Co-designing for Society (journal paper)

This year the Australasian Medical Journal (AMJ) ran another special Design + Health edition to explore ideas in designing for health. Deborah Szebeko, founder of social design agency thinkpublic and I followed up our previous year's Co-designing for Dementia: The Alzheimer100 Project (2009) paper with this new one called, Co-designing for Society (2010).


In this paper, we elaborate more on co-design, its approach, tools, processes and practices using several of thinkpublic's projects. At the end of the paper we also touch on what next for co-design, especially in line with the political climate here in the UK where the Coalition advocates Building Big Society which sees “a society where the leading force for progress is social responsibility, not state control.”

The Design Council have also been actively exploring co-design and organising discussions among the design community to understand the practice better. Check out their published summary here.

Dott Cornwall think tank 'Inspired'

Last week Dott Cornwall and University College Falmouth hosted 'Inspired' a think tank to look at design in our times and discuss emerging design practice.


Present were designers, leading design thinkers, researchers, students and academics. We convened at the Bedruthan Steps Hotel sectioned across the hillside overlooking Mawgan Porth Beach. The views were amazing. Here's a taster.


Day 1
On Day 1 we heard presentations from two leading design thinkers, Nabeel Hamdi, Emeritus Professor of Housing and Urban Development at Oxford Brookes University.


And Ezio Manzini, Professor of Design at the Politechnico di Milano.


Both shared a broader and more international context for "Dott-like" (as Ezio called it) design. Following their presentations was a soapbox session. Each delegate got 3 minutes (and yes, it was timed with an hourglass) to say something about design that was on their mind. As you can see from the picture below, John Thackara was up first.


After a well-earned lunch we split into two groups to discuss either design practice or design education and research. I joined the latter and have to say it was a very interesting session. That's a brief overview of what happened on Day 1. Below are some soundbites I gathered from the various sessions.

The opening keynotes

• Dott recognises that it is top-down and bottom-up. It is top-down in responding to EU policy and bottom-up in responding to the local people and their issues;

• Nabeel began his presentation by saying that many students come to him to ask, "we like design but how do we make ourselves relevant?" Great question and certainly a very important one for design in our changing world today;
  
  
• Nabeel had a lovely sentiment to express how design could be more strategic. He said rather then just design a house, designers should think about what a house can do;
  

• I also liked Nabeel's comment that design (and designers) "disturb" situations. The slightly pessimistic notion of "disturb" reminds us that design and designers can disturb in positive and also negative ways;

• On the plane from London to Cornwall, Ezio asked us from an English language perspective how we understood the word "territorial." He uses the word in the Italian sense, to frame the nature of Dott-like projects. "Territorial" in Italian recognises the complexity of the physical, cultural, social etc. coming together. But in English we tend to think of "territorial" as being possessive and it generally has quite negative connotations. The interpretations from different languages is really fascinating. I remember buying a notebook in Italy with 'disegno' printed on the front. In Italian this mean 'to draw" a core tool for a designer. Since purchasing the notebook I often wonder what key insights language can reveal to help us uncover more about design (of course language is well discussed in design literature such as in Boland and Collopy's book, Managing as Designing);

• Ezio talked about Dott was as a "framework". That is Dott as a vision, as a way to connect people and host projects. Ezio showed some "Dott-like" projects from his network DESIS to frame an international context to Dott.
  

The soapbox session
Here are some themes I picked up:

• Design education needs to change: Especially as practices of design change. But it is education ready to? It needs to be more inter-disciplinary, but how do we 'walk the talk' in these unmovable institutions? In education let's also consider children today who are going through an education system deficient of creativity (Ken Robinson's TED talk argued for more creativity in education. Check it out here);
• What's missing from design practice at the moment? Mary Cook of Uscreates brought up ethics. How designers go about engaging with the public and dealing with situations appropriately? Let's also be more aware of the costs of designing, and the sustainability of projects. The financial, resource and time costs are high if a project ends and does not continue;
  
• Let’s not lose the link of design to economy: This tends to get lost when we look at design for social issues. It is challenging to build sustainable design businesses to do work only in this area (though I know many who have done so) and also challenging to measure and evaluate design's return on investment (ROI). That is ROI in its classical sense that business and organisations understand;
  
• Design’s contributions to social issues: include that of being able to engage people in issues and in policy. Furthermore, designers can bring better usability, sustainability and desirability to public services. Designers can integrate these aspects into the sector's concern for cost, scale and time;
  
• What are the roles of others that participate in design projects: such as the clients and project stakeholders? We take them on a journey which can often be challenging because it can be a different approach to what they are used to.
  

The academic and research breakout session
I feel like I need to write a bit more than soundbites for this one. It was a great session and many valuable things emerged for design education. Ezio early in the discussions said that to be interdisciplinary we need discipline and design is a weak discipline. Jeremy Myerson added that when design polytechnics gained university status they let go of practice but then forgot the theory.

We spoke about how we needed to understand the core of design. Ezio framed it well by saying that design thinking is broad and we agreed that it can be done by many others who aren’t trained as designers. But there is also design knowledge which is the core of the discipline ie. the USP of the designer, the toolkit the designer brings to the table etc.

Lucy Kimbell mentioned that other discipline don’t recognise a design paradigm. This made me think back to the design + businesses debates where designers lamented that they often didn't have a seat at the management table (See 'Are design schools the new B-schools?' at InterSections 07). That comment really frustrates me because we identify with the fact that we are a weak discipline with no recognizable paradigm for how we can be relevant to other disciplines. We also makes little attempt to learn the language of the other disciplines, and this not only divides us from within, but means we have difficulty talking to other disciplines. The challenge of language is not specific to design. Long ago playwright George Bernard Shaw claimed, "England and America are two countries divided by a common language."

When we understand the core of the discipline, designers might be better placed to respond to what Nabeel called “thematic organization” of the world’s "wicked problems" (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Wicked problems require an interdisciplinary approach, and interdisciplinary contributions due to their complexities. Nabeel described thematic organization as a way of framing problems around issues that become everyone’s problem. One could say that Dott 07 was thematically organised in emphasising five issues of health, energy, education, food and mobility. We have all been touched by these issues in some way, so they are our problem. Ivo of thinkpublic once said to me that by "allowing people to identify the problems [they] become part of the solution."

To sum up the point Nabeel and Ezio were making was that if we knew the core of design better, we'd be more likely to step up to bigger challenges as we'd understand what a designer's role could be ie. what a designer could bring the table.

The last part of the session, Jeremy asked what would our research agenda should look like. Some of the delegates mentioned that designers don’t do enough reflective practice or critical thinking. The divide between academia and industry also came up. I shared my experiences of doing this PhD to say that the role of academia and research could be to collaborate with designers to do more of what we all are not doing. A dynamic relationship between academia and practice, on a very practical level, could become a mutual learning experience and contribute to the discipline.

