Changing the change

Final Visualisations deadline expired on June 3rd, 2008. We received about 30 Visualisations of the selected papers. Now we are preparing the Exhibit at Changing the Change. On one hand, we applied the same clusters of the papers: visions, proposals and tools are the main themes of final Visualisations. Most of them are proposals and visions. On the other hand, we can identify different genres and languages for communicating design research. In particular, the exhibition will show photographic sequences and collages or graphs and diagrams.
Of course, the first ones are much more iconographic, visual and imaginative ways of representation. They can visualize subjects, showing actions and telling stories for stimulating the imagination. The second ones refer to a symbolic language, which is useful for defending a thesis. They are able to explain subjects, arguing theoretic thoughts and concepts, building relationships between issues and items. Their final result is abstraction. It is a rational way of communicating to peers, while the other language is much more intuitive and emotional and it can be understood by a wider audience. Of course, we can find also hybrid rhetoric and languages. We think that the brief format requested (35 secs) is an useful exercise of communication. It also allows getting a wide and complete look at the themes presented, stimulating the dialogue on urgent issues. Visualisations Exhibit will offer another way of looking at design research presented at Changing the Change.

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?

Change is the one constant; the human race has throughout history been trying to understand change, contribute to it or change the direction of change. The design profession has of course been a major contributor to the change of products, places and systems, and design education has been predominantly concerned with providing students of design with the skills to analyze, design and develop new (changed) outcomes, concentrating on the change rather than reflecting on the action. This is not to say there has not been any concern or reflection on the role of the designer in a changing world.

Designs leadership in social issues and social responsibility, like business’s response, has mirrored the great activist movements. Indeed, it has been a recurring theme, with designers addressing a range of quality-of-life issues. In the 1960s, designers began to actively consider design’s wider implications for society. Several approaches emerged, including green design, consumerism, responsible design, ethical consuming, ecodesign, sustainability and feminist design. Accessibility and inclusively have also received a great deal of design interest and activity.

It seems now that the scale and complexity of change and its impact globally requires a different kind of action and reflection, locally and globally. The science of climate change has led us to consider the future with urgency, to try to imagine what ‘change’, or ‘no change’ will bring to the earth and to future generations. In order to do this we need to draw on all our knowledge, science and engineering, social science, arts and humanities, and here lies a role for design research.

Design thinking and design processes appropriate knowledge from anywhere in an endeavour to create solutions and alternative approaches to problems. Designing often has a catalytic effect on a situation or a group. Designers feel comfortable working in teams. Designers often offer alternative insights into the future, designers can help us imagine. It is this facility that offers alternative approaches to research.

Design researchers are able to contribute to research teams addressing multitude of problems. In the UK the research funding councils have been funding some research through what is called ‘Ideas Factories’. These Ideas Factories bring together academics (around 25); from across the disciplinary spread to addresses an issue alongside interested stakeholders. I have been involved with three; Mobile Health, Countering Terrorism, and Nutrition and Aging. They work together through a week to define current problems and offer research projects to address them, at the end of the week the best projects are funded. In each of these Ideas Factories there has been three or four design academics, and in each case they have been critical in the development of the research thinking and method.

There are now opportunities for designers to be in the centre of the problem or the issue and to lead the research. Much research being funded in the UK and in the EU is for collaborative multidisciplinary teams. My last project ‘Vivacity2020, Urban Sustainability for the 24 hour city’ included 32 researchers, scientist, social scientists and designers and 42 companies. The design aspect was very important we were able through graphics to model, complex issues and to illustrate the relationship between the science and the experience of city living and the design decisions that led to the built environment.

This later aspect illustrates yet another design competency which is crucial to academic research, that of completion and communication. Whilst most designers are trained to be divergent in their thinking at the onset of a problem, they need convergent thinking and verbal and visual communication skills to explain and communicate clearly the ideas they have. This is essential if we are to transfer the knowledge we gain through research to a wider community. Often designers can create visualizations of complex models, systems or prototypes that enable society to understand and apply them in practice.

At Lancaster University we have created ImginationatLancaster, an Imagination Lab comprised, in the main, of designers who work across the university with all faculty to address research problems in areas such as healthcare, education, open innovation, and sustainability and wellbeing. We will use our lab not only to collaborate across the university but with other academics worldwide and with other interested institutions and enterprises. We are not alone many other universities are capitalising on the strengths of design thinking in research.

Changing the Change offers the opportunity to consider the way in which we can continue to drive research through design in new directions.