Simplexity of Design

User generated content for design research

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:56:00 +0000

I've been searching near and far for a good way to publish my masters on the web.

This is what I was looking for. Enjoy!

Open publication - Free publishing - More services

Fellows form function

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:52:00 +0000

I have a feeling this concept is going to erupt. We talk of user-oriented design, service design, social design, sustainable design, and so on.

I have been using the phrase fellows forms function for a few years now. And it's coming together quite nicely. Here's what I mean: groups of people are the ones who are behind choosing how to accomplish a function. Design has always been about the function or the need to be solved as well as the form or manner to achieve it. But today in 2009, the actual design process itself is not anonymous nor single minded anymore. Design is just as much about the fellows taking part as it is interested in the form and function.

I like the word fellows because it also evokes the ideas that it is not one person but a group of people who can together orient the avenues of better change.

I like the word function because it reminds me of the functional unit in the calculation of an LCA. You can't manage what you can't measure.

I like the word form because it is used as a action verb, not a passive noun. To form the future. It implies a process.

To me that is design in 2009. Fellows form function.

Done_sky

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:26:00 +0000

There it is. Done. The pdf was created and sent.

Thanks for reading, listening, tagging along.

It's been a great ride.

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:23:00 +0000

More Structure for unstructured users?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:34:00 +0000

This paper comes from a specialist in information technology systems design. It is clear that in such a design process, the users’ input is really crucial to the success of the product or service. In fact, Leela Damodaran states that this inadequate involvement of the users has lead to IT systems failing to deliver the benefits expected by the users for the past two decades. So in this article, “User involvement in the systems design process: a practical guide for users”[i], exposes the kind of structures that are required to insure the users have enough influence in the development process.

The critique of the existing literature on participatory methods is that it deals with only some of the stakeholders in the design process. This continues the idea that participatory design is a complex process that needs to be taking into account specific organization contexts. Therefore so far, the focus has been put on the point of view of the PD initiators and their need to be reactive and improvise depending on the context and culture of the participants and their organization. They are also advised to seek greater bureaucracy by involving top and middle management into the process of getting users into the process. In IT systems design, another point of view has been discussed, that of the system experts or software developers. However, as Damodaran argues in this paper, the point of view of the user has not been explored in the past research on participatory design.

Damodaran, an expert in the field of participatory design methods, therefore begins by presenting problems coming from users in participatory design. In many cases, users are required to participate which doesn't bode well for the design team. It is said that the users are often lost in the process as they aren't briefed and don't understand their own role. Then there are user representatives that need to speak with users and find a way to come up with a consensus in order to represent the majority of users. Even though, guidance is given, participatory processes can become meaningless "rubber-stamping" exercises. What she proposes is to structure and organizational context around the users either with a user representative or with an ongoing quality assurance program. The simple need for an infrastructure to support user involvement shows that the participatory aspect might be more an effort in itself than the actual design part. Although there are surely many cases where participatory design is recommendable, she makes one wonder if it is worth the trouble.

Nonetheless, what matters to my research the most in Damodaran’s writings is the initial study on the benefits and pitfalls of user involvement.

Pros:

1. Improved quality of the system arising from more accurate user requirements.

2. Avoiding costly system features that the user did not want or cannot use.

3. Improved levels of acceptance of the system.

4. Greater understanding of the system by the user resulting in more effective use.

5. Increased participation in decision-making in the organization.

Cons:

1. Process success dependant on users being able to influence decision-making.

2. Hostage role: Users not wanting to contradict the experts or designers.

3. Propagandist role: Indoctrinated users taking on the view of the designers.

Damodaran’s conclusion is that for users to apply their knowledge and expertise to IT development, a user involvement structure allows for communications mechanisms and services necessary to support the user involvement process. My conclusion is that a more natural way of having users participate has to exist. Something seems wrong with creating more structures to better coerce users into participating. Shouldn’t they want to participate willfully in the first place. Maybe there’s more behind unconscious participation where users are doing what they do best: just use it.

[i] DAMODARAN, L. (1996). “User involvement in the systems design process a practical guide for users”. Behavior and Information Technology, volume 15, number 6, pages 363 -377.

State of the PSS

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 07:51:00 +0000

A paper that retraces the evolution and the present understanding of product-services systems has been put forth just recently in 2007. Having reviewed with a fine comb the past decade of literature on the subject of PSS design, the authors have established the State-of-the-Art this growing field. Rightfully so, Baines et al. have named their foundation creating paper : “State of the art in product-service systems”[1].

The authors proceed to examining many definitions of all the nomenclature that relates to the field. In some cases they show the variability in the definitions thereby demonstrating the evolution of the concept of time. For example the initial author treating directly PSS and naming it so was Mark Goedkoop as he defined PSS in 1999[2] as :

“A product service-system is a system of products, services, networks of “players” and supporting infrastructure that continuously strives to be competitive, satisfy customer needs and have a lower environmental impact than traditional business model.”

This differs slightly from the definition of Ezio Manzini who picked up on the trail and popularized in design research the notion of PSS in 2003[3]:

“An innovation strategy, shifting the business focus from designing (and selling) physical products only, to designing (and selling) a system of products and services which are jointly capable of fulfilling specific client demands”

Ironically, Manzini is the author that speaks most of the possibilities for sustainability emerging from such process[4], however the mention of environmental impacts is not mentioned the way it is in Goedkoop’s initial definition. By studying other definitions of the sort, Baines et al. have noticed the adoption Goedkoop’s definition throughout the literature. Nonetheless, Baines et al. do dare to propose this simplified definition:

“A PSS is an integrated product and service offering that delivers value in use.”

In this paper we choose to follow the general consensus and continue with the definition that Goedkoop established. It is noteworthy to determine at this time the meaning that he attributed to the words Product-Service System in his definition. Hence, a product is a tangible commodity manufactured to be sold and to fulfill a user’s needs whereas a service is an activity done for others with an economic value and lastly, a system is a collection of elements including their relations.

Another way to explain what is the general concept of introducing a PSS to business markets is with the emphasis that a PSS provides in selling the use more than selling the product. There has been mention of three types of PSS. The product-oriented PSS promotes and sells a product in a traditional manner. This includes the original act of sale and additional services such as after-sales service guaranteeing functionality and durability of the product owned by the customer (e.g. a computer with extended servicing). The use-oriented PSS: selling the use or availability of a product that is not owned by the customer (e.g. a car-sharing service). Result-oriented PSS: selling a result or capability instead of a product (e.g. a laundry service).

The results-orientated model is more complex and nonetheless represents the most popular and innovative interpretation of the features of a PSS. Secondly, a result-oriented model better suits customer needs with an inherit flexibility for a company to customize their response consequently increasing the quality of their service and creating a differentiation between competing companies. In looking to create a total value for the customer, the experience becomes tailored to his needs and must take into account the culture in which the PSS will operate. All this leads to a PSS development process following a case-by-case basis and viewed from the client’s perspective.

A PSS is also new perspective for business to operate changes the role of the manufacturing strategy in developed countries. Their solution to a reduced amount of objects produced lies in augmenting the intensity of the knowledge required to produce such products. When a manufacturer becomes more responsible for its products and services through take-back, recycling (of even upcycling?), and refurbishment, the integration of a PSS reduces waste through the product’s life. That is the argument that authors present to describe PSS as a sustainable strategy.

In fact, the sustainability of the PSS becomes possible thanks to a systems view in the development and maintenance processes. Because of this world-view on the situation, designers are able to better manage the waste and quality of the output that the PSS produces. This same perspective not only allows for better environmental impact management but also economical cost to rendering the service. Interestingly so, the majority of the authors that expose the benefits of designing a PSS emphasize the benefits on a environmental and social scale more than demonstrating the economical successes.

This tangent for leaving aside the economical costs variation of running a PSS that researchers tend to follow might be the case because of the cultural barrier required to embrace such a shift in operating methods. This shift and new understanding has to take place not only in the minds of the company executives but also in the minds and hearts of the customers. So far, an initial resistance to ownerless consumption has been conveyed by users. Furthermore, if users have to relinquish their relationship of ownership of an object, companies have to become responsible of structuring their organization to receive the used products. Secondly the companies also take on the risk of product malfunction. This is not to mention the difficulty in pricing a single use of product. For example, what should be the cost of printing one sheet of paper? The conclusion to the barriers for a company to adopt a PSS as a business strategy is to work with a complex point of view and choose to develop a systemic approach to designing their services.

This complex point of view also suggests including all players into the equation as mentioned in Groedkoop’s definition. Therefore the users have a pivotal role to play in participating in the early development stages to create a system that is conscious of the user’s perspective of the service offered. Luiten et al. go one step further by stating that in an effective PSS, users should be thought as innovators, emphasizing a shift towards co-creation, whereby end-users play an organized role in the design process[5]. Therefore this change from product thinking to systems thinking modifies all the relationships between businesses, users and designers. (triangle diagram).

More on these relationships could be known if the literature presented more critical and in-depth evaluation of their performance in practice. Baines et al. have determined that the range of tools and methodologies that are present in developing PSS are often subtle modifications of more conventional design processes and lack the completeness of set of tools proposed. They wish to pursue their understanding of PSS by developing more tools to create PSS to study further what is called management of transition, and thus use more quantitative methods. However, the greatest challenge remains to integrate the relevant stakeholders in a participatory process. My goal is to show that users are already participating, and figure out how designers can translate that into more effective PSS.

References

[1] BAINES, T. S., LIGHTFOOT, H. W., EVANS, S., NEELY, A., GREENOUGH R., PEPPARD, J., ROY, R., SHEHAB, E., RAGANZA, A., TIWARI, A., ALCOCK, J.R., ANGUS, J.P., BASTL, M., COUSENS, A., IRVING, P., JOHNSON, M., KINGSTON, J., LOCKETT, H., MARTINEZ,V., MICHELE,P., TRANFIELD, D., WALTON, I.M.,WILSON, Y., (2007). “State-of-the-art in product-service systems.” Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Journal of Engineering Manufacture Professional Engineering Publishing, volume 221, number 10.

[2] GOEDKOOP, M., VAN HALER, C., TE RIELE, H., and ROMMERS, P. (1999). “Product Service-Systems, ecological and economic basics.” Report for Dutch Ministries of Environment (VROM) and Economic Affairs (EZ).

[3] MANZINI, E. and VEZOLLI, C. (2003) “A strategic design approach to develop sustainable product service systems: examples taken from the ‘environmentally friendly innovation’ Italian prize”. J. Cleaner Prod., vo1ume 11, pages 851-857.

[4] MANZINI, E. and VEZOLLI, C. and CLARK, G. (2001). “Product service-systems: using an existing concept as a new approach to sustainability.” J. Des. Res., vo1ume 1, number 2.

[5] LUITTEN, H., KNOT, M., and VAN DER HORST, T. (2001). “Sustainable product service-systems: the Kathalys method.” In Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Environmentally conscious design and inverse manufacturing, pages 190-197.