Day 2
On day 2 the delegate group was far bigger and Geoff Smith of UCF remarked that Dott Cornwall was “internationally distinctive and locally relevant.” It linked very much to Ezio’s presentation which showed us “Dott-like” projects happening around the world.

The highlight for me on Day 2 was a presentation by Mat Hunter, Chief Design Officer at the Design Council. Mat spoke about the narrative of emerging practice where the design ethos had moved from designer-centred to user-centred design to co-design to co-production. In short designers went from designing the next generation toaster or poster, but now designing the "next generation healthcare service journey system". The middle part of Mat’s presentation was framed by the notion that “the act of selling design alters it.” And he touched upon a key issue in my own PhD research which was about the articulation of design activity as process model. It’s great to simplify design activity for communication purposes with a client, it but it risks “corrupting” our understanding of design. A lot of what is done in designing Mat says, "is inexplicable" so we need to “watch how we talk about design.” Other interesting points Mat brought up were, where was the craft in all this? And we need designers to lead with a point of view, not just a portfolio and process.

After lunch, three parallel breakout sessions occurred. These were led by two designers and were around service design; community-inspired design; and collaborative design. I attended community-inspired design led by Mary Rose Cook co-founder of Uscreates and Justin Marshall a researcher at UCF. Mary spoke about design-led methods/tools for engaging people on two levels. First was the need to get them into the room (or sometimes go to them). And the second was the need to have people talk to us.

In the final part of the session, Justin spoke about an academic-led project called Bespoke. It aims to increase social inclusion through community journalism in an area called Preston. The project is still underway but many, many issues are arising ranging from ethics, to behaviour change, to policy, to the naming of the project etc.

Reflecting on my time at the think tank, I think it was very much about gathering floating sentiments and commentary as to what appears to be happening in design today. I spoke to a designer shortly after the think tank and he told me he thought design practice had already changed. I know many others believe that design is constantly changing (eg. John Heskett, 2003). But where pushing the boundaries of practice is concerned we'll not always be sure of what comes next. And that's what's absolutely fascinating about having the opportunity to look at Dott and the design community as it applies design in new and different situations. I thought Emily Thomas of Aequitas Consulting summed up quite nicely how we should recognise design in the future where she said, “some of it is a little about the faith, because it’s about the future.”

Interdisciplinary discovery through design workshop, Monday 28 September 2009

Yesterday I was at the Interdisciplinary discovery through design workshop, hosted by Tom Inns of the University of Dundee and who leads the research initiative, Designing for the 21st Century.


Here's what the workshop invitation said:

The Designing for the 21st Century research initiative was originally conceived as a platform for building new interdisciplinary research partnerships between the engineering and technology communities and researchers in the arts & humanities... A broad portfolio of projects have delivered on this agenda, interestingly however, many have gone far wider bringing in researchers and stakeholders from across the UK research council communities. In all of these projects a design research perspective has allowed interdisciplinary research teams to explore a range of business and social issues in new ways.

This one-day workshop will profile the work of six research teams that have worked in this way. Participants at the workshop will then have the opportunity to reflect on the emergent roles for design research within the interdisciplinary research landscape and strategies that might be adopted to capitalise on this approach.

Throughout the workshop, it wasn't defined if we were talking about design research in practice or in academia. But the good thing for my own research is that it is currently working in both contexts ie. My research topic looks at the changing and expanding role of the designer, and my research process is a discussion about a researcher looking into design (the latter is key to a PhD because one's research process needs to be articulated in order to asses the reliability and validity of research findings or theory).

The workshop was held a the Imperial War Museum in London and was well-attended by mostly academia, quite a number of people from the Design Council and a few PhDers such as myself as good friend, Qin Han, aka Design Generalist.

I did tweet some notes during the event, but operating my new phone isn't quite at the level of efficient translation of my thoughts, but I do want to thank Lauren (redjotter), Fergus, Tamsin, James and Nick who responded to a few tweets (and I did try and include some of your comments in the conversations) and thanks to those who watched updates.

The workshop began with a presentation from Tom. He spoke about the current archipelago of design practice which sees many different islands represent current and emerging practices of design such as product design and service design.

Tom and Tom's archipelago of design

I love this analogy because it not only maps a terrain but also reflects the state of the different design practices, which are always similar in nature but aren't often connected in any other way. It also illustrates many new islands of design practice, which have popped up alongside the traditional modes of product, fashion and communication. These new island include service design, social design, design for development, design for sustainability etc.

Furthermore, Tom's archipelago is influenced by deltas (design history), currents (such as design thinking), lighthouses (such as the Design Council), cold fronts (lack of research funding for design), oceans of uncertainty, banks (of management), inlets, streams and the analogy goes on.

The research projects for the Designing for the 21st Century initiative were to act as ships either navigating the islands, or landing on them to explore ethnographically what was happening on the islands. Either way they were, as Tom mentioned, to be the Scott of Antarctica- finding new knowledge about design, especially since traditional notions of design have changed (or expanded) over time. One of Tom's slides showed this and below I have adapted a short cut version of his slide:

Traditional notions of design -------> Extended roles of design

generating ideas ---------------> facilitating ideas
managing trade offs ---------------> negotiating value
visualising the tangible ---------------> visualising the invisible
accommodating uncertainty ---------------> navigating complexity
profiling users ---------------> mediating stakeholders
synthesising futures ---------------> synthesising strategy

Adapted from Tom inns presentation for IDD, 28 Sept 2009

We then had five presentations from the Designing for the 21st Century initiative to give us insight into the initiative's projects. The projects profiled were:

1. Improving healthcare through design research by Prof Alastair Macdonald, Glasgow School of Art: Looked at how visualisation and participation could help in healthcare in the Ideal States project
   
   
2. Mobilising older workers through design research by Prof Jeremy Myerson & Jo-Anne Bichard, Royal College of Art, London: Looked at reinventing the workplace for the aging population in a project called Welcoming Workplace
   
   
3. Engaging audiences through design research by Prof Chris Rust, Sheffield Hallam University: Looked at the My Exhibition project which sought to explore how “affective” communication could help personalise experiences.
   
   
4. Designing interdisciplinary research by Dr Lucy Kimbell, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford: Looked at the Designing for Services project which explored how service designers worked with SME's involved in science and technology
   
   
5. Reducing crime through design research by Adam Thorpe & Prof Lorraine Gammon, University of the Arts, London: Looked at the Bikeoff Project where design was used to help reduce bike crime.

