Design Research Studio

08.28.17

I remember when I was freshmen design student, especially first semester. I was blown out because what this school talks about design. It was so different from what I had considered about design before. I was same as other non-design people who may never consider designer as problem-solver. Design is so much broader than what I had thought. Its spectrum depends on how designers define what design is and their role as designer.

In Terry’s lecture, I learned that transition design can empower and expand designer’s role. I think it invites designers to perform various roles with multiple disciplines in wider timeline to help solving wicked problem.

Personally, it was interesting that transition design takes a long-term and slow solution. In these days, everything is getting faster and efficient. people wants Instant gratification through social media. Internet users is never be patient when it feels slow. The slow direction of transition design might oppose to this present trend. But, if transition design is considered in the context of natural environment, it would be okay to be slow as a lot of things in nature changes slowly and gradually.

09.18.17

Haiku: A Day in my life in 2047

I am fifty-three
Still considered as young girl
we live longer life

Reflection to Stakeholder research, persona, and skit

During the past few weeks, I learned about the concept of wicked problem and dig into that problem that I got assigned (Housing). It was bit challenging to push myself being interested in the housing problem of Pittsburgh. To be honest, it was none of my business before I have this class. I have never thought about this issue before because I have not recognized what issues of housing are happening in Pittsburgh. Just few weeks ago, I realized the situation is so awful. But, still I cannot engage in fully. There is such difference between the way I treat my own problem and this assigned problem.

I thought the stakeholder activities (such as stakeholder map, fear and concern, building persona, making possible scenario of skit) helped have more empathetic view on them. I need to put myself on their shoes to carry out these tasks. Then, I tried to throw several questions to myself and assume what their answer might be. It helped get to know and understand who they are and how they thought. After these processes, I felt more connected with the stakeholder group. Probably, meeting with real stakeholder in person is the one of the good ways to take a next step?

09.20.17

Reflection to lecture about future

Three Different Modes of Future

There are multiple images of future. If future is represented as just single image, it should be wrong. There are three different modes of future: possible, probable and preferable. I redrew the maps of three different future modes. I believe that there are some common area that preferable and other modes of future can share. In the context of sustainability, I wonder how can we bring preferable future more close to possible and probable area. So sustainably preferred futures are envisioned more close to happen.

Question:

• What factors make ‘possible’ future more ‘probable’?
• How can design help draw preferable future to probable and preferable future?

09.27.17

Reflection to ideal future scenario

In group discussion about ideal future, we came up with a variety of interesting images of idealistic future. Some stuffs from others were something that I wish to be true but some were just never thought of before. It was fun and inspiring to imagine about the ideal future in group.

We gathered everyone’s idea and created one ideal future scenario. Our group’s ideal future seems that all the problem existed in this world is resolved. It’s incredible. But, I am not sure about our imagined ideal future really means ideal to future generation. Even if the current problems we know are all resolved, there will be not anymore problem in this world at all? I think the thing we do in order to solve the problem can have side effects and create another problem.

I realized that overall class has many common ideas about ideal future. However, I think it doesn’t mean that these common ideas are the most desirable future. Because the reason why we have so many common ideas is that we are all students of Carnegie Mellon University, especially majoring in design. Other people outside CMU or just at least outside of school of Design probably have different ideal images of future. We might be confined in our own bubble? It would be nice if we know about what the ideal future does mean to our stakeholders.

