Changing the change

163 papers selected, from 27 countries (from Europe to Asia, form America to Africa): these figures offer an initial profile of what Changing the Change will be. Later on we shall see the range of topics these papers deal with (and therefore on which great issues debate will develop during the conference).
Later on we shall see where the authors operate (universities, professional practices, or other research centres). A clearer profile will emerge of what design research for Changing the Change is today and where it is taking place. For now I would like to stress only that the way international participation in the conference is distributed, and what it represents, indicate not only that design research is widespread, but so also is the work that, although in different ways, is orientated in the direction to which Changing the Change is pointing. In my opinion this is excellent news.

It was by no means to be taken for granted that this would happen, because design as a profession is now practised worldwide. However, the same can still certainly not be said for design culture, meaning the conceptual tools that guide its operations: the development of a knowledge and network society has enabled design to spread to all regions of the world, but the speed with which this has happened has not allowed for the spontaneous growth of an adequate new design ethos.

In other words, it seems to me that design has acted worldwide speaking (and thinking) a language that is still too bound to its now distant origins (the traditional, industrial societies in Europe and North America). This has made it difficult for designers working in other regions of the Planet to understand and fulfill their own local potential and work to steer them in the most promising direction and, as far as what most interests us here, this means towards sustainability.

The signals we are receiving from Changing the Change suggest that this difficulty can be overcome; that parallel to this spread of design in practice, a similar spread of design as research is also beginning. In particular, a growing number of design schools are not only aiming to prepare future designers, but are also creating a new design expertise for the present. They are centres of a new design expertise able to generate a cosmopolitan mixture of design culture and practices that are expressions of the different regions of the world, with their own particular traditions and potentialities.

In this framework, the conference itself can be seen as a research activity, the theme of which is the state of design research for sustainability at an international level. Its call for papers, with the subsequent proposals, forms an international inquiry. Its outcome will be a map of who is doing what in this field, and where. We shall be able to bring these results into focus in the coming months and discuss them in greater depth during the conference in Turin. However, we can already indicate an initial output of this work: as stated earlier, the response to the call for papers for Changing the Change tells us that design research is beginning to be a worldwide phenomenon, articulated at the local level. It is therefore legitimate to hope that design is getting ready to become that cosmopolitan, but at the same time both global and local, culture of research that is so much needed today in the transition towards sustainability.

The industrial age is over, really is over, it once made sense, but it doesn’t make sense now. We just have to look around us. Many of the positive creations of the industrial era are now less and less relevant and no longer fit for purpose: our schools and education system, our hospitals and health system, our production and consumption system and our very lifestyles. Where does this leave Design? Is Design, also primarily an industrial construct, less and less fit for purpose?

There is a risk that in the industrial sunset design becomes a parody of itself or becomes increasingly commoditized, as it is taken ever more for granted by its industrial masters. (Roberto Verganti, Newsletter 07). There are risks, but if the industrial era is over, there are also great opportunities. This is a time when we have to re-invent just about everything and such times urgently need the specific thinking, skills and capabilities of design. But society needs a different design, not industrial but social, a design that is part of the solution and not part of the problem. If this is so, then it interesting to ask the questions: what is holding us back and what is pushing us forwards?

So what holds us back? In part the impression that the 21st century still feels very much like the 20th. We still live by an economic ideology that believes growth is based on ever more productivity and consumption and so we still buy lots and we still consume lots. At the same time we are all children of the 20th century. We have 20th century mindsets and 20th century training and perhaps this is why, even if the industrial age has had its day, we keep on looking backwards and all too often doing what we have always done? And anyway real change isn’t easy. There is no rule book, no instructions of use for the next age. What is easier is to pull the future back to the past. This means that instead of systemic structural change, change that facilitates the new socio-techno-economic conditions to flourish and take us to a new era of prosperity and wellbeing, we co-opt the future back to the past. We colonize the future driven by habit, interests and fear.

