Changing the change

This post has been written by Ezio Manzini and Jorge Frascara

Changing the Change ended two weeks ago. Concluding it, we felt enthusiastic: our emotional impression was the one of having participated in a very meaningful event. Now we are two weeks later. We have had the time to recover, rethink and digest the many stimuli … And we are still enthusiastic and convinced that Changing the Change has been a very meaningful event.

Given this enthusiasm a question arises immediately (one that has been asked by may friends): what will the next steps be? Frankly speaking, we don’t know yet: we need some other weeks of rethinking, recovering and discussing. Nevertheless, something, some “next steps”, already appear clearly:

1. A conference is a conference. Paraphrasing Magritte, with this statement we intend to say that we don’t have to ask to a conference more than what a conference can do. And a conference is a mainly a place of exchanges: we say something to others, we listen to others’ thoughts and experiences, and, if it is a good conference, we bring back home something useful in terms of new relationships and ideas. Given that, the only next steps that a conference has to generate are the ones that every participant will take on the basis of the new ideas and relationships that he/she will have brought home.
   In the Changing the Change case, will this happen? Of course we hope so. But it is not up to the organizer to take these steps. It is up to you. The blog in the conference site will remain active (at least for some months): let us know if some of these steps have been taken.
2. A conference is also a book: a collection of papers that permits to those who had not had the opportunity to participate, to have an idea of what had been said at the conference, and get the address of who said it. And so, again, through its proceedings, a good conference may generate ideas and relationships.
   In our case, the conference proceedings have already been published and you can find them on line in the Changing the Change site. Everybody interested can read them and, if very interested, download all the papers.
3. In principle, what has be said in the two previous points could be true for every conference, both the virtual and traditional ones. But traditional conferences have a different potential in terms of community building. In fact, they are places where you bring not only your ideas, but also your body. And this is what, in a successful conference, can make the difference. As everybody knows, physical interactions help the creation of a sense of community.
   Changing the Change was a conference specifically dedicated to designer-researchers who think that sustainability should be the meta-objective of every design research. This large group of researchers has been until now rather weak and invisible. A very positive Changing the Change next step could be the empirical observation that this group has evolved towards a community. If this will be true or not, if this next step will be taken, it is now too early to be said. In this case too, we hope to see something on the Changing the Change Blog.
4. A conference may generate a final document: a text that captures the “conference spirit”. Changing the Change did it too. It produced a document where themes that appeared to the conference participants to be relevant (in the perspective of sustainability) and demanding (in terms design knowledge) are indicated. This document, the Design Research Agenda – Draft 1, clearly could be considered as another “next step” of the conference: the possibility to use the emerging issues that the conference has produced as “attractors,” capable of orienting a multiplicity of on-going and brand new design research programs.
   
   Maybe this document could be seen as the most evident next step of Changing the Change. But its meaning has to be attentively considered and its possible practical implications discussed.

   The Design Research Agenda has been presented in its first version, the Draft 1, as an open and collaborative research program. An open program, because it can be continuously integrated with other ideas and themes. And a collaborative program, because it is based on a p2p approach: each research team can bring its “contents” and consolidate a research line. That is, if it accepts some general visions and simple rules, each research team can bring its programs and its results into the system, contributing to consolidating and, possibly, reorienting some larger streams of research. The aim is moving from a multiplicity of researches in different directions (and incapable of interacting and of creating a clear image of what, as a whole, they are doing) to the possibility of mutually interacting and generating the design knowledge needed to produce larger and stronger visions and proposals.

   As a matter of fact, this same document (the Design Research Agenda – Draft 1) has been generated in a p2p spirit: a series of formalized and informal discussions that, during the three days of the conference, progressively defined the proposed “emerging issues”. In conclusion, we could say that the first next step has been taken during the same conference , and it has produced this draft. Now, the next step is to see if this idea could work. Please, read the Design Research Agenda for Sustainablity text and let us know what you think.

   Thank you!

Changing the Change Conference has been organized according to the principles of sustainability, both in terms of environmentally friendly-efficiency, for what we could do, and on the base of the spirit of sharing and quality welcoming activities.
The Conference offered a highly scientific and academic agenda together with a research and a project regarding virtual spaces, physical spaces and services, thought to be coherent and sharable by Changing the Change community.
Changing the Change Conference may provide Turin with a sign of the future goals in terms of sustainability, by presenting visions, proposals and tools, which, if they are included in the Conference manifesto, would be extremely useful for our city and its local government to give new directions for the city’s future.
The Conference has been part of the Torino 2008 World Capital Design agenda, which has worked in this sense too: this year is a moment to reflect upon “flexibility”, the way through which design connects knowledge and values, reads the change and, sometimes, pinpoints new directions.

AzzeroCO₂

The preparatory step of the Conference has been designed to have a reduced impact on the environment, to eliminate the greenhouse gases emission resulting from energy consumption, use of materials, transports and staff’s activities.
The AzzeroCO₂ “curing” action regards the Po river park. This will allow the reintroduction of local flora and fauna: 35 tons of CO₂ will be eliminated thanks to this action, the same amount that would have been consumed for the preparatory phase of the conference.

