[c]

What is Meta-design?

posted by [c] on June 30, 2009

Meta-design, as a form of design practice, places significant emphasis on the process side of design and the need for a model that is dynamic and adaptable. It involves the creation of socio-technical environments in which people can be creative. It has been clearly characterized as the “objectives, techniques, and processes for creating new media and environments that allow the owners of problems to act as designers” (Fischer, Meta-design: Beyond User… 1). Central to meta-design is that these environments enable users to “engage in informed participation rather than being restricted by the use of existing systems” (Fischer, Meta-design: Beyond User… 1). Also—and this is important—from a methodological perspective, meta-design does not define a product or specify an outcome, rather it defines and designs the conditions for a process of interaction (Fischer, Meta-design: Putting Owners… 16). By focusing on the general structures and processes, rather than on fixed objects and contents, meta-design seeks to better anticipate unforeseen changes with an eye toward adaptation (Giaccardi, Metadesign 346).
A meta-design model can be separated into two phases of operation or activity that are defined as design time and use time. At design time, a system is developed whereby the social and technical environment is conceived and implemented to ensure that future users of the system can effectively identify problems and resolve them through a newly acquired knowledge and capacity for design thinking and activity. Design time development of the system would typically be the result of collaborative efforts by experts from a variety of different disciplines depending on the focus of the particular meta-design project, and through a process of consultation with potential future users of the system. Use time refers to the second phase of the project where the consumer for which the system was designed uses its various tools, services and networks, to extend their own existing capacities and to further develop the system itself to suit their needs—needs that may have been unanticipated in phase one or that only become apparent over time. At use time the activity is driven by the users themselves who, with the requisite resources provided, act as designers by assessing needs, researching, planning, and implementing solutions—carrying the project forward through unforeseen changes in situation and exigency. Figure 1 shows a model for Metadesign.

Figure 1: At design time, a multidisciplinary group of developers work with representatives of future users to design the system which is made up of social and technical components. At use time the system is available to end users who interact with it by utilising existing products or services of the system and by modifying or introducing new products and services to the system.

This continual evolution of the project at use time is made possible by meta-design’s employment of the Seeding, Evolutionary Growth, and Reseeding (SER) model¹, acknowledging Herbert Simon’s premise that complex systems must constantly evolve in order to be effective (Fischer & Scharff, http://www-jime.open.ac.uk). The SER model is not dissimilar to the frequently described iterative process² of design practice, but it differs largely in that its implementation takes place at use time and is like an open circuit that is intended to continue indefinitely, ensuring adaptability and continued efficacy in the face of what Richard Buchanan refers to as “the indeterminacy of wicked problems [where] the problem for designer is to conceive and plan what does not yet exist” (17). The iterative process, on the other hand, is ostensibly a closed circuit where after a series of passes the process must come to an end. Iteration of this type takes place at design time when experts are designing the system itself or at use time when users act as designers and work toward specific outcomes. Comparatively speaking, the iterative process is a micro level closed process which is suited to project based situations that must have a conclusion, while the SER model operates as a macro level open process to enable the system itself to viably persist.

Figure 2: Here developers work with selected future users to initially seed the system space. The system develops further through the contribution of users, creating an evolved system space. These contributions become integrated into the system at the reseeding stage and a new reseeded system space is created. This is followed by a second iteration of the process, starting with a new round of evolutionary growth from the reseeded space. The iterations are perpetual, continuing for the life of the system. Figure information from the following source (Fischer, Meta-design: A Manifesto for…  5).

 

The SER model starts at design time with the initial development of a system by designers, experts, and potential users—a system that is open to change over time. At use time there is support for a culture of design that isn’t self-conscious, where it is expected that users experience breakdowns and “bad fits” but where end-users can modify and improve limiting experiences—an evolutionary growth through incremental modifications that are referred to as seeds. This is followed by the reseeding stage where the system is significantly reconceptualised by accounting for the incremental modifications, mitigating conflicts between the changes, and thereby establishing an enhanced system (Fischer, Meta-design: Putting Owners… 43). This new system can then be fed back into the evolutionary growth stage and continued in a manner that accounts for changes over time.
Though it’s sometimes compared to other practices or methodologies such as collaboration, co-creation, or user-centred design, it more accurately utilizes these approaches within its own practice and methodology—so rather than being associated with open source development, it is actually the methodology that makes open source possible.
Since meta-design has its roots in computer science and design³, its not surprising that the computer should be seen as a catalyst for creativity and that new media specifically could be used as a means of enabling communities. Much of the research into meta-design focuses on software development and the creation or use of web 2.0 technologies (see figure 03)—the primary focus of the technical in “socio-technical environments.”
One standout example of meta-design is the development of systems that enable the creation, evolution and dissemination of shared bodies of knowledge. John Thackara refers to this as conviviality, and quotes NYU law professor Yochai Benkler’s description of this commons-based peer production.

We are seeing the emergence of a new mode of production, distinguishable from the property and contract-based modes of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals—rather than market prices or managerial commands. (130)

At Wikipedia.org, users generate essentially all the content and, as new iterations of the wiki project develop, users contribute to the design and development in varying degrees based on their interest and knowledge⁴.

Figure 3: This diagram shows some comparative differences between early web characteristics and the change taking place within Web 2.0. (Fischer, Meta-design: Putting Owners… 9) Many of these changes are the result of a meta-design type methodology.

