Insights: HKDI DESIS Lab / Yanki Lee & Albert Tsang
In the second interview we led during our visit in Hong Kong, Yanki Lee and Albert Tsang introduce us to design for social cohesion in the context of Hong Kong.
Please can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about your background?
Yanki:
My name is Yanki Lee. I am a design researcher. I conduct design actions to research about new design practices to address social changes and build new knowledge for a better world.
I got architectural design background and with a PhD in Design Participation. I try to understand the society in term of systems and networks. This is also related to my design research background as I led design research projects about ageing, disability and inclusion for fifteen years at the Royal College of Art in London.
In 2013, I was invited back to my hometown, Hong Kong, where I founded the Social Design Research Lab at the Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI) which is part of the international Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Network. My goal is to ask the same question of how to design for social inclusion, but in a different social context. It is particularly interesting because social inclusion as a policy is not fully implemented in Hong Kong yet. Unlike in the United Kingdom, they are already at the next level, speaking about cohesion considering what would be the best results by putting people of different social backgrounds together for social good.
Albert:
My name is Albert Tsang, I am a design researcher at HKDI DESIS Lab and also an educator in various institutes. I have a background in humanities and studied design research. My original concerns are for urban sociology and consumer culture and now my research area is about social design. My role at the HKDI DESIS Lab is to define new ways to foster design education at HKDI and imagine new collaborative approaches of design that also include citizens. Our work is to find a way to combine these two approaches.
What is the idea behind the HKDI DESIS Lab?
Yanki:
We are a group of design researchers looking at how we can develop new design practices, drawing from different design disciplines. The question is to find out how designers can respond to social changes in their own specialty. They are not working as social workers, but still as designers using their very own practice to contribute for social development.
It is important to distinguish what we do with other design schools’ centre for social innovation. We focus on the practice of Social Design rather than the bigger concept of Social Innovation. We think it is important to transform our own practice and the general impression of the design discipline. In Hong Kong, there are a lot of misunderstanding from citizens to policymakers about what design really is. They tend to think design is a way to just to beautify things, rather than designing new services, transforming organisations and making societal changes happen. It is one of our main tasks to make people understand that they can involve in designing even if they haven’t intended to be professional designers.
Additionally, we also work on transforming design education with HKDI departments to re-imagine about new design practices as well as leading social projects to involve citizens and let them understand that they can be part of design processes.
Having worked in Hong Kong and Europe, how these different cultures influence and complete each other?
Yanki:
Actually, I have constant discussions with friends in Europe on this issue. In my recent conclusion, I have found out that Asia is “doing a lot but not talking or debating enough”, whereas, in Europe, it is the other way around. Designers just discuss and, in the end, there is not enough resources to make changes happen.
I have a lot of friends from Europe, came to Hong Kong who have crazy ideas that have been only exhibited in galleries so far. But, how can these projects happen for real in Asia? Can we prototype some of these provocative concepts here? If they could make some of the futuristic and alternative ideas happening in Asia, then we could start to have more meaningful discussions. In our culture, people are indeed quite passive, they won’t talk if they have nothing concrete to discuss. This gap between action and debate is, for me, quite typical of the differences between the east and west.
In this context, why have you decided to work on ageing?
Yanki:
A lot of people working on ageing had really good relationships with their grandparents. It was the same for me. When I became a designer, I missed the conversations with them. It finally brought me to work on ageing and design.
More important, I met Professor Roger Coleman, Founding Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art in London when I finished my MA in Architecture. He was one of the pioneers to work on ageing and design. He advocated the slogan, “design for our future selves”, which means thinking about ageing is not thinking about others, but about us. It has deeply influenced what we are experimenting with senior citizens in Hong Kong.
We use a lot the term “empathy”. It is about empathy with older people about our ageing processes. We believe “talking about ageing” is a “tool” to bring all generations together as we are all ageing. This is why we use the term “ageing” instead of “age”. By focusing on ageing and design, we think that design is able to gather different age groups together by making people having more positive thinking about ageing.
Can you explain why you use specific terminologies in your work, such as “Older people and Ingenuity, etc.…”?
Yanki:
We are really picky on the use of terms. For example, we use “older people” rather than “elderly” or “old people”, which came from the United Kingdom. It means that there are no young or old people in our society, but only some of them are older or younger than you. It is all related. Alternately, we also use the term “elders” that is conveying the idea of respect, a notion that is quite important in Chinese culture.
We also use the term “ingenuity” to refer to the creativity of people, being resourceful. Who would be the most ingenious people in society? We think this is the older people, since, from a pragmatic perspective, they live longer, know society better and know where the resources are.
Especially in our culture, a lot of older people tend to be more resourceful. Young ones tend to say they don’t have money, friends or time. However, older people always think about the limited resources they have and then use them carefully and creatively. This is why we put the two terms together: the Ingenuity of Ageing.
Is this ingenuity limited to Hong Kong older people or do you see it also happening in western societies?