What will this research entail?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 05:51:00 +0000

So far in our research, we have seen that more than ever people want to participate proactively in the design process. In many domains, users have already become active in modifying or creating solutions for themselves to satisfy their needs and desires. In addition, the internet has proven to be a fertile ground, enabling large numbers of users to become active in generating content. With respect to our current research and experimentations with online crowdsourcing efforts, the idea generation phase has been the most potent for involving users into the design process. Furthermore, the traditional brainstorming activity relies in part on originality and divergence, and both are well served with the large quantities of online participation. Crowdsourcing a brainstorming is what we’re calling brainsourcing. Finally, a report from a study on user involvement in service innovation revealed that the users produced more original ideas than the company’s professional service developers^{^[1]}.

To further narrow the scope of this research, we have decided to focus our attention specifically to better understand the relationship between the simplicity of participation over the internet and the user’s capacity to innovate. This study asks: what are the right conditions, for participants to create innovative responses to a design problem over the internet?

To do so, we would evaluate the creativity of the participating users while using the internet for crowdsourcing a brainstorming like task. Moreover, we hope to investigate the quality of the brainsourcing exercises by comparing them to a traditional brainstorming with professional designers. Could a brainsourcing exercise where online users express their ideas become a means for designers to perceive tacit needs? In a form of reflection-on-action, could the content generated by the users help the designers better define the design problem?

[1] Per Kristensson, et al. (2002) “Users as a Hidden Resource for Creativity: Findings from an Experimental Study on User involvement”

The internet as an innovative playground?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 05:49:00 +0000

The internet is a new element in professional participatory design that this research brings to the table. Allowing for the problem owners to become problem solvers is now possible with the ever trail blazing communication advances of the internet. The year 2006 was determined to host the social revolution of the internet. A phenomenon called Web2.0 has seen people participating in the creation of the content to be published online. By writing blogs, sharing knowledge in a wiki, reviewing services, uploading videos, Time magazine has named all contributing online participants the “person of the year”. This user generated content shared over the internet is a contributing factor in a form democratisation by social empowerment. Moreover, the internet space allows for one to express his views that are proper to his context.

Needless to say that this form of self-publishing comes with its sets of disadvantages. Let it be said that the internet doesn’t automatically implicate democracy. The negative sides of the internet create a form of “maocracy”[1]. As it is true that many people don’t have access to the internet, and many don’t have knowledge of computers to actively participate in the process.

Nonetheless, the internet has proven that it can be catalyst for initiating change. No other place could allow for democratising the design process with the same amount of participation. Basically, the internet is levelling hierocracy with its network. Not to mention that all the information and the activities taking place on websites are easily documented, timestamped, classed and memorized. This allows for an asynchronous approach to project development.

Enter crowdsourcing, another 2006 internet phenomenon. It happens when a specific task is completed by a crowd of people using the internet as a network. It originates from the idea of companies out-sourcing specialized tasks. Therefore, solutions could come from the productive potential of millions of plugged-in enthusiasts [2]. The neologism crowdsourcing embodies a complex principle where the average response of a large group of people is nearly always better than any individual’s answer [3]. In stride with what Sanders had been studying, these professional-amateurs don’t consider leisure as passive consumerism but active and participatory [4].

So far, collaboration is not truly present in the current forms of crowdsourcing initiatives. The essence of true collaboration is present when team members are actually “thinking together” rather than only exchanging information and opinions[5]. An exception can be made for cases like Wikipedia, where people are adding to the work of others, in a distributed asynchronous form of “thinking together”. This is one of the strengths of a wiki where users can dynamically modify and create the published content put forth by their peers.

[1] Lanier, J. (2005) “Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism”

^{^[2]} In 2006, Jeff Howe exposed in Wired magazine the concept of crowdsourcing by looking at how amateurs with digital cameras affected professional photographers.

[3] Suroweicki, J. (2005) The wisdom of Crowds.

[4] Crowdsourcing is possible because of the rise of Professional Amateurs. With open source ideals, they get involved in publicizing knowledge and skills to the greater public. This way, other amateurs can learn and train to become Pro-Ams.

[5] Larsson, A. (2004) “Making Sense of Collaboration: The Challenge of Thinking Together in Global Design Teams”

What is the relationship between the designers and the participative users?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 05:48:00 +0000

Within this context of democratizing the design process, the designers and the users need to be revolutionary. Sanders states that the task of getting users to create themselves starts with designers empathizing on the difficulty of waking the creativity within. In addition, Sanders believes that people want to express themselves and to participate directly and proactively in the design development process. The collective aspect of this generative process helps resonate within the users or rebounds onto another idea, in displacement of concepts.

In researching the shift from user-centered to participatory design approaches, Sanders has been a pioneer in helping the user articulate his unspoken feelings, inexperienced needs, and unthought desires[1]. Starting from one’s innate visual abilities, she has created the games, tools and experiences that simplify the involvement participants into the design process and thus enriching what can be extracted from the process by the designers. So far in professional participatory design, the focus has been put on need intensive tasks. For example, developing a particular type of product or service is assigned to the users, along with the tools needed to carry those tasks out [2].

Sanders uses many diagrams to illustrate her research findings, all to show the user’s capacity to express himself. The following table quickly synthesizes the subtleties and relationships between what the users create, and the nature of that self-expression.

In professional participative design, the role of the designer changes because the user takes on some of the creative aspects in the process. Sanders views the designer’s new role as facilitating the expression of the user’s needs and dreams. This new role has the practice of designers and social researchers not just coming together, but completely fading one into the other. This new bread of design researcher will create the tools to let the user express his creativity, then analyse and interpret user generated artefacts and models, to lead the process to inspiring innovation.

[1] In applying the social science of psychology and anthropology to design research, Sanders calls herself an experiment. She dates participatory design at the end of 1999 when the designers and social scientist started respecting each other’s particular field of interest within the user experience. This coming together of the practices of science and creativity is where Sanders sheds new light on the design process.

^{^[2]} Von Hippel (2005) Democratizing Innovation

How can participative design generate design ideas?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 05:47:00 +0000

A change in concept comes from seeing the new in terms of the old. That is to use the situation at hand to change our perception of the old. This is a shift. Schön calls it a displacement of concept[1], describing it as a metaphor of the extension of the concept of old in terms of a new situation. New concepts arrive as a result of this shift. He adds that it is not applied, new concepts happen after the process of discplacement.

Tying into another of Schön’s idea generating concepts in reflection-in-action and in the concept of surprise, Coyne and Snodgrass demonstrate how the design process is apparent to a contextual and dialogical understanding of a conversation[2]. They also recognized that in design terms, the initial question begins a conversation which then flows with more questions. The objective of this dialogue is that both parties engaged expand from their initial understanding. This to-and-fro movement from the first point of view and that of the third person point of view leads to the displacement of concepts.

In Praquin’s master’s memoir on collective idea generation, it was difficult for the participants to detach themselves from their personal perspectives and see the world from each other’s point of view. This comes with no surprise, as Schön of the original model was also aware of its limits. In this case, Schön makes clear that “closed minded and narrow minded describe not only pathological conviction but conviction generally. And conviction is necessary for directed action.” It was therefore expected and comprehensible that the participants might not engage in the concept shifting aspect of the process.

For displacement of concepts to happen in participatory design, the creation of a common language or translation between the participants and the users is the most critical aspect [3]. Sanders has been a pillar in developing such field study methods and design activities to build the bridges that lead to user idea generation. The goal is to integrate “systemic analysis, appreciative intervention, and practitioner participation” to create conditions that reduce the gap between design vision and users’ reason. In fieldwork such as videotaping participant observations and follow-up interviews, designers can understand the nuances of users’ everyday practices[4].

For Arias, complex design solutions don’t lead to consensus, but informed compromises. He presents four reasons why the existing technological tools are not being used for complex design problems. Large amounts of training and knowledge is required for proper use, lack of flexibility in decision making, prohibitive cost data gathering and maintenance of the systems[5]. This is reminiscent of why Jones stated that there needed to be human functionalism. He defines this concept as making design thoughts public so that they’re not limited to the experience of the designer and can thus incorporate scientific knowledge of human abilities and limitations[6].

^{^[1]}In the chapter called “Starting from Scratch, treating the new in terms of the old” Schön attempts to explain how ideas are generated. He tries to answer the question how can we deal with the new in terms of the old but without reducing it to the old. He starts by stating that when working towards the new, all we can use is the old. This could be seen as a form of unintelligence. Thus leading to dealing with novelty by ignoring the old.

[2] In the 1997 article, “Is designing hermeneutical?”, Coyne and Snodgrass established that ideas are generated in conversation by comparing this process to the works of the German philosopher Gadamer to understand language.

^{^[3]} The Scandinavian software researchers, Finn Kensing and Andreas Munk-Madsen, wrote an article on participative design called “Pd-Structure in the toolbox”. Their main objective was to suggest a model for understanding the communication paradoxes between participating users and developers. Their research led them to believe that PD design efforts that fail are caused by misunderstanding between users and designers.

[4] Schuler, D. and Namioka, A. (1993). “Participatory design: principles and practices”

^{^[5]} In the article entitled “designing a design community”, the dream of a common language is the second idea that transpires from Arias’ systems of interaction. The research looked at how people communicated each other and what the common ground was in communicating design thinking. The results showed that the common language had been the use of the system in place.

[6] In Jones’s Designing design, he states that human functionalism has lead to the emergence of ergonomics, and he calls for the more human scale normative work for the non-physical aspects of design.

How is participatory design leading to democratising the design process?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 05:44:00 +0000

In 2006, Bonsiepe shared a broader perspective on the relationship between democracy and design. The first dimension that was touched was ethics within the multiple practices of design. Again the modernist past is evoked because of the way rational problem solving created an ephemeral spike of interest for a design creation that paid no attention to the ensuing relationships that were forming. The concept of democracy that Bonsiepe favours reduces the domination external forces. This ideal is a quest for autonomy of thoughts, of actions and an autonomy of dreams. His view on democratic design can be summed up as “autonomy of projecting”[1].

Back in Scandinavia, the idea of democratic design has also been developed for practical constraints and the use of technology at work [2]. Historically, trade unions were seen as vehicles for industrial democracy. In the context of democratization at work, a participatory approach to the design process alone was not sufficient [3]. In such a context, the definition of democracy was simply “freedom”. This goes one step to far. In Bonsiepe’s perspective, the idea of democratic design was “freedom, in action and reflection, to formulate and carry out an ideal”[4]. This vision is more pertinent as it remains within a boundary and is oriented towards attaining an ideal.

Many researchers and practitioners advocate participatory practices because it breads the values of democracy into civic, educational, and work settings. It had been proven by the works of Pateman that one benefit of participatory democracy is the acceptance of the ensuing decisions [5]. This democratic value that can be seen in the strengthening of disempowered groups, in the improvement of internal processes, and in the combination of diverse knowledge to make better services and products. Recently, Beck started a new discussion arguing for the necessity to recapture participative design’s political dimensions [6].

