Changing the change

Many years ago, I studied anthropology with John Collier, Jr. John spent much of his life in two ethnic communities. He grew up with his family in the American Indian communities of New Mexico and Arizona. Later, he worked as an anthropologist in the fishing communities of Nova Scotia, where he helped to develop the research method of visual anthropology. John’s work was oriented toward creating positive change. He used to say that the problem of social change involves a simple paradox. We can’t change one aspect of an organization or society until we change everything, and we can never change everything — we’ve got to start with one thing.

This is true, yet it is not beyond solution. We can and must start somewhere by finding appropriate points for vital intervention. We create consensus through action, and we do so in part by making theory action.

Theory has at least two meanings for design research. One is a scientific theory of what things are and how things work. The other is an ethical or philosophical theory of desired states: a design outcome. A design research agenda for sustainability requires both.

I agree with Victor Margolin that the word innovation has lost its power and its purpose. Innovation has become the latest buzz word and hype and has become increasingly meaningless and empty. It is not innovation in itself, but what we innovate, how we innovate and who innovates that is the issue, after all Hitler innovated! When, however, social is used in connection with innovation then, as Ezio comments, things change. I believe the amount to which things change depends on how narrowly or broadly we define the concept. A strict definition of social innovation refers to new ideas (products, services, models) developed to fulfil unmet social needs. But then in this changing world what is a social need? Is a better relationship between what is produced and what is consumed a social need? Is more community a social need? Is a richer relationship with the biosphere a social need? Like innovation, sustainability has lost much of its more transformative potential given that it is also a buzzed and hyped word. Also, as we know, it is too often commonly understood in its more limited definition of the environment.

But let’s forget semantics for a moment and actually look at what needs doing. Most of us would agree that society needs to re-address and re-invent much of its industrial legacy, including new patterns of production and consumption, new social ‘industries’ such as health, care, education, new individual and collective lifestyles, new relationships with nature and new organizational and cultural models. Furthermore it needs to do this through a greater individual and collective empowerment and responsibility. Is this about social innovation, is it about sustainability, does it matter?

Rather what is important is not what separates or distinguishes them (always inherent in labels and definitions) but what unites them, and what they have in common. I believe that what unites all three concepts is firstly the vision and purpose to improve the quality of life and to be ‘accountable for positive social results’ (Victor Margolin). In this purpose they also share the same territory, namely the need to re-address and re-invent much of our industrial legacy and to shift the emphasis from the economic and the market to the social and people, which leads me to the subject of social design. In all honesty, I did not know, until reading Victor’s pieces, the accepted definition of social design, related to a more social work and social workers reference. Rather for me design was suffering from the same fate as innovation and that just as innovation has lost meaning so has design.

Yet what to use? Design on its own is too broad and can be too easily co-opted to the old, and Industrial Design reflects the past not the future. By putting social before design things change, things open up. Social Design offers vistas of social change and transformation and emphasizes its relevancy and meaningfulness for the 21st century. Put simply a broader meaning to social innovation/sustainability equals and is complimented by the broader meaning of social design. A design for the next era.

I believe that the theme of the conference Round Table on Design, Social Innovation and Sustainability is increasingly associated in the collective imaginary with a more structural and systemic change and transformation. To limit them or to spend too much time on semantics and definitions will only play to the old game and will reduce their transformative qualities. At a time when everything is negotiable and everything can be changed I believe it is counter productive to narrow down definitions too precisely. I am looking forward to understand the synergies, where and how they fit together and most importantly the role of design and the implications for design in terms of design research, new design competencies and capabilites and new design frontiers.

A long time ago someone has said “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”. It is a challenging principle in a time where happiness often is achieved by ignoring your neighbor rights and needs. However, searching for sustainable ways of living requires from us the adoption of a principle far more challenging: “you shall love people of future generations that you don´t even know that will exist and that are not even necessarily related to you”. If the previous principle has already proved to be difficult to implement, if not impossible in many regions of the globe, what could be said about this late enlarged principle?