Open source software is another example of the results of meta-design. The Mozilla Foundation develops a wide range of computer applications from web browsers and mail programs to something called Ubiquity. The Ubiquity project has hundreds of contributors throughout the world all working toward intuitively languaging the Internet. This is more than user-generated content; users are actually developing the programs through everything from beta testing to writing in code snippets that build out greater capabilities, using everyday language and by leveraging existing mash-up applications to make for more efficient user-experiences and communications. Most of these mash-up applications themselves are meta-design projects. Facebook provides add-ons, extensions and other services that have been developed by users; the content itself is all user-generated, content that is often drawn from another mash-up application such as YouTube or a WordPress blog. WordPress too is a meta-design project with users designing page templates called styles, developing extensible add-on applications for embedding in blogs, and linking data from other mash-ups such as Twitter or Flickr. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these new Web 2.0 technologies and applications in various stages of ongoing development⁵ and most would not exist if it were not for the principles and methodologies of meta-design. What makes this environment so interesting is that these open design systems are all interacting and feeding one another. This network is so organic, dynamic and complex that it couldn’t ever be effectively mapped but it might be analogous to a garden where plants, insects, soil, sun and water all interact in a highly complex eco-system.
Beyond the technological characteristics of meta-design there are the arguably more important social characteristics. In 1984, Horst Rittel wrote of the communication challenges evident when people from different cultures had different norms, symbols, and representations, calling it “a symmetry of ignorance” (317-327). Meta-design views this as an opportunity for creativity where “having different viewpoints helps one discover alternatives and can help uncover tacit aspects of problems” (Fischer, Symmetry of… 1). The emphasis on multi-disciplinary collaboration that exists within meta-design embraces the notion that the required knowledge to solve complex social problems is beyond the scope of one individual or discipline and that in true collaborative and co-creative environments participants teach and instruct each other. In this case the role of the designer is one of facilitator and a co-designer of systems that will enable access by user-designers to various practical bodies of knowledge and experts, whether pedagogical or practical, specialist or layman. Both at design time when the system itself is being developed and at use time when user-designers continue the meta-design project, there is an understanding that social creativity emerges when participants teach and instruct each other.
A meta-design project will typically investigate social factors within a community such as cognition, collaboration, and motivation, utilizing the outcomes of that learning to help model an open system that takes into account the existing social context. With regard to cognition, emphasis in areas such as individual and group comprehension, decision making, planning and learning all contribute to assessing social environments and modelling appropriate approaches in order to optimize ongoing outcomes. This is an example of where, at design time, a multidisciplinary approach to initial systems design is required. Here psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists or cognitive scientists can make invaluable contributions to the design process. In a broader system context, multi-disciplinary collaboration might also include computer scientists, industrial and information/communication designers, environmental engineers, business leaders, politicians, and lobbyists—the list is as long and diverse as is the number of possible scenarios for applying meta-design. And then there are the users—consumers, individuals and groups all willing, and often eager, “to engage and cocreate their own personalized experiences” (Prahalad & Krishnan 325).

There is a fundamental shift in the focus, the sources, and the processes of innovation and value creation. Forced by digitization, connectivity, and open and free access to information and social networks, an informed and active consumer base is emerging. (Prahalad & Krishnan 325)

This emergence offers an opportunity to re-envision the user as an informed and engaged practitioner of their own design solutions, contributing to the evolution of product or service development in such a way that it represents ideally and actually the needs of that individual or community.
In meta-design what we see is an evolution of design methodologies to a more democratized form of design. This evolution begins with a requirement that users adapt to the designed product and ends with the creation of new opportunities for users to become engaged in a co-creative practice of design (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: This can be viewed as an evolutionary process that’s taking place in design. It could also be considered a democratisation of design as stakeholders progressively play a more significant role in the design process. Figure data source (Fischer, Meta-design: Putting Owners…  19 ).

Meta-design transcends the traditional consumer mindset associated with the consumption of products and services, and instead, is far more tightly integrated with the use of those products or services— an integration that continues throughout the life of the system.

“Keeping the system open to participation and evolution at use time is meant to join social and technical systems, not only to make them optimized and efficient, but also to let new conditions, interactions and relationships emerge. In this way—by sustaining emergence and evolution—new forms of sociability and creativity can develop and innovation can be fostered” (Giaccardi 346-347).

1. 1. This process model was first presented in 1994 at a conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Boston, MA under the title Seeding, Evolutionary Growth and Reseeding: Supporting Incremental Development of Design Environments. (Fischer, G & McCall et al.) [↩]
2. 2. Design iteration can take on many forms, from rapid prototyping in industrial design to usability studies in interface design, but in whatever context it is used it usually follows a simple circuitous process of designing-testing-analysing-designing. A hallmark of many design methodologies, the iterative process has been thoroughly addressed by everyone from Jacob Nielsen to David Kelley. [↩]
3. Meta-design, as described in this conceptual framework, was developed at the University of Colorado’s Center for Lifelong Learning and Design, or L3D. It should be noted that the earliest conception of meta-design can be traced back to the 1960’s, but has generally developed more consistent characteristics since the 1980’s and is now being significantly refined at L3D and somewhat differently at the Laboratory for Architecture and Urbanism, or Lab[au], in Brussels (Giaccardi, Metadesign 343-345). The conceptual framework for meta-design, as expressed in this paper, is most closely associated with that of the L3D in Colorado. [↩]
4. In meta-design, not all users are designers; the enabling of users to contribute, develop and design is about enabling choice and to what degree a user chooses to participate in the process is up to them. [↩]
5. It’s the nature of these projects that they are always in development. They are not closed end products but rather open systems that are changing organically based on designer/user contribution and the existing context of technological advancement and user requirements. [↩]