An open and collaborative program
Draft 1 - 12.7.08
Download a PDF version [HERE]
Proposal
This Design
Research Agenda presents some statements, some emerging issues and some
promising design research fields and directions for sustainability.
It has two main
goals: (1) to outline and progressively consolidate a shared framework for a
multiplicity of research activities on design research for sustainability. (2)
To trigger new autonomous research programs that will enlarge and or re-orient
the present framework in order to give more coherent programs and more
effective results.
Design researchers
who agree with this proposal should orient their on-going activities, or start
new ones, in such a way that they can enrich these emerging issues with
visions, proposals, tools and reflections.
Doing so, they will
participate in the development of an open and collaborative design research
program and, most importantly, in the realization of an articulated but
convergent set of visions and proposals (and of the ideas and tools necessary
to better understand and implement them).
This document
The process where
this document comes from started with the organization of the Changing the
Change Conference (and the debates that took place between several involved
researchers to prepare it) and continued in the discussions and the co-creation activities that took place during this same conference.
Its possible future
evolution will depend, first of all, on the commitment of the conference
participants who will agree with its spirit and its present proposals, and
moving from here, to all the other design researchers who will also agree with
them.
In conclusion, this document is a draft, and it will remain a draft: an open artifact to be integrated by the free collaboration of whoever will accept its spirit and the simple rule it proposes.
Structure.
The document is
organized in 4 sections:
- Background statements. They are some general ideas to be shared by who intends participate in this co-creation process.
- Emerging issues. They are research themes that, at this stage of the process, appear to be potentially relevant to orient a variety of existing or future research programs.
- Rules of the game. They are some simple rules to be followed to participate to this initiative.
- Basic concepts. It introduces some working definitions,needed to start a conversation in-between the community. In the future, these working definitions could be up-graded and new concepts could be added.
Background
statements
Background
statements are some general ideas to be shared by who intends participate in
this program co-creation process.
Sustainability must be the
meta-objective of every possible design research activity.
Sustainability here is intended as a
systemic change to be promoted at the local and global scale. It will be
obtained through a wide social learning process, re-orienting the present
unsustainable transformations towards a sustainable knowledge society.
Design research has to feed the
social learning process towards sustainability with the needed design
knowledge. That is, with visions, proposals, tools and reflections to enable
different actors to collaborate and to move concrete steps towards a
sustainable knowledge society.
Emerging Issues
Emerging issues are research
themes that, at this stage of the process, appear to be potentially relevant to
orient a variety of existing or future design research programs
The
following ones are the results of the "Emerging issues" exercise that took
place during the Changing the Change conference (10-12
July 2008). Each one of the six proposed research lines integrates
several topics proposed during the first two days of the same conference and
has been discussed in one of its dedicated sessions the last day. The specific
topics indicated for each one of these research lines is an open list that
in the future will be implemented and, if necessary, re-oriented.
1. Ways of living
How to generate radical changes in
everyday life, orienting them to visions of sustainable life styles? How
to promote sustainable qualities, sharing knowledge across geographical
distances, cultural differences and disciplinary barriers? How to develop
scenarios and convivial tools, through community generation and activation?
1.1 Physical and social commons and sustainable qualities.
Understanding the "commons": from the physical ones (such as air,
water, landscape), to the social ones (such as lively neighbourhood, public
spaces, sense of community, perception of safety, social knowledge), to the new
ones (such as internet and open knowledge). What makes them exist (what is
their "glue"). The people and community recognition of the commons in the
definition of a sustainable wellbeing; what media and design can do. How to
design solutions capable of generating or re-generating the commons.
1.2 Active and collaborative behaviors and the ecology of time.
Understanding "sustainable wellbeing": individual vs.
collaborative; passive vs. active. Sharing different local knowledge.
The sense of personal balance as harmony and contentment. The sense of
community as communication, protection, participation, recreation, identity,
freedom and generosity. A new sense of time, with the re-discovery of slowness
as a desirable component, permitting attention to the important things in life.
2. Ways of producing
How to promote models of production and consumption based on a sustainable use of physical and social local resources? How craftsmanship, traditional productions and advanced technologies can merge and collaborate in the perspective of a sustainable, distributed knowledge economy?
Understanding "distributed systems": from computing to power generation, from manufacturing to the whole economy. Distributed systems and system resilience. Distributed systems, democracy and power shift. Connecting people, places and things: distributed systems and the convergence with the p2p and open source movements.
2.2 Local development in the global society.
Understanding "the local": local identities and cosmopolitan
culture; local economies in an interdependent world. How to design the
collective local wisdom. Craftsmanship valorization and regeneration.
Sustainable tourism ad community-based tourism. Local and seasonal food and new
food networks. The "Slow food model" and its applicability in other fields. The
design role in local and regional development.
3. Ways of designing
How can designers become agents for
sustainability in a society where more and more people have to take design
decisions? What are design's conceptual and practical tools in an
interconnected world where different (i.e. non-western) narratives are
emerging? What is the role of schools and universities in this new context?
3.1 Designing networks and forming new professional designers.
Understanding the new designer role: designers as connectors and
facilitators, as quality producers, as visualizers and visionaries, as future
builders (or co-producers). Designers as promoters of new business models.
Designers as catalizers of change.
3.2 Design knowledge and design education.
Understanding the new design nature and developing a new
cultural background: from products to services and systems, from individual
activity to collaboration. New designing networks and new learning networks.
Changes in the education priorities and methods. Design for sustainability in
design schools. Different education strategies: to introduce sustainability as
a meta-theme for all the courses, or to organize specific courses on design for
sustainability.
Rules
of the game
Rules of the game
are the simple rules to be followed to participate to this program co-creation
process. They are:
- To share the background statements and basic concepts' working definitions.
- To enter in the digital platform (that will be prepared) the description of their research projects (and, when available, of their results) following a format and keywords system (that will be provided)
- To enter in the platform comments on other
research projects, in the spirit of promoting the dialogue between different
points of view and the convergence towards the realization of a more coherent
large picture.
Basic concepts working definitions
What follows is a
first list of working definitions needed to facilitate the conversation among
the researchers involved in this program co-creation process.
Sustainable society: a society where
all the people and the communities have the same possibilities to live well
(that is, to be what they want to be and do what they want to do) in a
sustainable way. That is, maintaining their environmental footprint in the
limits of the ecosystems resilience, and regenerating the quality of the
physical and social commons.
Design for
sustainability: everything design can do to facilitate the social
learning process towards a sustainable society. That is, to sustain promising
social and technological innovations and to re-orient existing drivers of
change towards sustainability.
Design research: an activity
aiming at producing 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: a set of visions, proposals, tools and reflections: to stimulate and steer strategic discussions, to be applied in a variety of specific projects, to help understand what we are doing or could do. This knowledge has to be explicit (to be clearly expressed by whoever produces it), discussable (to permit the exchange of opinions among many interested interlocutors), transferrable (to be applicable by other designers) and accumulable (to form a reservoir of design knowledge that could be the starting point for producing further knowledge by other researchers).
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