Hence, I understand that the most fundamental (radical) improvement that could lead the all society towards sustainability lies on the human spirit. Using the words of our colleague Geetha Narayanan (Newsletter 07): that is what makes each of us humans, that which endures beyond matter.

Yes, induction of market forces can drive sustainability forward faster. Yes, speeding up changes in consumption patterns can be achieved through education. And, yes, we should work to include sustainability on the main agenda of every world leader. However, it is the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated are determinants on the future we are shaping today and that is beyond conventional design.

Some people could say that improvements on the human spirit are outside of the scope of design. Contrary to this opinion I believe that Design as well as any other profession can make a direct contribution to changes or improvements in the society values and aspirations and that does not mean transforming design into a religion. Improving the transparency on the ethics of production of a given product or implementing processes that enable consumer´s co-responsibility for a product life cycle are examples of how designers can operate as channels for positive change.

In South America design clearly is far from delivering the changes that it potentially could provide or induce. The good news is that emergent changes on the direction of sustainability are expanding in numbers, involving since large corporations until self-employed workers operating in their own home.
On many of these cases the change is so positive that theme for design could be more “supporting-the-change” or “disseminating-the-change” than actually change the change. At the same time, the continent currently presents large economical and social changes that in many instances replicate environmental or social mistakes that have already being made by developed nations in the past. Here is an opportunity to change the change.

Até a Conferência!

The industrial age is over, really is over, it once made sense, but it doesn’t make sense now. We just have to look around us. Many of the positive creations of the industrial era are now less and less relevant and no longer fit for purpose: our schools and education system, our hospitals and health system, our production and consumption system and our very lifestyles. Where does this leave Design? Is Design, also primarily an industrial construct, less and less fit for purpose?

There is a risk that in the industrial sunset design becomes a parody of itself or becomes increasingly commoditized, as it is taken ever more for granted by its industrial masters. (Roberto Verganti, Newsletter 07). There are risks, but if the industrial era is over, there are also great opportunities. This is a time when we have to re-invent just about everything and such times urgently need the specific thinking, skills and capabilities of design. But society needs a different design, not industrial but social, a design that is part of the solution and not part of the problem. If this is so, then it interesting to ask the questions: what is holding us back and what is pushing us forwards?

So what holds us back? In part the impression that the 21st century still feels very much like the 20th. We still live by an economic ideology that believes growth is based on ever more productivity and consumption and so we still buy lots and we still consume lots. At the same time we are all children of the 20th century. We have 20th century mindsets and 20th century training and perhaps this is why, even if the industrial age has had its day, we keep on looking backwards and all too often doing what we have always done? And anyway real change isn’t easy. There is no rule book, no instructions of use for the next age. What is easier is to pull the future back to the past. This means that instead of systemic structural change, change that facilitates the new socio-techno-economic conditions to flourish and take us to a new era of prosperity and wellbeing, we co-opt the future back to the past. We colonize the future driven by habit, interests and fear.

So what pushes us forward? In short, the desire to grow, to explore, to create and need. In a change of age we face many social challenges whereby society, both in the developed and developing world, needs to invent or re-invent just about everything for an ecological age, including health, education, mobility, etc. Such a re-invention and re-design of systems, however, is about social innovation rather than market innovation. It places the emphasis away from the consumer and his/her needs towards the society and its needs. It gives attention less to the individual and more to the collective, less to a need and more to the activity and the context, , less to the product and more to an ecosystem of information, service and experience. If this is what society needs and where society is going then companies will surely follow, as the big industrial corporations also have to re-invent themselves. And this is the necessity and an opportunity for Design to free itself from becoming a commodity to becoming a strategic differentiator. Who better to help design new social systems than Design? If Design does this, and as the social industries supersede the industrial industries, then Design could certainly be to the 21st century what Marketing was to the 20th.
What does this mean for Design? A large part of the answer must lie in the increasingly strategic role of Design Research. Design research is the instrument at the service of Design, exploring and building Design’s role and contribution in the field of social innovation and re-design of critical social areas. Addressing social innovation as a set of design challenges is the means. What are the challenges? What new competencies must we grow in social research, social design, systems design, context design, and service design? Which approaches, methods and tools do we need to develop? How do we facilitate the participatory networks and co-creative practices? How do we imagine new value for a new age?

