Design for Living Complexities
work-in-progress. the thinking behind choices may not be clear (to me as well as to you). peter taylor
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Design is about intentionality in construction, which involves a range of materials, a sequence of steps, and principles that inform the choice of material and the steps. Design always involves putting people as well as materials into place, which may happen by working with the known properties of the people and materials, trying out new arrangements, or working around their constraints (at least temporarily). Critical thinking involves understanding ideas and practices better when we examine them in relation to alternatives. In a sense, critical thinking is in design from the start, because design cannot proceed without the idea that there are alternatives to the current way of doing things.
This course exposes and explores alternative designs through
history (showing that things have by no means always been the way they are now), "
archeology of the present" (shedding light on what we might have taken for granted or left as someone else's responsibility/specialty),
comparison (looking at the ways things are arranged in different organizations and cultures), and
ill-defined problems (in cases of real-world "living complexity" that invite a range of responses).
Each course session takes up an issue about design, introduced in a presentation (drawing on videos available online), followed by in-class work on a case related to that issue and, at the start of the next session, reports on students' design sketches to address the case. With each design sketch, students add to or revise a growing set of principles for critical thinking in design. The design sketches and principles will, with students' permission, be made accessible to a wider online audience and serve as part of an evolving online text for subsequent years.
Schedule of Sessions, with readings and cases
Reading before course starts: Scott Huler (2010),
On the Grid: A Plot of Land, An Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make Our World Work
(see also
http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/infrastructure)
1a: Ice-breaker
Ice-breaker:
Marshmallow challenge followed by discussion of the design principles involved.
1: Waste
Byproducts are products
Reading: Preventing Waste at the Source, By Norman Crampton
Presentation:
Four laws of ecology popularized by Barry Commoner recast as four design principles:
1) Everything is connected to everything else (
example).
2) Everything must go somewhere.
3) Nature knows best.
4) There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Principles 1 & 2 leading into Waste and byproducts are products, or the Engine and the atmosphere are part of the one system.
Including selections from
Case on the issue of Waste and byproducts are products
"How to respond to ways of subverting an ideal scheme of emissions tax and tariffs"
- Ideal scheme = http://wp.me/pPWGi-vR
- Subversion includes Counter-arguments, schemes based on different principles, ignoring it, adopting it in name but not spirit
- Response = that's what you have to design! (Remember, with each design sketch, you add to or revise a growing set of principles for critical thinking in design.)
2a: Reports (starting each session)
Initial design sketches from the case of the previous session [not repeated in the syllabus from here on]
2: Play
A yin and yang of design is intentional planning and play, to the extent that play involves ongoing experimenting and adjustment in putting people as well as materials into place.
Reading: V. Paley,
You can't say you can't play or
The girl with the brown crayon.
Presentation:
Case: On average, children play less outdoors even though streets are safer. Moreover, play declines during adolescence into adulthood -> Design a program to shift the norms, practices, misperceptions, environments etc. EITHER back towards more play outdoors or unsupervised or other alternatives OR to extend play to older ages OR both. (Bounce off models provided by 4H, Scouting, MADD, Little League sports, ...)
3: Gathering into community
Putting people into place—as designers, users, co-designer-user—may happen by working with what you know about people, facilitating new arrangements, or working around their constraints.
Reading: P. Fleischman,
Seedfolks,
Community computer clubs
Presentation:
From http://learn.media.mit.edu course:
Find out about and visit a creative learning space in your local area.
By "creative learning space," we're thinking of a place in which people are creating projects --and learning from each other as part of the process.
Here are some questions you may want to note when visiting. You could focus on one or two, and share back to the group. If you are already an active participant, share your experience.
Projects - What kinds of projects are people working on? How would you describe the range or diversity of projects?
Interests - Where do the ideas for the projects come from? Are the projects based on individual, group, or community interests?
Learning Community - Do people help each other learn? Are there mentors in the space? Is there a trajectory of participation from newcomer to leadership roles?
Values - How do people treat each other in the community? Are there community guidelines or values that are discussed or agreed upon?
Space - Which aspects of the physical space support the creative learning process? What materials are available?
