#transformation design

[cromahi]

OC believix sketch design

Wednesday - fairy of fog

[cleekleequlee]

Am I doing political ecology all along?

Political ecology "in the broadest sense... deals with intersections of power, politics, and conflict regarding nature-society interaction" (Harris, 2021, p.332). "The task that the nascent field set was nothing short of unveiling the political and economic causes of environmental change and mapping their uneven effects." (Braun, 2015, p. 102)

Interest in nature, then urban nature, then body-in-space lead me to the multiple reading of materiality in space, including its historical aspect (of different temporalities). Professor Matthew Gandy's work helped me pin down to the field of urban political ecology and broadly political ecology. It seems a perfect field where my ambition of pulling together the experienced nature/environment and the "grand forces" of colonialism, modernization, marketization, etc.

Professor Gandy's interest in embodiment on one hand is tied to his long-time interest in art (and film in particular), but is also a manifestation of emerging trends/tensions of the Marxism loaded political ecology. With some quick readings in the field, I will discuss three of them here.

The first tension is between historical materialism (both as method of historical analysis and as theoretical foundation of Marxism historical materialism) and new/neomaterialism. Traditionally, political ecology adopts mainly historical evidence to connect experienced environmental change with grand historical forces. However recent scholarship move toward the micro-level, practice and embodiment. Examples includes interest in the tension between structure (entity) and practice (immanence) (Robbins, 2012, p. 75), embodied urban political ecology with particular interest in affect, emotion, relationality and body (Doshi, 2016).

The second tension expresses the insufficiency of doing purely critique and pursues an "experimental turn" of political ecology (Braun, 2015). Similar to the self-critique of anthropology, political ecology is no longer satisfied with its positionality of being distant from the issue at hand and providing a judgemental, mostly negative evaluation of reality. Some even hold the opinion that critique itself is not only impotent in addressing the issue, rather paradoxically strengthens the problematics (e.g., Latour (1991)'s analysis of Hagel's negation as pulling Nature and Society even more apart; Braun (2015) also quotes Deleuze to question the effectiveness of critique in mobilize change:

"Critique has everything – a tribunal of the peace, a registration room, a register – except the power of a new politics which would overturn the image of thought." (Deleuze, 1994, p. 137)

Part of the reason why political ecology is particularly interested in experimental or inventive mode of research lies in its particular interest in Anthropocene, which leads to the third tension in the fundamental ontology. Braun (2015) conducted a brilliant analysis of how Anthropocene challenged both our (human/researcher)'s role in interfering reality and the romantic view of returning to a prestine past. This is particularly problematic for conservation practices that aims at recovery of a certain "baseline".

I have briefly discussed the emerging tensions of political ecology, namely, 1) its theory of change shifting from historical and macro to the micro and the embodied and affective, 2) its positionality shifting from distant critique to in(ter)ventive experiments, and 3) its ontology shifting from fixed reality to participatory and processual. These tensions/emergences make the transdisciplinary field (mainly with geography, anthropology, environmental studies and developmental studies) on a converging trajectory with the very remote field of design, in particular social (transformation) design. There is a beautiful dance, or oscilation between the stablized structure and history, and the immanence at practice level. If we don't put the question of "how this is design" first, rather ask "how can we maek change", then the line between these two disciplines - between political ecology and design - can be very blur.

[design-xinyi]

CRAFTING UNCERTAINTY · slowLab in dialogue with Judith Wehmeyer van den Boom

[vizuarna]

Is design political? There has been a shift in conventional politics; a realization that top-down politics no longer work and that public services in particular must be redesigned around the user. Conventional policy makers are not readily equipped to do this. Designers are —Jennie Winhall, Senior Design Strategist

http://www.core77.com/reactor/03.06_winhall.asp

[rjnsklwrites]

One of the Culprits Behind PRISM? Design Thinking (Really) — Sam Jacob (Wired)

"Perhaps because of the converging digital tools we use across disciplinary boundaries, design thinking is a product of the fact that the digital is both where we design and what we design. 