10.02.17

Timeline for Future Change

Some thoughts after review all the timeline:

• Color coding is a good way to break down and organize all the information. But, it is necessary to have keys.
• A lot of timelines have no title. I sometimes have to find which problem this timeline is for.
• In many cases, it is difficult to find where I should start.
• It is helpful to put images together with the text for understanding immediately.
• Good handwritting is actually matter. More readable
• Larger text makes easier. I can see both whole structure and several details at once.
• Suggest ice breaker or interesting hooks in the beginning so let audience know where to start

Pittsburgh Affordable Housing 2050

Lifestyle Lecture by Terry

class note

9 Needs are same for everyone

• Subsistence (shelter, food, work)
• Protection (healthcare, insurance, investments)
• Affection (friendship, partnership, family)
• Understanding (education, meditation, group membership)
• Participation
• Idleness
• Creation
• Identity
• Freedom

Synergistic Satisfier: To kill two birds in one stone

• simultaneously meet multiple needs
• can only happen within the context of entire lifestyles

Everyday and Lifestyles

• emerges as people strive to satisfy their material and non-material needs
• The Domains of Everyday Life(Scale): Household, Neighborhood, City, Region, Planet

Re-conception of entire lifestyle?

10.04.17

Needs and Consequences Assignment

First, I got this assignment I thought about objects, services or experiences that I often uses. Pinterest is one thing among them. I don’t really see consequences that undermine need yet in Pinterest (maybe certain undermining consequences can happen in the future). Second one is a thing that undermines our basic needs. So it might satisfy some needs but also undermines other needs. I got gun ownership for second one.

In class, I realized that everybody interprets assignment and needs in own individual way. Even if we always see and hear same thing, what we come up are so different. The 9 needs of Manfred Max Neef is based on that we human all has same fundamental needs. It is interesting that we are all same but different. We have same genuine needs but our interpretation and perception for those needs are different.

10.09.17

Service Design Lecture

class note

What is service design?

• There are front stage and backstage (seen and might not seen)
• Touchpoint — where you interact with service?
• Services are stakeholder-centered

How designing for service is different than designing for products?

• Single thing vs. many different touch points
• service design — the object of design is experiences over time

Service Design Exercise

Exercise to design service for sharing music

10.11.17

Design Intervention for each area

Overlap? synergie?

Education

STEM to STEAM (include art)

qualitative standardized test

pop up activity to teach skill

environmental

intership opportunity

lifelong Learning

Expose to greater ecological system

pop-up shop

• after-school workshops about skills — life promote
• Duolingo cultural exchange program
• real-world skill

Participation to education, sparks in their interest, community

Water

Testing pollution level of water: awareness

social media

New University Major

Blue City Campaign

• water is fundamental right
• incorporate with other organizations

Underwater tunnel

• can see water quality as it getting changed

Water Testing startup

citizens tools to detect pollutants

Water visibility

• water filter

Visualize/test quality of water/shows water quality real-time

Crime

Scope

• disagreement with justice system
• re-introduction of ex-cons

Treatment truck

• accessibility to rehab: social aspects are missing
• A Helping hand: platform that neighbors needs, tight-community
• Panel: successful ex-crimnial
• middle/highschool student — creative opportunity
• PGH scouts: safe space after school for children

Air

result of human activity

Activity sharing app: social interaction, highlight green practice of neighborhood

Repurposing land: unused lots converted into community squares

Community garden education: for children

Bag recycle service: new plastic production has halted, provide only reusable bag

recycled plastic fiber: fabric by recycled plastic products

Steps for Rewards: encourages and incentivize green travel, including walking and biking, real-life reward is given like discount promotion

Air quality sensor: monitors what kinds of pollutants going on in their homes

Food

1. Nutrition + Food Education

• reconstruct food pyramid
• garden to teach in school

2. Crowdsourced autonomous food rescue

• Identity as Volunteer

3. Awareness of Corporations

• aware of which farmer is connected

4. The Garden Initiatives

• DIY community Gardens
• learning and interacting through garden ecosystems
• elderly volunteers can facilitates

5. Community Compost Service

• Divert waste from landfill
• Support local
• Participate in community

6. On-demand Pantry Delivery

• Food Dessert
• distance
• Most-needed one

Gentrification

• Begins from conflict b/w newcomers vs. local residents
• Subsistence
• Participation
• Identity: part of community
• understanding

1. Mixed housing: higher / lower income lives together
2. Developers opens to residents: lack of communication
3. Neighborhood blockout system:
4. Education system in high-school: participatory and acting as a citizens
5. Community Mural: interact, voice of residents
6. When developers destroy, they provides housing to residents

