Design Research Studio
Fall 2017 — Stacie Rohrbach, Stuart Candy, Terry Irwin
Process documentation for class that will cover Service Design, Social Innovation, and Transition Design. Current challenge: Public schools curriculum shift to focus on sustainable thinking

Learning Goals
- Grasp the basis of designing for services and social innovation
- Become familiar with the nature and scope of transition design
- Investigate the anatomy and dynamics of complex, wicked problems
- Recognize inherent relationships/dependencies of components in a system
- Assemble and utilize a toolkit, drawing on methods and approaches in/outside of design
- Develop and use theory as a criteria for conceiving appropriate solutions
- Articulate speculative concepts via foresight approaches including backcasting
- Adopt both expert and non-expert postures, as appropriate
8.28.17 — First Day (Lecture With Terry)
- *In Progress***
From Lecture
- “Learning to dance with uncertainty”
- “Peak Oil” — A society reaches Peak Oil when it doesn’t have enough oil to extract oil from underground
Reading Notes
Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows
- “Leverage Point” — Place in a system where a small shift can have a big effect
- Low income housing, or “the projects” don’t help if there’s not job creation as well
- “State of a system” — measurable elements of a system
- Vocab — Inflows and outflows — Metaphor: Bathtub with water
- Negative feedback loops — trying to fill up to a desired level, or trying to avoid an overflow
- Negative vs. positive feedback loops. Positive feedback loop: The more people are born, the more people have babies.
- Transcending paradigms — what buddhists call “Enlightenment” Being meta and realizing that your paradigm is limited in its understanding, and that that realization is in itself a paradigm
- Realizing that no paradigm is correct can help you realize that you can subscribe to any paradigm in order to achieve your goal
- Real-life applications of paradigm transcendence: Beat addiction, speak their true mind to authority,
“You have to
work at it, whether that means rigorously
analyzing a system or rigorously casting off
your own paradigms and throwing yourself
into the humility of Not Knowing.”
Reflection: Systems and Terry’s Lecture
This all takes me back to a class I took last year, Design for Social Innovation: Facilitating Conversation with Marc Rettig and Hannah Du Plessis. We discussed the nature of complex systems — chaos theory, emergence, complexity vs. dynamicism, and more. However, what was most effect for my learning was the class role-playing a complex system on the lawn outside Margaret Morrison. In this exercise, we picked two other classmates, and move around the lawn while maintaining the same distance away from our chosen classmates. It’s like the fish analogy from Terry’s lecture — a fish has no alternate reference point, so they don’t know they’re in water. The people in our game knew the rules, but from the perspective of someone walking out of the business school across the street, we looked like we were a drunk cult. This kind of hands-on learning brought systems thinking to life for me.
I spent the summer in a complex system called New York City. Some people complain about the amount of people chaos and dirtiness, but I find it energizing. Street performers have the power to stop foot traffic, creating waves in the system. The personalities of different neighborhoods. The relationships between dog owners and dogs at dog parks. And the constant inflows and outflows of people on the subway.
During my internship, I tackled another complex system — healthcare. The amount of stakeholders, the conflicting goals and agendas, and the socio-technical ramifications of outdated medical portals — it’s a mess. But that’s why we need to get to work.
I was first drawn to design by discrete things. The immaculate design of the classic Coca bottle. The album cover for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The BMW 3 Series and its cat-like stance. More recently, I’ve started paying attention to relationships between things. In other words, systems. I hope to keep developing my systems thinking skills this semester.
9.5.17 —Beginning of Preliminary Research
Affordable and Quality Produce
Map http://youarehere.cc/s/grocery/pittsburgh#/description
Entry-point: Food deserts
https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/food-deserts/
- Larimer is a big food desert, 47% of people are “food insecure”
- Vocab “food insecurity”
- I have a friend named James who has studied this a lot, should reach out to him for resources
- Even when there’s lots of restaurants, like in Oakland, that’s still not affordable, so Oakland still count as a food desert
- Existing interventions: Food Pantry/Bank — they’re different Food bank near Kennywood, one food bank for Kennywood? provider for food pantries. https://www.pittsburghfoodbank.org/resources/about-hunger/
- Sometimes these are interview-only, more demand in the Fall
- They’re volunteer-run, have trouble paying for utilities
- Nowadays less canned goods, more farm fresh, which is healthier but spoils faster
- Squirrel Hill Community Food Pantry is special — need to visit
- Special because you get a shopping list based on household size
- 412 food rescue: they have an app — if there’s leftover food in restaurant, volunteers come and deliver it — priority is spreading it out to all p[antires
- Northside food pantry — visit
- Food stamps
9.5.17 — Notes: Terry Irwin Ojai Reading
- Ojai, California, Water shortage–A wicked problem
- Related to other wicked problems like energy, climate change, dominant for-profit paradigm
- Part of general trend across SoCal
- Low water levels in Lake Casitas
- Residents are accustomed to a certain way of life (watering lawns and cars), need to change
- Challenge–getting residents to imagine themselves living a sustainable lifestyle. Designers can use storyboards to help that look at what daily life would be like at different scales, from home to community
- Backcasting–The Masdar 2032 exercise that Peter took us through in Futures
- Wicked problems are super long-term, which goes against American paradigms. Terry recognizes that this will be a decades-long process.
- Need to maintain perspective like that of an acupuncturist (I love this metaphor): Observe shifts after inserting needles, trading the problem →solution paradigm for a more continuous, iterative approach
- Workshops help reveal conflicting agendas/find common ground, good way to bring people together to conduct some primary research instead of having to knock on a million doors
- Ojai Workshop: Create a problem map. Investigate stakeholder relations (stakeholder map?)–inclusive interventions.
9.5.17 — Reflection: Terry Irwin Ojai Reading + Project Research
Reading the Ojai case study makes our new project a little easier to understand. However, the water shortage and food insecurity are different. The water shortage, although it required government and larger entities to change, puts a lot of responsible on the choices of the residents. In Pittsburgh, food deserts/food insecurity are not created by everday people/residents. For example, the root cause is entangled in history; when the steel industry left in the 80s, Kroger, a grocery chain that had a large presence, left. In present day Pittsburgh, grocery stores like Giant Eagle need to compete with big stores like Walmart. One strategy is to consolidate into bigger stores, meaning less smaller stores. In addition, there’s the City of Pittsburgh and their transportation policy — they’ve downsized the bus routes, which makes it harder for low-income residents to get to the grocery store. For our wicked problem, it seems like the responsibility for change rests more on bigger organizations than everyday people.