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Case:
"Learning from experience in the past and elsewhere to prepare for extreme climatic events and epidemics"
- (adapted from here, Cuban civil defence, SARS epidemic
4: Enabling
All disabilities can be reframed as opportunities to a) enable others and b) learn from those who are differently abled
Reading: xx
Presentation:
Case:
"Communities enabling the elderly"
- Inspired by the model of Geel in Belgium where the mentally ill are integrated into families and community life and by ADA-mandated accommodations--enablements--for the disabled, what would it look like for a community to integrate the elderly into community life and enable their full participation? How would the transition to there from where we are now be organized?
5: Design thinking education
(making such thinking available to all)
Imagine that you don't say "it's not my problem" or "this seems too hard for me to solve," and imagine instead that, whatever your age or background, you can rise to the challenge and contribute, through a series of steps, to a prototype to be tested in the real world.
Reading: Computer Clubhouse (
http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/Clubhouse/clubhouse-origins.pdf)
Presentation:
Case:
Appropriate low-tech (building off M. Cooley & Lucas Aerospace Plan)
6: Craft, improvisation, innovation and uptake
(design thinking in professional and commercial practice)
Craft, innovation, improvisation and uptake are well-managed learning.
Reading: D. Pye, The Art and Aesthetics of Design; E. Ries, The Lean Startup,
Presentation:
http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/book/-/9781592535873,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/video/2013/mar/15/products-through-the-ages-slideshow
E. Ries, The Lean Startup
D. Pye, The Art and Aesthetics of Design
Diffusion of innovations (Hughes)
Crossing the chasm (Moore)
- The founder of the Stanford D.school talks about Design Thinking, CBS 60 Minutes video ("Global firm IDEO incorporates human behaviour into product design - an innovative approach being taught at Stanford. Charlie Rose profiles the company's founder, David Kelley"): http://goo.gl/z4Wi1
- IDEO web site: http://www.ideo.com/
http://artisansasylum.com/
Case:
"Modern apprenticeships, communities of practice, scaffolding"
7: Standards, Conventions, Modularity and Infrastructure
"All invention is borrowing" (D. Pye, furniture designer); infrastructure already in place, standards and modularity enable the designer to know the properties of borrowed materials and have some sense of the possibilities and limits of adaptation into new arrangements. Indeed, Pye's dictum reminds us to build on what is already in place, not assume that new is better.
Reading: xx
Presentation:
Hassan Fathy,
https://vimeo.com/15514401,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5_LPYFyaFE,
http://calearth.org/
Brad Bellows's Kuala Lumpur project,
Matt Frederick's book:
http://www.amazon.com/101-Things-Learned-Architecture-School/dp/0262062666/ref=rec_dp_0
material properties
view
http://bit.ly/18S9ftp
Case:
"Low energy, low maintenance, affordable, DIY housing"
8: Local particularity
"All design is local" (to paraphrase Tip O'Neill)—ultimately what is designed has to work for particular people using the materials that can be made available in their particular setting.
To that end, a) the knowledge of the people most affected by the given issue needs to be brought into play and b) participation needs to be facilitated in ways that ensure that the full range of participants are invested in collaborating to bring the resulting design to fruition [see Gathering into community)
A corollary is for designers not to rely on early adopters of innovations, but to pay attention to users who, while prepared to adopt innovations, need them to be integrated with their own practical day-to-day concerns and specific situations [see innovation and uptake].
Finally, a corollary of all that is to acknowledge local distinctiveness or vernacular is to demand that the new keeps places worked in, lived in, not standardized, maintains employment etc.
Reading: xx
Presentation:
foodsheds
Permaculture
Food Democracy Now
Slow foods
I. Illich
Transition towns
Common Ground (1993) on Local Distinctiveness
Cuban movie on post-oil adaptations
http://calculator.bioregional.com/
West of Eden
http://www.faculty.umb.edu/pjt/TakingYourselfSeriouslyParticipation.html
Personalized google maps (for local knowledge or against diversity?),
http://slate.me/12V9r2Y
Case:
"Sustenance in the city" Modeled on bioregional calculator, or on 10+10 questions, create a guide for planning your transition to sustainability, e.g., What role models can you find for changing your habits? Who are your local experts, for e.g. safe soils to grow foods in, composting, exercise, car alternatives, stream restoration, safe fishing, pest control, local dialects, local history & archeology, etc....? What non-local experts or sources of knowledge do you need as well?
