The Codesign Symposium Reflections — Part III
Metaphor, evocation and the wisdom of nature
The Codesign Symposium was the 2nd day-long event held in Melbourne, Australia this year, organised by Peer Academy.
You can read my reflections on the first Symposium, “Introducing Systems Practice” here. And you can read my first reflection piece on this 2nd Symposium, “Materiality, Power & Community” here.
Exploring Organic Toolkits
I was privileged to have the opportunity to run a session entitled ‘Co-creating Principles And Values To Guide Our Community Of Practice”.
For a long time, I’d been wanting to break out of the design modes I’d come to know — the post-it, lego and coloured paper vortex. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with those ubiquitous tools, per se (unless we start talking sustainability), it’s just that I yearned to weave more of the wisdom of nature into my work.
Whenever I need to reflect deeply or get inspiration, I head for the rivers, mountains and forests around my home in the Yarra Ranges, and I’m immediately shifted to another mode. I wanted to see if that was the same for others, and whether we could bring a little of that thinking, into the slick workshop spaces of Monash’s Design School.
I started the conversation with some friends who I suspected might have some insights:
The Peer Academy crew gave me a gentle nudge to say “yes, do it!”, so the night before the session I was foraging in my garden in the Yarra Ranges, and whisking up some homemade play-doh.
My session was designed to be a relatively low intensity end to the day, which gave people a practical taster of a Codesign session, and the space to reflect and sense-make, so they could run something similar for their own purpose.
It was based around the lessons I gained working under Liz Sanders’ tutelage at Workchops in NZ this year. The message I really absorbed was:
By making, not just talking, we can enable people to access and express tacit knowledge and experiences.
If you’re interested in this area, I would highly suggest getting a copy of The Convivial Toolbox by Liz Sanders & Jan Van Stappers
This was backed up by one of the Project Spotlights at the Symposium:
My session was scheduled to be one of the last of the day, so I was expecting people to be a bit overwhelmed by everything they’d already been exposed to. I designed my session to be low key, casual, but with plenty of time for introspection and sensemaking.
My session format:
- Introduction + ice-breaker
- Spend 10 minutes solo, reflecting and making something from the materials I provided. The direction was simple: “make something as an answer to what principles you feel should guide our emerging community of practice.”
- Chat with a peer about what you made.
- Share a couple of examples with the group. Q&A.
- Group reflection on the process, and what they noticed.
- Spend 10 mins working with 2 or 3 others to make something collectively. The direction was: “what common principles or values do you share to guide this community of practice?”
- Share a couple of examples with the group. Q&A.
- Group reflection on the process, and what they noticed.
Participant Reflections
There were too many gems to mention, but here’s some themes from participants reflecting on the process.
Mindful Materials
Several people mentioned that the organic materials immediately changed how they approached things. They didn’t grab a stack of post-it notes, sharpies, pipe cleaners, and get to work. They quietly observed the array of different materials available, and many people chose quite deliberately on what they were drawn towards.
There seemed to be a trend towards paying the materials some respect as well. Participants were very careful to not use too much for their creations, and dutifully returned everything at the end.
Perhaps my favourite moment of the session was someone saying:
“I feel like some people go through a Design workshop with post it notes everywhere, and get a kind of sugar high. They feel like they’ve invented all the solutions, but really it’s quite hollow. This feels different, I slowed down, and paid attention.” — Participant
It felt prescient, because I’ve experienced that same feeling and I was hoping that this would not only feel different, but also give different outcomes.
Metaphor & Literality
I noticed a few metaphors which kept coming around. They centered around life cycles, interconnection, diversity and wisdom.
“My reflection would be on how the materials made me think of my personal experiences. It made me think of places I go with my son, I could visualise it. It made sharing my vision more easy.” — Participant
Many of the creations were a mixture of metaphorical and literal. They were trees and roots made of sticks and moss. This gave an interesting dynamic of being able to reference literal elements that people immediately understood, whilst also using metaphor to describe the dynamics of community which people were observing — such as interconnection of people, cycles of people’s energy over time, and the importance of collective efforts.
