Demanding Better Futures through Co-creation
A Discussion Room session with Hugo Pilate
Hugo Pilate is a design researcher trying to make sense of the world we’ve built for ourselves while exploring alternative modes of living, earning, and thinking, one project at a time. Let’s hear from him about the fascinating world of co-creation, the different facets of creating a co-creative environment, its relevance today, and how we can shape our future through co-creation.
What does co-creation mean to you?
Co-creation, at its heart, is getting a group of people to make together. A lot of times, in my experience as a designer, I’ve been part of design sprints or charrettes that might be a couple of hours long or a few days longer where the idea is that we’ll get together, we’ll work really hard, all-nighter and all, but it’ll be all worth it because, in the end, we’ll have solutions. And I think that’s really the wrong way to go about it because you should not expect to have solutions from such a short sprint.
There was this funny moment where Enric Ruiz Geli, a Spanish Architect had come to Art Centre College of Design where I was studying and we had organized a two-day design sprint for him. And by the end, he’s like, “Oh man, you American designers, when you design, it’s like hunting, when actually it should be about fishing and waiting for the idea to come to you”. So, to me, this is really what it’s about: the discussions, the hope of finding a solution almost becomes the excuse for coming together.
In that regard, co-creation is really unique, the focus is not necessarily as much on what is getting made, the solution itself, but the ability to make sense of a situation collectively. For example, when you’re designing a bridge, co-creation can help you gain exposure to the different aspects and lenses of how it might affect the community that it is being placed in, as well as the policymakers or business owners’ concerns. So what’s interesting is how it might raise questions that those organizing it, those who would be designing it, had not thought of. Because people have different affinities or passions, through different lived experiences, all these backgrounds make it valuable to get together and make things.
What is the relevance of co-creation today?
It is about getting different voices to be heard, to increase your own exposure to other perspectives. At the end of the day, it is a way of learning to ask better questions.
So many things need to be relooked at, especially when we think about systemic, and infrastructural inequalities in the services and the rules we live by or in the governments we have put in place. Co-creation can help question these systems. It could mean getting a few friends together and coming up with your own laws and seeing the challenges you face. You can also role-play and have someone who is trying to circumvent that law. This is really the beauty of co-creation: that we may not come up with a workable law, but the next time we look at bills we will have a much sharper understanding of what the lawmakers may have been trying to do. What were they thinking? What kind of compromises were they trying to find? That’s its main relevance.
Coming to the lockdown situation, a hurdle that we are tackling is that co-creation is resource-intensive. You need a space, a hall or maker space, library, classroom, office and you need supplies. You also need some degree of preparation for stuff for people to engage with. So with the current situation, I have been trying to experiment with using video games and readily available tools like Google Slides or Miro, often in tandem, the online collaborative platforms for brainstorming and research, and the games for prototyping solutions. What is interesting is that these are approaches one can consider using beyond lockdown to be more sensitive about everyone’s schedule constraints, or collaborate across the globe!
The process of co-creation involves interaction between people across disciplines and walks of life. What are some of the values to keep in mind while setting up and sustaining a co-creative environment?
“Those are the three key things one would want to keep in mind: Who will be part of the discussion? What will the group be doing? How does it fit within the broader effort?”
One key thing to keep in mind is avoiding the use of a “one size fits all” model. Co-creation could be between four people or twenty people and that will impact the activities you choose. The other really big thing to do is framing. When you are getting people in a room to work together in a tight situation, schedule and time, you have to frame the questions to yourself: Who is willing to be let in and kept out of the group? What are the voices that will be part of this discussion and who will not be a part of this discussion? And is that okay? Is this for logistical concerns? Why is that? Why do we have the people we have? What are we making? It really depends on the matter at hand.
A typical situation for using co-creative activities is when you need the client’s blessing, especially while transitioning from the research to the design phase. You may want them to come in and hear about the research, and get their buy-in. So it is always important to understand whether the co-creative session you are organizing is just a transitional moment where you want to make sure everyone agrees, or if it’s a more long-term kind of involvement that we want to work into different phases of the project. Understanding this will also shape how you frame the discussions and activities. So again, those are the three key things one would want to keep in mind: Who would you have in the discussion? What will you be doing? How does it fit in the broader effort?
What does co-creation look like when people are from diverse or similar backgrounds and how do you moderate as a facilitator while being a part of the process?
I like to get my hands dirty! Start sketching, start creating with people as a way to build rapport, gain confidence and trust. That is my way of doing it.
Facilitation and co-creation go fairly well together. While facilitating, it is advantageous to have a few people on your side who are a little more primed than the others who have a better sense of the agenda to be facilitators with you. A lot of the projects we are discussing today have actually been co-designed and facilitated with Salil Parekh for instance, who’s been central to this process.
I don’t want to tell the audience and people what to do- I’m uncomfortable with taking the central stage and convincing people; so I like to get my hands dirty! Start sketching, start creating with people as a way to build rapport, gain confidence and trust. That is my way of doing it.
How is co-creating through and with digital technology different from doing it with people physically? What do you foresee as the future of co-creation?
There are a few different ways in which I’ve experimented with some degree of technology in co-creation contexts. One was a concept generator I created after getting frustrated by the number of design sprints that focused so much on making people feel creative and innovative when the outcomes felt so unimaginative. I have an article where I go into it with detail so I won’t dwell on it here.
Another way I’ve used it is for a project I brought up earlier called Digital Bunkers which I’ve been organizing with colleagues and friends. We use Fortnite, the video game, as our platform and Google slides as the starting point. What is really promising about using this craft-focused kind of game is the visual quality of the prototypes you get to create. Digital medium helps you think, change, and iterate on ideas, the feedback loop is much faster, you place items, shift them, rearrange them. You are not cutting the cardboard, getting some tape, etc. Everything happens instantaneously. The scale, too, is pretty surprising and useful, you may be joining from a phone or computer but the space is infinite, unbound by physical constraints, and you are intervening in it together as a group of collaborators.
This keeps everyone engaged. It can be a distraction also, that is possibly a pitfall. The key then is how to manage the feedback loop for everyone, leave time for participants to acquaint themselves with the medium but keep them on their toes with new prompts or challenges to make sure they don’t get absorbed by it.
I am now trying to see if the approach can be used to look at more sensitive or more strategic topics. Right now, I’m trying the Fortnite model on addressing nutrition insecurity for households in East Austin with the Community Resilience Trust. This is a big experiment. I don’t know if we’ll be able to make Fortnite useful in this context. But there it’s really important that the feedback loop or the value of the workshop not come from Fortnite, but from the knowledge that’s brought to the table, that those who are participating can right away, learn about interesting programs in other states or countries, and perhaps consider how to repurpose them for their own community.
This Digital Bunkers workshop was heavily influenced by the documentary Gaming in the real world which showcases different organizations that have turned to video games to help imagine and co-create more inclusive cities. And to see other co-creation workshops I’ve hosted you can visit some of these links: Museomix, Virtual Narratives, Pune2050, Eyemyth 2017.
Article by Komal Jain
Interview Host: Reshma Rose Thomas
Research and curation: Komal Jain, Thommen C Lukose
