Changing the change

I think that the Conference should produce, as final document, a design research agenda for sustainability: a short text where emerging themes are focalised and promising directions of research are indicated.

I know that saying this involves some risks: conference final documents are quite common and often they are nothing more than rhetorical declarations of good intentions. This is true. But I think that we have to take this risk: the meeting of a worldwide community of design researchers is, in my view, both a cultural and a political event. And an event like this should leave a trace (in the community’s culture) and give directions (about future steps to be taken). Not only: in a previous design conference (the Cumulus Design Conference in Kyoto of March 28, a declaration was signed – see Yrio Sotamaa in the Newsletter 5). I think that this Declaration, having been signed by a large number of design schools, is not only highly symbolic (having being signed in Kyoto) but also potentially relevant. Now, of course, something has to happen to implement it. The design research agenda for sustainability that I am proposing, in my view, should be considered as one of Kyoto Declaration possible implementations: a document that will have to give research directions in order to develop the necessary design knowledge to make it real. That is, for us, to Change the Change.

In this perspective, some organisational choices involving the Conference and its preparation have been taken to facilitate a process that, in a bottom-up and peer-to-peer spirit, should be able to generate shared ideas. In practical terms, during the first two and half days of the conference, listening to the presented papers, participating to the initial Round Table, talking in the bar or whatever else conference-related conversations take place, the participants will progressively focalise on the themes that, in the Changing the Change perspective, will appear as the most relevant and demanding in terms of design knowledge. In the Conference last session these themes will be discussed in different meetings and, finally, in the general assembly.

In conclusion, in parallel to the selected paper presentations, that is, the “academic stream” (that of course will be the core of the Conference), there will be also a “political stream”: an open space aimed at giving participants more possibilities to interact, to bring their own ideas and to collaborate on the preparation of a final document. This political stream will be a bottom-up process of theme definition oriented to build, in a participatory way, the design research agenda for sustainability” that will be the Conference final output and (hopefully) the first step of some post-conference actions.

In order to concretely move in this direction, this discussion should start now and should regard both the anticipation of some emerging themes and the proposal on how to facilitate, during the Conference, their definition process. These Newsletters and the blog on the CtC Website are places where this discussion could easily happen.

Changing the Change is a moment of intensity in a continuum of action, or this is the way I think it should be, and is the spirit that I see in Ezio’s “Design Research Agenda for Sustainability.” Conferences are very charming occasions: they include nice friends, exciting people, interesting papers, new faces, and enjoyable social events in unfamiliar friendly places. But if they do not become arrival and departure points for a continuing action, and if, in this case, a change in the current changes is not generated, the effort would not make sense.

Will a group be generated as a consequence of the conference, a group that will take the issue of sustainability and design to the capillary circulation of culture internationally? Will a constant flow of communication be generated or intensified, so that like-minded designers, engaged in changing the change could work more in concert? Will the conference provide the necessary drive and the indispensable tools that are needed to develop design research internationally toward a sustainable society?

As a bottom-up event, the organizers can only aim at creating favorable conditions for things to happen. It will be up to the participants to transform the event into a departing point. I agree with Ezio wholeheartedly about the emptyness of manifestos that are not supported by programs of action. It is easy to write nice things; but it is difficult to integrate new challenges into everyone’s agenda, challenges that are certainly worth while, but that need imaginative work and sustained effort. We believe it is possible, and we hope that the conference will make that possibility even stronger, through the exchange of ideas, experiences, visions and tools.

At the Institute without Boundaries, changing the change has meant tackling local problems that have global repercussions, while also speculating on global issues to devise frameworks within which local agents can contribute solutions to those issues. Walking on both sides of the line, from systems theory to generating examples and embodiments of design innovation, the faculty and students fluidly interact with experts to exchange knowledge, build ideas, test prototypes, and formulate systems. Over the past number of years, this process of experimentation has generated a number of insights on change that are worth consideration, especially in the context of a world where global forces connect and impact communities in the most unpredictable ways. Here are some of our insights:

Sometimes, the world is good as it is and we don’t have to change it as designers. Sometimes we need to stop trying to change the world and let it be.

Other times, the rapid pace of change demands that designers mitigate change, acclimatizing people so it becomes bearable, channeling it into a direction that is evidently beneficial all.

When inexorable change becomes dehumanizing, degrading, alienating or brings about conditions of injustice or inequity, designers can work with civil society to postulate alternatives, to dream alternative realities that society can adopt. Designers can change the change as they control the embodiments of change.

When rapid or massive change is needed to avert crisis or imminent extinction, the redesign and reinvention required may be too critical to leave to designers alone. In these instances, design needs to interact with science, sociology, economy, and politics to generate possibilities that ensure survival and open avenues of opportunity.

Working with students from diverse backgrounds in arts, design, business, science, economics, sociology and informatics in an environment without professional boundaries, where students, faculty, and visiting experts embrace challenges together has made clear to me the complex readjustments required of design methodology. This past year, we have been working on design solutions for sustainable housing for Guanacaste, a region in Costa Rica. How could we help from such a great distance? How could our inter-professional team generate relevant solutions? To address these challenges, we experimented widely, conducting extensive research, showing up in person to charrette, collaborating with other academic institutions, finding on-the-ground NGOs to stimulate, roping in experts local, national, and international, and even working with elementary school children. We learned that their problems were ours.

Experimentation, while not always successful, taught us how varied methods generate different design results. Knowing which approach may generate a particular result can empower communities, designers, and clients and if not to change their change, at least to guide it positively.

Society has been served well by the pursuit of deep knowledge (the cornerstone of any self respecting academic institution) but more and more the nature of today’s “big picture” problems resides at the intersection of what we know. What is – for example – healthcare? It’s not medicine, law, buildings, therapies, doctors, processes, ethics, or business but rather the convergence of all of them in a complex system. We need to first see the nature of these system problems to define the path towards more complete solutions. Not reductively, not as fragments, but in the complex, integrated and synthetic ways that drive them. These are the cornerstones of design, yet its not design as defined by our professions, rather design as defines by our needs.

But what does this call for “system design” have to do with Changing the Change? A lot when examined from two simple perspectives.

First, it captures many of the threads that seek to rethink design found within the conference Newsletter. Here alone there is much evidence for a call for design to sustain better solutions: Mugendi M’Rithaa places the question of Design in context of Africa’s future. The call, by Lou Yongqi, to “pause” and think strategically and systemically is apt not only in China, but throughout our geographies; Stefano Marzano places design in the context of economic systems. All seek more effective design, but discuss them within a broader context of systems.

Secondly, one could argue that the hallmark of a discipline is in the research that it pursues: as such the question of what kind of research is central to academia. At Harvard, President Drew Faust has spoken at great lengths about the challenge to work more effectively across disciplines. In this context design has a unique leadership opportunity across the university, but it’s the kind of opportunity that will only come if we are able see beyond the professions we serve to the value of our discipline.

To meet this opportunity, academia is going to have to challenge itself to define the right frameworks, incentivizing students and faculty to work in ways that may inherently contradict the established structures of success. The institutional dilemma is that with success comes rigidity towards change. The future will be in the hands of those whose past success won’t create an insurmountable barrier towards rethinking how they operate in this design driven age.