To give an overall feel for the projects, some commonalities I noted seen across the projects included:

• The wide variety of stakeholders used on each project
• This made the methodology complex, such as in Lorraine Gammon and Adam Thorpe's project where they attempted to visualise the process (check out their methodology map here)
  
• A bit of theory was often overlaid on the project to help explain it, and most of the time the theory was literature from another discipline
• Most projects were done "through" design ie. the academic researcher was doing the project as well as reflecting upon it. Lucy Kimbell's project however took a more ethnographic approach to exploring designing services in SME's. But this last point raised the question I had at the beginning of the day which was, were we talking about design research in academia or in practice?
  

After the five presentations, it was a break for lunch and back for a workshop.


The workshop asked us to reflect on the presentations and contribute our notes on what was the role of design research? More specifically, what perspectives, skills and methods do design researchers bring to the table?


Below are some tweets I got back when I asked the question on Twitter:

Jamesamperi: "Role of design research- to inform, inspire & set parameters around the activity of design giving it a better chance of success"

fergusbisset: "Role of Des. Res. is to make explicit what has hitherto been implicit within process of design and amongst the design community"

TAMSINA: "Role of design research... [doing all we can] for the sake of designing awesome experiences"

In our group we talked about the spectrum of doing design research in academia and in practice. Some differences were noted, such as more time and more theory being overlaid in academia. Some key words we identified among our individual scribbles in response to the question were:

• Giving people a voice
• Navigating uncertainty
• Openness
• Communication
• Flexibility

Under the the question, what skills and methods do design researchers contribute we said:

• Flexibility
• Rapid learning
• Iteration
• Awareness (of people and markets)
• Visualisation (making the implicit explicit, thanks Fergus)
• People-centred
• Bringing insight

The same kinds of words did keep on popping up and TAMSINA tweeted in response to the 2nd group of words: "Basically all the skills of a designer then!?! Design research is an oxymoron." The first part of Tamsin's comment was later repeated by a delegate in the final group discussion.

Tom did a quick overview of all the posters, drawing our attention to the fact that openness came up in many of the posters in response to the first question. Delegates raised issues with this saying that with openness, who owns the project? And also, how do Uni's teach this?


Under skills and methods, Tom drew out the fact that participation was the dominant theme, and mentioned that workshops were a great platform to allow this. A delegate commented in response to this theme that design and its visual nature allows a more democratic process as its not tied to a particular vocabulary.

The final exercise we did was listing challenges and opportunities for design research and what some action steps could be. My small group chose to focus on Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and we noted that the key challenge was having all disciplines in silos and a key opportunity would be to have them all work together by identifying, supporting and rewarding a catalyst. We also spoke about shifting paradigms of HEI's from places of teaching to places of learning. It reminded me of Sir Ken Robinson's awesome TED talk where he discusses creativity and how schools kill creativity.


In the final discussion for the day, more observations and issues were raised. Here are some I noted (but I think Qin might have more soon):

• Design academia and practice need a better relationship
  
• We have been talking about "different manners" of design research today
• Design as a word has many uses which can be confusing

The workshop ended at 4pm and I went home a bit exhausted and soaked like a sponge! But it was great to hear more about the Designing for the 21st Century projects, Tom's design archipelago, reflect on design research (in academia and in practice), meet new people, old friends and also consider where my own research sits in the wider context of academia and practice.

- Update -

For further reflections on the workshop, see Qin Han's Design Generalist blog post. She goes indepth on the Bikeoff project and also Lucy Kimbell's presentation on Designing for Services.

Lauren Currie's blog has a public lecture of Tom's at Dundee University's MA Exhibition. Titled, The End of Design, both Lauren and Qin tell me Tom adapted this lecture for the workshop presentation written about in this blog post. Lauren's also posted a video of the lecture, so check it all out here.

Leeds Festival of Design Activism: Postgraduate Research Colloquium. Thursday 2 July 2009

On a sunny Thursday in Leeds, seven PhD students, two facilitators, two potential PhDers and one interloper attended the one-day Postgraduate Research Colloquium to share, explore, develop and discuss PhD research. Here's what the website said:

The Postgraduate Research Colloquium is intended for PhD students working in the field of Design Activism. It will provide an opportunity to explore critical issues in their doctoral studies and receive extensive feedback on their work from facilitators and fellow students.


Katie Hill, who organized the event intended the colloquium to be a comfortable space where PhDers could spend time talking about their research with other PhD peers. The sessions were PhD-student led, rather than academic-led (the latter being a common model for conferences).

We began the day with a short exercise to think and reflect on life as a PhDer. The exercise was a reminder that we have lives outside of our PhD’s. We listed three great things and three challenges with doing a PhD and stuck our Post-it notes on the wall. An interesting observation was that things like time, freedom and focus were both great things and also challenges.

The day was split up into two sessions. In the sessions, we were given 10 minutes each to present and then had 30 mins for discussion time. Our facilitator Wendy had a neat idea to write on coloured Post-it notes a question, a suggestion and an issue, we saw for each person’s research. This was really helpful as sometimes we ran out of time to discuss everything and each of us could take away a handful of Post-it notes to reflect on.


The day wrapped up with a plenary. Guy Julier, Head of Research at Leeds Metropolitan University, and Clive Dilnot, from Parsons New School for Design in New York, joined our plenary to hear how the day went. Joyce and Wendy, the two facilitators gave a short wrap up on the day.

Joyce told us briefly about the broad scope of work being undertaken by the PhDers in her group. The research ranged from fashion social enterprises, to digital storytelling, to ecological literacy, to critical approaches to service design, to mapping worldviews of designers in relation to sustainable design strategies. This group’s reoccurring theme was about being honest and transparent about the research process.

Research methodology was a theme in both groups. I think most design PhDers have come to know enough people now to see that academic design research is digressing from traditional academic research practice. Every design PhDer I know has been actively exploring new research practices around how design is being investigated in an academic context. This has been a big theme of my own research. I have presented my research process numerous times now with the underlying argument that the subject matter of design requires a researcher to deal with it in a different and much less scientific-way in order to extract, understand and communicate the richness of design.

Joyce recently authored and presented a paper on a handful of design PhDs which use new and different practices of research to undertake academic investigations into design. Her paper was presented at the EKSIG 2009: Experiential Knowledge, Method & Methodology conference last year and was titled, Capturing tacit knowledge: documenting and understanding recent methodological innovation used in Design Doctorates in order to inform Postgraduate training provision. You can download the paper here.

Wendy, expanded on the other group's theme to say that in our group, we also spoke about transcending disciplinary boundaries. We had talked more about the challenges we found as doctoral research in design is still pretty much in its infancy.