Such questions and such research are deeply meaningful in relation to the concept of Changing the Change. Ezio Manzini in the first newsletter emphasized that Changing the Change wants to be a research conference with a strong and ambitious political focus on the design research potentialities in the transition towards a sustainable knowledge society. Design on its own cannot change the change but, as I am sure the Change the Change event will show us, it is beginning to gain more self awareness, to challenge its past and to ask different questions about its discipline and its purpose. For as we journey from one way of being and doing to another we have to ask ourselves individually and collectively why we do things, what we do, how we do them and who does them.

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?

The Zebra Question is a poem by Shel Silverstein in which he poses the conundrum of order and causality embedded in our contemporary view or perspective of life. Is a zebra black with white stripes he asks or is it white with black stripes? and so on!

Perhaps we might ask, in a similar vein, if it is design and design thinking that will allow us to build a sustainable and fair world beyond 2020, or will it be that dominant visions of the world of 2020 will determine the scope, nature and field of what design is today in the year 2008?

Or perhaps we need to move beyond such simplistic and reductionist conundrums to some essential and core realizations that must underpin substantive dialogue on change.

A beginning might be to realize and accept, as David Orr and others put it, that all education, including design education must pivot around the human condition, the human prospect and the human spirit.

An addition to this would be the realization that the human condition, prospect and spirit is linked closely to our home –our mother ship, our Gaia, our earth. The earth defines the material, the matter that forms the fundamental core of our existence. It plays a big role in defining both the human condition and the human prospect.

A third realization could be centered around the understanding that contemporary discourses on matter such as the ones on sustainability, slowness or on change omit a vital part of what makes each of us human- our spirit-that which endures beyond matter and is what defines each of us as living beings on this planet- described by Carl Sagan as “the pale blue dot”

All of us, who are engaged in being critical about our societies and our futures, must learn to pose serious and challenging conundrums around these and other similar critical realizations. Using the power of the conundrum to generate genuine, equitable and critical dialogues, ones that do not focus on the generation of a series of reassuring lies but which deals with “impossible things” and ‘inconvenient truths” would result in powerful conversations on change. It will play a vital and informative role, at conferences such as Changing the Change in generating both the skeptical and the critical view of design enabled futures.

The Changing the Change conference offers an opportunity to question dominant paradigms in design, including contemporary paradigms such as sustainability thinking and green design. There is a real need today for designers, educators and thinkers to question the idea of development, not in isolation but together with notions of equity, of social and environmental justice and in doing this consider carefully the needs of both the people and the planet.

To me that would imply Changing the Change!

This article was co-written by Ezio Manzini and Claudio Germak.

The issues Changing the Change deals with, regard several aspects of peoples’ lives: from food, to health, from residence to mobility, from work to tourism. General visions (the way these activities could be rearranged in terms of sustainability) and specific solutions (the way specific problems could be solved) will be presented for each of them.

This core of visions and proposals provides the material for discussing the meaning of design research. But not only this. It gives an immediate and constructive contribution to the way to sustainability and to what can be done to direct accelerate it. This is the main aim of the Conference, not just thought for the researchers’ community that is currently working on these topics, but also for enterprises and social actors who promote, or should do so, this transition.

In facts, nowadays everybody is discussing about the great and fast changes of our time. Many (at last!) talk about the need to move towards sustainable lifestyles and manufacture processes. But few elaborates visions and proposals about possible practices, starting from today. This is the concrete and constructive stage where design research can provide and effective contribution, by developing a sharable, increasing design knowledge which is focused on possible solutions. A kind of knowledge which can support specific design activities involving many different actors, as it should be every sustainable solution.