There are residents in Pittsburgh who are already making interventions. Volunteers run food pantries that work a community, local level. When the government (food stamps and transportation) and big business fail you, you have to come up with your own solutions. This is a bottom-up intervention. My team plans to visit some of these, including Northside Pantry, to understand how Pittsburgh residents are intervening.
We’re also interested in how restaurants can help. There’s a service called 412 Food Rescue that has volunteers come to restaurants to “rescue” wasted food and redistributes it to different food pantries. This is relevant to food deserts close to campus, like Oakland. There are lots of restaurants, but little grocery stores. Interventions exist to help the flow of food around Pittsburgh. Where do we fit in?
9.6.17 — Class
- Looking at other groups research
- Missing: environmental consequences
- Politics
- Physical infrastructure (city is aging)
- Need more questions
- Timeline (for both ourselves and other people
- Self awareness one group citing their lack of personal experiences
- How to write a post it note: need to write post it’s that are framed in a way that outside people can understand. Be more specific.
- Not many of us listened to the teachers instructions — there’s positives and negatives to that.
- Matrix/vein diagram- showing relationships + overlaps of things
- There’s no clear entryway in a wicked problem.
- Design challenge: creating a readable visual of a complex system
- Affinity clustering — putting up stuff and creating categories vs creating categories/taxonomies then filling them up
- Friend James who has studied this a lot. His angle is more civic engagement and community service. He’s out there at food pantries, More integrated. What questions should I ask him.
- Look back at service design tools to see how else we can make meaning from this for others value flow
- “Leverage points”
- Themes are really big suggestions. Archetypes that can be explored in any place.
- From Design for Social Innovation class: in countries with heavy UNICEF presence or where Toms donates shoes, destroys local economy because they can’t compete with free
- Do food pantries and free food discourage people from starting their own grocery ?
9.7.17 — Conversation with James Crnkovich, CMU Civil Engineering student + member of PACE, Food insecurity scholar
I sat down with my friend James, who, as part of CMU’s civic engagement organization, PACE (Partners Allied in Civic Engagement) tackled food insecurity as the yearly for the organization 2 years ago. He’s worked at a number of Urban Farms and Food Pantries. I was hoping he could help guide our research and maybe help us avoid some dead ends.
- Discussed social aspects. Brought up the question, How do we change the perception of charity/handouts? There’s a stigma around people getting free things. Changing the perception about those who are food insecure. Our group has already been exploring this area.
- There’s a perception among some people of privilege that those on welfare abuse it.
- Attitudes of the poor towards being poor — Mark Twain quote about socialism…see themselves as not poor, but temporarily embarrassed millionaire
- Books: Stuffed & Starved, also the work of Miriam Messle
- Food Education: Sq. Hill food pantry has nutritionist on-staff (possibly a partnership with Pitt) to help guide people in the right direction at the pantry. Some don’t know the most healthy options. Or don’t know how to cook certain things that might be healthier options.
- Incentive for Government to intervene, especially in schools with free or reduced breakfast and lunch — Poor nutrition leads to poor test scores. In current system (NCLB), poor test scores lead to reduced funding and higher teacher turnover.
- Poor nutrition leads to more ER visits. Often, those who are food insecure use the ER as the doctor’s office. Without Health Insurance, there’s no preventative care. Will only go to ER if it gets really bad, and then it’s very expensive and more taxpayer burden.
- Urban Farms: James sees them as a possible waste of urban space. Considering there’s so many farms 5–10 miles away all around Pittsburgh.
- Grow PGH. Produce 2 People (Free Farmer’s market!)
- Fit Farms helps rehabilitate and retrain ex-prisoners. Uses growing food to improve community or for learning purposes. “social bedrock for the community”
- WW2 Victory Gardens: Grow in backyard to send to war effort. Not financially efficient, but raised morale.
- No good source on this — but business-related, allegedly Wegmanns and Giant Eagle have agreement not to encroach on each other’s territory.
- Business: Common business sense that Grocery stores don’t want to set up in places that won’t be profitable for them.
- School lunch programs — Free breakfast + lunch
- The issue with repurposing food waste: Liability. Restaurants are held accountable if people get sick. Needs to be guaranteed quality. Restaurant business is already tough (high turnover rate, not very profitable).
- Aldi has good affordable fresh produce, but doesn’t have many locations. Does good job of tailoring to community.
9.10.17 — Independent Research
We decided to independently explore different areas of our opportunity space before meeting back together as a group.
What I’m looking at: Fresh Produce, Local vs. Import, Farm to Table, Urban Farms, Grocery Stores
Existing interventions:
- Grow PGH: “Grow food: Sustain Neighborhoods”
- Nonprofit, helps guide community/urban farmers
- School gardens! Garden + cooking activities at school
- http://www.growpittsburgh.org/garden-and-farm-resources/school-gardens/
- http://schools.growpittsburgh.org/
- https://thekitchencommunity.org/ Organization that helps build school gardens
- Produce 2 People You can register on-site. Fresh produce. Not just one location — distributes all around PGH. Farmer’s market for low-income people.
Problems
- How do we change the perception about those who are food insecure. How do we change the perception of charity/handouts? There’s a stigma around people getting free things. There’s a perception among some people of privilege that those on welfare abuse it.
- Education around healthy options. Some don’t know the most healthy options. Or don’t know how to cook certain things that might be healthier options.
- Poor nutrition leads to more ER visits. Often, those who are food insecure use the ER as the doctor’s office. Without Health Insurance, there’s no preventative care. Will only go to ER if it gets really bad, and then it’s very expensive and more taxpayer burden.
- Business. Common business sense that Grocery stores don’t want to set up in places that won’t be profitable for them. Aldi has good affordable fresh produce, but doesn’t have many locations.
- Repurposing food waste Liability. Restaurants are held accountable if people get sick. Needs to be guaranteed quality. Restaurant business is already tough (high turnover rate, not very profitable).