It’s also a product of how digital culture shows us the world: of networks and accumulations of big data. Design thinking is marked by the scale and scope of its operations. Rather than isolating particular problems, it attempts to survey the whole scenario.

Design thinking conceives the field of operation as the system rather than the object. In doing so, it transforms the designed world into an ecosystem. Design thinking treats this synthetic ecosystem as its project, attempting to redesign it according to particular goals, to achieve its desired outcomes.

By seeing the world through the lens of this conceptual design ecosystem, design thinking abstracts the world into a series of interactions with outputs and it remains poised to provide a solution for anything. (Never mind the fact that there are many who would argue with the idea of design as a solution-focused activity, that this conception of design is pure ideological can’t.)

A problem-solving methodology born out of art school creativity hijacked by management theory, design thinking suggests the synthetic way in which designers are (supposed to be) thinking can be applied to almost any subject. Its power is its ability to transform anything into a design problem: the way organizations work, profitability, market share, information, the gathering and processing of intelligence … and, it seems, national security."

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/06/the-real-culprit-behind-prism-design-thinking-yes/

[damace]

Checkdisout #7: Transformation Design Update vom 07.02.2013 (by Matthias Weber)

*** ZUR FUNDING KAMPAGNE indiegogo.com/checkdisout ****

[njalwal]

Design as it never was..

If there are no boundaries to problems then how can we encapsulate Design in a defining boundary? We have begun to zoom out and see our traditionally complicated problems as more of complex and ambiguous situations. Not being able to adapt to this change of complication into complexity has been a major reason of failure for a lot of modern organizations in both public and private sector.

Traditional market research fails to articulate the rarely evident needs of the end user, a complex individual. Facts, figures, charts and study maps are continuously changing and there is a need to associate them with real people through participatory design and user research scenarios. Design is such a humanitarian act that each of us has an instinct for problem solving. There is this need to access the ample amounts of knowledge and creativity that resides with those users. It is about giving users the power to embrace that knowledge and voice their opinion for a better.

The ‘user-centered’ model of Transformation design started forming shape in the 1990’s and 2000’s was marked by the realization that every process that constitutes the final outcome involves/affects a human being in one way or another. And it is really about a holistic approach to systems thinking. Emotional considerations have to be given equal weight as compared to the practical ones. No amount of education can bring the motivation to achieve practical and desirable solutions. To cultivate a new environment of innovation we have to leave behind the tools for people to capitalize on their own ideas, knowledge and expertise.

                    The first response to a design brief in this setting would be moving beyond it and understanding the larger picture by facilitating the clients to define the problem tactfully which would even complete the first step to problem solving. Designers are now enabling great change by guiding and supporting decision making through the jungles of vulnerability with a lot of uncertainty found in complex socio-economic problems. We must acknowledge the fact that ‘design is never done’ and thus the experience has to be made transparent and shared to be sustainable and iterative for the users, unlike the traditional dependency on a designer. The process also embarks a dangerous journey where one cannot be sure if it is safe to leave the participants with such powerful tools that could shape behavior – of people, systems and organizations.

Transformation Design could be called a new disciple of design as the processes and outcomes are very different from the traditional design disciplines. The designers are collaborators here who work across all the other backgrounds and areas of expertise. This new discipline also endangers the role of a designer in these scenarios which is a food for thought for all of us. As Kate Canales beautifully explains in the RED Paper 02,

‘One reason this is seen as threatening is because we are exposing the principles and skills of design for what they are: simple, empathic, teachable, and transferable. There is no rocket science involved, no secret formula. To some of us this is a thrill, to share this methodology with a world that needs it so. For others, it undermines the sanctity of Designer as Artist. It takes the romance out of it to think that anyone could think and act likes a designer... but we believe anyone can.’

Source: The RED Paper 02