Yanki:
It can be culturally specific but is more about individuals’ positiveness and how they see their own community. If you are pessimistic, you will only look at a world and thinking you got nothing. However, if you look at it in a positive way, you will see a world where a lot of things might be counted as resources. When switching to this approach, it is not only about identifying resources but also more about recognising them.
Albert:
The difference can be also found in the relationship we have with the government. In Europe, we can observe a very common somehow positive attitude towards governments, as some initiatives that started with grassroots movements will try to turn into public policies. In Asia, many countries don’t see it that way. Citizens would do things by themselves and won’t seek help from the government because it is neither in the culture nor in their habits. From a cultural perspective, as government activities and the everyday life of citizens are not that close in Asia, it is easy to see citizens’ initiatives, led for themselves, existing in this gap.
How do your articulate your design approach around older people?
Albert:
We articulate design around this idea of ingenuity and we see people as resources. Some more usual ways of using design for older people community tend to “help” them, which are with a good intention, but also ignoring the efforts the older people have already made for their own. We see older people are actually useful and active citizens in the society and being very resourceful.
Yanki:
And they welcome us to use them!
In Hong Kong, we go with the idea of stimulating people, to make them think they are not useless. Therefore, we set up a program called DesignAge Hong Kong Club. The purpose of this design club is to invite citizens especially older people to engage the design school to discuss and co-create concepts with our students. However, when they come to the school, the first thing they will say is “I’m old, and useless, I can’t help the students!” Still, if we give them tools and time, they will come up with very exciting ideas. As our students are very young, only 17/18 years old, they tend to struggle to think about what could be changed in our society. In this regard, older people really become our resources to change the perspectives of the younger ones. With the Club and its infrastructure, we give older people a way to voice out some of their ingenious ideas in everyday life.
Is this Club part of your co-creation process?
Yanki:
To be honest, when we set-up the Club we found out that Hong Kong people were not ready for co-creation. Co-creation is an ideal situation and, in some extent, is a western thing. In Hong Kong, there are still very strong classes existing, reinforced by distinction linked to professions. How can we co-design when design is a traditional profession?
The first thing we did with the Club was to set a design training for older people. It seemed mandatory to obtain this first “co” relationship. A lot of designers have started to promote co-design in Hong Kong and seek to involve communities, but how can you co-design if people don’t understand what design is?
It was our main reason to start the Club, we wanted to give Hong Kong senior citizens a taste of what design is and to make them ready for co-designing.
When we started we thought it is a unique issue in Hong Kong, but when we exchanged with our friends from Europe, we actually realised that it is the same for them. As design has become a very trendy, but also a spectacular profession, the minute you walk in a community saying “I’m a designer” people will expect you to create a poster for them or to make their home beautiful.
When we started to teach citizens design, surprisingly, it went better than what we expected. During the first session we let them try to experiment with design approach through exercises and they were quickly getting into it. The next time, they came with ideas asking if we could help them to execute their concepts. At this point, it was them asking for co-designing rather than us.
How your approach to connect and involve these communities is different from other educational programs?
Albert:
One of the main problems we observe with design schools is that many of them are opening social design courses. Every semester they would need to find willing communities to send students on selected sites to carry social projects. However, when they leave these communities, most of the time, the project just dies. And the next year, it all starts again, with young students coming and saying “we want to help you and solve your problems by design”, before leaving again.
The Club we set is a bit better in that way, as we are nurturing a new community that keep improving their own life and are not interrupted by design students who want to save the world.
This is an interesting way to develop new models of community ready for co-designing.
As you mentioned, your design approach is quite westernised. Do you observe specific cultural challenges in Hong Kong?
Yanki:
The original term “DesignAge” was set up by Professor Roger Coleman when he started the programme at the Royal College of Art in London in the early 1990s. He first worked to the University of the Third Age, which was a new social idea from the 1990s for people who were just retired and not dependent yet. There, similarly to what we did in Hong Kong, he gathered a lot of amazing older people such as retired lawyers, editors and even designers. When we started ourselves, it was very grassroots and I can’t imagine that any of our retired designers would have joined the Club.
When Professor Coleman started his initiative, he attracted a lot of people that were already interested in design. However, in Hong Kong, people don’t have any idea of what design really means or that design belongs to them.
On the other hand, the UK DesignAge Programme almost failed, as the recruited older people eventually became too critical and, doing so, scared young designers to involve them in the process. It is interesting to observe the interactions between these two groups. Older people were constantly complaining about the behaviour of young students. They were sending complaint letters to Professor Coleman saying that some design students were rude to them. Here in Hong Kong, people are still polite and respecting each other. When my students meet the older people coming for co-design workshops, they are really paying respect to them. Sometimes it is too respectful and then they don’t argue about the propositions but just follow the older people’s ideas.
