Changing the change

Design research is an activity that aims to produce knowledge useful to those who design: design knowledge that designer and non-designer (individuals, communities, institutions, companies) can use in their processes of designing and co-designing.

Design knowledge is a collection of different cognitive artifacts with different purposes: visions to stimulate and steer strategic discussion; proposals to integrate into the development of numerous specific projects; tools to help understand the state of things and implement design ideas; reflections on the sense of what we are doing or could do. Moving form contents to form, the design knowledge we are talking about must be explicit, discussable, transferrable and accumulable: knowledge that can be clearly expressed (by whoever produces it), discussed (by many interested interlocutors), applied (by other designers) and become the starting point for producing further knowledge (by other researchers).

Research that produces conceptual and operational tools for designing and/or to help understand the nature of what we are designing (research for and on design) is usually carried out adopting methodologies, and adapting them to specific requirements, proper to disciplines endowed with a consolidated research tradition. Vice versa, research that produces visions and proposals usually adopts original methodologies, using tools and skills proper to designer culture and practice (research through design). In this case, clearly the research modes are, and must be, very different from those of traditional scientific research: research through design necessarily brings into play a level of subjectivity that would be inadmissible in scientific tradition. At the same time, this is not typical “artistic research”, totally guided by the subjective dimension. Design is a discipline that combines creativity and subjectivity with a dose of reflection and arguments on its own choices. The same is obviously true for research through design, with the added factor in this case that the knowledge produced cannot be implicit and integrated in the design but, as we said, it must be explicit, discussable, transferable and accumulable.
Exactly what the acceptable level of subjectivity is in design through research is an open question. We have discussed this and we can continue to do so, but I do not believe that a precise definition of this limit is of such great interest. I believe that what is really important is to discuss the results we have achieved case by case and the contribution they can bring to solving the problems we have to face.

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.

Well known for their iconoclastic power, they were recognized as major driver of linguistic change in the arts and in architecture.
They also had the stronger, although less direct, role of anticipating and catalyzing major socio-cultural and political change.
In design and architecture, it was their ability to “give shape” to change that allowed them to have a revolutionary role comparable, if not larger, to the one of “true” politicians.

At the end of the last century, the independent exploration of designers grew inside large companies, and took a different format, combining the scenarios of a future life with a potential vision for the whole company and its strategy. In this case, the culture that designers try to change is both the external one, the user culture, and the internal one, the one of the company.

Today, the role of Design Research, or Strategic Design, is giving to designers in a company the responsibility to represent the transformation of the world “Out There” and bringing it inside the company. Among the many ‘sensors’ that a company tries to develop to get in touch with its users, Strategic Design is the one that has the most visionary role: rather than asking users what they may like in the future, Strategic Design needs to imagine the future before taking it in front of users. Designers in this case need to be involved in a sort of mutual ‘seduction’ with their audience: designers need to be ‘seduced’ by the desire for change that people is about to express, but they also need at the same time to create visions that are so exciting, tangible and plausible that can catalyze this desire for change and spin it into demand for new products and services.
To be so concrete and credible, designers cannot just rely on ideas or concepts. They need to develop a new aesthetic, an innovative language that can at a time render anything past obsolete and uninteresting, and open new iconic references for the future.
In this sense, visionary designers today wouldn’t be much different from the ‘constructive iconoclasts’ of the original avant-gardes. They just work in an environment much more integrated in their company.
But there is another dimension that makes this job today way more complex that in the past: the eco-system dimension. Eco-systematic approaches are not only limited to environmental eco-systems: it seems that any major innovation today needs to face the complexity of large systems that no designer, or even no single company, can control. Any innovation in digital communication, for example, such as social networking or mobile communication, touches multiple points of contact with the user and multiple networked systems that support them. In the same way, an innovation in manufacturing, like a new material or manufacturing cycle, touches many globally sparse components and suppliers.
Under these circumstances, any design vision needs to be supported by a certain degree of feasibility that spans across the whole ecosystem, which translates in the opportunity to steer the whole ecosystem toward a better balance.
And this is what makes visionary design today so exciting and important: never before the culture of design has been so strategically necessary (for companies), so socially relevant (for the users), so impactful (for entire ecosystems) and so communicative (of new aesthetics).
It has also probably never been as difficult before, but this challenge is what makes it even more interesting.

