SR. Design Research Studio
AUG. 28, 2017
Today’s conversation about systems and transition design got me thinking about how much the SoD does to spread its design philosophies and thinking. We talk about climate change and about designers playing a responsible role in our environment, but why isn’t composting required of everyone in the school? Why hasn’t sustainability or energy consumption played a larger role in our studio project assignments? One of the largest things I struggle with, as a designer and as a student, is being able to take these big ideas (pieces of wicked problems) and my own set of ethics and actually apply them to a more localized problem. I believe in finding new sources of energy, conserving our forests and oceans, making higher education accessible to everyone, and reconciling gender- and racially-driven wage disparities. So if I believe in all of these things, what is stopping me from doing something about them?
I think the largest issue that undergraduate designers face is our lack of motivation to branch out into other areas and schools, particularly those that do completely different kinds of study and thinking than we do. Understanding systems means understanding that there are various levels, pieces, and connections that map across space and time. So how are designers ever going to tackle systems-level problems if we don’t engage with other people and things that are involved? While leverage points are typically referenced in the Meadows reading as components of socio-economic systems, I saw parts of it connected to my own experience as a designer.
“A small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.”
(Meadows: Leverage Points)
For me, it’s the small interactions and the brief enlightening moments that help me better understand my larger role as a designer and the code of ethics I chose to follow. One of the most impactful moments for me since arriving at CMU was finally noticing and understanding socially-constructed gender roles and identity. One lecture of one class of one semester of one year at college forced me to shift my entire outlook on the world and begin to understand my place and responsibility within it. Knowing where I fall within this system was the first step in being able to break it down from a holarchic entity into those various levels, pieces, and connections mapped across space and time. I hope that this studio course will allow me to explore these things that matter to me, but that I haven’t yet explored deeply within the context of design research.
Takeaways from studio class:


References: Terry Irwin Presentation
Takeaways from Meadows reading:
You can’t solve all big problems with growth… often we push growth in the wrong direction.



A system just can’t respond to short-term changes when it has long-term delays.
References: Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows
SEPT. 4, 2017
This weekend in studio we were assigned Terry Irwin and Gideon Kossoff’s Mapping Ojai’s Water Shortage: A Workshop. We were also set the task of working in our groups on our assigned wicked problem. Many of the problems that we discussed in our group meetings had elements of the theory and methods included in the Ojai piece. Below are some of the main connections I found.

In the education system, access to good schools doesn’t just mean being close geographically to a good school. It means financial resources for the families and the district, transportation resources, familial and cultural expectations, etc. There are greater, wicked problems at play.

Access to quality education involves the students (affluent and working class), teachers, administrators, Board of Education, local activists and politicians, state govt., federal govt., etc. All of the stakeholder concerns and thoughts must be understood and addressed by all other stakeholders when tackling this wicked problem.

Iterations and updates to the problem at hand have to happen on various scales (local, global) and over long and short periods of time. We could implement one big change all at once in the education system or we could implement a couple small changes in a short period. But what will give us the most insight is to make incremental updates, wait and observe, and see what the result is before conceiving of our next approach.

There are so many different ideas for what kind of education is the “highest quality” education for everyone; the forms it could take are infinite. But the main goal is that we fulfill the needs of everyone and, in the process, work at higher, mid, and lower levels of the system to see where interventions can take place (Meadows, Neef).
Group Brainstorming

To Sum Up
I think we as a group have a hard time conceiving of every aspect of the problem, so we have decided to allocate a couple different areas to each person in the group. I think the biggest takeaway from our meeting and from the reading is that designers can’t fix anything just by conceiving of models and running workshops; this is a process that takes the involvement and commitment of all stakeholders. That being said, it’s overwhelming to think that we want and need to make an impact on a wicked problem that Pittsburgh and the world faces with our timeframe of a little over one semester. However, I am interested to see how we approach this and how we go about using community resources and tapping into community groups.
Key Terms
Wicked Problem- incomplete, contradicting, and continually changing parameters within a problem. “Resistance to resolution.”
Cosmopolitan Localism- reconception of entire lifestyles that are place-based and local, but cosmopolitan in their exchange of knowledge, skills, and technology.
Sustainable Living- ways of living that allow people to meet their personal needs and aspirations, while allowing current and future generations to do the same.
Socio-Technical System- system comprised of complex social infrastructures and human behaviors. Often out of sync with environmental systems and increasing dissonant among themselves (other socio-technical systems).
Key Models