Clive closed the session by stating that in just our small group of researchers, our research topics were so broad and varied. If PhD research is to expand the field of design into the twenty-first century, it will not be about taking the path we all know best. Instead it will be taking the lesser known path because the destination we seek for our research- into, for or through design, is something we are never going to be quite sure of during the process.

The PhD Colloquium was followed by the Design Activism Practitioner Conference. I'll publish an update of any reporting from Leeds Met here.

Communicating to the Public: Vitae Poster Competition

Last week I visited a sun-drenched Leeds University for a poster competition to communicate PhD research to the public. The event was organised by Vitae an organisation funded by the Research Councils UK (a partnership between 7 UK Research Councils) to help bring commercial skills to postgraduate researchers to increase their employability to industry. If you are a PhDer they have a great site of resources.


Vitae called for submissions of abstracts, which were proposals for our posters. From this, 100 PhD students were selected to design a poster in jargon-free language that a non-subject specialist could read in 5 minutes. This was the key judging criteria.

There were 5 Northumbria PhD students selected to submit posters. I met them and two staff from the Graduate School to spend the day viewing posters, having conversations about research and attending two very interesting presentations.

The first presentation was on opening us up to taking our research out in the public media space. Some ideas were to:

• Make a documentary
• Design a children's storybook
• Approach newspapers and magazines (as journalists are always looking for news)
• Use the internet
• Approach the University press office

The second presentation was about commercialising scientific research. The research was on the ability of our ear to detect the location of sound. The research found that while the ear was good at detecting the location of sound, it could not detect the location of sirens due to their frequency. In times of crisis, we need to be directed by our senses. Fires are the worst because in low visibility, we cannot see green exit lights nor can the ear detect the location of the siren.

This research went on to develop a low frequency siren that could direct people in low visibility. The siren has since been adopted by ships, universities and in vehicular tunnels. The key message here was to encourage us to seek a connection in our research to real-life situations.

But back to the posters... I found the poster exercise and event really valuable. The process of designing the poster meant I had to try and put the bulk of my PhD on one page. Here's a photo of my poster.


The poster submissions were very impressive and there was great variety. From seeing others and the winning posters, I definitely got a good feel for what I could do next time to better engage the general public in my research.

At the event I also found it really valuable to have a conversation about my poster. I had a few requests to talk through the poster and this helped me see that some of my language use could be improved.

If you are a PhD researcher, I would really encourage designing posters to communicate research. Throughout my PhD I have been doing 'one-pagers' to quickly disseminate and share ideas. It's a fun process, it makes you think and it allows people to have a conversation with you about your research which helps refine language and clarify thinking.

A PhD friend of mine once said she felt "really uninspired" sitting infront of a blank Word document. I think we would be less inclined to feel uninspired infront of Indesign or a blank sheet of paper with a pen- ready to sketch, map, draw or even write.

I found a paper recently which assembled An Evolving Map of Design Research and Design Practice of which the author visually mapped design research and then wrote an accompanying narrative. I think this is a great technique to employ and the Dubberly Design Office (where I found the paper) presents some excellent and engaging examples of concept maps to get one started.

At the end of the Vitae event, most of us didn't walk away with prizes (there could only be 3 winners- 1st, 2nd and 3rd!). But we did walk away with exposure to loads of other PhD research and more ideas to better communication our research to the public.

Reflections on Writing Across Boundaries, 30-31 March 2009

The focal point of the Writing Across Boundaries project is an annual workshop held in Durham. The workshop is aimed at third year doctoral students who are completing theses based on qualitative data and explores the relationship between data collection, analysis, and interpretation in the act of writing. Students are invited to reflect on the writing process itself as a form of social science thinking. Writing up from qualitative data can be a challenging but rewarding experience, and Writing Across Boundaries provides the forum for students to explore the theory and practice while still under the expert guidance of their supervisors.

From www.dur.ac.uk/writingacrossboundaries/

Early Monday morning I set off north to the pretty town of Durham for a two day residential to attend the Writing Across Boundaries (WaB) 2009 workshop. The workshop intended to bridge that “scary gap” from one's PhD data collection to writing up the thesis. It also had a secondary aim to be a time of reflection on our PhDs and on writing.

Bob Simpson (Durham University) and Robin Humphrey (Newcastle University) were the conveners and accommodating hosts to some-45 students over two days and one night at Durham University’s Holgate House, nestled in the countryside among gentle hills and lofty trees of Durham county.

In the workshops, we formed a few friendships, enjoyed loads of food and coffee, talked about writing and listened to an interesting mix of presentations on writing. The presentations came from many different perspectives such as:

• How creative writing techniques can help in PhD writing;
• The use of digital technologies as a possibility to go beyond writing;
• How the act of writing helps one theorise;
• The concept of the audience and the author’s standpoint.

But the most valuable (and I think much of the group would agree) was the opening panel of past PhDers who had attended WaB before completing the write-up of their theses. The past PhDers had all recently completed and passed their viva (an oral defense of one’s PhD). They spoke candidly about their PhD experience- previous and post-WaB workshop- and how the workshop contributed to the writing of their theses. There was a great Q&A session after the panel spoke, illuminating some of the most critical issues among the WaB group including:

• The final thesis looks nothing like the initial proposal: All PhDers submit a proposal before starting their PhD to let their sponsors and/or Universities know what they are looking to find out. These proposals are quite specific and often throughout the research process many PhD’s end looking very different to the initial proposal. One person at the workshop put it well by saying that all proposal's should just state: “give me time and money and I’ll tell you something interesting.”

• The “circulatory” of the PhD process: There seemed to be a consensus among the WaB group that a PhD is not a linear process, but a circular one. Some of us have found that we cannot retrofit existing theories to our research. This has required us to go back to discover, think and reflect more on what our research is telling us. Presenter Jennifer Mason actually said that a very few of us would be able to fit an existing theory neatly on top of our research and that most, would probably draw from many theories (ditto for me);

• The issue of honesty: This “circularity” can be an issue in a PhD, especially in terms of how honest one should about finding out that your initial hypothesis is disproved by the qualitative data. The panel advised to be honest. They had been and it added value to their research analysis.

• Kick starting confidence: The panel said the word “kick start” a lot i.e. that the workshop kick started their write up phase. It gave them a “permission” and confidence to go ahead a write up;

• The idea of two theses: We talked a lot about the idea of having 2 theses. The first being the focused and “polished" one we submit, and the second being the one that pays homage to all dimensions of our research (the successes, the failures, the off-in-a-tangent thoughts etc). Bob mentioned that these dimensions were really important, and that through writing we could “rehearse and exhaust them.” Personally, I think it'd be great if PhDers could write a book as their second PhD;
  

• The 'so what?' question: The 'so what' and the 'why' of one’s research is so important to remember- Why we are doing the research? What value is it contributing? Answering these reminds us of all the reasons for our commitment, of 3 or more years, to one piece of work.