Subsequent work supplemented the foundational democratic motivation with a need for combining complex knowledge for realistic design problems. In the case of too many end-users for everyone to participate directly, representative democracy is another avenue for implementing participative design. However, with the avenue of the internet, quantity is no longer the problem, yet the quality of participation is to be evaluated. Bonsiepe finishes by bringing up the advent of technology which modifies the design questions to symbolic inquiries. And in such cases, he describes the role of the designer as making these invisible functions visible.

Democratic participation sees the people as the means of the process as well as the ends. Therefore, in participative design, democracy involves more than the formal right to vote. This particular understanding of democracy in the sense of active participation relates to the design process allowing emancipative proposals to answer needs of social groups. No matter how small the presence of a utopian ingredient, reminiscent of the Scandinavian initiatives, democracy symbolizes the autonomy of projecting within the participatory design process.

[1] Bonsiepe, G. (2006) “Design and Democracy”

^{^[2]} Iversen, O. S., Kanstrup, A.M., Petersen, M., (2004) A Visit to the ‘New Utopia’ Revitalizing Democracy, Emancipation and Quality in Cooperative Design, NordiCHI '04, Tampere, Finland.

[3] Ehn, P. (1993) “Scandinavian Design: on Participation and Skill”

[4] Iversen, O. S et al. (2004) “A Visit to the ‘New Utopia’ Revitalizing Democracy”

^{^[5]} Carole Pateman is a british feminist and specialist in political theory. In 1970, she wrote “Participation and democratic Theory”. She takes a problem-oriented approach to political theory and is concerned to bring theory together with policy and empirical evidence.

[6] Beck, E (2002) “P for Political: Participation is Not Enough.”

How can participation integrate a creative design process?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 05:41:00 +0000

Understanding design as a communicative process is uncovered by the works of Schön. He treats design primarily as a relationship between designers and the design material. In doing so, Schön emphasizes that design competence is foremost the ability to orchestrate the mutual learning process from the relationship between the design practitioners and the design material. But presently, we are moving into another generation of design research methods were the actors are becoming the central focus of the design process, not material objects. The communicative and dialogical aspect of designing remains, but instead of designers having conversations with materials, they are beginning to have conversations with the users.

As a researcher who focuses on the participation of users in the design process, Carroll reveals 8 aspects of participative design by finely studying how humans try to control the natural world by designing the artificial world[1]. They are :Social aspects of design, identifying stakeholders, human development, human activity, understanding human activity, dynamics of design, intelligibility of design representations, and participation in design.

For example, Simon speaks of active people taking charge of their future and thus taking part in the design process. “The members of an organization or a society for whom plans are made are not passive instruments, but are themselves designers who are seeking to use the system to further their own goals. [2] ” From which Carroll then defines participatory design as “the direct inclusion of users within a development team, such that they actively help in setting design goals and planning prototypes. [3] ”

Simon emphasized that designers must consider the consequences of a design beyond the client’s directly articulated concerns. For Simon, the designer has the obligation to act as a teacher, and not merely an implementer [4]. This sparks Carroll to investigate the intelligibility of the design activity, and the need for a common language. Carroll states that if users are to play a significant role in design, the design activity should be intelligible to all stakeholders [5]. In that objective, Carroll studied three tools that create a level playing field for designers and users to interact: scenario building, prototyping, and organisational representation. These activities have become a “lingua franca” for people. Carroll even characterizes the science of design as a “core discipline for every liberally educated person.” With all the specialization taking place in the various fields, there has to be a way to bring everyone back to a common stepping ground. In the post-industrial era that is said to be the information age^{^[6]}, the common ground could be seen as the values that are conveyed in the language of design.

An interesting new practice of participatory design is brought when the Bødker and Iversen speak of initial fascination of user involvement. This comes from software designers that were indeed amazed by how their users handle real world situations. They felt that users needed to be implicated in the design process. And these researchers wished to go beyond this fascination, and go beyond the trial and error process. Consequently, they proposed that the participative process require the planning and intervention of the designer to insure its success. They call this professional participative design (proPD).

According to Bødker and Iversen, there are two questions that need to be addressed by the designer for the participative process to begin and follow through smoothly. They noticed the users required the “why” and “where-to” notions. Simply put, the “why” concept is a reflection on the main purpose of the project, an end-in-view. The other deficiency in the participative design process is that the general direction of the project is hard path to stay upon. Off-loop reflection in terms of participant’s introspection and discussions about the project are in general is often treated as unprofitable idling[7]. In a professional setting, reflection is usually viewed as the budget buster and is therefore cut to a minimum[8].

In addition, these researchers attacked head on the criticism of participatory design in Vicente’s “Cognitive work analysis”[9]. Vicente brings to the table some limitations to participatory design: leaving possibilities of new technologies unexplored, the use of incomplete design methods such as scenarios and prototyping and the lack of purpose to the analyses made in relation with the design’s progression. To palliate to these deficiencies the authors offer a frame set to facilitate the development of the project. They propose that the designer must envision a strategy for the entire process. In professional participative design, the designers envision a strategy for the entire process that evolves and develops itself depending on the users and situation. They prone an interesting hybrid approach where the designer facilitates the process. On the other hand, there is a line to be drawn between a facilitation in proPD and an interventionist approach, where the designers give direction for the design.

In devlopping proPD, the authors respond to the limitations foreseen by Vicente. They propose to use scenarios and prototyping; they propose to reflect on the initial problem and to have a sense of perspective upon the process. The authors state that the advantage of a professional participative design process is that it remains always in context because the designers implicate problem owners directly in the solution process. Another role of the designer in proPD is to identify and include the stakeholders into the participatory process. All this relates to what Cross has described as the rise of systemic or complexity in the post-industrial age, which in turn has become part of the objectives of this research.

“ In the systemic paradigm design is described as being participatory, anonymous, and democratic. The process is collaborative since it engages individuals from different disciplines in the process. It is democratic by giving those affected by design the right to participate in making decisions concerning the design. Participatory refers to the relationship between the designer and the others involved in the design process. The designer’s role is now not to design for others, but rather to help others design for themselves.[10] ”

So far in this paper, we have seen that complex design problems can be addressed with participatory design practices. The following model further develops this specific research’s framework. A take on LeMoigne’s illustrations of complexity, this diagram presents the four elements making up complex research: the environment, the subjects, the object of study, and the project at it’s center[11]. The subsequent sections will focus on these four entities individually as they set the table for the research question. This question will then direct the methodology in elucidating the relationships holding this model together.

[1] In the spring edition of Design Issues 2006, Carroll proposes “Participation in design” and exposes the underlying concepts of user participation by dissecting Simon’s the Science of the Artificial.

[2] Carroll, J.M. (2006) “Dimensions of Participation in Simon’s Design”, Design Issues

[3] idem

[4] Simon, H. (1962) Sciences of the Artificial.

[5] idem

[6] Pink, D. (2005) A whole new mind.

[7] Bødker, S and Iversen, O.S. (2002) “Moving PD beyond the Initial Fascination of User Involvement.”

[8] Norman, D. (1988) The design of Everyday things

[9] In Cognitive Work Analysis (1999), Vicente critiques PD and provides another program for designing computer-based information systems, based on detailed mapping of information flows, task constraints, and control processes.

[10] Cross, N. (1981) “The post-industrial Age”

[11] LeMoine, J-L (1995) La modélisation des systèmes complexes.

So how did participatory design begin?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 05:33:00 +0000

As an expert within the participatory field, Muller defines participatory design (also referred to as PD) as a set of theories, practices and studies related to end-users as full participants in activities leading to software and hardware computer products and computer based activities [1] . This definition relates to computer science where participative design practices first began in Scandinavia[2]. In the 1970’s, the birth of the participative design approach came from a cooperative movement to counter the growing technological immersion into workplace settings. Participative design activities, comprising tools and cooperative techniques used within workshops, prototyping, and planning were developed to provide users the means to take an active part in the design process. During this period various different projects took place in Norway with Nygaard, Sweden and Danmark with Ehn and Kying. Considered as one of the founding figures in participatory design research, Ehn related the rise of this practice to an explicitly political context during the Scandinavian workplace democracy movement[3]. Initially, research-based participatory design projects were design alternatives to insure user quality matters compared to mainstream solutions constructed by large companies. The participative design approach propagated ideals of democracy, emancipation and quality were essential when designing technology for the workplace [5]. Since then, Muller argues that the successes of participatory design in the Scandinavian countries will be difficult to reproduce in North America or

Britain

, because of significant differences in labour, legislative, and workplace environments [6].

In 1987, Ehn initiated one of the most famous participatory design action research called the Utopia project[7] along with Bødker, another founding figure in PD research. Starting a long line of Scandinavian research projects in the health sector, these endeavours were still orchestrated in response to technical and organisational changes. Their design methods emphasised hands-on experiences with the problem-owners. A parallel project took place in Florence where Bjerkness and Bratteteig were working particularly with nurses. They developed approaches for them to get a voice in the everyday work processes and in the information technology implementation in hospitals.This notion of active implication of the user during the development of a project has recently been explored by many other disciplines, young and old. The field of participatory design has been applied to many diverse other fields like user-centered design, graphic design, engineering, architecture, city planning, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and political science. However, in an attempt to define participatory design, the diversity of these practices has not led to a single theory, paradigm of study nor common approach to practice[8]. Rather different perspectives focus on certain aspects of user involvement and most of participatory design theories and practices require simply the combination of multiple perspectives[9] .

[1] Muller, M.J. (2003). “Participatory design: The third space in human computer interaction.”

[2] The history of the participative design has been well studied and described in the writings of Michael Muller in the early 1990’s in “Participatory design: The third space in HCI.”

[3] idem

[4] Bødker, S. (2003) “A for alternatives”.

[5] Iversen, O.S. et al. (2004) “A Visit to the ‘New Utopia’ Revitalizing Democracy, Emancipation and Quality in Cooperative Design”

[6] Muller, M.J. (1999) “The scandinavian challenge”

[7] Bodker et al. (1987) “A Utopian experience in Computers and democracy”

^{^[8]} Slater, J. (1998). “Professional misinterpretation: What is participatory design?”

^{^[9]} Muller, M. (2003) “Participative design the third space in HCI.”

How can complex design processes take place?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Thu, 17 May 2007 12:45:00 +0000

The design process has introduced itself into the complex school of thought for two reasons. Firstly it has come in opposition with the dictatorial approach of modernist designers. The design profession is no longer to be limited nor represented by the capacity of a single expert mind or of a team augmenting such a mind. A single mind trying to design for the variety of a million minds, has to reduce us all to numbers and not people[1].Secondly, in the earlier stages of the profession designers have relied heavily on the expertise of others by referring to textbooks, standards, legal constraints and especially previous design efforts. Yet there is so much knowledge to be contextualized that there needs to be more people included into the design process. That’s why divisions of labour and collaborative strategy have been created to accomplish tasks more extensive and complex than any individual could accomplish[2].