So what pushes us forward? In short, the desire to grow, to explore, to create and need. In a change of age we face many social challenges whereby society, both in the developed and developing world, needs to invent or re-invent just about everything for an ecological age, including health, education, mobility, etc. Such a re-invention and re-design of systems, however, is about social innovation rather than market innovation. It places the emphasis away from the consumer and his/her needs towards the society and its needs. It gives attention less to the individual and more to the collective, less to a need and more to the activity and the context, , less to the product and more to an ecosystem of information, service and experience. If this is what society needs and where society is going then companies will surely follow, as the big industrial corporations also have to re-invent themselves. And this is the necessity and an opportunity for Design to free itself from becoming a commodity to becoming a strategic differentiator. Who better to help design new social systems than Design? If Design does this, and as the social industries supersede the industrial industries, then Design could certainly be to the 21st century what Marketing was to the 20th.
What does this mean for Design? A large part of the answer must lie in the increasingly strategic role of Design Research. Design research is the instrument at the service of Design, exploring and building Design’s role and contribution in the field of social innovation and re-design of critical social areas. Addressing social innovation as a set of design challenges is the means. What are the challenges? What new competencies must we grow in social research, social design, systems design, context design, and service design? Which approaches, methods and tools do we need to develop? How do we facilitate the participatory networks and co-creative practices? How do we imagine new value for a new age?

Such questions and such research are deeply meaningful in relation to the concept of Changing the Change. Ezio Manzini in the first newsletter emphasized that Changing the Change wants to be a research conference with a strong and ambitious political focus on the design research potentialities in the transition towards a sustainable knowledge society. Design on its own cannot change the change but, as I am sure the Change the Change event will show us, it is beginning to gain more self awareness, to challenge its past and to ask different questions about its discipline and its purpose. For as we journey from one way of being and doing to another we have to ask ourselves individually and collectively why we do things, what we do, how we do them and who does them.

How does Design Research communicate itself? Of course, design research has the responsibility to deal with the transformations of the world and society, in order to identify and declare the emerging trends. It also has the responsibility of communicate its objectives, to spread knowledge and make it diffuse, as popular as it can. Communicating means telling stories, sharing knowledge, building new aesthetics for complexity and making theorethical issues tangible and comprehensible problems.

Visualisations will be an exhibition at Changing the Change Conference. Video projections will show participants’ research results as solutions proposals, visions of possible worlds or tools to enhance them. All of them have to be proposed in a highly communicative way as animated storyboards (animatic) or short sequences of images (slideshow) (For more information, search for “Submission Guidelines” on the website).

Visualisations exhibition wants to offer the opportunity to look at design research as a communicative process with different audiences: users, peers, companies and institutions. Changing the Change is looking for new ways of expression and dialogue. Lets start from the scientific community: how can we talk each other? The exhibition at Changing the Change Conference is a step towards the building of a peer to peer communication strategy. We would like to collect and make accessible design research materials, a network of visions for communicating international design research.

To achieve this end, according to the policy of sharing knowledge, we encourage the liberalization of certain rights, as advocated by the Creative Commons licenses (www.creativecommons.org). Nothing will impair or restrict the author’s moral rights, but organizers of Changing the Change Conference and Exhibit will be legitimated to distribute and share Visualizations. Works will be accessible to peers, as it is a key principle underpinning social interaction. We guarantee the attribution of each work, both in the case of video projection and other publication and distribution artifacts (For more information, search for “Rights” on the website).

Of course, your works are dedicated to different themes and urgent issues. Communication rhetoric and languages seem various and interesting too. Some of them come from documentary and ethnography, others look like interfaces for service systems; some are visions, others tools. We think that video (even a slideshow) can help to represent complexity. Is that true for design research? In the era of bottom-up contents and diffuse creativity the ability of image production is widespread. Is there a designerly way of communicating? Could we identify a common ground? Are there different genres for different kind of design research?