Some practical steps toward writing

As well as workshop reflections, I also wanted to share here some practical steps for getting over the 'writer’s block' we all meet at some stage in the process. Here are some practical steps I noted down during the workshop that might help kick start the writing:

• If you are not doing well to engage with reams of transcripts from interviews, one of the PhDers at WaB suggested picking up a transcript, picking an issue you see within it and writing about it. He mentioned one thing just lead to another...;
  

• Ask a question, then write a response to it;

• Jot down notes of thoughts about your research. Then write in examples and explain them;

• Think less academic-speak and start writing things as you would say them. Think about how you would want it to be heard and received by someone;

• Just do it: easy to say, but not so easy to do. One key reflection I took away from WaB was that writing-up was about confidence. WaB was about sharing all our issues and finding out that others experience and think in the same way too. For me, I know I always struggle with wondering if I am doing the right thing or not, and this can be a huge time waster. Now I would say- just do it, because all my doubts and questions, in terms of what I have been doing, were more than validated at WaB.

Some things to consider when writing up the thesis:

So we're over the writing block, but WaB pointed out some important things to consider:

• Audience: Who is your audience will tell you a lot about how you should write, what you should write and what language to use;

• Situating yourself in the thesis: How do you bring yourself into the thesis? After all, we all had a story and a reason for doing the research in the first place;
  

• Keep the passion in the text: Don’t detach yourself too much in the write up;
  

• Voice: Consider who’s perspective you tell the story from. One exercise we did was to write about someone irritating we knew from a first person, second person and third person perspective.

• “The fine line”: In our last activity we got into groups to discuss some pieces of literature that we read before the workshop. We had to collectively list 5 reflections on the literature. My group talked and questioned a lot about how far we go on each side of the “fine line”. This is in terms of writing as:

Objective <----> emotive
(Where do we situate our viewpoint?
Taking into consideration that we are writing an academic thesis
but also want to engage the reader?)

Formal <----> informal
(How specifically do we quote people speaking in the thesis?)

Theory <----> narrative
(Could we weave theory and narrative together as well as Bryon Good did in his book, Medicine, rationality, and experience: An Anthropological Perspective)

Absent <----> reflexive
(Where do we situate ourselves in the thesis?)

Sensitive <----> literal
(How do we deal with ethics in qualitative research?)

There are so many more smaller reflections and notes I have from the workshop, but this is not the space for it all so I am going to finish up here. I thought WaB was a really valuable time of reflection in the middle of one’s PhD. The workshops brought a heightened sense of awareness to, and consideration of, one of the most important communication devices in human life- writing.

Walking to the train station, towards Durham Cathedral, after the WaB workshop

Writing Across Boundaries Workshop, Durham University

Today and Tuesday I will be attending the Writing Across Boundaries workshop at Durham University. The workshop is for PhDers in their write-up stage of their PhD.

The WaB website provides some interesting and useful resources to get one into writing mode. Here's what they say:

The Writing Across Boundaries website is dedicated to the support of social science researchers who wish to engage more effectively with the practical and intellectual issues that arise in the quest to produce texts which are engaging, accurate and analytically insightful.

The Resources part of the website is pretty helpful and quite interesting. It discusses:

• Drafting and plotting
• The data-theory relationship
• Narrative, rhetoric and representation
• Hints and tips for writing

Literature 'top ten'

Just a quick update on PhD and timing...

• My research question currently stands at:

Understanding seven archetypes of designers
in the Dott 07 publicly commissioned projects
and their relevance to sustainable development contexts

• I am in write-up stage at the moment
• I counted that I have been doing my PhD for 21 months (yikes!)
• With 15 months left and
• 12 months till I need to hand in a draft submission of the thesis for review.

I am currently pulling together my literature review. The ten selected texts below illustrate the scope of my PhD, inclusive of 2 key texts important for my research methodology. The texts below anchor my research subject matter and PhD. The list is alphabetical with short descriptors on why they have been chosen.

PhD scope

Boland, J., Collopy, F., Ed. (2005). Managing as designing. California, Stanford University Press.

• Boland and Collopy write about developing a new vocabulary of design, to transcend disciplinary boundaries. In the case of MaD, they are looking at integrating design and management. For this PhD, developing new vocabularies of design in the area of design methodology is a key focus to enable us to see how design can contribute to the public sector.
  

Burns, C., Cottam, H.Vanstone and C. Winhall, J. (2005). RED Paper 02: Transformation Design. London, Design Council.

• Think-do tank RED at the Design Council published some of the very first case studies on utilising design practice for tackling social issues. This paper also discusses philosophical and practical challenges of designers working in this area, especially where designers are making the design process more transparent.

Chris Jones, J. (1992). Design Methods. New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

• Design methodology sits at the heart of design practice and the activity of a designer. Chris Jones was one of the founders of the design methods movement and his book, first published in 1970, is a seminal text on the subject. The design methods movement since the 1970's moved through varying schools of thought (of which Nigel Cross has published extensively on). Chris Jones rarely agreed with these schools of thought, distancing himself from the movement and the community when the focus of design methods moved toward being systematic and scientific. Chris Jones believed the more important aspects of design methodology where the people involved and the complexities of design projects and process. In Design Methods, Chris Jones identifies levels of complexities in design practice- a helpful framework for us to understand the different levels design can intervene in society.

Collins, J. (2006). Good to Great and the social sectors: A monograph to accompany Good to Great. USA, Random House Business Books.

• Collins gives a great overview of the difference between the business and social sectors. Collins (and many others) cite the biggest difference between public and private sector organisations is source of funding. Collins also draws out common issues both sectors face.

Design Council. (2007). "Designs of the Time (Dott 07)." from http://www.Dott 07.com.

• Dott 07 is the empirical focus of study of this PhD. It is uses 7 publicly commissioned projects as case studies to understand the utilisation of design methodology in public sector. These case studies profile 7 archetypes of designers in the public sector.

Cross, N. (2007). "Forty Years of Design Research." Design Studies Vol. 8(No. 1).

• As mentioned before, Cross provides good historical overviews and summations of the design methods movement and their differing schools of thought since the 1960's. Cross writes extensively, and in more detail about this historical trajectory, in many published works.
  

Myerson, J. (2007). Pressing the Pause Button. London, Design Council.

• Myerson chaired the InterSections 07 Conference held in NewcastleGateshead in October 2007. Myerson described the conference as a "watershed event" as the last event to bring together such high calibre speakers and address such contemporary design issues was 14 years earlier at international design summit, Design Renaissance, in Glasgow. In Pressing the Pause Button, Myerson summarises the key themes of the conference. He saw these as being four key roles of design practice: Designer as strategist; co-creator; storyteller and; rationalist. This summation provides a great starting point to ground the PhD research findings in contemporary design discussion and debate.

