Materializing design’s role in bridging divides towards sustainability transformations
Abstract:
Society is currently facing significant and persistent “wicked” challenges undermining the sustainability of social and natural systems alike. The call for radical transformations that may result in ecological, infrastructural and societal regime shifts to more desirable system configurations, challenges researchers to transcend disciplinary and epistemological divides and embrace new knowledges and skills. Design, although emerging as an integrative, explorative and pragmatic discipline with the capability to support different transition pathways, has not been fully engaged on a symmetrical level by scholars from other fields. This work will seek to outline an initial framework to help articulate the potential role of design in interdisciplinary research teams working towards sustainability and resilience under the framing of socio-technical-ecological systems. To better communicate and expand the argument, the conceptual model is materialized as a design game that acts as a tool for collaboration.
Wicked problems and the call for radical transformations
The world is currently facing significant challenges that simultaneously affect people, societal structures and institutions as well as well as the natural, planetary processes that support life (Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2019; Rockström et al. 2018; O’Brien 2011). Problems such as the obesity syndemic (Swinburn et al. 2019) attest to the interconnected and complex nature of issues such as climate change, obesity and undernutrition. These types of problems are often described as “wicked” because of their intractable origins and their resistance to simplistic solutions. Addressing them hence require integrative, holistic approaches that can unfold significant transformations of the structures and logics that contribute to their persistence. There exists wide agreement that moving society towards sustainability will require significant changes in societal norms and behaviours together with a series of governance and management structures and processes. Facing the complexity of the systemic regime shifts needed (Olsson, Galaz and Wiebren 2014) requires novel ways of approaching such challenges that demand greater collaboration of disciplines, together with the integration of diverse worldviews not just within academia but also from the wider society (Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2019).
The term “wicked problems”, which emerged from a design perspective in the seventies (Rittel and Webber 1973), has been adopted to describe the complex nature of our sustainability issues from across different fields of knowledge (Preiser et al. 2018). However, design has not maintained much prominence as a promising field of knowledge and research. As the discipline evolved, design has showcased its potential to face the degree of change that is currently required. It’s inherent integrative and explorative nature could potentially address questions such as where to direct changes towards, and how to make them happen, while pragmatically responding to the urgency call transforming lives, narratives, systems, structures and environments.
This paper seeks to offer insights that help understand how design researchers could contribute to inter and transdisciplinary projects working towards social and environmental sustainability and resilience. To do so, a general framework will be developed as a way to clarify the language, roles and spaces where design abilities could fit in. It will particularly develop this discussion by bridging the gaps between the main communities of scholars currently working towards enabling sustainable futures. To exemplify and test its applicability, a case study will be offered that focuses on the materialization of this model for its application within a particular research community working under the frame of resilience thinking.
Developing an integrated change-oriented framework
1. Approaches to transformative change and sustainability
Currently, there exist two main epistemic communities addressing sustainability challenges from systemic and interdisciplinary perspectives, one working towards managing sustainability transitions and the other working towards socio-ecological resilience (Olsson, Galaz and Boonstra 2014). Although both communities describe transformations towards sustainability as consisting of multiple levels, phases and scales (Olsson, Galaz and Boonstra 2014), they adopt different approaches, frameworks and language. This results in different methods to frame research questions and to analyse and discuss the nature of such change. They also draw different boundaries to the systems they focus on. Scholars working towards Sustainability Transitions (Geels 2005; Loorbach, Frantzeskaki and Avelino 2017) frame their work mostly within Sociotechnical Systems –STS, while scholars working towards social-ecological resilience adopt the Social-ecological System framing –SES (Folke et al. 2016). The first group understands that the interaction between society and technology consists of material and symbolic elements such as technology, infrastructure, markets, networks, users and cultural meanings (Geels 2005). On the other hand, SES scholars adopts a “humans-in-nature” perspective, acknowledging the deep interdependence and feedback loops that exist between ecosystems and society.
Both fields understand their framings to focus on complex adaptive systems (Hölscher, Wittmayer and Loorbach 2018; Smith and Stirling 2010, as cited in Ahlborg et al. 2019) as nested, multilevel systems that display unexpected behaviours and emerging patterns which lead to new system configurations. Beyond these similarities, Hölscher, Wittmayer and Loorbach (2019) highlight that the main differences found between these communities stem from their epistemological traditions and the communities from which they have evolved –either within the intersection of sociology and technology studies or ecology and policy (Ahlborg et al. 2019). To describe and analyze such systems, SES scholars have adopted resilience theory as a way to identify risks and avoid undesirable transformations so as to ensure that nature’s essential services to human beings can be maintained (Olsson, Galaz, and Boonstra 2014; Ahlborg et al. 2019). Because of their extensive focus on ecosystems, critics have pointed out that this perspective has not deepened its understanding of the social aspects and dynamics shaping these transformations (as quoted in Olsson, Galaz, and Boonstra 2014).