Reference: Terry Irwin and Gideon Kossoff’s Mapping Ojai’s Water Shortage: A Workshop.
SEPT. 4, 2017
This weekend we read Fritjof Capra’s Deep Ecology- a New Paradigm. We also met with our teams to reframe and rewrite our wicked problem components on sticky notes. There are several obvious connections between our wicked problem and the reading such as having a non-isolated understanding of the issue, shifting away from typical perception of the problem, etc. However I’d like to explore the ways in which the reading does not connect with our design project.
Team Progress



To Sum Up
It was really challenging going back to each note that we made under our main categories of Access to Quality Education. We often found that many of the problems we wrote down were assumptions based in conception, stereotyping, and word of mouth. This weekend our goal was to flag everything that we didn’t have evidence for (yet), research more individually, and gain a clearer understanding of what the systemic features of our wicked problem were. For example, we found many connections between problems that fell under infrastructure and problems under political or social issues. This then got us thinking about what the specific “social” aspects of that infrastructure problem are and what “political” aspects existed as well.
Key Terms in Reading
Sustainable society- satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations.
Deep ecology (awareness)- understanding the complex interdependences of all phenomena and, as individuals and societies, we are all embedded in and rely upon the cyclical processes of nature; a fundamental belief that we are not separate from nature but in a network within nature with various connections and dependencies.
Ecofeminism- belief that the patriarchal domination of women by men is the prototype of all domination and exploitation in the various hierarchical, militaristic, capitalist, and industrialist forms; exploitation of nature has gone hand in hand with that of women; there is a natural kinship between feminism and ecology.
Reflecting
Despite the fact that I agreed with many of the philosophical methods of the author, such as shifting our perceptions and updating our worldviews to fit today’s needs, I have a hard time sympathizing with Capra. Below are some questions I wish were answered.
- What are some examples where this shift has actually been able to occur?
- Is there really much productivity in writing a philosophical paper on how we should target politicians and scientists for the pickle we are in?
- What are the actionable goals/tasks? We can’t just go tell politicians and scientists that their worldviews are outdated and if they don’t change them, they will inevitably cause our planet to fail.
- Capra is claiming that men, and people that rank high in our socio-political hierarchy will suffer an existential crisis once they are told that a shift in our value system must happen. OK, but how do we proceed?
I guess I am unsure what I’m supposed to take from this reading into my project other than:
- Seeing large systems as interconnected and interdependent
- Thinking about paradigm shifts within the context of education
- Consider how peoples’ values might have to shift to accommodate for this new, sustainable system
I’m not sure I’ve learned anything new, could teachers maybe help to synthesize information and draw more connections?
SEPT. 16, 2017
This weekend we worked in our groups to further develop the stakeholders map, understand their relations, and then choose one stakeholder. We then drew out their hopes/dreams/fears/concerns and wrote a script to embody these in a skit. For reading we were assigned Robert Jungk’s Future’s Workshops and Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging.
Group Progress




Reflecting on the Readings
The main takeaway I had from the Block reading is that if our communities and its inhabitants have a sense of belonging, both in an individual and community capacity, and a sense of structure within and among communities then they have the ability to transform communities to reach a desired future. From the Jungk reading, it’s that there is an untapped potential to rethink or conceive of desired futures among the silent majority. However, there is and has been no safe or impactful outlet for that creativity to wonder and thrive. We must consider the future that we want over the future we expect, otherwise we stay in the mindset of a negative and chaotic future state.
This phrase from the Jungk reading resonated most with how I’m understanding and working through this week’s challenges:
I had been expecting too much, without realizing that it takes quite some time for buried thoughts and hopes to emerge from the layers of suspicion and thwarted self-confidence.
As I was doing research into my particular stakeholder in education, Betsy DeVos, I started to realize all of the opposing mindsets that she and members of Congress were in just before her instatement as Secretary of Education. While DeVos often focused on the “flexibility” and “opportunities” that her plan would provide to students most in need (dreams and hopes), her interrogators were primarily concerned with the crushing effect that this plan would have on the future of public and higher education (concerns and fears). It is not surprising to me that this was the dominant pattern of conversation, however it got me thinking about which approach to an argument was more effective if at all. Which people resonate with more, no matter the political stance one takes or specific policies one supports.
Key Terms: Block
- Transformation of communities
- Accountability
- Structure
- Belonging
- Problem to possibility
- Fragmentation (cities and neighborhoods)
- Social capital
Key Concepts: Jungk