9.10.17 — Capra Reading Notes
Deep Ecology — A New Paradigm by Fritjof Capra
- Crisis of Perception Society is working with an outdated worldview that doesn’t help us navigate current problems
- People in power have not shifted to this worldview and don’t think in sustainable ways
- Physicists had to deal with a similarly dramatic paradigm shift when moving into atomic study
- Dominant paradigm — unlimited growth
- “The female being subsumed by the male”
- Not holistic, but ecological. Bicycle is a system of interconnected parts, but it’s also embedded in a social and place context. How it was built, where materials were sources, how it will be disposed of.
- Shallow ecology — the human-cnetered, but the human is above everything. Deep ecology- integrated into nature. Understanding our place in the cosmos.
- Antiecological — the dominator paradigm. Sexism, racism, imperialism, etc.
- Ecofeminism- relating the exploitation of nature to the exploitation of women
- Self-assertion vs. integration. Hierarchy vs. Network. Companies will brag about their “flat” organization, even the intern can make suggestions. Everyone is equal!!! On the other hand, my cousin, who has lived in Korea for the past 5 years, rants about the hierarchy in Korean work culture. He’s supposed to kiss up to the higher ups, and go out for drinks after work with them even after a grueling day of work.
- A shift from physics to life sciences.
9.10.17 — Weekly Reflection

This week in design studio was about conciseness. While in past years, we iterated with typography and layout, this year, one of our challenges is iterating with words and phrases. It’s easy to throw some big words that you found from a Google search onto a post-it. However, their must be a translation from research to human-speak. While our work this year may seem very different, we’re doing what we’ve always done — translating something complex into something that can be easily understood. We’re like Rihanna’s songwriters — in their case, their source material is the entire spectrum of human emotion, which they are able to translate into a compelling chorus. English was my favorite subject in high school — I’m glad I still get to write.
Taking my friend James through our process up to this point helped me better understand what we’re doing. He approaches Food Insecurity from another angle, of civic engagement. He was able to see things that I didn’t, and identify possible dead ends. My instinct is to keep a project under wraps until I have “something good to show” — but clearly there’s a lot of value in presenting things even in the research phase.
Self-assertion vs. integration. Hierarchy vs. Network. Companies like Facebook will brag about how “flat” their organization is. Even the intern to pitch their idea to Zuck! That’s an example of a self-proclaimed network. Of course, behind that rhetoric, their are still unequal power structures at work. On the other end of the spectrum is my Jay. He’s lived in Korea for the past 5 years, and constantly rants about the hierarchy in Korean work culture. He’s supposed to bend over backwards for anyone who is older than him, and go out for drinks after work with them even after a 12 hour work day. I’m critical of America, but I support the workplace trend towards a more network-style working environment.
9.11.17 — Class Notes: Worldview, Beliefs, Assumptions, Expectations