On the other hand, scholars working towards sustainability transitions address the interactions and complexities that exist within social sub-systems and their structures –technology, institutions, etc.– to develop better tools and governance strategies that can lead to large-scale societal changes (Loorbach, Frantzeskaki and Avelino 2017). While they recognize the role of technology in shaping our world, they do not give prominence to the role of ecosystems in both enabling, affecting or being affected by such dynamics (Ahlborg et al. 2019). Understanding that humans are the largest force of planetary change (Steffen et al. 2011; Folke et al. 2016) imply that further attention needs to be given to the interplay between technology and its interaction with the natural ecosystems (Ahlborg et al. 2019).
These accounts illustrate how both communities have underdeveloped the understanding of some aspect of reality when drawing their system boundaries, leading to the realization that they would benefit from integrating each other’s approach. To account for gaps between both frameworks, Ahlborg et al. (2019) suggest moving towards adopting a socio-technical-ecological systems –STES– approach instead. This analytical framework departs “from a symmetrical attention to technology, society, and environment” and tries to advance the understanding of technology especially for the SES community. Here, technology is placed second position to account for the mediating role it has in all human-environment relations. Mediation is understood as a “process of shaping, enabling, transforming, and conditioning the physical and symbolic interactions with our environment and other humans” (Ahlborg et al. 2019). Technology is thus understood to encompass methods, processes or devices that serve as means to fulfill human purposes (Ahlborg et al. 2019) and as such, represent a significant way in which physical and natural phenomena are exploited with a particular purpose or functionality. Because of this, they draw attention to what is often called the politics of technology (Winner, Langdon. 2018), the ways in which it can enhance, hinder and transform human agency by enabling certain power dynamics, while also noting how it is inherently value-laden and biased –as opposed to neutral and instrumental portrayals of it. Because technology is the result of human endeavour and design, it necessarily implies that the capacities that it extends to us humans can either be exploited for good or bad, for alienation and destruction, or for liberation and even for environmental conservation (Ahlborg et al. 2019). Technology thus has an ontological effect of shaping the conditions of our existence (Fry 2016), extending or limiting it by reshaping the world and our practices within it (Verbeek, 2005), thereby requiring special attention to its impacts on the world across time and space. This wider conceptual framework is effective at stressing that unless these aspects are addressed simultaneously, any study design, problem formulation, analysis, conclusions or policy recommendations emerging from them would most likely be superficial. A limited understanding of the dynamics of the interfaces between socio technical and social-ecological systems would thus fail to contribute to the degree of change and impact currently needed (Ahlborg et al. 2019).
2. Bridging models and language
When we analyze the different models that the SES and STS communities have adopted, we perceive that they have developed specific languages that relate to the analytical models they adopt. Scholars working within STS adopt the multi-level perspective on transitions model –MLP (Geels 2005), which identifies three levels: niche, socio-technical regime and socio-technical landscape. It stems from the understanding that the interactions between these socio technical system levels are created and reshaped by the social actors that are part of the structures and the rules that they develop to orient their actions. From this perspective, a change from one socio-technical system to another is what represents a transition. Transitions are understood as multi-actor processes encompassing interactions between different social groups and as such, represent complex, non-linear processes that emerge from a diversity of dynamics occurring at different levels simultaneously –never displaying one single driver or cause. Since these dynamics are socially constructed, they therefore change according to the varying interests and perceptions of its actors over time. Within this model, the meso-level represents the socio-technical regime that is responsible for the stability of the existing socio-technical systems in place (Geels, 2005).
On the other hand, the SES community has embraced the Panarchy model which explains how a set of nested complex adaptive systems organise and interact over different spatiotemporal scales (Holling, 2001). Similarly to the MLP model, this approach also understands the nested nature of processes and dynamics, and the varying phases during which certain processes are enhanced or prevented. Within this frame, the different adaptive cycles at play display four distinct phases: a) growth and exploitation, b) conservation, c) collapse and release, and d) destruction and reorganization. The change of state from one phase to the next is what they refer to as a transition (Holling, 2001), which represenst the stage between the preparation for change and the period of building resilience of a new trajectory or pathway of development.