SEPT. 18, 2017
Haiku about My Life:
My life is normal
They said I could be the change
Did I do enough?
Haiku about My Community:
Homogenized life
I wish I was different
We all play a part
Reflecting on Dator Reading:
“The future” cannot be “predicted” because “the future” does not exist.
Dator poses the question, “What are the obligations of present generations towards future generations?” early in this reading. This question reminded me of the conversation we had in studio on Monday about accountability and responsibility. Stakeholders in a wicked problem (a futures problem) often choose to deflect the blame towards another party or group. But if no one holds themselves accountable then who will make things better for future generations? I thought it was interesting how Dator drew a connection between creativity and futurist practices. In a way, though, much of this article came off as “If you want to be a futurist you have to be able to understand and embody all of these amazing, creative, organized, analytical roles.” So it presents itself as a field guide for futurists and futures studies. I would be interested to try out some activities that reflect Dator’s model of being a futurist and working with others.
Key Terms:
- Preferred future
- Alternative future
- Convergent thinking (objective, formal)
- Edward De Bono’s Lateral Thinking
- Social inventor
“The most likely future” is often one of the least likely futures.
SEPT. 22 2017
Though much of Stuart’s lecture and slides were a recap of our studies in Futures, I still found them useful to beginning to think about alternative futures for our wicked problems. It was really helpful to actually read the Four Futures for Hawaii 2050, in addition to watching the scenarios in Futures class.The lectures/reading started to get me to think about just how much local factors play into the future of the area; it’s not all about global factors, though they may play a significant part.
I found the way that the article approaches thinking about the future of Hawaii very useful, specifically with thinking about the economic driver in the area now and how that might evolve or completely change in 30+ years. For Hawaii it’s currently tourism, for Pittsburgh it’s UPMC, PNC, Heinz, and Gates. This was a good entry point for us into conversations like:
- What does healthcare look like? What’s the trajectory of it right now?
- Who is funding and supporting most of the city’s infrastructure?
- There’s a push to building a tech hub in Pittsburgh, how does that look in 30 years? What factors lead it to this point?
Our approach to the transformative alternative futures scenario was not entirely positive nor entirely negative. It was clear that all futures have “good” and “bad” aspects no matter how you look at them.

SEPT. 30 2017
This week we reflected on our Alternative Futures Scenarios based on Dator’s 4 Possible Futures (collapse, transform, grow, discipline). We then conceived of an ‘ideal future’ in regards to our group’s area of Education. Using the 3 Horizons Model we thought about the seeds of change occurring now, what stages of transition need to occur to get us to an ideal future, and what will have to be removed or altered drastically to achieve the future we want. We then used this model as a basis for our 2017–2050 timeline.

One easier way to understand the model that was mentioned in the Wahl reading is H1 as ‘business as usual,’ H2 as the ‘world in transition,’ and H3 as a ‘viable world.’ Some key concepts I got from the reading were future consciousness as a means of being able to think about these horizons, disruptive innovation, and cultural maturity which helps me to understand that the future is not a tangible thing; by the time we reach the third horizon it will have become the first and thus the horizons continue to pop up. In the Porritt reading, it was nice to be able to see how one might pair images with writing about the future; the events that were listed clearly had traces of today’s world and issues, it was just a way of laying these ideas out that I hadn’t really seen before. Reading and understanding their process of creating “the history of the future” was somewhat useful to thinking about how we might connect different events and ideas in our timeline of 2017–2050. Below is our first pass at the “Unfolding a Vision: Three Horizons” activity.

Our group really enjoyed doing this exercise together; it helped to clarify how we see some of the concepts we threw around in our alternative futures and ideal futures exercises. However, it became a bit challenging to translate some of these onto our timeline since many of them were not very concrete nor were they grounded in policy/world events.