- Going beyond Pittsburgh for our Wicked Problem. ex. for crime, considering the NRA — lots of political clout, has implications on Pittsburgh
- This project is hard because new things are happening right now- implications of Amazon building headquarters in Pittsburgh. Or of a new Whole Foods not moving in.
- The map we’re putting together is always evolving. Shows our understanding of the problem, connections between different STEEP categories are the most important part. Individual stars vs. constellations
- You can apply systems thinking to solving capitalist concerns (why are we losing market share?).
- Paradigms and worldviews: Clotaire Rapaille, psychologist who uses deep-set beliefs and values to help big corporations make more money. He runs workshops where he lulls participants into a relaxed state and unearths early childhood memories that explain why people buy things or are attached to certain products. His book: The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Code-Ingenious-Understand-People/dp/0767920570
- Q’s to constantly ask yourself: What is my belief system? What is it preventing me from seeing? What are my assumptions?
- Americans gradually shifting attitude towards smoking — cellphones + social media filled the vacuum. Bored? Need something to do? Nervous? Check instagram. Also could be connected to a parallel trend of American believing less and less in authority. TV talk show hosts were universally trusted. Then Watergate and government. Now nobody believes in politicians, they believe more in reality TV stars.
- Consequences vs. root causes Increase in tuition → rising cost in higher education → lack of value placed on education
- Why designers are important Their outsider perspective to the project allows them to see things that the client doesn’t see. Their mind sees connections where others might see siloes.
- Complaining can get you things. Terry and Comcast, me and the tough kitchen at the restaurant in the middle of Pennsylvania.
- Strategy with big clients: Do the work they want on their dime, then do what you think is the right way on your own dime/time
- Transition design Formal design skills, systems understanding, Empathy (ability to dance with whomever), Ethos (ecological/network view)
9.17.17 — Reading Notes: Block + Yungk
Block
- Explores concepts and methods of community building
- Nice phrase “increase the amount of belonging or relatedness that exists in the world.”
- Structure does not only refer to form, but also a deeper purpose and direction
- Moving towards belongingness because something is wrong currently. Isolated nature — technology like smartphones and social media can be part of this. Or in big cities — living with a bunch of people but you’re tucked away into your own lives, don’t have the community of a small town where everyone knows eachother.
- No one is spared from isolation — yes, homeless, and others are obvious examples, but people who look like they belong may not feel that way on the inside
- The whole concept of a play date, basically a business meeting for kids, not organic, not left to chance
- “generosity is an offer with no expecta-
tion of return.” I’ve never thought about it that way. I consider myself a generous person, but I’m expecting something in return, because I feel like friendship is a two-way street. - Social fabric cannot be imported — what makes Boston a tight community might not work in Austin.
- Reading is divided into Shift in Thinking and then Methodology, which is the same way our design studio is structured. We need to shift our thinking to a more network/ecological view in order to be able to make positive change happen. We have to examine how we see the world and actively change it. That’s been the big message from Terry’s lectures so far.
- Lots of individuals transforming vs. a whole community transforming are different
- Cohesion between citizens — social capital
- Reminds me of this book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities One thing I took away from it is that crime rate in a city block can be influenced by the architecture and planning. Houses on either side of a street allow people to watch out for other people’s kids, while project houses create shady, removed spaces from public life, like green spaces where people can go to deal drugs or other things they don’t want the public to know about
- Video I watched for my Acting for Non-Majors Class https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story Overlap with this reading because both are saying that we focus on story, for example that Africa is a cess-pool of crime and poverty, and shut out other parts of the story, which warps out perception of complex systems, it’s very reductive.
Yungk
- He runs future workshops, They’ve been successful in Austria
- A way for people to not feel powerless and to tap their imagination to affect change
- When people challenge or push back against a big project or technology in the community, they’re labeled as enemies of progress.
- Making sure that the future belongs to everyone Ex. Giving kids the chance to reimagine the school system
- Co creation like Marc getting workshop between It and sales
- Prep for workshop, Then phases are — getting grievance out into the open, the fantasy phase of coming up with possibilities, then coming back down to earth and thinking about feasibility
- Empowering people and telling them you’re listening to them can slowly shift them from being passive And apathetic citizens into something else
- Goal in the past — development of machinery Goal in future — preservation of humanity
- The future we expect vs the future we want
- The way jungk is trying to reveal deep seeded thoughts hopes and dreams reminds me of clothier rapialle and his workshops
- When he asked them about their dreams and how their experiences as children marked them as adults
- He used the term social innovation pretty before it became hot (past few years, even Hitachi has their own spin on it where they totally miss the point and make the story more about technology than people
- The powers that be don’t want social innovation — they don’t want other people to have power, they need it in order to make money
- He identifies the untapped potential of the Silent majority, the people who aren’t elites, whereas we shame them
- Schools for the blind is an example of a social innovation
- There’s no ego here — there’s no author to a social innovation. It’s created by the people
9.17.17 — Weekly Reflection
It feels like the project has already slowed down a bit — but not in a bad way. I guess that right now we’re going sideways a bit to learn some stuff that we might not learn if we just kept going.
I enjoy doing skits because I was involved in theatre in middle school and high school. I was inspired by Marc Rettig and Hannah Du Plessis to find an overlap between my design practice and theatre. They introduced me to the idea of Theatre of the Oppressed — to have people who are at a power disadvantage to workshop the conversations they might have with oppressive forces, to act out resistance. I think its cool because I’m a kinesthetic learner, but it makes sense why it might be a powerful tool.
The Block reading reminded me of a book called The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which embodies many of the themes we’ve been exploring in this class, but instead of looking at things through the lens of design, she uses Urban Planning. Jane Jacobs is the name of the author, and her main critique was that city planners didn’t take into account the whole system. While a shiny new building might be nice and shiny and a beauitle thing in itself, if it wasn’t interacting with the rest of the buildings, or it wasn’t in the right area with the right sidewalks and greenspaces and access to public transportation, it was a burden to society. She also touched on aesthetic faschism, for example with Le Corbusier’s Garden City plan of project housing, where one person, “the author” and their ego and ideas decide how everyone should live. He didn’t understand that the community needed to create itself, instead of it being decided by one person. Le Corbusier wasn’t one to hold Future Workshops like Yungk did!
The Yungk reading made me think about how it seems that capitalism is at odds with social innovation. However, what Stuart said last class made me feel better — that you can satisfy short term goals while also keeping the longterm in mind. I think it’s more of just the incompatibility of consolidation of power and social innovation. There are companies and entities and individuals whose goal it is to be able to make as much money as possible, and in order to do that, they need to keep people underneath them so they don’t have a voice. They’re not interested in democratizing social progress — they’re interested in social progress as long as it helps them look good or stay on top. I’m still working out my thoughts on it.
9.19.17 — Class Notes

