visitor made the
first knot too far down the thread) The third picture is misleading.
• Oh! I see. Blue again, on white. I used to do this at school I think. Now I do the pink.
Put in ‘Pull each knot tight ‘ and don’t say ‘ Threads switch places’. Say ‘Continue
knotting with thread B’ and say ‘Pull the thread taut’.
• Over and under. Do you tighten after the first knot? You need to say so. Next line. The
sequence the same way?
Evaluator’s recommendations
• Visitors enjoy this activity very much. However, as their comments show, they are a
little unsure of how to establish the activity. It is suggested that additional text, as
suggested previously in this report, be provided to supplement the excellent diagrams
in order to help visitors to proceed more confidently.
• Use DMC Tapestry Cotton.
• Provide two stools so that companions can each plait a cord.
• Place the peg around thirty-five centimetres from the working edge of the table.
• It is most strongly recommended that four colours be used for the Double Strip pattern.
• As visitors found the Double Strip pattern difficult enough to establish, and time
consuming to knot even a short length of it, perhaps it would be wise to offer the more
complex Double V pattern as very much a subsidiary activity, if it is offered at all. The
instructions for the two patterns should not appear on the same sheet.
Actions
• Text will be added to help visitors start the activity.
• DMC cotton will be used.
• The designers will be advised of the desirability of two stools for the activity and the
position of the peg.
• Only one pattern, the Double Strip, will be presented to visitors. If there is a book
available that details other designs, the reference for it could be given to visitors.
• Four colours will be used for the Double Strip pattern. This would affect the detail of
the design, but not the principle.