Changing the change

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.

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.

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.

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.

This article was co-written by Carla Cipolla and Ezio Manzini.

The first main step in the Changing the Change process is (successfully) over: the 18th of February was the deadline for submitting abstracts. We have received more than 300 of them. It seems to us a good result. Of course, the quality of the presented abstracts will be evaluated one by one by the International Review Committee. But something can be said just now: a new design research community is starting to exist around the topics of design research and of its possible contribution to the transition towards a sustainable knowledge society.

In fact, even considering that some of the presented abstracts where clearly outside the Changing the Change spirit or simply un-acceptable for technical reasons, profile is emerging of a wide group of design researchers who show a concrete interest (and often solid research activities) in the proposed direction. And this, as we said, is a first good results that in the next weeks will be better evaluated.

In these days the review process has been started, preparing the abstracts for the blind review process. The abstracts to be selected are expected to present design research results, clearly referring the on-going double transition towards a sustainable knowledge society.

What we can add here is that we know very well that both the terms “sustainable knowledge society” and “design research” can be interpreted, and are interpreted, in different ways. For this reason, we think that we have to be very open in the way we interpret them. In particular, for what regards the transition towards a sustainable knowledge society, we think that the papers can obviously refer to its environmental dimension but also to its social one. The important point for us is that they have to present real changes in the ways of thinking, being and doing. For what regards the kind of research where the presented results come from, we think that papers should be based on both formal and informal research activities (i.e. activities that can be carried out by individuals and groups for their personal interest, ouside the formal research structures). What for us is relevant here are the results: they have to be activities that really present an original, interesting and communicable improvement in design knowledge.

Finally, we think that the Changing the Change preparation process, as a whole, i.e. included the peer review evaluations and suggestions, should become an opportunity of discussion between peers and an improvement of the overall design research community activities in this field.

This newsletter intends to facilitate the Changing the Change conference preparation. It will anticipate programmes, abstracts and speakers profiles. And it will give information on different kinds of Conference-related news. But not only. It also intends to be the platform for a discussion that will start with short interventions of different authors and will continue on the newsletter-related blog (the CtC Blog). This discussion will , I hope, continue beyond the conference itself.

In particular, in the next months, from now to January 2008, the newsletter main goal is to trigger design researchers to submit paper proposals coherent with the conference aims. This is not an easy task: Changing the Change wants to be a research conference with a strong and ambitious political goal: to focus on the design research potentialities in the transition towards a sustainable knowledge society. And to present them to the same design community (to make it more confident in its possibilities) and to other social actors (to contribute to the social conversations on the future and/or to solve some specific problems).

This conference, in the organisers’ intentions, should show that these design research potentialities exist. That they can be found in all the design application fields (form products to communication, from interiors to services, from ITC to crafts, from medical devices to fashion) and in all the regions of the world (from the most mature industrial societies to the emerging ones). Finally, it wants to state that the possibility to play a positive role in the transition towards sustainability is not only an issue for those designers who, in the past years, have taken the first steps in this direction, but it is a challenge for every designer and every design researcher.

To do all that, Changing the Change has to receive papers presenting and discussing stimulating design research results: visions, proposals and tools developed by design researchers (or better: by interdisciplinary teams where designers played an important role), using specific design skills and presented in an highly communicative way (i.e. with good visualization materials in order to create a parallel exhibition: visions and proposals from design research world wide).