Both models recognise that within the different levels and scales, the lowest, smallest levels –niches– display the capacity for invention, experimentation and thus, faster change, while the higher and larger levels –regimes– tend towards stabilization and conservation, displaying a slower capacity for change. Resilience, in both cases emerges as the capacity of a system to remain within the same regime by absorbing or withstanding perturbations so that essential structures and functions can be maintained (Folke et al. 2010). From this perspective, resilience can be desirable or not depending on the configuration that the system is resistant to, but it also entails the degree to which a system can increase its capacity for learning, adaptation and self-organization (Carpenter and Folke 2006). This recognition has led the SES community develop a comprehensive understanding of resilience as the capacity of a social-ecological system to “continually change and adapt while remaining within critical thresholds” (Folke et al. 2010). To understand the nuances of these trajectories, this community has advanced towards the conceptualization of a Resilience Thinking approach characterized by three key aspects: resilience, adaptability and transformability (Folke et al. 2010). Adaptability refers to the capacity to deal with and adjust to internal and external changes while staying within a regime, whereas transformability refers to the capacity to “cross thresholds into new development trajectories” or create new ones (Folke et al. 2010; Folke et al. 2016). The main implication of this recognition is that it understands the need for changes within smaller scales so as to enable resilience at larger scales, while recognizing the role of novelty and innovation that emerges during periods of crisis when navigating transitions to new development pathways. One of the main barriers preventing transformations are often the high degree of resilience of certain societal patterns. Because of this, transformability emerges as a key ingredient within this view (Folke et al. 2010; O’Brien, 2011). Both epistemic communities have acknowledged that change results from overcoming path dependence and crossing over thresholds to enable flexible, collaborative forms of management and governance of resources. This implies dealing with the status quo, calling for addressing the role of agency and the power relationships that may exist. Collaboration and experimentation is what will lead to effectively releasing lock-ins and enabling shifts to new trajectories towards sustainability (Olsson, Galaz and Boonstra 2014).
Because of this Olsson, Galaz and Boonstra (2014) stress that a better integration of transition management and resilience theory could help design studies that can form niches for experimenting and innovating with new configurations of social, technological and ecological systems that can support the wellbeing of humans within planetary boundaries –particularly in the face of uncertainty and change. This collaboration between the different research fields represents a challenge on many levels. Firstly, accounting for the different ontological and epistemological traditions that they reproduce, secondly, by recognising that further participation and integration of knowledges and ways of thinking and doing are now imperative if we are to imagine and enact fundamental, radical change. All of these considerations points us towards the need to re-integrate design, as a discipline that has the capacity to synergize and synthesize plural views while enabling experimental and creative approaches to complex, ill-defined problems.
3. The role of Design within the Artificial
CHANGING DESIGN AND DESIGNING CHANGE
Design, as the discipline that it is today has only just developed to be so in the last hundred years. It went from being a field in the service of enhancing and improving the production and consumption of goods (Margolin 2002), towards a knowledge generation field containing its own epistemology, praxiology and phenomenology (Cross 1999). Nigel Cross refers to this as a third culture that is characterized by designerly ways of knowing (Cross 1982), marking a clear differentiation from the well established sciences and arts. This culture comes to represent technology and constitute itself as something distinct, including the material culture of design as a synthesis of knowledge and skills coming from both the sciences and the humanities. This conception of design would also align to what Herbert Simon refers to as the science of the artificial (Simon 1988) when referring to objects and phenomena invented by humans (Margolin 2002). Understanding that this discipline as neither science nor art, helps us see that design possess its own purposes, values, measures and procedures (Owen 1998) whereby the types of questions asked, and the knowledge produced, are very different to those of the other disciplines. By synthesizing knowledge from these other fields, it represents a truly integrative and pragmatic discipline that simultaneously addresses understanding, communication and action (Buchanan 1992).
Design aims to address the so called wicked or ill-defined problems, as opposed to the “tame problems” typically addressed by the sciences. Wicked problems are a “class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing’’ (Simon as quoted in Buchanan 1992). The ill nature differentiates these problems as indefinable and inseparable and hence, not leading to the finding of a single solution though a linear thinking process.