Unfortunately, not everybody agrees with the last statement. As it has been said before, enterprises, associations and public bodies are starting to realise that the transition to sustainability concerns the future, but it must be based on effective current actions as well. On the other hand, it is not yet so clear for them what design research could offer in this field. We think we shall raise this issue and focus many actors’ attention on it. And this is what Changing the Change is meant to do.

This article was co-written by Ezio Manzini and Jorge Frascara.

The Changing the Change Conference’s main aim is to present and discuss the design research contribution to the transition towards a sustainable knowledge society. That is, its capability to generate visions, proposals and tools to re-orient the emerging knowledge society towards more socially and environmentally sustainable directions.

This aim is based on some concepts that have to be clarified and discussed.

Knowledge society: it is the result of a large transformation that is taking place at a global scale. Its meaning overlaps the ones of service, information and network society: concepts that represent different expressions of the same on-going complex phenomenon.
In the Changing the Change conference we assume that the evolution towards the knowledge society, even if presents some positive characters, as it appears today, is not bringing us to a sustainable direction. It has to be well understood, but, at the same time it has to be re-orientated. In other words, the transition towards a knowledge society is the “big on-going change” that has to be changed.

Sustainability: in recent time the use of words “sustainability” (as a noun) and “sustainable” (as an adjective) has become quite common. This popularity can be seen as the positive expression of a growing concern for the environment. But, at the same time, it presents the risk of being mis-used. That is, used in superficial ways (little environmental improvements proposed as steps to sustainability) or even as “green washing” strategies (presenting some green initiatives to cover deeply un-sustainable ways of doing).
In the Changing the Change conference we use the term “sustainability” only in relation to deep and systemic changes in the ways of thinking, living and producing. In other words, systemic changes, in our view, are the pre-condition to generate visions or proposals that can be presented as “sustainable”.

Visions, proposals, tools: they summarise design’s main results. Visions are images of how a whole context could be like if new conditions where given (what if a new idea of wellbeing, of development, of production, of eating were disseminated?). Proposals are original combinations of products, services and communications capable to face specific issues (such as housing, mobility, health, food,…) in an original way. Tools are conceptual and practical instruments that permit the enhancing of these visions and proposals.
In the Changing the Change conference we assume that the social learning process that should bring us towards a sustainable society has to be fed by these visions and proposals. And supported by these design tools.

Design research: it is a research activity developed with design tools, skills and sensitivity; where “research” stands for the production of knowledge that can be shared and accumulated to become the starting point for new researches and specific projects; and where the expression “developed with design tools, skills and sensitivity“ stands for a research activity developed by designers who explore complex design issues and generate visions and solutions.
In the Changing the Change conference we assume that the transition towards a sustainable knowledge society is such a large and new challenge that individual design activities are only a good first step, but cannot be enough. They are a good first step because individuals can move with agility, explore possibilities and develop models, but design for sustainability calls for a community of designers working and debating with other actors to build a new design knowledge and a new set of visions and proposals.

If you are a designer and have done work in this direction, Changing the Change is the opportunity for you to share your experience and work toward the creation of the much needed change toward a sustainable society.

As Saki Mafundikwa aptly stated, “Africa is not poor, it just doesn’t have a lot of money!” The principal question that perspectives from the continent at the Change the Change conference need to address is: “If Africa does not have a lot of money, what then does it have?” Additionally, and more specifically, “How can design help accelerate and perpetuate enabling conditions that will help secure a truly sustainable future for all its denizens?”…