Pulling the timeline together was pretty challenging mostly because we had a hard time deciding what would feasibly be a bill that could be proposed or passed, what the catalysts would be in change, and how granular we should be in detail. However making the artifacts definitely influenced how we saw the progression of events going.
Below are a couple of spreads from our PTA Magazine of 2050:




This activity was really fun for our group because we each got to apply some of the things we love designing to our collection of artifacts. Lily and I wrote articles that would appear in a PTA Magazine of 2050. Deb painted a scene of what outdoor learning might look like and designed the layout and spreads for our copy. Max put together an academic calendar that highlighted some of the events and class schedules of students in school. Deniz created diagrams showing the change in trends of different stats such as graduation rates, green space per sq. meter on school property, etc. from 2017–2050. Benny created a “back to school” kit that a kid might purchase or be given, emphasizing the learning styles and methods we believe will be applied down the line.
OCT. 6 2017
This week we reflected on our progress with the 2017–2050 timeline from over the weekend, went in depth into the “New Ways of Designing” piece of the transition design diagram, discussed Max Neef’s Theory of Needs, did an individual assignment on an object within the context of those needs, and began to create a mapping of our area of Education with the “Defining Possible Interventions and Consequences” exercise.





I think I could’ve used imagery more effectively in these. The key is also a little overwhelming so it’s not really reading at first glance. It was helpful to do the affinity clustering for myself though. I could’ve put more emphasis on the inhibitors rather than the negative consequences of these things.
When looking at other people’s interpretations of the assignment I was glad that I acknowledged the consequences of the object/experience that wasn’t supposed to have too many. I feel like many of the examples that were included did have negative repercussions but they just ignored them because that would’ve make the assignment more challenging.
OCT. 14 2017
This past week in studio we had a service design lecture and activity guided by Molly. It was pretty challenging to come up with a lot of different ideas that focused on new ways of sharing music. On Wednesday we presented our Interventions and Possible Consequences maps and reflected on how we saw the integration of a lot of different pieces of our areas of study (i.e. Education, Crime, Gentrification, etc.) play into the hypothetical interventions we came up with.

Our idea for the music sharing model was to have pop up shops where people can visit all across the city and listen to music, meet people with the same tastes, and then go on a ‘scavenger hunt’ of sorts to collect different songs composed by local artists across the city (kind of like Pokemon Go or geocaching).


After Molly’s visit to studio we had a lecture and exercise given to us by Cheryl Dahle who started the organization Future of Fish. We then played with serveral two by two matrices that helped us to think about the scale of social innovation, the kinds of stakeholders involved, etc. when we were trying to understand the issues with fishing in Indonesia.

OCT. 19 2017
As I’m working on the Service Design/Social Innovation sticky notes activity I’m starting to realize that most of the service design interventions I’m coming up with are actually social innovation interventions; the value accrued from the solutions is on a larger scale than just the individual. However, I think you could look at most of these concepts on both sides.

OCT. 29 2017
Last week our group chose several interventions within Education and across areas that we thought were interesting.


I was really interested by a lot of the different project ideas that different groups came up with. Ultimately Lily and I teamed up with Sharon and Max from the Crime group to work on an intervention around re-entry, employment of ex-cons, and connecting them to different local businesses and organizations so they have a lower chance of going back to jail.


Below is some brainstorming that our entire group (Sharon, Max, Lily, and I) did over the weekend together:
Identify Problems that Lead to Interventions:
- Inability of continuing education after suspension
- No formal higher education
- People with lack of accessibility to education
- Unstable familial/friend/social network
- Recidivism
- Criminals often can’t escape toxic cycle of crime
- Illiteracy as a barrier to education
List Research Questions: What do you want to learn?
Resources for ex-cons Pittsburgh: https://pa211sw.communityos.org/zf/taxonomy/detail/id/634762
Current Infrastructure for Adult Education
- What are resources for adults to get education and what are they learning?
- Why are current adult education/re-entry programs not effective and don’t have a large reach of participants?
- Does value of education come from accreditation of the education itself?
- Why have the adult education laws not been updated to accommodate current change in the educational/social landscape?
- Why aren’t current programs successful?
Adult Education Theories
- What are leading theories and methodologies behind Adult Education?
- What are motivating factors for adults to get education?
- What are the goals of existing adult education programs and are those goals understood by the participants/learners?
- What mode of education is most conducive to employment for adults?
- What are societal benefits of adult education?
EDUCATION FOR EMPLOYMENT -
- Adult literacy?
- Why are disenfranchised not being employed? (stigma, literacy, social skills, etc.)
- Social competency?
- What aspects of education immediately benefit hireability? What aspects of education benefit hireability in concrete ways? What aspects benefit in abstract ways?
- Are we focusing on education in terms of degree based education/certification or project/portfolio based skillsets?
- What is the relationship between educational institutions and inmates?
- Why aren’t more inmates using available resources?
Define Design Opportunities:
- Shifting existing systems and connecting them to make them more effective
- Platforms/infrastructure for ease of accessibility to education
- Increase effectiveness of education for employment for age 16–26
External Research We’ve Done:
Janeen Christ ~ Western Region Reentry Administrator ~ 717–728–4965
http://www.cor.pa.gov/General%20Information/Reentry/Pages/default.aspx


