Changing the change

In Spanish, Design is written with ñ, Diseño, and although it could sound… banal, that ñ gives account of an original way to face the world.
That single letter talks about a huge difference regarding the way in which design is assumed, because for us, in the countries where the ñ is used, design is the art of “darse maña” (meaning the ability to use ones “knacks” to solve a given challenge).

The inventors of this funny letter were monks who had to fit just one metallic movable type, instead of two, in the mechanical press; they gave themselves the “maña” to make the sound (usually written with gn or nh) fit that single space…

Now, how many monks or “mañosos” are there going to be attending the CtC conference?

Would the activation of “maña” offer new insights regarding possibilities to improve life conditions in urban dwellings?
An initial answer is what I would like to share here by means of a personal exploration during the PhD research.

As a student, I remember having arrived in Italy with lots of expectations among which, the idea of learning about “sustainable” supermarkets being this idea a clear sign of my lack of vision regarding the way in which the design practice has stuck on mainstream possibilities of producing with LCA standards, eco-materials, etc., a way that neglects the urgency to develop a design culture and thus hinders the real need for research.

While being immersed in the design world, and while starting to address the relevance of looking the “mañosos” ways in a series of case study cities, I found out that a hybrid car, a more accurate LCA, a “sustainable” supermarket do help, but are not the actual solution; indeed it seems that what is needed is having design as a prompter of creative behaviours at a private/personal scale so that “users” feel encouraged to change, to fit into the planetary limited conditions; design/diseño then can help awaking user’s “non-professional” creativity (their mañas), to solve on self-basis daily needs. And this, let’s face it, will not “extinct” designers, rather than that, it will open brand new possibilities.
Along the way I found designers feeling threatened because, “if we don’t give shape to a product or a service then: what are we called to do?!”. For many, design is call to develop eco-products, toolkits, guidelines… but fortunately those stances are changing. Nowadays it is acknowledgeable that designers could help users not just to consume “better” but, to consume less.

I hope that the CtC will not be a moment to blissful talk and easily agreement but that discussions and positive disagreements (between designers coming from all over the world and thus using all sorts of eñes”) take place, so that the resulting agenda (which undeniable addresses a political phenomena) help us to face the “mañana” (Spanish for tomorrow) with more…: maña.

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.

We can say that a social innovation is an implementation of new element arrangements. The combination modes of these constitutive elements can be varied.

They include diverse associative ways and diverse operative procedures of social interest technologies (either by making current use technologies available for new purposes, or by inventing new technologies). The distribution processes are not external elements that are simply aggregated, inasmuch as they can be compatible or incompatible with the base of values that underpin the social innovation as such.

The social innovation results concern their very own characteristic: the implementation (meaning reinforcement or restoration) of relational patterns. Social innovations are always situated in a given context and subject to a process of “charisma routinization”. They promote social change through the birth and death of institutional forms. Yesterday’s social innovation may be tomorrow’s institutional form.

The study and evaluation of social innovation processes demand the assessment and the analysis of the relational patterns’ characteristics. For this purpose, a multi-criteria matrix is necessary. Its components can be defined based on the attribute binary polarities of the relation modes, such as: dialogical/instrumental, direct/mediated, near/distant, accessible/restrict. To learn with the study of social innovations in the contemporary world means more than identifying typologies. It has also to do with facilitating the access to this specific kind of information and so contributing to interconnect several (worldwide) initiatives and practices.

I see the Conference Changing the Change as an opportunity to discuss far beyond the limits of social inclusion technologies.

I address the following questions to the Conference:

The first one is: “can conceiving relational patterns be considered a design problem?”

The National Academy of Engineering in the United States of America recognizes that engineering is, since its origins, a profoundly creative process, and says: “a most elegant description is that engineering is about design under constraint” (The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century, Washington: National Academy Press, 2004, pp. 7 – 25, pdf available at http://www.nap.edu).

My second question is: “what are the specific constraints of designers’ activities? How different are they from the constraints of engineers’?”

Angelus Silesius’ verses (“Aus dem cherubinischen Wandersmann”) say that the soul has two eyes: one gazes time, and the other gazes far away towards eternity.

My third question is: “does the designers’ aesthetic commitment represent the possibility of perfectioning the gaze that perceives eternity?”