Africa has a predominantly youthful demographic with a population that is expected to rise to a billion within the next eight years. Failing infrastructure, material deprivation, epidemics, civil war, and pervasive political dysfunctionalism have failed to dampen the continent’s sense of optimism. This historic and diverse continent is incredibly wealthy in natural resources, and richer still in human capital- if one looks beyond popular projections coloured by cynicism and skepticism, a picture begins to emerge- one of a vibrant, engaging and resilient people making the most of their common lot. The robust anthropocentric philosophy of ubuntu (whereby an individual’s humanity is reaffirmed by their community) is increasingly being invoked. Ubuntu finds practical expression in the continental zeitgeist of the African Renaissance to rally the people of Africa in proactive response to the challenges facing the continent, as well as through the agency of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Across the continent, examplars of home-grown/grassroots sustainability are emerging. In eastern Africa, for example, the Jua Kali informal manufacturing sector offers gainful employment opportunities that far supersede those of the formal economic sector. Indeed this phenomenon is integral in Kenya’s vision of becoming an industrialized country by the year 2020! Entrepreneurship via small and micro-enterprises is constantly growing covering a vast number of business sectors with promising potential role for self-sustaining distributed economies. Similarly, a highly empowering sustainable rural transportation project was facilitated by the SABS Design Institute in South Africa. Other initiatives include an eco-village project by the Sustainability Institute in South Africa. Proactive engagement with international partners has created practical models for local designers to emulate. These include the innovative communication design project in Uganda by Designers Without Borders, as well as cost-effective eco-design projects in Kenya and Namibia by the Design for Development Society.

Africa needs to tell the rest of the world its own success stories- and this forum could well be the catalyst for Africa to respond to Ezio Manzini’s challenge to ‘leap-frog’ into an advanced multi-local society wherein the continent’s spirit of resilience informs humanity’s collective vision of sustainability…

Changing the Change is a working conference. It has a clear aim: to discuss the role of design in moving society toward making human life sustainable. We, however, do not know how to reach that aim. Finding ways to meet this goal is actually the purpose of the conference.

The organizers have resisted the notion of breaking interpreting the scope of the meeting beyond its heading. The conference itself will hopefully do that; the participants’ proposals and experience, their ideas and visions, will flesh out the territory of possibilities of responses to the challenges we face.

The conference is organized by designers and directed at designers. We believe that designers could play a role in changing the change, in re-directing the development of our world. Is it on the basis of our capacity to work systematically toward imagining and designing futures, our capacity to turn our ideas into images and then make them take form in the real world? Weren’t Jules Verne as an author and Flash Gordon as a character highly instrumental in shaping the future, just because they made it visible, and therefore desirable? How can sustainability become desirable? How can it enter the equation of quality, of what designers and clients place at the top of their lists?

Some initiatives are promising: some international corporations are looking at zero waste, while others have increased their allocation to research on alternative sources of energy, and on more efficient ways of generating energy. The City of New York is looking at turning all its taxicabs into hybrid cars. Too little too late? Not at all. Fifty years ago environmental conservation was totally absent from the big corporations’ agendas. Maybe these are the first steps toward sustainability. Including the notion in the agenda is useful, more than useful: important.

Other interesting things that involve more paradigmatic shifts are happening at the other end of the spectrum, like in the interior of Argentina, where I was last May. Cooperatives are developing interesting production and distribution systems, helping the locals, recovering cultural history, and using zero environmental impact technologies. All materials used are natural, renewable, and indigenous to the region.

Insights discover interstices that allow action in the most unimaginable places. We are looking for testimonies to this, we are looking for actual, factual experiences of implementing novel design approaches that find opportunities where everybody sees only challenges, and spaces, however narrow, that permit innovative action. The conference is looking for ideas to share. The scale is irrelevant. Large or small. The changes proposed could be paradigmatic or gradual. We need to explore and discuss models of intervention.

To sum up:

• How can a new direction be applied to the way things are, and change our culture into a sustainable one?
• How could design research contribute to this change?
• How could designers add the notion of sustainability to their list, affecting the way in which products, systems, and communications are designed?
• How could we put together a critical mass of successful case histories, that could serve as models to be adapted and followed?
• What other strategies could be useful to this end?
• What are the strategies that have been successfully implemented in different contexts to make products, systems, and services, more compatible with the idea of sustainability?
• What could be the role of communication design in this process?

We open this newsletter for contributions that could initiate the exploration of possibilities, and meet the challenge proposed by Changing the Change.