Organic Materials Are Wise
“The organic materials are so reflective of community and humans. I instantly saw connections from the materials I was working with. This one branch had so many elements coming off it, which can represent diversity and different communities. You didn’t have to think as hard.” — Laura, Participant
This reflection was one I was aware of the likelihood of coming up. It is both a blessing and a challenge, as I hypothesised that using organic materials would nudge people’s thinking into a more ecological space. This can be really beneficial as part of a broader practice, but it could also be restrictive when it comes to being more speculative.
“I was thinking about scale. Using the natural materials, it felt like it was really for me to go into this micro world and it was believable. When I looked at other people’s creations, I felt like I could walk through it as I would a garden. The sense of scale was really great to zoom in and out of.” — Participant
This was a really interesting reflection, and something I hadn’t thought too much about beforehand.
I had collected a number of patches of moss for the toolkit, as I really love it as a tactile stimulus. I love getting close up and looking in to the diversity within such a tiny little patch of ecology.
Of course, this was also something this participant picked up on, but in the context of the design session, she was able to reference the ability to zoom in and out of the material as a way to explain the nature of a complex system. Complex systems are often fractals, where zooming into a person as a system we can see we ourselves are made up of a complex array of bacteria and organic matter which is constantly in flux. Zoom out a little and we see we have complex relationships with others, which are affected by other stimulus. Zoom out further and we see the same at a geographical, national, global system level too. So these organic materials are wonderful ways of being able to pay attention to the micro, the meso and the macro views of what we’re trying to design.
Embracing Cognitive Dissonance
I always try to sense for what I don’t expect to see and hear in the sessions I run. It’s where I get my greatest insights.
Bending the process
My most surprising insight for this session was that no one really answered my questions. And I thought this was great!
Instead of the values and principles they wanted to guide the community, they described their perspectives on what characterises a community.
This is an important nuance.
Design is inherently speculative — exploring how we believe the world could or should be. Yet the basis for Design processes can also be about describing the current state, and how it might change. So whilst we were short on time, I’m keen to explore this further.
Thinking ecologically
A major surprise for me, was how quickly people snapped into what I would call a ‘living systems’ mindset.
I’ve run many a session along these lines — as dialogue circles, as lego play sessions, as journaling exercises.
Nothing has ever got people to describing the ‘ecological truths’ of human community as quickly as this session.
I put this down to the materials, and how we are able to rapidly shift into an ecological mindset when we’re reconnected with nature. By bringing a little bit of “nature” into this space, we shifted people’s mental models which resulted in literal and metaphorical ecological framings for their answers.
This is an exciting edge to be exploring, and I hope to have the chance to run a coffee circle on this topic soon, as part of the community of practice.
Taking time with the materials
Perhaps this links to the point about the wisdom inherent in the organic materials, but one person mentioned that they felt like they wanted a little more time just to sit and look at the materials before making.
I found this really fascinating, as it spoke to the importance of allowing space for mindfulness in a design process using organic materials. Quiet reflection and observation would help people to see / feel what the materials could share, before then jumping in to mix, match, hack and recreate our own vision. This feels like a really important area to pay attention to in future sessions, and could be twinned with nature connection exercises beforehand to maximise the benefit of. Of course, I should also acknowledge biomimicry which has inspired some of my design practice too.
Next Steps
You can read more about my next steps in regards to intentions for the Codesign Community of Practice in my other post on this Symposium here.
Things I would love to investigate further:
- Nature connection activities before getting into making
- People collecting their own materials from the area
- Blending sessions with organic materials into a broader process where other materials are also used
If you’d like to get in touch: twitter | linkedin | reply to this story.
Bonus resource:
- Codesign & Community Development Webinar: Insights from Māori Codesigners — watch it here.