We wrote haikus (poem where the lines go 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables) about our impression of one possible future (since their are many — the future is not just one thing).
My future as an individual:
I can’t tell if I’m dreaming
Don’t have to move anymore
They take care of me
My future for my community:
We stay home to work
Kids at home for school and play
The community is back
We also put on skits in an attempt to empathize with the stakeholders involved in our wicked problems. However, some stereotypes and assumptions came up — it would have been better to frame the exercise as a way to examine our own assumptions.
9.24.17 — Candy/Dator/Dunagan Reading Notes
- They present 4 alternative futures for Hawaii in 2050, instead of the conventional one future
- There isn’t one that is most likely or preferable, just options to start a conversation
Future One: Orange Hawaii
- To talk about the future in hawaii, you need to talk about tourism
- tension between construction and tourism boom and preserving the nature which people come to see
- Interesting that they talk about the value of people in this future — dominant age group as Milennials who…
“combine the aspirations (and nearly the numbers) of the old Baby Boomers with the work
ethic and “can do” spirit of the even older GIs.”
- Is this a contradiction? Goes right to…
Population on all islands has significantly aged
- This reminds me of my group’s scenario of Amazon taking hold of Pittsburgh…
Governance is in the hands of Commissioners
made up of representatives from the multinational
corporations who run the major industries.
- I guess they’re foreseeing a further blurring of the lines between corporations and government. Reminds me of Rex Tillerson being secretary of state
- This future imagines that the rest of the world is not doing too well, but because of Hawaii being an island, it has managed to preserve itself and avoid the problems that plague other places
- I’m looking the Social similarities and differences of the four futures
Future Two
Acquiring wealth is no
longer an ethical way to live.
- Because of the economic collapse and how people realized how shortsighted the tourism boom was, attitudes towards money have changed
even biodiesel and electric
cars are seen as symbols of selfishness by most
people.
- A huge paradigm shift!!!
- Trust in the military is high because they were the only ones who were able to restore order after the collapse, and they put native hawaiians in power. Martial law was actually welcomed.
- The appointment of a native king helped a resurge of native Hawaiian pride and culture including the language. Colonialism receded
Future Three
- After the failure of global capitalism, a return to local self-sufficiency and indigenous values, the values similar to Future Two.
most of them came to appreciate the advantage of
living fulfilling lives focused on family,
community, and essential, meaningful, and
ecologically-sustainable work.
- A paradigm shift, a shift in values, people don’t have the same goals as before. More network based and less self-assertive.
- “cooperation is the rule.” between the governments of the respective islands. Network mentality, “Social networks are strong”
Modern adaptations of traditional Hawaiian values
govern all personal behavior and social
interaction.
- The western influence is gone. Respect of the elderly — another paradigm shift
Future Four
- Augmented humans, cyborgs, robots, not just humans anymore. The traditional human is dead
- These beings think forward to the future, while some traditional humans look back to the old days with nostalgia. Things are super different for them
- Culture and Place aren’t relevant anymore because of technology
- An intgrated network inpired by wikipedis — the individual and self are obsolete
- what does bio-electronic mean
- like the matrix the way they’re connected to networks
9.24.17 Weekly Reflection
We spent this week stretching our imaginations. The act of coming up with alternative futures, at least for me, alleviates anxiety. There’s a lot going on in the world right now that’s out of my control — hurricanes caused by climate change, massive hacks (Equifax), bombings. But the practice of exploring alternate futures helps you get out of a mode of panic and helps you see the good and the bad, to not just expect a dystopia or utopia.
I’ve enjoyed this exercise because it reveals the overlap between design and film. It’s hard to look at the future as this one thing as soon as you realize how many different visions of the future are out there, even if they’re Hollywood films like The Matrix.
I like the storytelling aspect of it —especially how group storytelling can be used to empower people. I remember in our last reading, the author described the Futures Workshops that he held. He would gather a group of people that aren’t usually included in long-term futures planning — the youth. This bottom-up process gave them ownership of their future. If people feel like they have a stake in something, that they’re actual stakeholders instead of pawns in someone’s game, then you might have a stronger society.
My group’s own futuring sessions felt weird at first — (The Farmer’s Revolt of 2045? The robot strike of 2033?) but we were eventually able to weave these far-out events into a believable narrative.
In Stuart & Friends reading, theres a Fourth Future in which society is made up of augmented humans, cyborgs, and a handful of traditional Homo sapiens. Although these augmented humans are more organized and efficient, more respectful of their environment, and are more tightly knit as a community, it was a little sad for me. The article says that the concept of “the individual” was dead. Yes, we’re imperfect, but I wouldn’t want to live in a world without traditional humanness. One of the things that blows my mind is that you can read a book like the Bible that was written way back and relate deeply with the human experience being presented. The human experience can collapse thousands of years. Even looking at the Lascaux Cave Paintings makes me smile because I’m doing what they were doing, but instead of a cave wall, I’m using a Moleskin notebook. I would find it hard to feel the same kinship with an android that’s plugged into a digital, Matrix-like world.
10.1.17 Porritt Reading Notes
Overview
Porritt creates a fictional timeline of how the world changes leading up to 2050.
- Porritt’s timeline is simlar to the timeline we’ve been making about a hypothetical future, but he adds his own notes to make it personal (i.e. the death of his father
- Porritt makes it more concrete and emotionally relateable — he bring us into his lifestyle
- Good phrase: Grid Parity — the point at which the cost of solar electricity becomes the same as alternate sources
- Solar power — trading “real-time sunlight” for “stored sunglight” (locked away in the earth in fossil fuels)
- Porritt’s ways of illustrating the future — both lo-fi (sketches) and hi-fi (photos)

- Synergistic solutions! Waste-to-energy plant that doubles as a ski slope (kind of tacky but it satisfies two needs

The Circular Economy
Raw Materials can be re-used instead of thrown away. For example, clothes can be disassembled and be made it new clothes that are just as nice
Restoring the web of life

- The honey bee as a catalyst for a paradigm shift in how we see the natural world
Urban Makeovers
- Another example of something iconic and concrete becoming a catalyst — The Empire State Building helped bring about a trend in Urban Retrofitting.
Takeaways
- When creating convincing stories of the future, images are crucial, but a diversity of images are necessary. Both enticing photos and simple sketches (often diagrams to explain complex processes like the storing of electricity from the grid
- Using iconic things like Honey Bees and the Empire State building to anchor the reader in an otherwise unknown world
10.2.17 Max-Neef’s Needs (Terry Irwin Lecture)

Overview
- We all know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — Max-Neef is challenging these
- You have needs, then you have satisfiers in order to meet these needs