The Conference sites

The Institute of Biotechnology, where we have been, has been carefully designed. We have chosen this location because a high-quality Conference requires highly expressive and functional rooms.
The 11th July dinner has been held at Castello del Valentino. This Savoy residence is especially meaningful for us: it is the headquarter of the Faculty of Architecture of Politecnico di Torino. It has been a friendly dinner party with typical local food which is a mark of our territory: the Paniere della Provincia di Torino-Basket of Typical Products of Turin Provincial Government, a very successful initiative that opted for the sustainable short food production chain: from producer to consumer.

Special opportunities

More than 100 participants used the 20 bicycles we prepared, completely free of charge, to get around the city in a more human way.
GTT Gruppo Trasporti Torinesi also offered the public transportation’s use free of charge.
A lot of exhibitions, Olivetti, una bella Società, Flexibility and Piemonte Torino Design have been kept open in the evening by the TO2008WDC circuit for Changing the Change Community, during the 3 days of the Conference.

Thanks

I finally would like to thank the sponsors (The Regional Council of Piedmont, Torino World Design Capital 2008, The Chamber of Commerce of Turin, GTT-Gruppo Trasporti Torinese, Fantoni Group, DEGA) and the staff of Politecnico di Torino, who contributed as volunteers to make this meeting of ours possible in terms of organization and reception.

Changing the Change conference has made an invitation to build up a panorama of design research results today. Now, after the conference, it is possible to affirm – looking at the abstracts and papers received – that this invitation has been largely answered. First, considering the geographically representative number of countries that have an approved abstract – exactly 27 – from South and North America, through Europe, Africa and Asia.

The abstracts approved are 163: 101 from United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland and Denmark; 4 from Israel and Turkey; 5 from Kenya, Botswana and South Africa; 13 from China, India, Japan and South Korea; 18 from Brazil and Colombia; 13 from Canada and United States; and 9 from Australia.

Clearly Europe, particularly Italy, has sent the larger number of abstracts. This is explained by the fact that the conference took place in Turin. But if we exclude Italy, we arrive at a very balanced distribution between Europe and the other countries: 50 abstracts from United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Finland, France, Portugal, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland; and 62 from all other countries. In synthesis, 1/3 for Italy, 1/3 for Europe and 1/3 for the rest of the world in 163 abstracts approved.

Interesting also that a country like Brazil, that has only one PhD School in Design, has 17 abstracts approved, the total representation from Latin America (Colombia had sent only one abstract). After the United Kingdom, with 26 abstracts approved, Brazil was the country (always excluding Italy) with the largest participation in Changing the Change.

Other numbers: 348 documents were uploaded as papers/visualizations in the conference web platform, from those 263 where sent to 40 reviewers, at the end totalizing 163 abstracts approved and 138 final papers.

But the interest in the conference themes is not restricted to these numbers: Changing the Change newsletter is sent today to more than 1300 subscribers.

Regarding contents, papers were divided by the scientific committee in 6 groups, around the 3 larger areas: visions, proposals and tools. Visions: ways of living and producing. Proposals: daily life solutions and enabling systems. Tools: design theories and methods. This can be seen in the proceedings, already on-line (www.changingthechange.org). The conference organizers have always considered Changing the Change conference not as a “final result” of a process but as a starting point. When reading these papers, a still unexplored richness of possible clusters comes out, sub themes, and more than that, possible collaborations; and here we hope that the “proceedings” could be considered also as work material, enabling potential post-conference activities and contacts.

This post has been written by the conference coordination team:
Ezio Manzini, Jorge Frascara, Carla Cipolla,
Cludio Germak, Brunella Cozzo, Paolo Peruccio, Sergio Corsaro

The Changing the Change Conference is going to start. It will be the result of the efforts done by a large group of people: the coordination team, the advisory committees, the peer review committee, the invited speakers and discussants and, of course, and first of all, the many design researchers who prepared and sent their contributions.

As coordination team, we already know the selected papers contents, what the invited speakers and discussants will present and the side activities that will be proposed. On this basis, we are reasonably sure that these three days in Torino will be dense, interesting and agreeable. What we don’t know, because it cannot be planned, is if all these good ingredients will generate a real meaningful event: an initiative where the “being there” of many people generates a particular kind of positive energy. That is, a conference the value of which is much more than the sum of its formal presentations, discussions and entertaining activities.

Changing the Change has all the potentialities to become one of these meaningful events. But this possibility depends on a complex mix of factors and on the unforeseeable mesh of interactions that will be built in these three days.

In the next days we will be in Torino, driven by common interests: it will be up to us, and to our capability of “being here”, the possibility to transform a conference program in a meaningful event. And, therefore, the possibility to generate the energy we need to make this Conference an important step in the right direction. That is, in the direction of sustainability.

The Conference Program is ready! It has been conceived to find an effective compromise between different, equally important demands: to give many design researchers the opportunity to present their work and the time to discuss it with others; to listen to several plenary session speeches; to participate in debates on specific topics and, finally, to have time and spaces for open discussions that prepare the ground for the final statements of the whole conference.