Thackara, J. (2006). In the Bubble: Designing in a complex world. Massachusetts, MIT Press.

• Thackara discuss some key principles of designing in a complex world. Some of these principles were translated into Dott 07 and this book provides a very important foundation of which to understand Dott 07.

Methodology

Eisenhardt, K. (1989). "Building Theories from Case Study Research." Academy of Management Review Vol. 14(No. 4): pp 532-550.

• Eisenhardt connects Grounded Theory and case study research in her paper and outlines a process to do so. This PhD's undertaking mirrors Eisenhardt's process.

Glaser, B. G., Strauss, A. L. (2008). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. USA, Aldine Transaction.

• Grounded Theory is the generation of theory from the data collected. GT is the philosophical underpinning of the research approach in this PhD.
  

Design and the social sector

I often think of my story into this PhD as serendipitous. It really was about finding things in the right place at the right time.

When I was working in business and management consultancy, we did pro bono work with an Aboriginal policy centre to help them with their strategy to address the complex and long-standing issues in indigenous communities around Australia. For those of you who are not familiar with Australian history, we share a troubled story of white and indigenous Australia cohabiting. Things were much worse in the past but a legacy of this still exists in the present and shall do in the future if Australia is slow to move to address these issues.

Our work with the Aboriginal policy centre felt different to the other work we did with large organisations. For the first time, the top line vision was not about profit, market share or being a market leader. It was about well-being. Everything about this project tasted different and I was keen to explore more.

At the same time this project was running, I picked up Anita Roddick’s biography, Body And Soul: Profits with Principles. And then followed that by reading another biography titled Don’t look back: the David Bassau Story. Bassau was the founder of the first micro finance firm, Opportunity International. Both books celebrate life stories of people who weren’t designers or studied design, but what I noticed was that they shared similar innovative, lateral ways of thinking and acting to Designers that could help bring change to the lives of people. This was another thing I was keen to explore.

It was at this time I came across Dott 07 and the research offer online at the Design Council website. You can probably guess the rest of the story from here. So coming into the PhD, I had interests that loosely connected design to the social sectors, third sector, communities, well-being, development (as in the kinds of programmes run in the developing world)…. This was all just a hunch at the time, but while I was still working at the office, I came across micro finance firm Acumen Fund’s article on Designing Change: How venture philanthropy fund Acumen uses design thinking to help solve real-world problems. A year later (and a different country later) at the InterSections 07 Conference, Tim Brown of IDEO, talked about design for social impact and IDEO’s work with Acumen Fund.

Since my work with the Aboriginal Policy Centre I have kept an eye out for where design and Designers were involved in the social sectors and in the developing world. It's been over a year now and my list of references is growing. I thought I'd share as much as I know with you right here (listed in no particular order):

Blogs

Tim Brown (IDEO) blog
On the 10 big design challenges in the social sector.

Design for Social Impact Blog
The Rockefeller Foundation provided funding for the project and IDEO developed a workbook and guide for Design for Social Impact.

Design for India
Professor MP Ranjan explores on his blog where design can contribute to life in India, and around the globe. Here's a summary of the blog:

“Design is a powerful force that shapes culture and it is a professional activity that is beneficial for both community and business alike. This blog is for all those who are interested in exploring these wider manifestations of design as a critical human activity and would like to shape its application across all human cultural and economic activities.”

Putting People First, Experientia
One of my favouirte blogs with updates on all happenings where design is putting people first.

Companies

Many consultancies, whom we currently group under the umbrella of service design, are involved with using design in the public and social sectors. In the UK, companies like Thinkpublic, Participle and Uscreates have a steadfast focus on these sectors. Thinkpublic’s work with hospitals and the Alzheimer’s Society, and Uscreates work with education and health demonstrate applications of design thinking and skills to such areas. Here are some other companies involved in using design to address social issues:

Architecture for Humanity (USA)
A "charitable organization that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crisis and brings design services to communities in need... By tapping a network of professionals willing to lend their time and their talents to helping those who would not otherwise be able to afford their services, we support community development, help communities rebuild after disaster and provide pro bono design services to community partners around the world."

Design for Development (Canada)
A Canadian based company that "works with communities around the globe to develop meaningful and appropriate solutions to real world problems."

Design that Matters (USA)
A not-for-profit based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that "creates new products that allow social enterprises in developing countries to offer improved services and scale more quickly."

Engine (UK)
Service design and innovation firm, Engine, recently launched a Social Innovation Lab for Kent (SILK) which aims to put people at the centre of policy making.

Future Canvas (Australia)
Based in Melbourne Australia, Future Canvas “seeks to promote environmental sustainability and social connectedness through supporting, developing, and implementing a diverse range of creative, innovative and exciting projects.”

IDEO
All about what IDEO are doing and writing in this area.

Participle (UK)
"At Participle, we do two things: Firstly, bring together the widespread community level ideas and creative activity, and mix it with world-leading experts in any given field; Secondly, drive forward thoughts and actions around developing a new social settlement which can deal with the big social issues of our time."

Thinkpublic (UK)
Public service and communication design consultancy, Thinkpublic, "work to improve services and address social challenges. Our methods include social anthropological research, design, film and workshops. We work with the public and service providers to co-design products and services. Our services are designed to support 21st Century public sector reform and are transferable across all public services."

UsCreates (UK)
Dedicated to designing social change, Uscreates is a "creative consultancy that supports local organisations in delivering social change. We deliver solutions to national social problems at a local level working with Local Government, public sector organisations and businesses."

Work Worth Doing (Canada)
"An interdisciplinary design studio creating positive social and environmental actions for corporations, governments, and communities. Our current projects involve the greening of houses, preserving cultural heritage in Ontario, and understanding the intersection of design, society, and the environment."

Communities and Conferences

Designers Accord (USA)
"The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact." Core 77 inform us of a Designers Accord Town Hall Meeting in New York in March 09.

Design Can Change (Canada)
A Canadian graphic design studio's web platform bringing together the design community to join in sustainable practice. They are a bit like…

Three trees don’t make a forest (UK)
A UK not-for-profit to bring awareness to the design community about sustainable practice. Their ultimate goal is to have a zero carbon design industry. Check out their knowledge bank where they share tips for action on what Designers can do to make their practices more sustainable.

The Social Lab (UK)
Run by Thinkpublic is a space for ideas on social innovation and change.

A Better World By Design conference (USA)
"What are designers doing to address these critical issues facing today's world? How are engineers developing new technologies to improve life on earth? Where are entrepreneurs finding surprising opportunities in this mess? A Better World by Design will attempt to address these questions by demonstrating what professionals and academics are doing to promote sustainable development and change the world for the better." Check out their blog here.