OR
Cultural and environmental retrofit of the university
9: Spanning distance
People distant in space can have their cultures profoundly shifted by mediated connections, especially those made around new technologies and the commodities they give rise to.
Reading: xx
Presentation:
FairTrade
Electronic Waste,
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1870162,00.html
Clothing factories,
http://reut.rs/12EOOgJ,
http://to.pbs.org/15aw9d2
John Berger, A Seventh Man,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Seventh_Man
Mike Davis,
Late Victorian Holocausts
Case:
Variant of: Place the description of the video at
http://papertiger.org/node/751 in a wide context by tracing connections from near and from far in place, time, practice, and culture. (Don’t watch the video at this point. Following your own interests and curiosity, use the internet to learn more about who, when, where, why, what led to this video for the different players involved, what followed from this, and so on. Use the blog to record what you find out and what further questions arise.)
OR
How do consumers come together to take stock of their "mediated connections" to distant people and design alternative relations with them? (relevant model:
http://www.mega-cities.net/history.php)
10: Integration of diverse social and material worlds
Instead of dividing real world complexities into many local situations (as if they were well-bounded systems with other processes pushed into the background or hidden for the time being), we can examine “intersecting processes” that cut across scales, involve heterogeneous components, and develop over time.
There is always a tension between, on one hand, local knowledge and solidarities forged through working and living together in particular places and, on the other hand, application of trans-local perspectives, abstractions, or other resources--or withholding such resources.
Within the intersecting processes, there are multiple potential points of engagement for a designer, which need to be linked together "transversally" in a manner that is intentional and explicit. In other words, if sustained engagement in local situations is desired to ensure that design is not a "solution.. for the problems that people don't have" (Myles Horton), what else is needed to mitigate the consequences of decisions made in governments and corporations operating on a larger spatial and temporal arena?
Reading: xx
Presentation:
I. McHarg, Design with nature
Fathy,
https://vimeo.com/15514401
Louv, Last Child in the Woods, chap.
Urmadic design
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_design,
http://www.slowlab.net/CtC_SlowDesignPrinciples.pdf,
Epilogue of
Unruly Complexity
Wall of wonder/historical scan
http://www.ecoinnovationlab.com/
Case:
Compose your life using a Wall of wonder (a variant of intersecting processes) in a way that allows for transversal engagement (relevant model:
http://www.mega-cities.net/history.php )
11: Keeping track
Possibilities for surveillance are an unavoidable by-product of standards and of keeping track of the effects of one's design.
Reading: xx
Presentation:
Critique of stream restoration standards
L. Busch
http://theaecassociates.com/blog/when-good-record-keeping-saved-lives-in-architectural-cad-services/
A. Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto,
http://gawande.com/the-checklist-manifesto
Reproduction of images
Scorecard,
http://scorecard.goodguide.com/
Case:
Health surveillance, community and individual
(
Mozorov opEd, Extensions of Scorecard,
http://scorecard.goodguide.com/ (or Ontario Health Study), in which individuals keep track of their own histories of exposure; CounterPunch article)
12: Improving by taking stock (from design to adoption & adaption by others)
Making space to reflect, using various tools or processes, before proceeding either from one phase to another or on from an activity or event, makes it more difficult to simply continue along previous lines, opening up possibilities of alternative paths to proceed.
Reading: xx
Presentation:
Issues not (yet) explicitly included
Literacy
Gears
- Reading: S. Papert on gears
- Case: Turtle drawing software = what kind of creativity?