There are 4 main components in the program : 3 conference streams and 1 visualisations exhibition. These are:

1. SELECTED PAPERS MODULES. This is, of course, the Conference core: 138 papers are presented in 6 parallel themes of 4 modules each. The themes and the module sub-themes emerged from the clusterization of selected papers. They are:
   1. VISIONS (Ways of living, Ways of producing);
   2. PROPOSALS (Daily life solutions, Enabling Systems);
   3. TOOLS (Design Theories, Design Methods).
2. PRESENTATIONS BY INVITED SPEAKERS. 8 international speakers have been asked to give an overview of their countries or regions in terms of design research and its contributions in changing the change. As a whole, they outline the state of design research for sustainability worldwide. These presentations will take place each day, in late morning plenary sessions. They are:
   
   Bill Moggridige, USA; Geetha Narayanan, INDIA; Luisa Collina, ITALY; Mugendi M Rithaa, SOUTH AFRICA; Aguinaldo dos Santos, BRAZIL; Lou Yongqi, CHINA; Fumi Masuda, JAPAN; Cris Ryan, AUSTRALIA.
3. EMERGING ISSUES PROCESS. It is a series of activities (a round table, an international project session, an open discussion) that aim to produce the final output of the conference in a participatory way and make the first steps in possible post-conference initiatives. As a whole, they can be seen as a bottom-up process of theme generation. These initiatives will take place in late afternoon plenary sessions, on the first and second days, and in 6 parallel sessions and in the final plenary final one on the third day.
4. VISUALISATIONS EXHIBITION. It is a loop of video projections visualising the output of some selected papers. The aim is to promote the idea that design research can also be a process leading to highly communicative results.

Outcomes

• The meeting of a worldwide community of design researchers is, in fact, both a cultural and a political event. An event like this should leave a trace (in the community’s culture) and give directions (about future steps to be taken). For this reason, the Conference will produce a final document in the form of a short text pinpinting emerging issues and indicating promising directions of research. We can call it: Design research agenda for sustainability:
• In a previous design conference (the Cumulus Design Conference, held in Kyoto the 28th of March 2008) a declaration, linking design and sustainability, was signed by a large number of design schools. This declaration is not only highly symbolic (having being signed in Kyoto) but also potentially relevant. The Design research agenda for sustainability, which will be the main output of the Changing the Change Conference can be considered one of the possible implementations of the Kyoto Declaration: a document that must give research directions in order to develop the necessary design knowledge to become real. That is, for us, to Change 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.

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.

This text was written by Ezio Manzini, Jorge Frascara, Carla Cipolla

The blind review process of the abstracts submitted is now complete. One hundred and sixty three abstracs have been selected, after sifting through more than twice that number.

It was a very interesting process that proves that the topic of Changing the Change is present in the design researchers agenda across all continents. The conference will be a celebration of that interest, where the best ideas that are being developed internationally will find a place to be exposed and discussed, with a view to strengthening the international effort toward a sustainable society.

The organizers of Changing the Change want now to thank the work of all the reviewers that so generously dedicated their time, expertise and attention to analyze and select the best abstracts submitted.

We all look forward now to a great event!

The conference preparation process has arrived at the crucial point. The Peer Reviewer Committee is finishing its work. In two weeks time we will have a clear view of the selected papers, and therefore of the specific themes into which they will be clustered. Now, what we can do, is to anticipate an overview on the whole conference programme’s architecture.

The Changing the Change core will be, of course, the selected papers presentations. As the Newsletter readers know, we received more than 300 abstracts (and this is a success!). At the moment we don’t know how many of them will be accepted by the Peer Reviewers. In any case, we are working on the hypothesis of having around 100-150 good papers accepted. These papers will be presented in 5-6 parallel sections with different, specific themes that will emerge from the clusterization of the selected papers. The main issue here, is how to conceive these clusters in order to promote real and productive discussions between the presenters and the public. Each section will be chaired by a member of the Steering Committee, who will coordinate it bringing also the contribution of his/her views and experiences.

Another important element of the conference is brought by the plenary session speeches and the opportunities for open discussions. We are still working on the preparation of this part of the programme, but some orientations are clear.

• Plenary session speeches. There will be a highly international group of 6 speakers who will be asked to draw an overview of their specific country or region for what regards design research and its contributions in “changing the change”.
• Round tables. There will be 2 round tables where invited discussants will be asked to bring their opinions on 2 relevant topics. These topics will be: Design, social innovation towards a sustainable wellbeing (round table 1) and Design, technological innovation towards a sustainable production (round table 2).
• Final module. It will consist of 4-6 parallel discussions on themes that will be defined by the same conference participants. Each one of these discussions will have a facilitator who, at the end, will be in charge to presenting the discussion’s results. At the end, in plenary session, the facilitators of the previous discussions will present the meeting’s outcomes.

As you can see, we are dealing with a rather complex conference’s architecture. The motivation of this choice is to find the most effective compromise between the different, equally important demands: to give to many good researchers the possibility to present their work and the time to discuss it; to listen to several important plenary session speeches; to participate to the debates on some specific topics and, finally, to have time and spaces for open discussions.