Design and Development

UN Millennium Development Goals
So many opportunities for design...

Design Serbia
Currently under construction, Design Serbia is a programme of work to help support and catalyse growth of the Serbian design industry.

Designs of the Times (Dott 07)
A programme that brought together Designers and local communities to tackle issues in health, education, food, energy and transport in the North East of England.

Books and publications

Blessed Unrest (book)
A leading environmentalist and social activist's examination of the worldwide movement for social and environmental change.

Good to Great and the Social Sectors (book)
Jim Collin's famous book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't lays out business and management principles for great companies. In Good to Great for the Social Sectors, Collins looks at the application of these principles in the social sector.

RED (Design Council) Transformation Design Paper
Explores and discusses what Transformation Design is and some application of Transformation Design in tackling social issues.

Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered
E. F. Schumacher did well with the title, it sums up the book nicely.

Exhibitions

Design and the Other 90%
A traveling exhibition that began at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, "demonstrates how design can be a dynamic force in saving and transforming lives, at home and around the world."

Massive Change
A traveling exhibition that began in 2004 that, "explores paradigm-shifting events, ideas, and people, investigating the capacities and ethical dilemmas of design in manufacturing, transportation, urbanism, warfare, health, living, energy, markets, materials, the image and information. We need to evolve a global society that has the capacity to direct and control the emerging forces in order to achieve the most positive outcome. We must ask ourselves: Now that we can do anything what will we do?"

Research and academia

Stanford Social Innovation Review
Research and publishing to share "substantive insights and practical experiences that will help those who do the important work of improving society do it even better."

Helen Hamlyn Research Centre
"People-centred design and innovation at the Royal College of Art."

Attainable Utopias
Lead by John Wood of Goldsmiths, AU looks at principles to achieve big visions of a better world.

Stanford D School’s Adventures around the world
D Schools adventures throughout the developing world to seek out partnerships for projects.

MA. Design for Development at Kingston University
The brand new MA, "focuses on the value of design as a vehicle for addressing social and ecological concerns in both the developed and developing worlds."

Designer as Change Agent by Banny Banerjee
Great paper on role of Designer as Change Agent. Presented at the Changing the Change conference in Turin in 2008.

Sustainable Everyday
The Sustainable Everyday Project (SEP) proposes an open web platform to stimulate social conversation on possible sustainable futures.

Design and new applications, where to next?

So that's the list... In Tim Brown’s blog post (very first link on the list) he asks many big questions, but one which has played heavily on my mind for a long time now is:

“... just like the social sector in general; we may be diffusing a small amount of capacity across a very broad range of problems.”

I tend to think this is what tends to happen with the design and business argument. Design has so many applications in a business and organisational context that it becomes so confusing and overwhelming. Both for the Designer to articulate where they can add value, and for the Client in understanding exactly where design can make an impact. I always think Design should focus on one killer app first, and build from there.

Since I left design-led business and management consultancy, I have had good time to reflect on what design's killer app is for business. I believe it is about applying design’s people-centred approach in business. Businesses, especially large organisations, just don’t know how to talk to and get up close and personal with their customers. There is pretty limited teaching of this in business school. More secondary applications of design in business are around:

Prototyping- Organisations pilot, they don’t prototype. Organisations commit a huge pot of money and resource at once rather than prototyping parts of it, or the whole thing rapidly (the public sector does this too and one Designer said to me last week it was like a "big bang" approach). Prototyping would allow organisations (and the public sector) to weed out failures and issues before launching into the final implementation and before the commitment of a lot of money, time and energy. I have seen this "big bang" approach with organisations I worked with and by the time the design capability was brought it, all we could do was illuminate issues (our direct client did not like this much) and re-engineer a few incremental improvements to make the product slightly better than it was. We were hamstrung because so much had already been committed in terms of resource and finance. It is in this space where Designers will argue they need to be involved earlier in the process, rather than downstream toward the end.

Communication- There is such a massive, massive opportunity for communication designers to work internally with large organisations on their internal communications (eg. reporting, service and product concepts, business models, organisational models, strategy etc). Forget for a moment advertising, promotions, packaging, branding… there’s loads of work for a communication designer within organisations. I can’t count the number of times a simple visualisation (even just a hand sketch) has added value internally in making pages of written text suddenly clear (a picture tells a thousand words), beginning conversations (especially around how something can be improved) and reframing a problem (as people see it differently as a picture).

People-centeredness, or customer centricity, is the killer app of design in business. Just last Thursday, Harvad Business School blogged, Becoming a Customer Experience-Driven Business. Design's people/customer-centered focus is cosely followed by prototyping and (internal) communications. What is the killer app for design in the social sectors?

(ps. Sorry for the lack of visuals in this post. It's word heavy and long enough to scroll through!)

New year, new thinking and new questions

Happy New Year! I hope you all enjoyed the holidays, where ever you were and whatever you were doing. I got to enjoy the festive season in one of the most awesome cities in the world- New York!

I know I have a post brewing somewhere on some things I came across in New York, and I am not sure if it was these things or a 10-day break from the research did me a whole lot of good, but last week I refreshed, focused and revised my research question. I have a bit of expanding to do for it, but for now, here is it:

Understanding the emerging roles of Designers
in the Dott 07 public design commission projects
and their broader relevance to development contexts.

It's a new year and new thinking and new questions have been cropping up elsewhere. I have been scanning the blogs today and picked up on a few things...

Transformation, not Innovation

On the last day of 2008, Bruce Nussbaum declared that "'Innovation' is dead. Herald the birth of 'Transformation' as the key concept for 2009." Of course this was not met without loads of skepticism, criticism and some support (see the comments Nussbaum's post provoked at the bottom of the page). To give you a summary, here's a key part of the post:

The concept of “Transformation” ... implies radical transformation of our systems—education, health-care, economic growth, transportation, defense, political representation. It puts the focus on people, designing networks and systems off their wants and needs. It relies on humanizing technology, not imposing technology on humans. It approaches uncertainties with a methodology that creates options for new situations and sorts through them for the best quickly.

Most of the comments question, is this just a new buzzword/branding for/to replace innovation? In 2006, RED published a paper titled, Transformation Design. It's approaching 3 years now and while I think the content of the publication is great, the phrase "Transformation Design" never really took off. Did it?

Three (big) questions for Service Design

Another thing I came across today was my friend, Qin's, blog post on three questions she's posing to the Service Design world. Here they are:

Question 1: How do we change our understanding of the design process in Service Innovation?