Transportation

• Increasing natural disaster

1. lifeday — governement sancation holiday
2. education system — access to everybody, lifestyle change
3. community center — sharing economy, community garden, sharing vehicle
4. service to find carpoolers in neighborhoods
5. Community based transportation

• Consequences? — how these interventions impacts on us and earth

Overall

• already existed solution?
• working well not original
• indirectly related to given problem
• already part of another country, how to transfer?
• long-term oriented intervention

10.16.17

Lecture about Social Innovation Design

class note

“to Society as whole”

Social innovation as service

• The Life Program: Wigan, England

Social innovation as product

• D Light, Gira Dora

Systems Design

• Transition design requires layers of change
• Future of Fish
• Mindsets: fish is endless -> fish is precious
• values on sustainability

Who is your client?

• foundation/user population?

Which stakeholder view takes precedence?

Who gives you permission or authority to design for social good?

Cultural context: Is there a place for technology within this community

• Identity, values, mindset
• Relationship and exchange
• Learning pattern
• fiscal community
• trade tools
• mobile device
• usability

10.18.17

Summary of past half semester

Design Approach

• Not creating solution, designing intervention means of asking questions
• *design intervention: based on hypothesis
• *short-term victory vs. long-term vision

Frame Wicked Problems

• Diagram wicked problems to investigate levels of scale and interconnection among problems using a STEEP framework
• To consider a new mindset/posture towards design

Map Stakeholder relations

• Hypothesize stakeholders’ concerns/fears + hopes/aspirations to gain a broader worldview of the situation
• Create triad map to discover relationships of harmony and opposition

Imagine Future

• Explore possible, probable, and preferred futures
• Build Future Scenario

Develop Visions

• Create Three horizons diagram
• Construct Timeline

Explore Theories of Change

• Establish everyday life as the context for interventions
• Explore theory of human needs

Define Design Opportunities

• Create Scenario, blueprint, touchpoint, front/back-end activities
• Map ideas to four square model + social design pathways matrix

Mapping Service/Social Innovation Intervention

It is helpful to see the relationship between other problems. I can see some intervention tackles multiple problems. I thought these interventions have much potential. During the overall class reviewing session, I realized the field that I thought not related to the intervention could be related (I never thought that air quality is related to our Ai city planning intervention). I think more research and conversation about each different wicked problem could help find relationship between problems and interventions and add more potentials to our intervention.

10.25.17

Forming a group in conversations

It is nice to talk to people who have researched about different Wicked Problem. I realized that even if I and other person are interested in same intervention, each of us could have different directions and perspectives. We have our own expectation about things might happen in this intervention. So, I think, when we try to find a group in the conversations, it is important how much we can adjust our ideas to other’s. Because I can see that it would be entirely different project depending on where we heading toward. At the end, I decide to stay on the housing.

10.30.17

Beginning of Section 8+ Project

We wrote out our first version plan moving forward and shared our findings with professors to clarify our thinking and approach. We came up with the following investigation question:

Territory

• What was it meant to solve for?
• Who made it and why?
• What’s wrong with it?
• What are cell the the forms it takes/where does it live?
• Who can’t/won’t wait use it?
• What’s the larger issue that leads to discriminatory voucher programs and evictions?

Service

• What problem does happen in each process of current system?
• What is current image/definition of section 8 for each stakeholder? How do they feel about it?
• What is it like to deal with the sheer quantity of applicants for policy makers? What make it inefficient?
• Why do eligibility checks for a spot on the waitlist take so long?
• What services exist to alleviate more immediate needs? (impending eviction/homelessness)

Social innovation

• How can we lower the barrier for low income residents to access a housing?