Of the many ways to tackle the growing amount of complexity in design planning processes, Forrester proposes that a dialogical attitude is to be initiated amongst the problem owners. For the sum of their knowledge will lead the way towards framing the problem space and proposing creative solutions. In a time of distributed cognition and shared creation, specialization increases. Means of collaboration and effective team work is becoming increasingly important as the nature of work changes because of the complex nature of the problems. This creates design communities that have to cope with spatial, temporal and conceptual barriers.[3] As spatial and temporal barriers can be surmounted by technological advances, Checkland illustrated how the concept of information is the most powerful idea contributed so far by the complex systems movement. So much so that he compared it in importance with the idea of idea energy[4].

All this collaboration is subject to communication problems amongst the participants. In depth understanding of the translation problem among different actors who directly participate in design activities is key to a more effective, valuable, and direct partnership between designers and users[5]. There has been observed a “gap in rationalities” that creates barriers between the developers projected meaning and the users’ actual understanding. The importance of this “gap” between the worldview of the designer and the specific view of the potential user is one of the motivations for participatory design. The other gap is felt amongst participants was called “symmetry of ignorance”[6], enounced by Rittel. The mutual incomprehension between users was transformed by Fowles into a complementary “symmetry of knowledge” where the active participation of the stakeholders gave way to learning[7]. Participatory design is one of the field that has been studying the communication amongst the participants as well as between the designers and the participants.

Accordingly so, in this paper, the participative design process is perceived as starting point address complex design problems where there is no single truth to be told, but multiple truths to be confronted.

[1] Jones, J.C. (1991) Designing Design.

[2] Simon, H.(1963) Sciences of the artificial.

[3] Fisher, G (2004) “Social Creativity: Turning Barriers into Opportunities for Collaborative Design”

[4] Checkland, P. (1981) Systems Thinking, Systems Practice.

[5] DePaula, R. (2004) “Lost in Translation: A Critical Analysis of Actors, Artefacts, Agendas, and Arenas in Participatory Design”

[6] Rittel H. J. and Webber, M. (1984) “Planning Problems Are Wicked Problems”

[7] In 2000, Fowles added to rittel and webber with “Symmetry in design participation in the built environment: Experiences and insights from education and practice”.

How did design methodology evolve?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:44:00 +0000

In the early 1960’s, a change in design thinking was initiated with the founding conference on design methods research. This first generation of design methodology had been more concerned with understanding design than actually proposing better ways to solve problems[1]. The rational methodology was to begin with a primary generator[2], then the designer worked in a conjecture-revision, a step by step iterative process, searching for ways to align beauty of the form in line with the function[3]. This design methodology was mostly concerned with Descartes’ division, analysis and synthesis[4]. Furthermore, by taking a rational approach to the solving the limitations imposed by the different elements of the problem, this first methodology was still very distant from the everyday process of problem solving[5].

The second generation of design methods was looking to detach itself from a uniquely rational methodology. In fact, Alexander expressed his discontent with research that was distancing itself from doing design, and was leading towards a passive criticism of design. The emerging second generation became apparent for two reasons. Firstly, the field of design was in crisis. Rittel noted that when methodology enters a field, it’s a sign of crisis within that field[6]. However the second reason was unacceptable to Alexander. He thought that it had come from fear. Fear of commitment, fear of decision making, fear of design.

During the second generation, Rittel advocated for the designer to work with the client, as they both share elements of the solution that need to be exposed during the process. The back and forth transit of the information relevant to the solution and problem spaces was inscribed in a rhetoric of argumentation to establish a hierarchy or priority in the issues to be sorted. Rittel called for a change in attitude. Already at this point, the idea of the stakeholders participating in the process was emerging in order to gather all the different views and arguments.

“ the manner in which the solutions comes about does matter in another way; that is that the experience of having participated in the problem makes a difference to those that are affected by the solution. People are more likely to like a solution if they have been involved in its generation; even though it might not make sense otherwise. [7]”

The third generation in design methodology produced an epistemology where professional practice is a problem solving process concerned with selecting the best known method to attain established ends. Science itself was not the problem, but the technical rationality position of science within the positivist paradigm. The analytical, empirical and logical perspectives of positivist objectivity don’t solve the dilemma of “rigour versus relevance”[8] that designers are confronted with in everyday situations. Because professional knowledge involves experiences, feelings and subjective evaluations Schön integrates daily life experiences and skills with the concept of reflection-in-action. It entails building new understandings to inform our actions in the situation that is unfolding. Moreover, the practitioner enters a dialogue with the materials of the situation. The epistemology proposed in the third generation now includes intuition, implicit to art, from practices dealing with uncertainty.

“The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation.[9] ”

There have been many generations of design methods research, from pure rationality to descriptive rationality to the present of reflexivity in practice. This evolution of the design research and the subsequent practice has led to multiple redefinitions of the design activity, the design process and the role of the designer. It can be described simply as a change from the old methods to new approaches[10]. The traditional product design orientation was challenged, favouring a process oriented approach to designing[11]. Design is now described as a process of devising systems, as participation, as creativity, as a discipline, and doesn’t necessarily lead to product[12]. Therefore, in this paper, we will focus on two of theses point of views on design. Firstly, design as participation with the involvement of the users into the decision making process. Secondly, design as creativity which is potentially present in everyone[13] thanks to reflection-in-action.

[1] Alexander, C.(1964) “Notes on the Synthesis of Form”

[2] Darke, J. (1980) “The primary generator in the design process”

[3] Alexander, C. (1964) “Notes on the Synthesis of Form”

[4] Descartes, R. (1637), Discours de la Méthode.

^{^[5]} In this interview, Alexander spoke briefly of user participation in design : “ I believe passionately in the idea that people should design buildings for themselves. In other words not only should they be involved in the buildings that are for them but they should actually help design them.”

[6] Rittel, H. J., (1984). " Second Generation in Design Methods ".

[7] idem

[8] idem

[9] Schön, D.A. (1983) The reflexive practitioner.

[10] Jones, J.C. (1970) Design Methods.

[11] Jones, J.C. (1991) Designing Design.

[12] idem.

[13] In the interview “Notes from synthesis to form”, Alexander spoke briefly of user participation in design : “ I believe passionately in the idea that people should design buildings for themselves. In other words not only should they be involved in the buildings that are for them but they should actually help design them.”

How does complexity meet design?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Thu, 10 May 2007 11:38:00 +0000

In the beginning of the notion of complexity, the closed institutional and research models of the “hard science” disciplines of mathematics and engineering ironically didn’t permit the notion of complexity to reach out to other disciplines like biology and social sciences. Parallel to the evolution of traditional scientific disciplines, the design field has been evolving rapidly. In the last decades, design research has been moving from Positivist, Mechanist methods of research to the Constructivist and Complex approaches. The Constructivist approach differs from the Positivist methods by accepting that multiple points of view can shed light on a single issue. In resonance with the constructivist approach to creating knowledge, Bonsiepe states that “the sciences approach reality from the perspective of cognition, of what can be known, while the design disciplines approach reality from the perspective of “projectability”[1].

Seeing the world as an object to be built is the first step to understanding and working with the concept of complexity[2]. To tame such complex problems then requires more than a logical approach. In fact, complexity looks to unite and transcend by superimposing itself to the Cartesian Positivist methods of gathering scientific knowledge through division and analysis. With a complex point of view, the design methodologies have evolved to include more of the instability and relationships created in everyday life[3].

[1] Bonsiepe, G (2006) “Design and Democracy”

[2] Findeli, A. Parole raportée.

[3] Jones, J.C. (1980) Design Methods

Starting with Complexity

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Fri, 04 May 2007 15:00:00 +0000

Complexity? The leading thinker behind the study of complexity is Edgar Morin. He dates the notion of complexity to the early 1950’s where the first connections were made between cybernetics, systems theory and information theory. Consequently, the notion of complexity emerged.

Cybernetics is the theory of autonomous machines. In opposition to the principle of linear cause and effect, cybernetics studied retroactions and regulation. These concepts were characterised by the presence of a feed-back loop that amplifies or diminishes the initial cause creating an autonomous system.

Systems theory has become the basis for organisational thinking. In the organisation of a whole, the different parts can have retroactions. The study of these types of systems has lead to the principle of emergence which states that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts . Although Morin has deciphered 7 more principles of systemic organisation that contradict and counter-balance each other, emergence impacts most significantly this research study.

Information theory studies systems where order and chaos cohabit simultaneously. From the order in repetition and the chaos in randomness is constructed a governed whole that organises the information. As times goes by, this becomes a form of auto-organisation that regulates the extremes.

Even with its foundations in the three previously described fields of study, complexity is still hard to define precisely and concisely. Complexity is certainly not to be interpreted as something that is simply “complicated” but rather as that which is constructed of many related parts. In 1962, Simon sidestepped the daunting task of defining complexity by stating that the property of a complex system refers to the large number of parts that interact in a non-simple way . Having studied the evolution of science and systems theory, Checkland states that complexity is present when there are more variables than one scientist can manage . He also professes that complexity differentiates itself of the mechanist way of reductionism, and attempts to create relationships amongst entities.

In this research, the importance of complexity will come from its emphasis on the relationships between the elements more than on the elements themselves.

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Fri, 04 May 2007 14:58:00 +0000

This masters’ research begins with the simple idea that many heads are better than one. To begin, we will discuss the relatively new field called complexity which allows for many points of view to construct an object of study. Let it be clear that the object of study of this paper is the design process itself. Within the many design methods developed, one possible approach to complex design is in providing a bounded space and active method for the participation of the users. The objective is for people to share their perspective on the problem and build towards common solutions.

What is Complexity?

The leading thinker behind the study of complexity is Edgar Morin. He dates the notion of complexity to the early 1950’s where the first connections were made between cybernetics, systems theory and information theory. Consequently, the notion of complexity emerged.

Cybernetics is the theory of autonomous machines. In opposition to the principle of linear cause and effect, cybernetics studied retroactions and regulation. These concepts were characterised by the presence of a feed-back loop that amplifies or diminishes the initial cause creating an autonomous system.

Systems theory has become the basis for organisational thinking. In the organisation of a whole, the different parts can have retroactions. The study of these types of systems has lead to the principle of emergence which states that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts . Although Morin has deciphered 7 more principles of systemic organisation that contradict and counter-balance each other, emergence impacts most significantly this research study.

Information theory studies systems where order and chaos cohabit simultaneously. From the order in repetition and the chaos in randomness is constructed a governed whole that organises the information. As times goes by, this becomes a form of auto-organisation that regulates the extremes.

Even with its foundations in the three previously described fields of study, complexity is still hard to define precisely and concisely. Complexity is certainly not to be interpreted as something that is simply “complicated” but rather as that which is constructed of many related parts. In 1962, Simon sidestepped the daunting task of defining complexity by stating that the property of a complex system refers to the large number of parts that interact in a non-simple way . Having studied the evolution of science and systems theory, Checkland states that complexity is present when there are more variables than one scientist can manage . He also professes that complexity differentiates itself of the mechanist way of reductionism, and attempts to create relationships amongst entities.

In this research paper, the importance of complexity will come from its emphasis on the relationships between the elements more than on the elements themselves.

How does complexity meet design?