Qin speaks to the shift in the creation of tangible (ie. in traditional design) to less tangible outputs and outcomes. I very much like her comment, "The uniqueness of service design is that the design outcome is a living system that evolves over time as a result of rich human involvement." This certainly happened in Dott 07 too, but how much do Clients, and other stakeholders, value this? How can this be evaluated?

Question 2: What are the designer’s new roles while working with multiple stakeholders?

Qin says, explorers, negotiators, as members of a design profession and facilitators. I have a load more to add here, but more in regard to the Dott 07 projects (as you could probably tell with my revised research question above).

Question 3: How would design’s value be recognised and accepted by other disciplines in Service Knowledge?

Qin not only asks how would design's value be recognised by Clients and stakeholders, but also by other disciplines that design is increasingly intersecting with (on that note, keep posted for details on the next InterSections conference in the UK) and including education. This is a biggie.

Please post your comments on Qin's blog here.

The Creator Economy and Service Design

Finally, here's an radio interview with Futurist, Paul Saffo, on the Creator Economy. Not an economy of creatives, but the idea that we have gone through Producer and Consumer Economies (which was about making stuff and then lots of it), and we are now in the Creator Economy where the central actor is not a Producer or Consumer, but where the person does both activities in same act, for example a Google user who uses (the product or service) and also produces (brings together online information). Seems Saffo and the Creator Economy has been around for awhile. The BBC reported on it in 2007.

Anyway, I thought, this sounds a bit like what happens when people use a service. See Rafael Ramirez's paper, 'Value Co-Production: Intellectual Origins and Implications for Practice and Research'. Sorry can only provide an abstract for you here.

Changing the Change in Turin Italy

Geoff (boyfriend) and Ben (fellow Northumbria PhD peer) called me a “tough crowd” when I gave them my feedback on the Changing the Change conference which was recently held in Turin, Italy between 10-12 July 2008.


But having seen some of the blogging on the conference, such as here on Design Altruism Project, I don’t feel like such a tough crowd. My biggest gripe of the conference was the fact that is was a design conference with an abundance of poorly designed and illegible presentation slides. This was an issue raised at the DMI conference I attended earlier this year and I think we, as audiences and designers, should demand and do better.

Having said that, the keynotes and invited speakers are to be applauded for their passion, charisma and quality of presentation. Ezio Manzini hardly put a foot wrong with his opening presentation and he nailed it when he said the conference really was “field research” for all.


This is the thing that I have realised having attended a number of conferences now. Sometimes they are good, and sometimes they are bad, but no matter what, each time it is field research for benchmarking your own research and gathering new and fresh ideas, which may not come directly from the conference content, but hearing others just makes you think. And think about your own work.

I also enjoyed Nigel Cross’s presentation on the opening day. He did a good job to lift academic design research out of the drudgery saying that academic design research was beyond practice and was about clarifying what we do, and it should also inform design skills for constructive change. He further noted that academic design research should be developing knowledge that is easily articulated, communicated and replicable. All very important in our journey to bridging that divide between research and practice.

The invited speakers were also very interesting. I thought Geetha Narayanan’s presentation on Design in India really held the audience’s attention. She presented both philosophies of creative thinkers in India and gave some real world examples of sophisticated systems designs in India such in the case of milk production company, Amul, a network of people co-operating for milk production, marketing and distribution. It was clearly a sustainable system right down to the involvement of women in rural areas who were given financial independence for bringing the fresh milk to the factory. Close to the end of her presentation, Narayanan said, “design is not an abstract concept” in India, and I felt that both summed up her presentation really well and what design and sustainability should be all about.

Some of the notable presentors and presentations I attended are summarised below (with links to their papers):

Francois Jegou et al

Discussed the results of the Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles project, which gathered stories of creative ideas by communities for sustainable living. For me the most interesting part of Jegou's presentation was about how these ideas could be scaled ie. Implemented into other cultural and social contexts. This was done by 'simulation cards' or enabling cards which identified enabling conditions for ideas to flourish in other communities.

Alex Quinto

Quinto’s company, Work Worth Doing, is making a living out of combining design and sustainability and this is not without challenges such as how you measure success of design for sustainability and how you get the money to do it in the first place. The latter is something that rested heavily in my mind throughout the conference. It was great that we could talk about future 'could be' scenarios, but practically how would they work without adequate resources such as time, people and funding to do it? Alex’s presentation also discussed some of work such as Now House, a demonstrator home for domestic environmental sustainability- funded by a mortgage company.

John Wood

Wood’s fellow colleague presented the 10 principles of Metadesign, Metadesign is what Wood calls a ‘more comprehensive, self-creating system of design’ in his paper. Something that could sit above all disciplines of design. I thought it was interesting that these principles could be used as indicators and measures of design. Especially seeing as all the Dott 07 projects I am looking at are so vastly different and I have never been sure about benchmarking them. A further look into Wood’s paper and other work (which I am vaguely familiar with having met John before and seen him present a few times) would probably help a lot.

Stuart Walker and Scott Badke

Their experience of working together between Canada and the UK illustrated to them that there was a difference between having an experience and really being in a place. They showed images from Banff (in Canada) and Keswick (in the UK), two very special places and even more special seeing as I have been to both and been impressed by their natural beauty in the way Walker and Badke were. Walker and Badke described having an experience as buying into the same brands that proliferate both locations (eg. North Face, Columbia etc.) which they see as impeding meaningful connections with the distinctiveness of places. I found their personal experiences and reflections quite fascinating and also very much reminiscent of Nicolas Bourriaud’s work on Relational Aesthetics and Guy Debord's work (book), Society of the Spectacle, both which I probably need to pick up again very soon.

Robert Young

So Bob is both Ben and my principle supervisor, but Bob’s presentation really hit chords with the audience. Bob proposed a framework for the changing nature of design practice moving from traditional design to emergent design. He discussed levels that designers design on with the D1, 2 and 3 model, which describes designers designing in the context, to designing of the context. I think the audience really appreciated someone framing for them the complexities of designing and design practice. I saw no other person do anything like this in the entire conference, and conversations were sparked in the Q&A session and also in the closing Discussion Sessions that sought to pin down the emergent themes of the conference.

I came away from the conference with many, many ideas for my own research. Much of this was fuelled by conversation with Bob and Ben, especially over enormous Italian dinners. I will somehow report on these either here, or in the monthly comms (newsletter) I send out.

On the second night of the conference, a conference dinner was held at the opulent Valentino Castle.


It could not have been a more perfect, summery night for an alfresco dinner in the courtyard of the Castle, with a live jazz band, arrow-shaped tables (part of the conference branding), and an all-round casual but classy affair. Definitely a mememorable moment for the Changing the Change conference.


For more reporting on the Changing the Change conference see:

Core 77
Design 21: Social Design Network