Reflection:
I think our group is pretty comfortable with the problem space we’ve chosen to take on, however we’re having a hard time conceiving of what an intervention might look like. Many of the options I’m coming up with on my own would require extensive investigation and field research. How do we strike a balance so that we’re learning something but can also produce a useful or interesting output?
OCT. 31 2017
Our group has been thinking about the different ways to approach a potential “intervention” for the are of Education for Employment with a focus demographic of ex cons ages 18–26. I think we are still confused as to how we can bridge the gap between what we’ve already done, what we have been able to achieve in our earlier studios (skill-wise), and what we are trying to do now.



NOV. 1, 2017
Today in studio we chatted with Stacie about our next steps and how to get more specific in our problem space. We then started to think about issues and questions we had surrounding the persona we were exploring (left green) and their path towards employment (i.e. how they’re getting there and what factors influence this).


NOV. 3, 2017
Today we all came in with ideas for potential interventions and decided to re-work our problem space. We are no longer dealing with “education for employment” as a focal area, but rather looking at the question of:
How will re-conceptualizing a prison environment aid in reducing recidivism for first time offenders?
I think we’re a lot more comfortable with conceiving of potential interventions and artifacts for looking at this area, specifically because it is now confined to a particular space and we have goals in mind. We took a case study we found in Norway on creating environments of therapy and rehabilitation within prisons rather than environments of punishment and discipline as inspiration. The resources, structure, interpersonal relationships, etc. within the prison environment have proven to have a tremendous effect on prison climate as well as recidivism rates so we felt it would be a great project for us to re-conceive of a new structure for jails in the U.S. that take essential principles and models that we’ve found from international case studies.


Our plan moving forward for the weekend is to look into the areas that we’ve expressed interest in (for me it’s the soft skills that inmates develop, such as interpersonal skills, teamwork, work ethic, etc.). This will probably include programs that are currently already in place, seeds of change, things that could be useful to have, things that are done for this internationally, and so on. We will then combine all of this research that we’ve done and place it onto a 3 horizons model. We think this will help us think about how our intervention could be different and how we push a lot of these “seeds of change” programs that are happening currently.
NOV. 6, 2017



From here, I think the area that I want to look into is a type of mentorship program between lifelong inmates and first time offenders who are of a younger age. If there are spaces for both groups to develop their interpersonal, self-respect, and communication skills this could be a great way to have influence in the areas of recidivism as well as a potential for change in the culture within prison (i.e. respect, dignity, reduced violence, suicide prevention, etc.)
Today in class we will be creating a 3 Horizons model to explore what we’re finding right now in our research spaces and what we could do as a team to provide new areas for possibility of change and an exploration of new methods and program structures.




NOV. 12, 2017
This week/weekend we worked on developing our activity for people to interact with tomorrow in class. We are setting constraints on the game, creating character setting guidelines, and physically modeling out components so that people can try out different configurations of prison design. We still need to work on solidifying our ‘pitch,’ for lack of a better term. If we have a solid understanding of the goals we’re trying to achieve through our activity, we’ll have an easier time pulling it all together.


I think we’re interested to see how biases and assumptions come out when people try our activity. I’m also interested to see if people will have so many questions about prison and components of the activity that they can’t complete it in seven minutes. But I’m excited to see what the outcomes are, and we will be filming them using it in order to make informed revisions for our next iteration.