In the beginning of the notion of complexity, the closed institutional and research models of the “hard science” disciplines of mathematics and engineering ironically didn’t permit the notion of complexity to reach out to other disciplines like biology and social sciences. Parallel to the evolution of traditional scientific disciplines, the design field has been evolving rapidly. In the last decades, design research has been moving from Positivist, Mechanist methods of research to the Constructivist and Complex approaches. The Constructivist approach differs from the Positivist methods by accepting that multiple points of view can shed light on a single issue. In resonance with the constructivist approach to creating knowledge, Bonsiepe states that “the sciences approach reality from the perspective of cognition, of what can be known, while the design disciplines approach reality from the perspective of “projectability” .

Seeing the world as an object to be built is the first step to understanding and working with the concept of complexity . To tame such complex problems then requires more than a logical approach. In fact, complexity looks to unite and transcend by superimposing itself to the Cartesian Positivist methods of gathering scientific knowledge through division and analysis. With a complex point of view, the design methodologies have evolved to include more of the instability and relationships created in everyday life .

How did design methodology evolve?

In the early 1960’s, a change in design thinking was initiated with the founding conference on design methods research. This first generation of design methodology had been more concerned with understanding design than actually proposing better ways to solve problems . The rational methodology was to begin with a primary generator , then the designer worked in a conjecture-revision, a step by step iterative process, searching for ways to align beauty of the form in line with the function . This design methodology was mostly concerned with Descartes’ division, analysis and synthesis . Furthermore, by taking a rational approach to the solving the limitations imposed by the different elements of the problem, this first methodology was still very distant from the everyday process of problem solving .

The second generation of design methods was looking to detach itself from a uniquely rational methodology. In fact, Alexander expressed his discontent with research that was distancing itself from doing design, and was leading towards a passive criticism of design. The emerging second generation became apparent for two reasons. Firstly, the field of design was in crisis. Rittel noted that when methodology enters a field, it’s a sign of crisis within that field . However the second reason was unacceptable to Alexander. He thought that it had come from fear. Fear of commitment, fear of decision making, fear of design.
During the second generation, Rittel advocated for the designer to work with the client, as they both share elements of the solution that need to be exposed during the process. The back and forth transit of the information relevant to the solution and problem spaces was inscribed in a rhetoric of argumentation to establish a hierarchy or priority in the issues to be sorted. Rittel called for a change in attitude. Already at this point, the idea of the stakeholders participating in the process was emerging in order to gather all the different views and arguments.
“ the manner in which the solutions comes about does matter in another way; that is that the experience of having participated in the problem makes a difference to those that are affected by the solution. People are more likely to like a solution if they have been involved in its generation; even though it might not make sense otherwise. ”
The third generation in design methodology produced an epistemology where professional practice is a problem solving process concerned with selecting the best known method to attain established ends. Science itself was not the problem, but the technical rationality position of science within the positivist paradigm. The analytical, empirical and logical perspectives of positivist objectivity don’t solve the dilemma of “rigour versus relevance” that designers are confronted with in everyday situations. Because professional knowledge involves experiences, feelings and subjective evaluations Schön integrates daily life experiences and skills with the concept of reflection-in-action. It entails building new understandings to inform our actions in the situation that is unfolding. Moreover, the practitioner enters a dialogue with the materials of the situation. The epistemology proposed in the third generation now includes intuition, implicit to art, from practices dealing with uncertainty.
“The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation. ”
There have been many generations of design methods research, from pure rationality to descriptive rationality to the present of reflexivity in practice. This evolution of the design research and the subsequent practice has led to multiple redefinitions of the design activity, the design process and the role of the designer. It can be described simply as a change from the old methods to new approaches . The traditional product design orientation was challenged, favouring a process oriented approach to designing . Design is now described as a process of devising systems, as participation, as creativity, as a discipline, and doesn’t necessarily lead to product . Therefore, in this paper, we will focus on two of theses point of views on design. Firstly, design as participation with the involvement of the users into the decision making process. Secondly, design as creativity which is potentially present in everyone thanks to reflection-in-action.

How can complex design processes take place?

The design process has introduced itself into the complex school of thought for two reasons. Firstly it has come in opposition with the dictatorial approach of modernist designers. The design profession is no longer to be limited nor represented by the capacity of a single expert mind or of a team augmenting such a mind. A single mind trying to design for the variety of a million minds, has to reduce us all to numbers and not people .

Secondly, in the earlier stages of the profession designers have relied heavily on the expertise of others by referring to textbooks, standards, legal constraints and especially previous design efforts. Yet there is so much knowledge to be contextualized that there needs to be more people included into the design process. That’s why divisions of labour and collaborative strategy have been created to accomplish tasks more extensive and complex than any individual could accomplish .

Of the many ways to tackle the growing amount of complexity in design planning processes, Forrester proposes that a dialogical attitude is to be initiated amongst the problem owners. For the sum of their knowledge will lead the way towards framing the problem space and proposing creative solutions. In a time of distributed cognition and shared creation, specialization increases. Means of collaboration and effective team work is becoming increasingly important as the nature of work changes because of the complex nature of the problems. This creates design communities that have to cope with spatial, temporal and conceptual barriers. As spatial and temporal barriers can be surmounted by technological advances, Checkland illustrated how the concept of information is the most powerful idea contributed so far by the complex systems movement. So much so that he compared it in importance with the idea of idea energy .
All this collaboration is subject to communication problems amongst the participants. In depth understanding of the translation problem among different actors who directly participate in design activities is key to a more effective, valuable, and direct partnership between designers and users . There has been observed a “gap in rationalities” that creates barriers between the developers projected meaning and the users’ actual understanding. The importance of this “gap” between the worldview of the designer and the specific view of the potential user is one of the motivations for participatory design. The other gap is felt amongst participants was called “symmetry of ignorance” , enounced by Rittel. The mutual incomprehension between users was transformed by Fowles into a complementary “symmetry of knowledge” where the active participation of the stakeholders gave way to learning . Participatory design is one of the field that has been studying the communication amongst the participants as well as between the designers and the participants.
Accordingly so, in this paper, the participative design process is perceived as starting point address complex design problems where there is no single truth to be told, but multiple truths to be confronted.

So how did participatory design begin?

As an expert within the participatory field, Muller defines participatory design (also referred to as PD) as a set of theories, practices and studies related to end-users as full participants in activities leading to software and hardware computer products and computer based activities . This definition relates to computer science where participative design practices first began in Scandinavia .
In the 1970’s, the birth of the participative design approach came from a cooperative movement to counter the growing technological immersion into workplace settings. Participative design activities, comprising tools and cooperative techniques used within workshops, prototyping, and planning were developed to provide users the means to take an active part in the design process. During this period various different projects took place in Norway with Nygaard, Sweden and Danmark with Ehn and Kying. Considered as one of the founding figures in participatory design research, Ehn related the rise of this practice to an explicitly political context during the Scandinavian workplace democracy movement . Initially, research-based participatory design projects were design alternatives to insure user quality matters compared to mainstream solutions constructed by large companies . The participative design approach propagated ideals of democracy, emancipation and quality were essential when designing technology for the workplace . Since then, Muller argues that the successes of participatory design in the Scandinavian countries will be difficult to reproduce in North America or Britain, because of significant differences in labour, legislative, and workplace environments .

In 1987, Ehn initiated one of the most famous participatory design action research called the Utopia project along with Bødker, another founding figure in PD research. Starting a long line of Scandinavian research projects in the health sector, these endeavours were still orchestrated in response to technical and organisational changes. Their design methods emphasised hands-on experiences with the problem-owners. A parallel project took place in Florence where Bjerkness and Bratteteig were working particularly with nurses. They developed approaches for them to get a voice in the everyday work processes and in the information technology implementation in hospitals.
This notion of active implication of the user during the development of a project has recently been explored by many other disciplines, young and old. The field of participatory design has been applied to many diverse other fields like user-centered design, graphic design, engineering, architecture, city planning, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and political science. However, in an attempt to define participatory design, the diversity of these practices has not led to a single theory, paradigm of study nor common approach to practice . Rather different perspectives focus on certain aspects of user involvement and most of participatory design theories and practices require simply the combination of multiple perspectives .

How can participation integrate a creative design process?

Understanding design as a communicative process is uncovered by the works of Schön. He treats design primarily as a relationship between designers and the design material. In doing so, Schön emphasizes that design competence is foremost the ability to orchestrate the mutual learning process from the relationship between the design practitioners and the design material. But presently, we are moving into another generation of design research methods were the actors are becoming the central focus of the design process, not material objects. The communicative and dialogical aspect of designing remains, but instead of designers having conversations with materials, they are beginning to have conversations with the users.
As a researcher who focuses on the participation of users in the design process, Carroll reveals 8 aspects of participative design by finely studying how humans try to control the natural world by designing the artificial world . They are :Social aspects of design, identifying stakeholders, human development, human activity, understanding human activity, dynamics of design, intelligibility of design representations, and participation in design.
For example, Simon speaks of active people taking charge of their future and thus taking part in the design process. “The members of an organization or a society for whom plans are made are not passive instruments, but are themselves designers who are seeking to use the system to further their own goals. ” From which Carroll then defines participatory design as “the direct inclusion of users within a development team, such that they actively help in setting design goals and planning prototypes. ”
Simon emphasized that designers must consider the consequences of a design beyond the client’s directly articulated concerns. For Simon, the designer has the obligation to act as a teacher, and not merely an implementer . This sparks Carroll to investigate the intelligibility of the design activity, and the need for a common language. Carroll states that if users are to play a significant role in design, the design activity should be intelligible to all stakeholders . In that objective, Carroll studied three tools that create a level playing field for designers and users to interact: scenario building, prototyping, and organisational representation. These activities have become a “lingua franca” for people. Carroll even characterizes the science of design as a “core discipline for every liberally educated person.” With all the specialization taking place in the various fields, there has to be a way to bring everyone back to a common stepping ground. In the post-industrial era that is said to be the information age , the common ground could be seen as the values that are conveyed in the language of design.
An interesting new practice of participatory design is brought when the Bødker and Iversen speak of initial fascination of user involvement. This comes from software designers that were indeed amazed by how their users handle real world situations. They felt that users needed to be implicated in the design process. And these researchers wished to go beyond this fascination, and go beyond the trial and error process. Consequently, they proposed that the participative process require the planning and intervention of the designer to insure its success. They call this professional participative design (proPD).
According to Bødker and Iversen, there are two questions that need to be addressed by the designer for the participative process to begin and follow through smoothly. They noticed the users required the “why” and “where-to” notions. Simply put, the “why” concept is a reflection on the main purpose of the project, an end-in-view. The other deficiency in the participative design process is that the general direction of the project is hard path to stay upon. Off-loop reflection in terms of participant’s introspection and discussions about the project are in general is often treated as unprofitable idling . In a professional setting, reflection is usually viewed as the budget buster and is therefore cut to a minimum .
In addition, these researchers attacked head on the criticism of participatory design in Vicente’s “Cognitive work analysis” . Vicente brings to the table some limitations to participatory design: leaving possibilities of new technologies unexplored, the use of incomplete design methods such as scenarios and prototyping and the lack of purpose to the analyses made in relation with the design’s progression. To palliate to these deficiencies the authors offer a frame set to facilitate the development of the project. They propose that the designer must envision a strategy for the entire process. In professional participative design, the designers envision a strategy for the entire process that evolves and develops itself depending on the users and situation. They prone an interesting hybrid approach where the designer facilitates the process. On the other hand, there is a line to be drawn between a facilitation in proPD and an interventionist approach, where the designers give direction for the design.
In devlopping proPD, the authors respond to the limitations foreseen by Vicente. They propose to use scenarios and prototyping; they propose to reflect on the initial problem and to have a sense of perspective upon the process. The authors state that the advantage of a professional participative design process is that it remains always in context because the designers implicate problem owners directly in the solution process. Another role of the designer in proPD is to identify and include the stakeholders into the participatory process. All this relates to what Cross has described as the rise of systemic or complexity in the post-industrial age, which in turn has become part of the objectives of this research.
“ In the systemic paradigm design is described as being participatory, anonymous, and democratic. The process is collaborative since it engages individuals from different disciplines in the process. It is democratic by giving those affected by design the right to participate in making decisions concerning the design. Participatory refers to the relationship between the designer and the others involved in the design process. The designer’s role is now not to design for others, but rather to help others design for themselves. ”

So far in this paper, we have seen that complex design problems can be addressed with participatory design practices. The following model further develops this specific research’s framework. A take on LeMoigne’s illustrations of complexity, this diagram presents the four elements making up complex research: the environment, the subjects, the object of study, and the project at it’s center . The subsequent sections will focus on these four entities individually as they set the table for the research question. This question will then direct the methodology in elucidating the relationships holding this model together.