Types of Satisfiers
- Sometimes satisfiers don’t help meet the needs
- Violators/Destoyers How Hitler came to power. Same with how French people came to accomodate/collaborate with the Nazis because they just wanted a normal life again
- Pseudo-Satisfiers How Hitler came to power. Same with how French people came to accomodate/collaborate with the Nazis because they just wanted a normal life again
- Inhibiting Satisfiers Example: Cell phone designed for communication undermines your relationships and your ability to pay attention. You satisfy some needs but undermine the satisfaction of others!
- Singular Satisfiers
- Example: The Tide Pod detergent! Supposed to satisfy clean laundry need but kids thought it looked like candy and started eating it!
- Synergistic Solution that kills a couple of birds with one stone
Context
- Reconcieving Lifestyles In order to change behavior and create synergistic solutions, you need to embed them in an everyday life scenario (of course in the right scale).
- Example: This is crucial to Terry’s project for the city of Ojai, California, where they’ve identified that there are groups with radically different lifestyles that consume water differently.
- Mulitnationals like McDonalds and Unilever don’t think about everyday life contexts. Need to shift from a context-ignorant mass-production style to Cosmopolitan Localism
- Cosmopolitan Localism Using modern technology and globalization but also creating place-based solutions so that communities are self-sufficient but have access to the knowledge of the world
Exercise
- An object (i.e. water bottle) → needs it satisfies → consequences (undermining abiltiy to satisfy)
- Another designed thing (object or experience) → needs it satisfies → no consequences (maybe Alcoholics Annonymous or group therapy)
- Hand them in!
10.11.17 Class
Presentations of Interventions
- Each group presented six interventions for their topic
- Saw overlap between Education Group and my group (food insecurity), they proposed taking kids to recycling centers, educating kids early on to get them to see their place in the ecology — education will help long-term paradigm shifts, we were thinking about classroom gardens so kids can learn about their food, where it comes from, how it’s grown, how it lives
10.14.17 Reading Notes: Transition Design Case Studies
First Nations Place-Making
- Calvin Brook is trying to re-introduce first nations/aboriginal/indigenous art and values into modern urban society as part of the reparations process.
- Most of canada’s indigenous people live in cities, but nothing about how the city is built makes them feel like they belong
[The mission is] embodying Indigenous themes as a way of making Indigenous people in Toronto feel like they belong here.
- Set up a co-design process for urban installations
- For example, The Hoop Dance, an open-air pavilion, has been used for talks, weddings, and has been booked since it opened
Addressing Income Inequality in Canada
- Is there a reason these case studies have all been in Canada? To me, the Canadian political system seems to be more progressive
- Ran residential retreats, interviewed people, created personas, and considered what businesses/services might address the needs identified
- Long-term project!
Indigenous Rights and Economic Well-Being in Mexico
- Corporate partnership, not just a grass-roots movement, pine chemicals company and indigenous people
- Helps economic well-being and empowers indigenous people through pine-resin extraction
International Global Scale Social Labs
- involved Adam Kahane, we watched one of his talks in Futures class
- Social Labs are ways of studying wicked problems
- Runs Roller Strategies, the anti-consulting firm.
One of the key reasons we set up Roller Strategies was a belief that consulting as a business model is bankrupt.
- I worked at one of the largest consulting firms in the world this summer, and I would agree that there are things that could be improved — lots of cooks in the kitchen
- In consulting, firms charge by the day. Roller Strategies doesn’t think that works for more complex work. You always need more time than you think, but if you tell the client it’s going to take 5 years, they won’t want to hire you or pay you.
- They instead offer a fixed rate, that plans for emergence. If they need to put more people on the ground, they won’t charge for that. If they need less people than expected, then their margins increase.
Reinventing Finance to Drive Social Innovation
- Criterion Institute looks at relationship between finance and domestic violence. Many of the underlying causes of domestic violence are financially motivated — financial instability, and lack of access to capital for women
10.14.17 Reading Notes: Leap Dialogues: Career Pathways in Design for Social Innovation
- Sounds like they’re using social innovation as a way to both do good but also boost the perception of a brand
The notion of design “simplifying the complex” is very
powerful to me.
- Design as synergy of making things beautiful and a new way of approaching problems
- Embrace is a company that makes things for infants, they have to design under extreme economic constraints they design for under resourced infants
- The misuse of the term innovation — in this interview they define it so that there’s no chance for miscommunication. This was the feedback I got on a recent history paper — I didn’t define the terms I was using, like classicism and elitism, so it was general and it was easily misunderstood. This is communication design.
- Ideo and their design thinking recipe sounds weird because to me design is a form of magic and cant be reduced to a process to be sold to other people, but it’s important because its a bridge to people who don’t think like designers
- As a designer its part of your job to convince business people that quantitiative metrics arent the full story — think about the people. But empathy can be bad — we saw in our Design Studio skits and also we see it in TV series like breaking bad where they take a character like Walt and make them into someone you like so you overlook the bad stuff (my drama teacher says empathy is dangerous)
- One reason why companies are trying to find their purpose because it makes their brand look more attractive. One role of a designer can be to help a company find their identity and mission and purpose that’s not just a corporate identity with a logo. Like Dell — provides laptops for education and healthcare so they can build a story around that
- Designers have to speak business — learned this at doblin, if they want to be included in the higher level decisions. Meet in the middle
- Page 7: He knew it would be difficult to be a designer at such a huge company, but wanted to challenge himself! He would change the brief if he didn;t like it (designers are creative). I struggled with that as a lower level employee this summer.
- I love the concept of designing an HR policy. If designers are in higher level positions, everything is fair game. Reminds me of Megan Fath at Doblin.
10.14.17 Reading Notes: Stuart Candy
- What does “reverse engineer a business model to make it economically viable mean”
A social entrepreneur is a designer of business
- There’s some huge companies that still aren’t catching on to caring about the greater good