Engines
Divisions
Information
Reproduction of images
Public Health
Defense
Moving
Communicating
- Universal principles of graphic design
Conventions
Purity
Tinkering
Material properties
Reactivity
Resilience
Affordance
Borrowing
Apprenticeship
Recursion
From
Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design
William Lidwell; Kritina Holden; Jill Butler
Rockport Publishers
2010
http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/book/-/9781592535873
80/20 Rule
Accessibility
Advance Organizer
Aesthetic-Usability Effect
Affordance
Alignment
Anthropomorphic Form
Archetypes
Area Alignment
Attractiveness Bias
Baby-Face Bias
Biophilia Effect
Cathedral Effect
Chunking
Classical Conditioning
Closure
Cognitive Dissonance
Color
Common Fate
Comparison
Confirmation
Consistency
Constancy
Constraint
Contour Bias
Control
Convergence
Cost-Benefit
Defensible Space
Depth of Processing
Design by Committee
Desire Line
Development Cycle
Entry Point
Errors
Expectation Effect
Exposure Effect
Face-ism Ratio
Factor of Safety
Feedback Loop
Fibonacci Sequence
Figure-Ground Relationship
Fitts' Law
Five Hat Racks
Flexibility-Usability Tradeoff
Forgiveness
Form Follows Function
Framing
Freeze-Flight-Fight-Forfeit
Garbage InGarbage Out
Golden Ratio
Good Continuation
Gutenberg Diagram
Hick's Law
Hierarchy
Hierarchy of Needs
Highlighting
Horror Vacui
Hunter-Nurturer Fixations
Iconic Representation
Immersion
Inattentional Blindness
Interference Effects
Inverted Pyramid
Iteration
Law of Prägnanz
Layering
Legibility
Life Cycle
Mapping
Mental Model
Mimicry
Mnemonic Device
Modularity
Most Advanced Yet Acceptable
Most Average Facial Appearance Effect
Normal Distribution
Not Invented Here
Nudge
Ockham's Razor
Operant Conditioning
Orientation Sensitivity
Performance Load
Performance Versus Preference
Personas
Picture Superiority Effect
Priming
Progressive Disclosure
Propositional Density
Prospect-Refuge
Prototyping
Proximity
Readability
Recognition Over Recall
Red Effect
Redundancy
Rosetta Stone
Rule of Thirds
Satisficing
Savanna Preference
Scaling Fallacy
Scarcity
Self-Similarity
Serial Position Effects
Shaping
Signal-to-Noise Ratio
Similarity
Stickiness
Storytelling
Structural Forms
Symmetry
Threat Detection
Three-Dimensional Projection
Top-Down Lighting Bias
Uncanny Valley
Uncertainty Principle
Uniform Connectedness
Veblen Effect
Visibility
Visuospacial Resonance
von Restorff Effect
Wabi-Sabi
Waist-to-Hip Ratio
Wayfinding
Weakest Link
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Notes & other sources
- The presentations may make extensive use of material from the web, building on some crowdsourcing.
- Get advice from Marius Foley's friends in Pittsburgh
Maker movement
http://www.hackidemia.com/blog/tedxyouthaustin-hackidemia-the-musical-room
developing a research-biased course to encourage a user-focused approach to design.
a few suggestions:
TOPICS - the key elements and importance of user-focused design; various methods of research and how to evaluate and present the results; how to choose appropriate methods of research; how to employ and evaluate others' research.
ACTIVITIES - ones that encourage students to look at real-world problems from a number of perspectives, eg. addressing homelessness, solving environmental issues such as dwindling natural resources or promoting healthy eating. Guest project leaders from industry may add a touch of reality to the work and give the students a fabulous insight into the actual constraints and affordances they may have to work with. Projects could start with research and end with product designs or/and marketing literature, whatever seems to be a worthwhile solution. The tasks could be evaluated on a number of levels, eg. how well they have analysed the problems involved, the appropriateness of their research and the presentation and quality of their solutions.
READINGS - one of my favourites is 'The myth of the paperless office' by Sellen & Harper (2002?) outlining the research they did into how we use paper and what constraints and affordances of it needed to be considered before products could/can be developed to replace it.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/myth-paperless-office
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8ioIkB-VCE
pattern languages in design, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_languagehttp://www.instructables.com/
http://www.instructables.com/
Center for LifeLong Learning and Design,
http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/wordpress/
Fischer, G. (2011) "Understanding, Fostering, and Supporting Cultures of Participation," ACM Interactions XVIII.3 (May + June 2011), pp. 42-53.
http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~gerhard/papers/2011/interactions-coverstory.pdf