How is participatory design leading to democratising the design process?
In 2006, Bonsiepe shared a broader perspective on the relationship between democracy and design. The first dimension that was touched was ethics within the multiple practices of design. Again the modernist past is evoked because of the way rational problem solving created an ephemeral spike of interest for a design creation that paid no attention to the ensuing relationships that were forming. The concept of democracy that Bonsiepe favours reduces the domination external forces. This ideal is a quest for autonomy of thoughts, of actions and an autonomy of dreams. His view on democratic design can be summed up as “autonomy of projecting” .

Back in Scandinavia, the idea of democratic design has also been developed for practical constraints and the use of technology at work . Historically, trade unions were seen as vehicles for industrial democracy. In the context of democratization at work, a participatory approach to the design process alone was not sufficient . In such a context, the definition of democracy was simply “freedom”. This goes one step to far. In Bonsiepe’s perspective, the idea of democratic design was “freedom, in action and reflection, to formulate and carry out an ideal” . This vision is more pertinent as it remains within a boundary and is oriented towards attaining an ideal.

Many researchers and practitioners advocate participatory practices because it breads the values of democracy into civic, educational, and work settings. It had been proven by the works of Pateman that one benefit of participatory democracy is the acceptance of the ensuing decisions . This democratic value that can be seen in the strengthening of disempowered groups, in the improvement of internal processes, and in the combination of diverse knowledge to make better services and products. Recently, Beck started a new discussion arguing for the necessity to recapture participative design’s political dimensions .

Subsequent work supplemented the foundational democratic motivation with a need for combining complex knowledge for realistic design problems. In the case of too many end-users for everyone to participate directly, representative democracy is another avenue for implementing participative design. However, with the avenue of the internet, quantity is no longer the problem, yet the quality of participation is to be evaluated. Bonsiepe finishes by bringing up the advent of technology which modifies the design questions to symbolic inquiries. And in such cases, he describes the role of the designer as making these invisible functions visible.

Democratic participation sees the people as the means of the process as well as the ends. Therefore, in participative design, democracy involves more than the formal right to vote. This particular understanding of democracy in the sense of active participation relates to the design process allowing emancipative proposals to answer needs of social groups. No matter how small the presence of a utopian ingredient, reminiscent of the Scandinavian initiatives, democracy symbolizes the autonomy of projecting within the participatory design process.

How can participative design generate design ideas?

A change in concept comes from seeing the new in terms of the old. That is to use the situation at hand to change our perception of the old. This is a shift. Schön calls it a displacement of concept , describing it as a metaphor of the extension of the concept of old in terms of a new situation. New concepts arrive as a result of this shift. He adds that it is not applied, new concepts happen after the process of discplacement.
Tying into another of Schön’s idea generating concepts in reflection-in-action and in the concept of surprise, Coyne and Snodgrass demonstrate how the design process is apparent to a contextual and dialogical understanding of a conversation . They also recognized that in design terms, the initial question begins a conversation which then flows with more questions. The objective of this dialogue is that both parties engaged expand from their initial understanding. This to-and-fro movement from the first point of view and that of the third person point of view leads to the displacement of concepts.
In Praquin’s master’s memoir on collective idea generation, it was difficult for the participants to detach themselves from their personal perspectives and see the world from each other’s point of view. This comes with no surprise, as Schön of the original model was also aware of its limits. In this case, Schön makes clear that “closed minded and narrow minded describe not only pathological conviction but conviction generally. And conviction is necessary for directed action.” It was therefore expected and comprehensible that the participants might not engage in the concept shifting aspect of the process.
For displacement of concepts to happen in participatory design, the creation of a common language or translation between the participants and the users is the most critical aspect . Sanders has been a pillar in developing such field study methods and design activities to build the bridges that lead to user idea generation. The goal is to integrate “systemic analysis, appreciative intervention, and practitioner participation” to create conditions that reduce the gap between design vision and users’ reason. In fieldwork such as videotaping participant observations and follow-up interviews, designers can understand the nuances of users’ everyday practices .
For Arias, complex design solutions don’t lead to consensus, but informed compromises. He presents four reasons why the existing technological tools are not being used for complex design problems. Large amounts of training and knowledge is required for proper use, lack of flexibility in decision making, prohibitive cost data gathering and maintenance of the systems . This is reminiscent of why Jones stated that there needed to be human functionalism. He defines this concept as making design thoughts public so that they’re not limited to the experience of the designer and can thus incorporate scientific knowledge of human abilities and limitations .

What is the relationship between the designers and the participative users?

Within this context of democratizing the design process, the designers and the users need to be revolutionary. Sanders states that the task of getting users to create themselves starts with designers empathizing on the difficulty of waking the creativity within. In addition, Sanders believes that people want to express themselves and to participate directly and proactively in the design development process. The collective aspect of this generative process helps resonate within the users or rebounds onto another idea, in displacement of concepts.

In researching the shift from user-centered to participatory design approaches, Sanders has been a pioneer in helping the user articulate his unspoken feelings, inexperienced needs, and unthought desires . Starting from one’s innate visual abilities, she has created the games, tools and experiences that simplify the involvement participants into the design process and thus enriching what can be extracted from the process by the designers. So far in professional participatory design, the focus has been put on need intensive tasks. For example, developing a particular type of product or service is assigned to the users, along with the tools needed to carry those tasks out .

Sanders uses many diagrams to illustrate her research findings, all to show the user’s capacity to express himself. The following table quickly synthesizes the subtleties and relationships between what the users create, and the nature of that self-expression.

In professional participative design, the role of the designer changes because the user takes on some of the creative aspects in the process. Sanders views the designer’s new role as facilitating the expression of the user’s needs and dreams. This new role has the practice of designers and social researchers not just coming together, but completely fading one into the other. This new bread of design researcher will create the tools to let the user express his creativity, then analyse and interpret user generated artefacts and models, to lead the process to inspiring innovation.

The internet as an innovative playground?
The internet is a new element in professional participatory design that this research brings to the table. Allowing for the problem owners to become problem solvers is now possible with the ever trail blazing communication advances of the internet. The year 2006 was determined to host the social revolution of the internet. A phenomena called Web2.0 has seen people participating in the creation of the content to be published online. By writing blogs, sharing knowledge in a wiki, reviewing services, uploading videos, Time magazine has named all contributing online participants the “person of the year”. This user generated content shared over the internet is a contributing factor in a form democratisation by social empowerment. Moreover, the internet space allows for one to express his views that are proper to his context.
Needless to say that this form of self-publishing comes with its sets of disadvantages. Let it be said that the internet doesn’t automatically implicate democracy. The negative sides of the internet create a form of “maocracy” . As it is true that many people don’t have access to the internet, and many don’t have knowledge of computers to actively participate in the process.
Nonetheless, the internet has proven that it can be catalyst for initiating change. No other place could allow for democratising the design process with the same amount of participation. Basically, the internet is levelling hierocracy with its network. Not to mention that all the information and the activities taking place on websites are easily documented, timestamped, classed and memorized. This allows for an asynchronous approach to project development.

Enter crowdsourcing, another 2006 internet phenomenon. It happens when a specific task is completed by a crowd of people using the internet as a network. It originates from the idea of companies out-sourcing specialized tasks. Therefore, solutions could come from the productive potential of millions of plugged-in enthusiasts . The neologism crowdsourcing embodies a complex principle where the average response of a large group of people is nearly always better than any individual’s answer . In stride with what Sanders had been studying, these professional-amateurs don’t consider leisure as passive consumerism but active and participatory .

So far, collaboration is not truly present in the current forms of crowdsourcing initiatives. The essence of true collaboration is present when team members are actually “thinking together” rather than only exchanging information and opinions . An exception can be made for cases like Wikipedia, where people are adding to the work of others, in a distributed asynchronous form of “thinking together”. This is one of the strengths of wikis where users can dynamically modify and create the published content put forth by their peers.

What will this research entitle?

So far in our research, we have seen that more than ever people want to participate proactively in the design process. In many domains, users have already become active in modifying or creating solutions for themselves to satisfy their needs and desires. In addition, the internet has proven to be a fertile ground, enabling large numbers of users to become active in generating content. With respect to our current research and experimentations with online crowdsourcing efforts, the idea generation phase has been the most potent for involving users into the design process. Furthermore, the traditional brainstorming activity relies in part on originality and divergence, and both are well served with the large quantities of online participation. Crowdsourcing a brainstorming is what we’re calling brainsourcing. Finally, a report from a study on user involvement in service innovation revealed that the users produced more original ideas than the company’s professional service developers .

To further narrow the scope of this research, we have decided to focus our attention specifically to better understand the relationship between the simplicity of participation over the internet and the user’s capacity to innovate. This study asks what are the right conditions, for participants to create innovative responses to a design problem over the internet?

To do so, we would evaluate the creativity of the participating users while using the internet for crowdsourcing a brainstorming like task. Moreover, we hope to investigate the quality of the brainsourcing exercises by comparing them to a traditional brainstorming with professional designers. Could a brainsourcing exercise where online users express their ideas become a means for designers to perceive tacit needs? In a form of reflection-on-action, could the content generated by the users help the designers better define the design problem?

Conversational Problems (part three)

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 03:32:00 +0000

So far I have adhered to Simon’s interpretation of design as bringing initial situations to preferred ones. But now, Coyne and Snodgrass bring a new way to perceive design. They have studied the works of philosophy in understanding language and from this framework they have established that design is a conversation with the situation. This perspective neatly ties into the Schön’s concept of reflection in action and allows for the concept of surprise. Preferred situations give the impression of being void of surprises. In the spirit of Coyne, logic comes after hermeneutics. Living before thinking. So it would be surprises that lead to preferred situations.