Post traumatic innovation
- Stuart is proposing that what’s missing from social enterprises is foresight
- Page 5: Stuart says foresight is important but a lot of people aren’t ready for it or don’t think they need it
- Stuart’s job is to make sure that people see that foresight aligns with their own interests
- His goal is to get business people/people with power to approach problems like designers, to iterate the way designers do
- pg 10 Matthew Manos is one of Stuart’s design role models. Who are mine?
- Use of the word “diegetic” in reference to design fiction — I’ve heard this referring to film, where diegetic sound is sound that you can see the source of onscreen, like if a character is playing the trumpet and you hear it, or the character’s voice. Non-diegetic could be music added over the image, like during the Rocky montage
- Still not clear on how using the business concept of investment relates to design and futuring. So we invest in our imagination, in scenarios of the future we make, we believe in them…so I guess because we imagine these, we feel emotionally invested in them, and want to make them true? Still figuring this out.
10.16.17 Lecture: Sheryl(spelling?) Dahl(spelling?)
- Founded Future of Fish, tackling global overfishing problem
- Micro-finance — started off good, but when it got scaled up, big banks got involved and the loans weren’t going to the people who need it most
- The Life Program in Wigan England. Too much time at social agencies with administrative burden. How can we streamline services so family can choose what they need and not all the services
- Figured that needed better information from fisheries, but in the system, humans are making decisions that make sense for them, align with their own incentives, not necessarily make sense for the broader system
- Leverage points!!!
- Fish is a wasteful industry — bycatch is when you’re looking for something like shrimp but you end up catching other fish that you don’t need
- Mislabeling — it’s only red snapper 12% of the time
- Fisheries don’t have money to do an assessment bc need to pay a marine biologist
- Traceability systems (all the way through the supply chain) because usually it’s a mystery or used in paper and pen
- Paradigm shift: Fish is endless → fish is precious
- PATH birth kit — being culturally appropriate and improving mortality rates for infant and mother. Custom is to cut umbilical chord with coin, but sometimes it’s dirty. PATH has something like a coin, but sterilized, so best of both worlds.
- Complexity (will take more time and effort, but longer-lasting) vs. scale of impact (how many people will we effect)
- For her project, first explored the high-level theory of change, then zoomed in with anthropologists to what we would traditionally think of as the user, to flesh out who the stakeholder in this problem is
- Always be on the lookout for conflicting agendas
- Indonesian punishments for illegal fishing — confiscate boat and blow it up publicly, aggressive but effective
- Two types of fishing boats — mandar (bigger), ludar (smaller). Also fad (fish aggregation device). Fad is a trap, provides a cozy environment for fish, lulls them into a false sense of comfort, then you kill them
- Cultural differences — even if fishermen can’t swim, they don’t use lifejackets even if someone gives them to them
- In social innovation, community immersion is necessary
- It’s hard to introduce new tech into fishing processes because that learning curve could slow down the processing and they could lose their job
- Fishermen and processers are very close (we’re family), because of the interdependency of their relationship
- Interviews of a community have to fit with the culture — these fishermen would only be interviewed as a group, they don’t make decisions individually
- Oleh Oleh — constant gift-giving, how you start a relationship
- In social innovation you need to be able to work with anthropologists. You might think something is weird, but they will tell you that there’s “nothing weird in anthropology)
- I think I should work in consulting first and then later apply those skills to social innovation
- Technology: Weather/conditions from the radio and community members
- There’s her team, then there’s a company (Tone) that sells people like fishmen minutes on phones, so they’re gravitating towards an app solution because that benefits their business
- Key themes: Supply chain as family, gift economy (oleh oleh), receptivity to new technology, predictability (need to know when larger ships come through because they could run you over!!!)
- State department: Wanted the perception of a successful project (success story of for-profit and non-profit), didn’t care about real long-lasting results
- User profiles based on mindsets — for example, with wine, there’s people who want to show off, people who know what they want and get it, the people who want you to tell them what to get so they can leave, and others who genuinely want to understand wine and how it works
10.18.17 Mid-Term Course Reflection
Classwork
- The groupwork aspect has helped me improve how I communicate my ideas to others. I’m glad that we’re working in such big groups, because that’s how it was this summer at Doblin, and at least for my career, because I don’t plan on working freelance alone, that’s how it will continue to be.
Lectures
- It might just be me, but the lectures long. Stuart’s expertise is incredible, but I’m only able to retain so much. In addition, because of the amount of frameworks we’re learning, I’m not sure which one to use when. It’s great that we’re being exposed to such pioneering design work, but when I’m working professionally next year, because the frameworks are so abstract, it’ll be hard to recall them in the moment, even if they would be great for a project!
- I think that something that might help my learning is to apply the frameworks to my own life, even if I’m using a Three Horizons model just to plot a journey to the hotdog stand on campus. This will give some concreteness so that I’ll be able to remember the frameworks when I’m on a project that could benefit from them! I’m not doing enough to make this relate to my own existence.
Transition Design
- During lunch with Terry yesterday, she said that to explain what we’re doing to employers, we could say that we’re looking at how to initiate systems-level change. It’s good that we’re being exposed to this — I don’t think I’ll have the skills or the credibility/authority to participate in the field until I’m at least in my 30s. Hopefully these concepts will seep into my work subconsciously. I can hope.
- Note to self — talk to Frances about food insecurity
10.23.17 First Class After Mid-Term
Do I Understand what we’ve covered so far?
- Framing/diagramming wicked problems YES
- Mapping stakeholder relations: Concerns/hopes+fears/aspirations YES Triad map: NO
- Imagine futures: possible, probable, prefferred futures YES Build future scenarios YES
- Develop Visions: Create 3 Horizons Diagram YES Construct Timelines YES
- Theories of Change: Everyday life as a context YES Max Neef Theory of Human Needs YES
- Define design opportunities: Scenarios, Blueprints YES Four-square model + Social design pathways matrix (scale of engagement vs. complexity) YES
10.30.17 New Project