Other aspects that characterize designerly knowledge, is that it adopts solution-focussing strategies, the use of abductive, productive thinking, and the use of non-verbal media for visualization, experimentation and communication (Cross 1982). This means that this type of thinking-though-action is generative, explorative and future-focused –concerned with imagining possibilities, not what ought to be but what may be, by imagining and planning for that which does not yet exist (Cross 1982). In this sense, it has been popularized to be apt to navigate uncertainty because of the indeterminacy of the type of problems addressed and its capacity to pragmatically invent and develop working hypotheses that can help advance towards the problem resolution even when there is a lack of information (Cross 1982). This often comes about through exploring different framings of the problem, and through extensive experimentation and testing in which problem and solution co-evolve. These designerly capabilities became popularized outside of the field as “design thinking” (Brown, 2008), which has helped communicate the potential application of design in enabling innovation, collaboration and to trigger rapid change mostly within business and government settings (Cooper, Junginger, and Lockwood 2009). As a new discipline, design researchers have only recently started engaging in research collaborations (Muratovski, 2015) on a symmetrical level. Designers have historically gained popularity contributing to visualize or communicate the final outcomes of research projects. Within an increasing trend and a call for collaboration among and beyond disciplines to address the complexity and persistence of our current problems, there seems to be an urgent need to bring design back into our discussions as a way to truly expand the scope of our understanding of the systemic nature of our complex challenges, and identify and imagine novel opportunities for action and change.
DESIGN AND ITS BRIDGING POTENTIAL
Design stands today as a truy integrative and transdisciplinary discipline (Buchanan 1992; Brown, Harris and Russell 2010) in the sense that it merges and synthesizes knowledge emerging from other fields, and it enables the engagement of a diverse array of actors and their perspectives. Through these synergies and dynamics, it is able to propose new questions and discover possibilities behind the indeterminacy and uncertainty that exists within the complex problems it addresses. Design is also valued for its capacity to “bring things together” (Duclos 2010), particularly when transferring and translating knowledge during the production of new knowledge and artefacts. An analysis that considers the sociology of technology is useful when understanding that the material outcomes and the “socio technical assemblages” that are shaped through design (Duclos 2010; Latour, 2019), become active shapers of reality and help constitute our lifeworlds. By dealing with artificiality and technology, both materially and symbolically, design is not only purposely mediating relations but also shaping and being shaped through its unfolding (Willis, 2006). This has evolved in deeper understandings of the role of design in enabling or limiting future possibilities (Fry 2008) and the recognition that our lives are inherently mediated by design and its ever pervasive existence (Margolin 2002). This has led many scholars to state that because the human experience of the natural world is incessantly mediated through design (Papanek, 1985; Margolin 2002,), it could be said that the natural has in many ways ceased to exist leading us to exist in strictly artificial worlds (Margolin 2002) –also in line with the concept of the Anthropocene. The implication of this is that the act of designing carries now a deep responsibility and has an important role to play in enabling and limiting the possibility of of life flourishing on Earth (Fry 2008). This has led to the emergence of different design-led approaches to tackle system change challenges and explicitly work towards the active reconfiguration of transition processes (Irwin 2015) that help realise socio-technical system transformations. Designing for Sustainability Transitions (Ceschin and Gaziulusoy 2019) integrate different approaches that help conceptualize, visualize, imagine and operationalize a diversity of experiments to co-create transition pathways. Such interventions may seek to foster changes in values, technologies, social practices, lifestyles, infrastructures and reshape the interactions between socio technical and socio-ecological systems (Ceschin and Gaziulusoy 2019). Approaches such as Transition Design (Irwin 2015) and Design for Resilience (Baek, Meroni, and Manzini 2015) try to support collective efforts for re-imagining and enacting desirable futures, and foster innovation initiatives across long spatiotemporal levels and scales. From this design perspective, Ceschin and Gaziulusoy (2019) agree that there is now a need to focus efforts on socio-technical-ecological systems that acknowledge the key role of technology and the artificial, but also bring back its attention to the biosphere and the future of all life on Earth. Considering how the human made world is a mediation of the relation between humans and the environment, the need and importance of the inclusion of design within any work trying to enable sustainable futures becomes central.
Translating Design’s role for Resilience Thinking — a case study
For the purpose of the discussion and development of the framework proposed here, a series of definitions and considerations have been laid out, which helped construct an argument for the relevance of the integration of design as pertaining to the realm of the artificial –the layer of technology as a mediator and shaper of human-environment interactions. To be able to evolve, visualize and test its relevance, this work will describe a case study developed around a community of practice (Wenger 2011) in which the author is engaged with. This community consists of an interdisciplinary group of researchers and artists that adopt a Resilience Thinking perspective to develop insights for building sustainable and resilient social-ecological futures for Latina America (SARAS Institute 2019). The low participation of design researchers within this community points to the need to better articulate and communicate its potential role in helping enable sustainability transformations through the reshaping of diverse transition pathways. To achieve this, this section will explicitly outline the seven core principles that constitute a Resilience Thinking approach, and draw correlation to capabilities, methods and tools existent within design. Even though some designers have explored what it would mean to design for resilience (Baek, Meroni and Manzini 2015), there is still a lack of clarity and deeper understanding of the scope, breath and nuances behind this concept, especially as it has been lately developed in the field of SES. The table shown in Figure 1 maps some skills and abilities to try and bridge the communication gap, when seeking to unlock large-scale system transformations within SES and STS.