Understanding things is what makes us understand ourselves. Understanding is basic to who are, and what we do. Have you seen a doctor that doesn’t understand the human body? Therefore I wish to ask who understands a wicked problem? Can one person understand all dimensions of a wicked problem? Isn’t the problem to be defined, framed, conceived? That’s where the designer begins the conversation with questions. Who is this for, why are we building this, how can this situation be ideal?

Not only is design a conversation with the situation, it’s a conversation starter amongst the role players of the situation. A conversation that’s not about the designer’s view, but about the roleplayer’s idealized situation. Can the designer relinquish his star status in favour of the resolution of the situation?

Design is about this conversation, not just the solution. The authors touch this because they see design as an interpretative skill. I see it first as a communicative skill. Being able engage the players into the conversation to share their needs and dreams. Then is the problem defined by the designer or the aggregation of the user’s discourse? Can the emerging preferred situation come from the user’s themselves or is a little perspective on the situation required? Emergence might then require the designer’s interpretative skills. Maybe design’s role is not to aggregate but to make all views understandable. This ties into the idea of taking on others arguments to have a true dialogue. “Design as formulation or explication of what is understood.”

Conversational Problems (part two)

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 03:47:00 +0000

So how can we foster an open-minded discussion? Must their be a form of tabula rasa? Isn’t easier to start from scratch? Can one really scratch out his past experiences? How many times did my mother tell me “there is a place and time for such things”?

The authors state that true dialogue is the opposite of an argument. I find this engaging because I’ve always been one to argue, thinking that I was having a dialogue. The objective of dialogue is that both parties engaged expand from their initial understanding. First by recognizing followed by assimilating the new understanding. This reiterates the need for an open-minded approach. And when the parties lose their initial colors, only then can there be dialogue in nuances. Gadamer refers to role playing to facilitate true dialogue. This reminds me of a well fought hockey game between a red team and a blue team, when the ice turns purple.

In the case of material objects, an affordance is a physical trait, a form that allows for the user to figure out the proper course of action to deliver the function of the object. The shape of a door handle is often cited as an example of an affordance to understand if you need to pull or push to get trough the door. With this concept of affordance in mind, how does it apply to the reflective practitioner? Can conversations build toward better affordances of future design solutions?

My intial thought is yes, because of our innate hermeneutical approach to experiences. Interpretation is our method of engagement into this contextual world we live in. Based on Gadamer’s works on dialogue in conversations, I propose a shift from a conversation with another person to a conversation with a situation. “ Thus is the characteristic of every true conversation that each opens himself to the other person, truly accepts his point of view as worthy of consideration and gets inside the other to such an extent that he understands not a particular individual, but what he says. The thing that has to be grasped is the objective rightness or otherwise of his opinion, so that they can agree with each other on the subject.”

I believe there are levels to be distinguished in this concept of hermeneutics and reflection in action. It is easy to accept that a designer proposes an interpretation in the form of reasoning that will tend to solve the situation. Can situations answer back in the form of pure reason, or will that answer always come from an interpretation of the designer?

In conclusion, if I had to resume this text in a sentence, the authors demonstrate how the design process is less similar to a positivist and logical understanding of language and more apparent to a contextual and dialogical understanding of a conversation. It almost seems as though complexity has come to save the day. Once again, we wish to include more points of view, allow for debate and accept that there is no absolute truth. My reoccurring question is: How?

Are designers the enemy of design?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 23:54:00 +0000

Here's the piece Bruce Nussbaum wrote after a speech at Parson's on March 14th 2007 that deals with the backlash against design. I've edited it quite a bit. It's designed to provoke all designers and show how I've everyone is redesigning their businesses weekly. Bruce was the Voice Of Authority and has become the Curator of the Conversation on Innovation. We all live in life 2.0 now.

Are Designers The Enemy of Design?

In the name of revolution, let me start by saying that designers are overrated. I’m sorry. It’s true. Designers aren’t the only ones responsible for design. There’s a big return of the tide against design going on today and it’s because designers think to highly of themselves.

So let me tell you why. Designers are overrated because they are arrogant. The blogs and websites are full of scared designers shouting how awful it is that now, thanks to apple’s constant innovation, an increase in communication over Web 2.0, and even do it yourself videos on YouTube, EVERYONE can be designer. Core 77 recently ran an article on this backlash and so did Buisnessweek on our Innovation & Design site. Designers feel threatened by Design being everywhere, and worse, done better by anyone willing to sweat it. So design is becoming debated, un-heroic, un-sultan like. The present text of course, is that royal designers can only be outdone by great real life designers.

This is simply becoming true. Design Democracy is the base of the future. Exceptional design may only be done professed as such by a sub-system for star designers. But the design of our experiences, the design of our personal pages, the design of our thoughts, the design of our attitudes, the design of our community, the design of our class of ’05 e-vites, the design of our silk-screens, the design of the designs of our bodies—We are all designing more of our lives. And with more and more open-mindnesss, we, the true users, want to design anything that touches us on the journey, the big journey through everyday life. People want to participate in the design of their lives. They insist on conversation as a part of their lives.

So Lesson One here is that the process of design, the development of the design project, is evolving rapidly. Egos and silos are joining, participation leads to collaboration, tools are helping, and everyone deserves the right to play. People want to be in the design sandbox, so you as a beta-designer have to figure out how to let them in and design with them. This is the huge challenge of meta-design.

Let’s talk about the arrogance of the design community. When Bruce Nussbaum began covering design practitioners a decade ago for Businessweek, they launched an annual contest with Architectural Record. When they were about to publish pictures of the first winners, Bruce looked at all the fancy architecture magazines. None had any pictures of people inside buildings. The buildings were all devoid of people. And most still are. We put people inside the spaces they inhabit. We inserted people into the conversation of their lives. Now, smart designers engage the users in their designs. They hire firms who do research in the human sciences, showing how users really interact in organizations, not what their titles could impose. Informed by this research, spaces are designer for the people who use them.

So one big design challenge is how do you switch gears from designing for yourself to designing for people with people? Maybe the object of design is not a finished product but a service that allow people to design experiences for themselves. Think Product-Service-System. Think Wysiwyg. Personalisation not just mass customisation. Fortunately, design is a tremendous process. In fact, design has evolved from a simple practice to a powerful methodology of Design Thinking that, as we are witnessing, can transform society. By that I mean design, with a minuscule d, can move with fashion, graphics, products, services as a facilitator of educational, mobility, economical and political projects. Design can become diverse enough to be an approach to creation, to life, to a philosophy of sustainability. But it can do so only when Design by Ergo ends and Design through Conversation begins. More on that soon.

Back to the return of the pendulum of design. Designers can also be irresponsible because some are also ignorant, self-centered, especially about sustainability. If we continue in this ignorance, the reputation of designers will be that their narrow viewed design process will hurt the planet. That’s the future if things don’t continue to change. Let’s take your everyday object, designed by one of yesterday’s design gods, Jonathan Ive and his team at Apple—the iPod. Apple does fantastic things with marketing. Amazing things. And thank goodness it has recycling programs for its products. But what it doesn’t do is prioritize design for disassembly, yet alone cradle-to-cradle design. It doesn’t design a product with it’s life cycle in mind, so that you can upgrade over time and even give it a second lifecycle. It doesn’t design a process that encourages the upcycling of materials throughout the product’s lifecycleS. It doesn’t offer sustainability.

So ask yourself if you can offer sustainability in designing and using your computers, your music players, your communication devices. Or can you be more sustainable in your transportation choices and when you’re consuming at home. There are mountains of electronical components—that once belonged to you that you paid for, worked for, —building up in India and Chinas, leaking toxic chemicals . Greenpeace should launch an I want a Green Life campaign. Europe tipped green in the 90s. The U.S. has started to paint things green just last year.
I actually think that of all the designers in the US design professions, architects are the greenest. Architects were the first who needed to be the leaders in terms of sustainability. Building according to LEED specs should be the norm for any corporation. Bank of America is putting up an incredibly green building near Bryant Park. One wonderful green trick-- it uses cheap electricity at night to make ice in the basement to cool the skyscraper in the morning. Bring back the ice box.
In the next paradigm of broadening design—the paradigm we will all work within for the rest of your lives—is sustainability. When you have venture capitalists at conferences taking the stage to talk about the planet, sustainability is becoming key. So the design can be cool but it can become smarter...
Challenge all assumptions. Think about the mind of a goat. It is beyond simple. It’s sustainable. You feed those little braty animals with garbage that you throw out or food you grow, it procreates when it is comfortable, and beautiful is the warmth for your entire family as you pass it along during an expedition or when recycling everyday in Belgrade. It’s organic, before all.

As folks in fashion try and rethink materiality. Fashion is as creative as any of the design fields— appearance is key. But can we create designer fashion within a sustainable context. I think it a means for changing the ends: materiality. How can you refashion the fashion process? When it focuses on bringing a new line out twice a year, that allows for creativity to be reused again and again in different ways? Or should users try and design clothes that last far longer than one season or two? And why are organic materials, bamboo and cotton, so elusive, or exclusive? And at what price will all of this need to take place. Hard questions. Soft answers.

Let me start another conversation. Take your next trip to Venice or Cuba and plead instead, for it’s preservation. Or visit the Navajo and Hopi, the Pueblo Indians, the Souix and the Cheyenne. These folks created a sustainable lifestyle long before it became both designable and effort scary. There’s a lot that’s right about their culture. Let’s learn from them—everyday natives are our day’s contemporary artists with their weaving, pottery, painting and jewelry which are among the most innovative and creative by their relationship with the natural world.

Take the Hogan household, a complex of six buildings. The Hogans live hardly at their land’s expense—a 10’000 thousand square foot McMansions for the Hulkster. The Hogans are easy to ressemble, use a lot of energy to keep the house warm, and they have easy living thanks to the families who work for them. Today’s modern Hogans are as elusive as sailors and when they justify their ways. Now think about sailors. They live hardly on the land, they are a kind of fable, but they use their own energy. In a world thriving from sustainability, is a sailor sailing better than a building cooling designed by Rem Koolhass or Frank Gehry?

I want to live the life I design. Take Al Gore, one of my mentors. Does a great movie on global warming? But can those with 20-room mansion and private jets hear his talk? What is my carbon footprint? Yes, I buy all kinds of carbon offsets, I now pay for my shipping measures with the Amazon Tees. But is that choosing for sustainable life. Can you buy your way to a carbon-free tee if you are rich? Both David’s and Goliath’s are folks flying in on the same jets leaving a big fat carbon footprint. Yet both big and small are allegedly one size fits all tee. What’s up with that?

OK, we’re tough. Now that I’ve invited designers, allow me to present myself. In the 00’s, I was the learning about design. I was listening to the voices of authority. Truly, I had to complain they were creating with their voice of authority. I did design as a student with much thought, all night and during the weekend. I dreamed about design being a culture without business. I had a something going.