Also co-design is a new area for Hong Kong designers, many of them are not comfortable doing it yet. For example, there was a workshop for the Future Cemetery Design in Hong Kong, students had no idea of what that meant to be in a cemetery and they just listened to the older generations describing what is the best cemetery in town.
Speaking of arguing, debate and friction, you are also working using speculative design posture, the famous “what if?” questions. Although in general, speculative design projects hardly blend with co-design. Why are you taking this stance?
Yanki:
We do talk a lot about speculative design, as it refers to critical arts and we believe it has a very special function in our society about asking questions. We use its methodology to create some tension when we put two age groups together to co-design. Indeed, for some subjects, elders might not have enough insights to imagine future issues in Hong Kong. Hence, speculative and critical design is an efficient tool to get citizens to imagine “what if something unexpected might happen” in order to trigger discussions and new ideas.
Albert:
When you gather an older person and a design student, it is very hard for them to find a common ground to start a discussion. When it is too “everyday related” or too “problem specific”, older people will follow the students very easily in their ideas, without raising any contradictions. With speculation, it is easier to stimulate imagination and then conversation. This is the connecting point between speculative design and co-design.
Yanki:
For example, our latest project called “Open Diamond”; we opened a space for people to speculate on “what if you become a piece of diamond after you died”. This is a very futuristic question that we taught students to ask the elders. The answer is very specific to each person, as he or she will be led to think about the one who will receive this piece of jewellery: How would you see yourself as jewellery? How would you wear it?
With the term social design, we are interested to make a better society for all, by combining critical design, inclusive design, speculative design and other design methodologies.
Albert:
In the academic language, both co-design and speculative design can be understood as methodologies. However, their aims are very different.
Speculative design is about how you envision the future. Co-design is more about the ethics between designers, users, communities and society. Both design approach co-exist at very different levels of methodology.
In a way, co-design is becoming a form of speculative design as it is all about rehearsing the future, but without doing any radical critique.
Speaking of methodologies, you also use performance in your workshop. What are you looking for through this very specific format?
Yanki:
From the ingenuity perspective, everyone has a body. In fact, if we don’t have pens or paper, we still have our body. This is the first resource we have. Performance is a way to bring people together and to germ concepts together, using our bodies as a way to express ourselves.
However, it is difficult because people think they can’t perform and may be uptight. Still, if the participants are willing to play along, performance is a nice icebreaker for co-designing.
Albert:
The analogy is very important, but sometimes we don’t say we perform, we say we act out. When you use the word “performance”, people start to wonder if there is a plot to follow or correct lines to play, which can be scary.
Using the body is also a way to get rid of the complex tools used by designers, which also makes the co-designing process a more equal one for both designers and non-designers. If you put a paper on the table, designers might feel quite comfortable with starting to draw, but what about the other people? With performance, everybody is on the same page again.
From your experience, do you see limitations to co-design? How do you overcome them?
Albert:
We have a very specific limitation: we are working with students. It is then hard to make some of the ideas happening in the real world. There is also a concern of adaptation. As the participants joining the co-design process are not designers, how can we adjust it to them when they give inputs, so they not end up being frustrated?
In general, in a co-design process, the professional positions such as engineers, designers, or civil servants are always being put aside. It is really confusing for the students as they are in a design school where they are trained to become professional designers; yet In the same time, you keep telling them that everybody, in some way, is a designer. Then, we have to find them a very specific role for them in the design process, that they can make use of their specific skill set as designers, as they can draw, represent ideas, organise thoughts and processes.
Although as many people are now saying that the designer is just the facilitator in the process, we argue that a designer is still a designer, but also a citizen having knowledge on the said process.
Yanki:
In our context, our work is more complicated here than in Europe, as design has still undergone a mindset change. How to co-design? Who is doing it? What are the consequences? Who is facilitating the process? Who is executing the results? The whole system needs to be redesigned per se, in order to help co-design happening.
In fact, some myths about collaborative innovation are persisting and limiting the spread of co-design. Co-design is not only about setting workshops, as a lot of co-design approaches are now focusing on this format. Now, it comes to broader questions: how to recruit people? How to put them together? How the workshop should start? What is happening after the workshop? By asking these questions, it is the whole system that starts changing. Conducting workshops might be frustrating, as people are spending a lot of money in them and nothing directly is coming out. We need to plan strategies to support workshop outcomes, so someone can execute or monitor the results.
Wrapping it up, what are your next steps or projects?
Yanki:
It is very complicated to change the citizens’ mindset about design. So, first, we need to make a real impact on society, even if it was not in our original plan as we are setting a design research and experiment lab. We published books and newsletters of our research findings, but for the funders and even the whole society, they are not design. We need to play along.
For the coming three years, we need to release new products with new concepts of services, so people can think what we do is a meaningful process that can make real changes. This is mandatory not to waste our works of these last three years. Still, we met a lot of good designers whom we will be partnering with in the coming phase so that they can transfer our research data into good designs.
Discover more of the HKDI Desis Lab activities on their website!