Cumulus, the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media representing 124 first class institutions from all continents, is making a commitment to building sustainable, human centered, creative societies. The Design Declaration will be signed on March 28th in the same venue where the Kyoto Treaty was signed. This event, we hope, will be an important step towards a new role of design in the transition towards a sustainable society. The Changing the Change design research conference, in July, in Torino, will be a second one. Here below, the declaration that will be singed in Kyoto is reported.

PROPOSING NEW VALUES AND NEW WAYS OF THINKING

All the people of the world now live in global and interdependent systems for living. We continue to enhance the quality of our lives by creating environments, products and services utilizing design. Design is a means of creating social, cultural, industrial and economic values by merging humanities, science, technology and the arts. It is a human-centered process of innovation that contributes to our development by proposing new values, new ways of thinking, of living, and adapting to change.

AN ERA OF HUMAN CENTERED DEVELOPMENT

A paradigm shift from technology driven development to human centered development is under way. The focus is shifting from materialistic and visible values to those, which are mental, intellectual and, possibly, less material. An era of “cultural productivity” has commenced, where the importance attributed to modes of life, values and symbols may be greater than that attributed to physical products. Design thinking stands steadfastly at the centre of this continuum. Simultaneously, this development highlights the importance of cultural traditions and the need to extend and revitalize them.

THE IMPERATIVE FOR DESIGNERS TO ASSUME NEW ROLES

Global development, and an awareness of the growth of related ecological and social problems are posing new demands and offering new opportunities for design, design education and design research. Design is challenged to redefine itself and designers must assume new roles and commit themselves to developing solutions leading to a sustainable future.

SEEKING COLLABORATION IN FORWARDING THE IDEALS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The members of Cumulus, representing a global community of design educators and researchers, undertake the initiative, outlined in “THE KYOTO DESIGN DECLARATION”, to commit themselves to the ideals of sustainable development. Furthermore, the members of Cumulus, have agreed to seek collaboration with educational and cultural institutions, companies, governments and government agencies, design and other professional associations and NGOs to promote the ideals of, and share their knowledge about, sustainable development.

THE POWER TO MAKE FUNDAMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS TO OUR WORLD

Human-centered design thinking, when rooted in universal and sustainable principles, has the power to fundamentally improve our world. It can deliver economic, ecological, social and cultural benefits to all people, improve our quality of life, and create optimism about the future and individual and shared happiness.

Changing the Change is an opportunity to visualize the opportunities and responsibilities of a better world. This is not the world of the past, a world to which we cannot return. That world was never perfect, and we cannot be what we once were. Neither is it an impossible future of utopian central planning. That future is also behind us.

Changing the Change is a chance to think our way through the different futures we can hope to inhabit, examining these futures designers.

Every human institution is embedded in an historically contingent ecology of societies and cultures. These influence every human institution, artifact, and agency.

“It’s impossible to change one thing,” John Collier once said, “without changing everything. But you can’t change everything all at once. You’ve got to start somewhere.”

Nevertheless, John didn’t believe that change is hopeless or impossible. He believed that we must learn more and do better, working with resolve and commitment to create the world we want to live in.

Genuine change involves each of us. Changing the Change is an opportunity to see how we can change ourselves to change the societies and cultures in which we live.

A remarkable work of art on the theme of change has been circulating around the world. It is drawn from the words of a political candidate, but it is not part of a political campaign. It is an unofficial campaign ad for hope, inviting citizens to be a voice and cast a vote. You can see the work for yourself at:

http://www.dipdive.com/

This could be the campaign ad for Changing the Change. It calls neither for utopia nor for business as usual.

Changing the Change is an opportunity to use design tools and design thinking to envision and shape a common future.

What I find so inspiring and realistic about Changing the Change is the understanding that we must reshape our cultures and ourselves to reshape our future. To bring change about, we must change the way we change.

Gandhi said, “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world … as in being able to remake ourselves.”

See you in Torino!

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.

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.