Design has evolved looking back. The customization of manufacturing and outsourcing knowledge to Asia, rightfully left US companies unable to create, let alone to make profits. When you can’t create with innovation of cost or quality, you are a problem. So the business community should be embarrassed to function on innovation. Innovation is simply driving revenue and profits by turning out a continuous series of new things. Sustainability is the goal because it implicitly generates innovation within products or services or even experiences.

Wow. But how do people who’ve spent a lifetime using one side of their brain, suddenly shift to communicating using both their left and their right? How do people used to reducing problems to their parts and squeezing them out and away from of each of them then learn to see problems with perspective to integrate parts of many problems into one emerging situation. Enter design thinking with complexity. Over the past decade, design has articulated and formalized an evolved method of solving problems that can be widely used in complex situations—like business and society. Design’s focus on participating in the relationship of consumer/user/stakeholder—human behavior, it’s emphasis on iteration and learning, its ability to construct, not constrict, its search for preferred options and opportunities, its ability to create powerful emotions, its optimism without positivism, converted CEO into soft thinkers. AG Lafely at P&G, Immelt at GE and many others embarked in design processes. Now Mayor Daley of Chicago and Mayor Livingstone of London are embracing it too.

And so have I. I dropped the “said it” attitude and launched the Innovation & Design site online two years ago. Here’s how you have success. Open-source it: have many partners, including your corp, dwellers, no adds in magazines and become a metropolis. We link the top thinkers and practitioners of design to build columns with us. We blog about it. We have built a global community around the ongoing conversation of design and innovation (although 80% of our traffic is from US). And then we did something simple, we launched a magazine thanks to the website’s contributors, because we found that many senior managers don’t go online. No Surprise. The magazine is IN, Inside Innovation.

Today, Bruce coaches a team of about 80 000 people, women in their early 30’s, guys in their late thirties, and people in their twenties (Canadian are a generation ahead of the systems in network technology). The design process is totally different from the hierarchical way of managing we had just a few years ago. We all create on both platforms—2d and 3d, and do a little 4d on the side. Our job today as designers is to curate conversations among groups within our user audience, with social networking and philanthropy, fashion, gaming culture, industry, technology, sustainability and emotion technology. We design stories with our user audience for our user audience. As the conversation now is the content, the design process is too the design content . It’s not about the finished design but about the ongoing design content. It’s the conversation. And since most wicked problems don’t have a conclusion, they need ongoing designs. We live a life in betadesign.

A final point on language: Innovation and Design. Men and women don’t like the term “designer.” I think they think it implies being dapers or distressed. Even soft CEOs who embrace design don’t want to be called that. They see design as “Innovation.” That has a right party view to it. It sounds strong. These folks are perfectly willing to create their vision, whatever the heck their vision is. They have Imagination, wherever the heck it comes from. But they feel they don’t know about the design process. They should see some design process figures.

I wish I could solve this problem by calling it all a banana. Innovation, design, eco-imagination, whatever we want to call it, it’s about the design process. Because design has the potential of allowing people to change their lives in a myriad of ways in a myriad of places.

Changing the world is to design for others to change their own world. Alexandre Joyce

Conversational Problems (part one)

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 05:43:00 +0000

When is a project done? When is a product intuitive? It all depends on how many questions are left unresolved. It’s not a matter of knowing when things are right, it’s a matter of taking them for granted. Of course, this has to be taken with a grain of salt. Still, that’s why you want to hear: “Are you alright?” when you hit your toe on the corner of the table. It’s to know someone cares. In a project for example, when everyone comes back the next day at no one talks about a certain aspect that was discussed yesterday. Chances are that part of the problem isn’t asking for attention. Then again, when design problems start speaking to you, maybe there’s a bigger problem?

Richard Coyne and Adrian Snodgrass unite to ask themselves: Is designing hermeneutical ? Simply put, hermeneutics refers to the interpretation and understanding of texts. The authors are proposing that design is hermeneutical because everyone starts a project with their own hermeneutical baggage. When designing, it is impossible to fully free one self from his past experiences and his prejudiced thoughts.

This is yet another article that is pushing the design process away from the positivist model into a constructivist approach. However, in this case, the authors use a metaphor from the works of prominent writers on language to describe the design process. Wittgenstein describes language as atomistic elements that when assembled within the laws of grammar form sentences. This relates to the positivist method that was projected onto design during the modernist era. How come we understand the words in the middle of a sentence?

The awnser to that question came from another German philosopher who developed the concept of conversation. The meaning of the words is made possible at all times because of the context of the conversation. We move from the words to the context and back gathering the information. This movement, this comparison from the parts to the whole is key in creating an understanding. And in some cases, even leading to anticipation. Even in the initial states of the conversation we project a meaning to the whole. During the development we are constantly referring, refining and redefining our understanding depending on how the anticipation rings true with the present information. The same can be said for design. It starts with your interpretation of the situation, the further the project is developed, the more questions are answered and the more information can adjust the initial projection. In the end, the project emerges from the back and forth movement of the understanding of the relationship between whole and the parts.

Many great thoughts have come from Gadamer works on hermeneutics. For example, you don’t start a conversation you fall into it you become involved in it. And better yet in design terms, the primary generator of a conversation is a question. The to-and-fro movement for understanding is created by a question-answer method. This defines the reflexive designer. The initial question begins the conversation and the situation begs to ask more questions pertaining to the approach (prejudices and values) of the designer. Needless to say that being open to questioning is essential in continuing the conversation with the situation.

Awakening the Giants

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 05:47:00 +0000

Now we’re talking. Literally. Finally, a company has stepped up at bat to see what it’s customer’s have to say. The computer manufacturer Dell has decided that things need to change. A change that starts where it should. Grassroots. Power to the people. This is the beginning of Dell 2.0, called ideastorm. I’m watching this with great intent. Improving this model is already in the works. But again, don’t take my word for it. The users themselves are giving an earful about how the system could be improved. A little reflection-in-action from the participants really. So let’s take the time to see what kind of ideas have been poping up.

Cleaning up the clutter. Proposing a rebellion to the site by withholding his idea until this brouhaha of content is more organized. Repetition is what’s annoying. How can the system eliminate the repetition? Is there a way to keep just the new parts of ideas? Even worse, one of the commenters said: “I'm starting to think this site is more a marketing ploy than anything else.” Dell is going to have to show the users how their ideas are going to be making it into their service.

Is Dell listening? How intently? What will they do with these ideas? The official FAQ answer is : “Yes, Dell executives and managers will monitor Ideastorm to gauge which ideas are most important and most relevant to you. Occasionally, we will weigh in on an ongoing discussion or ask for additional input on an idea.”

Dealing with the initial brainstorm of ideas. Once a critical mass has been reached, two options remain. One: start clustering similar ideas together with the most expressive or voted upon idea at the forefront. This is where the company should weight in. There should be a special status for good ideas that are moving in the right direction. Two: Turn in into a contest where people get to vote on the most pressing or innovative idea.

Ideas need to fill a need. Simply having a starting point to ignite the fire is an obvious lack that this system needs to fill. If the company doesn’t want to do it, maybe the users could self challenge eachother. “I understand what that Dell can benefit from this by reading how customers truly feel, but where is my benefit?” What are the contributors getting out of this? The implementation of their idea? When will that happen? Where are the Dell employees? Should they have a special recognition? Could they be moderators?

In conclusion, this site is too close to the journalistic feel of the digg website. Users are ready to let the companies have it, let's just hope the companies are better suited to accept that information. And more importantly, the companies need to make sure that the users will keep on contributing.

Quick links to these articles.
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Text: Participatory Internet tool

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:55:00 +0000

Once in a full moon a video comes along and explains it all.

This video started by retracing the evolution of text. From pen and paper to, digital, to hypertext with links and finally with rss text is independant of form, it's just content.

This speeded darwinian demonstration is well crafted enough. Yet the author (or cinematographor?) took the time to touch on the changes in the bigger picture. The idea of participation over the Web 2.0 websites allows for all this information to be gathered by these conversations we are entertaining online. The next thing you know, the machines are going to take decisions based on our reputation of internet participation.

And the following response is equally interesting. Although the music is not as good, the point brought to counterargument the first point of view on the evolution of text. The second author speaks of the lack of a sensory participation when writing over the web. The basic form of reading and writing being untouched by the machine. He states the major achievement of the internet as being the simulation of participation saying that "it has made non-participatory addition of responsive content more rapid" This little smiley beign a substitute for sensorial participation :)

One final thought:
If the "medium is the message", what is the participatory internet trying to say?

Mea Culpa (part three)

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce) — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 04:33:00 +0000

This idea of mea culpa with Alexander and Rittel comes from the changes in the way to approach design methodology. At first they we’re searching for ways to recreate beauty. Alexander, as exposed earlier, has given up on not only the term methodology, but it’s goals as well.

Rittel is less emotional. He starts by saying that when methodology enters a field it’s a sign of crisis within that field. Therefore, the objective of design methodology has been more concerned with understanding design than actually proposing better ways to solve problems.

Taking a step back for a moment, I see that this is another paradox of paradoxes. Design is concerned with elaborating solutions to solve the problem. Whereas in the past, design methodology was trying to define the problem of design instead of going with the natural flow of design by building the answer by refining the generators. With time, these elaborations were called generations and they evolved to where we are today. There have been many generations, from rationality to bounded rationality or description to the present of reflexivity in practice.

Back to the beginning of this second generation, where Rittel admits to seeing things differently from the rational, step by step methodology of designing. He proposes a few insights into the future of design methodology where the designer works with the client as they both share elements of the solution that need to be explicated during the process. He calls for a change in attitude. Modesty playing an important role in helping the parties better exchange. This back and forth transit of the information relevant to the solution and problem spaces is inscribed in a rhetoric of argumentation to establish a hierarchy or priority in the issues to be sorted.

This rupture with the first generation is embodied in 7 principles. The first states that the design process is not a linear because the expertise is distributed amongst the actors. This brings a logical argument for the case of participation in the design process. The second principle addresses the argumentative method of taking design decision in the development. The third is the linked relationships of cause and effect of all the different elements of the situation. In Rittel’s words: “ a given issue is the symptom of another”. Transparency of the arguments is the fourth principle. The fifth principle called objectification is a form of primary generator. The goal is to start with something to be built upon and which at the same time documents the process. The sixth and final principle revolves around delegated judgements to touch implied logical aspects of the projects like politics and environment that might not be part of the designer’s technical arguments. He finishes the principles with a seventh unspoken element that this second generation attitude contains the implementation of the project because the designer is playing a role of the midwife. The project is born thanks to his ability to get it out of the hands of the problem owners.

In contrast to Alexander’s quick reference to participative design, Rittel exposes the importance of participation to gather all the different views and arguments coming from defending these points of views. But he goes one step further by stating that : “ the manner in which the solutions comes about does matter in another way; that is that the experience of having participated in the problem makes a difference to those that are affected by the solution. People are more likely to like a solution if they have been involved in its generation; even though it might not make sense otherwise.” This adds a little more weight to my idea that design is not the ends but the means.