[c]

Social Impact Design

posted by [c] on July 1, 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

From Design to Meta-Design

Design’s Place in the Current Social and Environmental Paradigm

What is Meta-design?

Towards a Meta-design for Social Service

A Global Social Movement

Meta-design for Social Impact

A Place and Context for Social Service

Some Background on a Region and its People

Objectives of the Indigenous Movement in Chiapas

Meta-design for an Indigenous Social Movement in Chiapas

A Social Meta-design Scenario

Conclusion

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. [↩]

Design’s Place in the Current Social and Environmental Paradigm

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The discipline of design may be a relatively recent development, but the practices it utilises have ostensibly existed since the beginning of civilisation, in fact, civilisation is the result of these design practices. Historically, design was directed toward mediation between man and the natural world, and there are myriad examples of how early cultures used design to improve the conditions of life. Shelters designed by the nomadic plains Indians¹ of North America, entire floating communities of the Uro Aymara² culture in the high Andes, or the Sumerian³ development of organised agriculture—in the face of a natural world that challenged not just man’s creature comforts but his very existence, design has been intrinsic to the development of mankind and civilisation.
Design for the purpose of communication can also be traced back thousands of years. An early example of this is the songlines of Australian aboriginal culture. For thousands of years, on a continent that held families of disparate spoken language, the song was used as a way to communicate visual way finding. These songs, taught to one another at meeting or junction points in a journey, translated the visual and physical spaces into an aural map that, through singing, would reveal points of significance such as landmarks, watering holes, and hunting grounds.
Centuries later, the industrial revolution can be seen to have carried forward this simple theme—it was a design-centred epoch that sought to make things better for people. There are many lucid arguments that claim the industrial revolution substituted one form of indentured servitude for another⁴ and that much of the human suffering of the period was merely supplanted from the countryside to new urban centres of industry, but it’s also beyond dispute that with this change came many advancements in social freedom and access to products and services that improved the quality of life across Europe.
However, as early as 1754 Jean Jacques Rousseau questioned the optimist notions of western civilization in “Discourse on Inequality”, laying the foundations for modern day concerns of social injustice. A little over a century later, in 1867, Karl Marx wrote the famous critique of an economic system that had its roots in the Industrial Revolution. In “Das Kapital”, Marx dedicated a large portion of Volume 1 to the consumption model that, having developed out of industrialization, today has spread throughout the vast majority of the world. Marx explains how the capitalist economic system requires continual increases in production in order for it to sustain itself and, as a result, an ever-increasing level of consumption is required to create the demand for such production. This consumption would not be possible if not for what Marx called “commodity fetishism”, a condition where there is a perceived intrinsic value in a commodity that extends far beyond the labour required to produce it.
Design was an effective tool in adding such value to a commodity. Whether decorative or utilitarian, design was capable of modifying an existing commodity and making it either more appealing or more useful. Design was also capable of persuading consumers that new products or services were a significant improvement over what they were meant to replace. Communication design could create the perception of value where little existed, and by doing so it could contribute to increasing the production required to perpetuate economic growth.
As the economy grew, other ways of creating demand were needed. The rapid successions of product improvements or aesthetic changes were not enough to perpetuate the short consumption cycle required to maintain a growing economy. While the creation of new emerging markets for consumption was one way of addressing the problem, advertising and design began providing opportunity for further growth in existing wealth economies. In 1972, Jean Beaudrillard reintroduced the term “commodity fetishism” to explain the relationship of objects as signs that represented, or stood in for, individual identity. Through advertising, branding, and communication design, consumers could be persuaded to purchase goods and services as a way to help construct their personal identity and display their self to the community. Though the presentation of identity has always existed, the commodification of individual identity would not have been possible were it not for the work of advertisers and designers.
By the mid 70’s, “design for need” had become, what Tony Fry refers to as, “a functionalist rally call.” Led by the work of Victor Papanek and explored in his seminal text, Design for the Real World, the movement was a significant step toward a return to the principles of what design is really about—“making things better for people” (Seymour quoted in Design Council) . But as Claudio Pinhanez has pointed out—if you go to the design section of your local bookstore “you will find books on […] furniture, houses, gardens, books, cars, clothes, posters, textiles, glass, type, ceramics, literature, logos and, more recently, software interfaces and websites” (3)—it suggests the ambiguous nature of design but also challenges the notion of need in design. The “true” need that Papanek refers to in Design for the Real World is an important qualifier and one that addresses the importance of examining what is meant by the word, particularly in the context of its use as justification for design and production. Need is often “called upon as if it were a self-evident empirical reference [and yet] the needs of the poor are not the same as the needs of the well off” (Fry 42). There’s been an absence of recognition and clarity within design theory when it comes to felt need, and this has limited understanding “of all design activity during the rise of industrial culture” (42). Given the historical role of design in the context of a consumption-based capital economy, it’s unlikely that these traditional design practices can effectively address the true needs of our privileged western society let alone that of the underprivileged, particularly when these practices have contributed significantly to the ecological and social paradigm that currently challenges both.
Design was originally a response to the true and immediate needs of people at a time in which everyone designed, but it has evolved to become responsive to the false needs of a divided class system, where underclass labour is used to produce the objects of upper class consumption and where the waste from everyone is threatening our shared future. There have been attempts within the design community to address this problem and with them have come some positive results, but real change has largely failed to take root in a fundamental way. Design is currently faced with a perceptual and real problem—it no longer knows its role in society and the one that it has adopted is viewed by many in a negative light, particularly given the unsustainable social and ecological situation that we currently find ourselves in. While the relationship of designer and commercial client is continually being refined, we have lost our mandate to design for society—to make things truly better for people. As a discipline, we seem unable to adequately assess the true needs of individuals, communities and our global society⁵. Now, technology has returned us to a paradigm where once again everyone designs, albeit in a different sense than in the past. Today the computer-based digital domain of design practice has made it open and accessible to more people than ever before⁶.
If we are to again design for the betterment of society then we need to first acknowledge these realities. First, “the screen of mediation between us and need is so thick [that] the authentic is unviewable” (Fry 49) and we can know longer assess true need. Second, we can’t continue to practice the kind of design we have grown accustomed to and also ensure a socially and ecologically sustainable environment—the two are not compatible. Finally, given the existing communication and technology paradigm, design can no longer be viewed as existing within a silo of elite knowledge. Ezio Manzini clearly expresses what he perceives to be an emerging challenge for today’s designer:

“In the present times, designers have to operate in a society in which, as contemporary sociology points out, everybody designs. In other words, they have to consider themselves part of a complex mesh of designing networks: the emerging, interwoven networks of individual people, enterprises, non-profit organizations, local and global institutions that are using their creativity and entrepreneurship to solve problems, to open new possibilities and, sometimes, to take some concrete steps towards sustainability.” (1)

This paradigm can pose a challenge to some design practice, particularly that type which is rooted in traditional modernist notions. Many designers today continue to “advocate for educating the public in modernistic design values [rather than] promotion of the design values of consultation and participation” (Holm 59). Where design tends to impose its ideas on society, albeit with good intention, it will face resistance to its historically paternal approach.
Rather than warning signs, these should be viewed as opportunities for transforming professional design practice and, in doing so, finding new and effective ways of designing for a socially and ecologically sustainable society. Recent developments in design thinking are showing resilience in design practice and methodology. Adaptations within design suggest an acknowledgement that there is need for significant change if we are to point a new direction. This is notable in areas of investigation and practice such as open source, multidisciplinary collaboration, user-centred design, and co-creation, all of which are methods that re-envision the role and responsibility of design in the context of both present opportunities and the emerging future of our highly globalised society.
And then there’s Meta-design.

1. 1. The plains Indians designed a shelter that could be constructed with readily available material, simple tools, and relative ease of construction. The tipi, made of buffalo skin and tree saplings, could be taken down and packed up easily for transportation, making it an ideal solution for a culture that used seasonally nomadic practices of hunting and gathering. [↩]
2. 2. The world’s highest lake, in the altitudes of the Andes Mountains, would not surprisingly be a place where nature would challenge man’s existence. Yet here on Lake Titicaca the people of the indigenous Uro Aymara culture continue to make use of the reeds that grow on the lake’s shore much as they did before their subjugation by the Inca civilisation hundreds of years ago. Not only do they make their famous totora rafts of this material, they also construct mats, baskets, fishing traps, homes and even floating communities. These design solutions allowed them to adapt and survive where there was no ready access to timber and allowed a degree of protection from other groups. [↩]
3. 3. Around 5,500 BC the Sumerians utilised what could be called early systems design in the development of large scale and intensive land cultivation that included the planning of crop location and rotation, organised irrigation systems, labour practices, storage, and product distribution. Along with the domestication of animals, the organisation and later commercialisation of agriculture would allow for the expansion of the Sumerian culture and early empire building. [↩]
4. 4. One cogent example of this is the chapter on slavery, in An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin. Here Zeldin uses a socially current existential exemplar to suggest that indentured servitude has never really left the human condition (1-10). [↩]
5. 5. This should not be viewed as an isolated critique of the design community. The capital economic model has become so ingrained in western culture that it seems to be wholly unassailable and individuals in every walk of life have found it difficult to recognise its limitations and potential negative impact [↩]
6. 6. 3d modelling software, WYSIWYG web design, desktop publishing software, and online software like Google’s Sketch-up, are all making it easier for the layman to become the designer. [↩]

From Design to Meta-design

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Previous: Introduction

It is about time that […] design, as we have come to know it, should cease to exist. As long as design concerns itself with confecting trivial “toys for adults,” killing machines with gleaming tailfins, and “sexed-up” shrouds for typewriters, toasters, telephones, and computers, it has lost all reason to exist.

Design must become an innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the true needs of men. (Papanek X)

Next: Design’s Place in the Current Social and Environmental Paradigm

Introduction

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The first generation—our own—to worry about global threats like nuclear proliferation and climate change is effectively ahistorical; for most activists and campaigners, environmentalism has little or no history, no lineage. It is a response to immediate conditions, a reaction to waste, pillage, damage, and underneath it all lies the deepest grief about the shattering of the world.(Hawkin 29)

Today, there is a renewed movement aimed at curing the world of its significant and spreading ills. Social injustice and environmental degradation are directly or indirectly impacting every living thing on this planet and the evidence of it can be found in both empirical science and in the uncertain existential malaise that is being felt by individuals of diverse location, culture, and socio-economic background. continued…