We mostly stumbled with how we can design for both the short-term and the long-term. We felt tat the immediate action we could take is to improve the user-interface of Section 8’s voucher program, but our team agrees that this only a surface level intervention that doesn’t address the greater systemic issue of gentrification. We found it helpful to think about how our deliverable could be an

- immersive experience in a future scenario

- role playing

- timeline comparison between 2050, 2050, and now

- infographic narrative

Stuart helped us think about how we can design artifacts from the future just like props from a movie set

11.01.17

Meeting With Gentrification Group

Our housing group decided to meet gentrification group because those two problems are related. Both of group shared knowledges so far we have researched. Gentrification group has done a lot of research about mortgage. And our group researched about Section 8. We learned a lot about mortgages and difference between renting and home ownership.

We, housing + gentrification group creates a persona Bob who is looking for affordable housing. We realized that each intervention can affect to different stages of Bob’s life. We thought about a narrative where Bob could begin in our Section 8 redesign program and move forward to the other team’s community investment plan for Bob to own a home. If there system fails, Bob could revert back to our renting system.

Two Different Stages of Life

• Too many knowledges that I do not know. What do I need to know for designing an effective solution. and How far?

Further Research

• Huge problem of housing is *stigma that cannot be solved right away.

11.06.17

Backcasting/Forecasting

We still try to struggling with the design for both short-term and long-term. Today’s class was to continue flushing out narratives. We identified that our final deliverable should include

1. section 8 interface improvement

2. partnership between pittsburgh and an organization to address funding and shortage of houses

3. jump to a future vision where stigma has been addressed

11.08.17

Finalizing our Research Question

Today we worked on our 2050 VISION. We took another stab our at research question:

If we can address the stigma surrounding section 8 where low-income tenants are discriminated against for their race and socioeconomic status, can we tangibly increase the baseline for standards of quality living?

Our 2050 vision is for Pittsburgh to represent the highest possible standard of living for low-income residents, to use design as a medium to end discriminatory stigma against residents seeking affordable housing.

Our sub research questions include:

1. What are appopriate forms of quality living for section 8 low-income tenants?

2. How can creating an immersive experience positioned in 2050 help specific and targeted stakeholder groups change their views surrounding Section 8?

3. Why is design an effective medium to end stigma?

4. What happens after? what are the consequences?

Our making plan:

- website that houses the Section 8 service (immersive experience, role-playing)

- poster that communicates the narrative

How do we know if we have addressed this question? How do we know if we are successful?

- Ideally we can show our project to stakeholders in positions of influence. This group includes landlords, city mayor, city planning director, professors conducting academia research etc.

- Depending on the responses and reactions, which can take forms in questions, comments, critiques, etc. we can gauge how successfully design can be used to impact their perspectives on low-income residents.

Our stakeholders include

- tenants

- future tenants

- landlords

- policy makers

- homeless people

- developers

- non-tenant pittsburgh residents

- low-income residents

11.15.17

Our group re-aligned in articulating our service design by thinking about how it could be a research tool. We flushed out a service that equally includes the perspective of a landlord with a landlord package. We want to answer the question, why do landlords accept or deny section 8 tenants? Would a landlord package that includes a notification that a landlord’s property has been suggested to a section 8 tenant improve the chances that a section 8 tenant would be accepted?

Service Blue Print

11.20.17

Talking with Stacie, we realized that it was more important to create a research tool that probes if landlords hold a stigma against section 8 tenants rather than testing a new design that would improve a user’s experience applying for section 8.

11.27.17

We sketched out the system that our research tool will be situated in. It was important to sketch this out so we can see where the new landlord package is and the stakeholders involved.

11.29.17

We learned that it’s important to be careful in framing our project as an activity and not a game. We will frame our project as a first pass in designing a possible research tool that will help us discover how and why people make decisions, based on contextual, situational information, and personal biases. Depending on how the science fair goes, we’ll see whether this is an effective tool to bring to real landlords and if it will inform a appropriate design intervention if we all continued to work together.

12.04.17

We brought in all our prototypes to see the feel of our activity. We determined the revisions we need to make, namely a visual brand that ties everything together. We divided up tasks.