Recap
- After using food insecurity as a topic to practice Futures frameworks, we’re now moving into more tangible projects.
- We spent a few days looking for connections between our projects — for example, how does Food Insecurity overlap with Gentrification? Or Affordable Housing? We had conversation with members of other groups and thought about how we might collaborate.
- I knew I wanted to focus on children for the new project. Children are still impressionable, open to dreaming about a more sustainable world. Molding them early on gives us a good chance of building the future we want.
- I also wanted to focus on children because it’s an area I’m familiar with. My Service Design project with Molly last semester was focused on building self-management habits in children with asthma. When tackling a new project with many unknowns, it’s good to have some familiarity.
- I also wanted to focus on children because my visual style is usually pretty kid friendly. I’m a huge fan of children’s book illustrations.
- When talking to people about their topics, I made it clear I wanted to focus on children. I was able to find a group — Julia, Jeong-Min, Kevin, and Emily, who wanted to do the same thing.
- We’re focusing on Public school curriculum and crafting a proposal on how we can make it more sustainability focused. We’re also interested in Aquaponics (a system that uses fish poop as fertilizer for plants) as a very tangible metaphor for sustainable thinking.
Mapping the System

Before we scoped down our project, we used Max-Neef’s hierarchy of needs to plot our stakeholders. This would give us a clearer understanding of who needed our intervention the most.

We also thought about what form our intervention might take — because of the long-term nature of changing a school curriculum, the actual deliverable could be a timeline with artifacts spread about. The timeline would work up to the ideal future. This would be suitable to present to say, a school board.
10.30.17 Class
- It feels weird to scope our projects down so much, but it’s really more of a design sprint. We’ve all done this in interviews- given a finite amount of time, scoping down a design solution so you don’t take on too much. It’s a good exercise in planning.
- We have to understand that we might not be able to accomplish much, and be ok with that. We have to be very clear about our goals.
Conversation with Stuart
- We vocalized our intervention with Stuart to make sure it made sense.
- He thought we were scoping the project well but wanted to know if we knew of any precedents to this. We could leverage Arnold Wasserman’s LE
- He is concerned that this is not future-oriented enough
- He asked what are we bringing to the table as designers and not as policy makers
- Summary: This has already been done before — what are we bringing to it that other people can’t? How can we make this more designerly?
11.8.17 Class
Overview
- We’re looking to focus our intervention. We don’t have much time and need to start making something too. What could we put in front of people at the senior show to get a reaction?
Brainstorm
- Kevin: 1. Sustainability kit with life hacks 2. Screen installation on trash can of fish dying. 3. At smoking areas on campus — an installation that shows that location in 20 years
- Jeong-Min: 1. a gadget or token you can take with you from the senior show that you can keep with you at all times to remind you (in the vein of a laptop or phone sticker)
- Me: Let’s meet our audience where they are. 1. Online shopping/”fast fashion” is unsustainable. Chrome browser extension that overlays the unsustainable supply chain practices behind the shoes you buy. 2. When we order in food, the packaging. 3. Social media can help us be sustainable — For Sale at CMU, group where people sell used clothes to other people. Communication allows you to find people that have what you’re looking for so you don’t have to buy new.
- Julia: Sustainaibility saves you money!!! Students want money. 2. pack of cards: Breaks it down into understandable chunks. We’re during the curation of information for people.
- Emily: 1. Context: A case or proposal, step by step walkthrough of what we’ve been doing. This is why we changed what we’re doing. 2. For context: The world in 2050 with pictures and stuff. 3. A guide of life hacks. A story about what you could do instead 4. A story of where our trash goes. 5. CHoose the world you want to live in
Summarizing
- Kit = pack of cards in a box (on recycled paper). Pass this on. Gadget or token. Kit focuses on saving money. Saving time over the long run. Sticker (Julia + Jeong-Min) Content of cards (Julia)
- An installation that shows the location in 20 years. Photo + MIrror paper. Dystopian future. Photo or illustration?
- Are we pitching an ideal future that we can work towards, or are we trying to avoid an undesirable
- Context: Digital case study deck.
Cards/Deck Iterating
Emily, Kevin, and I rapidly iterated on cards, each creating examples, so that we would be able to pick out the best qualities of each.







Jeong Min and Julia put together a draft of the card experience.


We also thought about creating illustrations of Preferable/Possible/Probable futures as a way of getting a reaction from people.


Speed-Dating
We then took our work-in-progress to studio for a round of Speed-Dating. Each team was paired up to explain their projects.

Our main takeaways were about the tone of the cards and about the incentive for people to participate. For the incentive, we decided we might need a more social aspect to this. People want to look good in front of their friends. For the tone, we decided to make it look a bit more serious, but avoided scaring people or guilting them. That’s very off-putting. We needed to strike a balance between approachability and urgency.
We decided to focus on the card deck, and get rid of the Possible/Preferable/Probable futures. In addition, we decided to target our audience more specifically. Using the names of CMU eateries or buildings on campus could create a greater sense of urgency.
Work Session

We iterated on our possible Snapchat extension. It would provide a more social and ephemeral version of the cards.

We continued to refine the visual system for the cards. Stacie encouraged us to commit to the card look. If they didn’t look like cards, the system wouldn’t hold together.





We iterated on possible illustrations.


We tried to run with the Plant a Seed metaphor for the card deck suits. However, although we were making it a card deck, we had to be comfortable with the fact that it wasn’t an actual playable game. But we needed the the format to make it friendly and approachable.

While at first we thought we might use very resolved illustrations and a typeface, we went for simple illustrations and handwritten. The thinking here was that if things looked too designed, it would be a high threshold, and the user wouldn’t feel like they could participate.

We pushed through and the project came together.