Design literature has illustrated how the field has developed and adopted a diverse array of attitudes (Rawsthorn, 2018), methods, and tools that are particularly suited to face the challenges of managing resilience and fostering regime changes and large system transformations (Anshelm, Jonas, and Zerwas, 2016). They particularly portray design as apt to: face uncertainty and surprise, integrate different knowledges and disciplines, contribute to the translation and communication, facilitate collaboration and innovation across different actors, aid in the visualization and reframing of complex, ill-defined problems, explore, test and experiment with solutions and interventions, help speculate, imagine and develop desirable visions for sustainable futures that can help improve governance and aid decision-making processes while effectively changing the values, practices, meanings and products that constitute our reality (Ceschin and Gaziulusoy 2019; Gerber and Carroll 2012; Paton and Dorst 2011; Kimbell 2015; Muratovski 2015; Brandt, Lockwood, 2009; Messeter and Binder 2008).
Materializing Synergies Through Design: A Creative Toolkit
In order to further exemplify, materialize and test the framework developed within the case study proposed, a process of research-through-design (Cross 1995, as quoted in Simonsen et al. 2010, 80) resulted in the development of a creative toolkit that took the form of a design game. Adopting and enacting a designerly way of advancing research, this toolkit consists of a series of material elements arranged and designed as a way to enable a process of participatory design in which participants are able to visualize, speculate and reflect on a series of aspects though direct play and experience (Hanington and Martin 2012). As is the case of many design games, it particularly seeks to provide a stage to enable participation through a collaborative generative space to envision future actions, solutions or outcomes in a non-competitive way (Vaajakallio and Mattelmäki 2014). To align with this goal, the artefact (Figures 2 and 3) adopted the logic of a cooperative game in which all players are motivated to cooperate to achieve the conclusion of the game. This results in a way to elicit playful interactions that enable the building of trust among participants –a necessary requisite for conducting collaborative projects. The material and symbolic aspects that are offered through suspending time and adopting a new set of rules, seeks to open a space for improved dialogue and mutual learning (Brandt, Messeter and Binder 2008) that can transcend typical language barriers found in interdisciplinary collaboration.
This artefact was also designed to particularly address the need of defining a collective group vision and to identify a strategy for future group actions and interventions. Though its materialization and the facilitation of a collective experience, the game intends to guide participants through a design process informed by the Transition Design approach (Scupelli, 2015) that moves from visioning and forecasting, to stakeholder mapping and grounding, to co-visioning, backcasting and planning. This toolkit was developed, tested and improved, while particularly customized to be adopted during a research workshop involving the community mentioned –which is due to take place in the near future. The outcomes of the adoption of this tool will be further analyzed after its implementation. It is hoped that a series of consecutive reformulations and tests will be carried out within different research communities and groups to further refine and test its ability to communicate and illustrate the model and the main ideas exposed here.
Concluding remarks
Responding to a need of expanding the understanding of the role of technology and the potential of the integration of design within research groups working towards sustainability transformations and change, a conceptual model has been offered highlighting the spaces and potential contributions of integrating design capabilities into inter and transdisciplinary teams. To exemplify and further expand this model, a case study is offered which materializes the framework as a creative toolkit by undergoing a research-through-design process. This results in the development of a cooperative game that seeks to foster a collaborative design processes, enable dialogues and outlines shared visions through the embodiment and practical exemplification of the potential of design within a community of practice working from a resilience thinking perspective.
This discussion and the directions proposed by this model have tried to communicate and expand on the potential offered by the inclusion of design –and its link to technology– within a wider framing of complex adaptive systems as STES. By doing so, it has attempted to narrow and bridge the gaps between the two main communities towards sustainability transformations, move across the language barriers and articulate the role of design as a way to translate, understand and materialize transformations towards sustainability.
Although the timing of the group activities do not allow to incorporate reflections and analysis of its application, the work so far will help understand and visualize a particular material experiential understanding of the model and explore possibilities of future application. Though this, it seeks to inspire other designers working in transdisciplinary groups, and especially concerned with societal transitions to sustainability, to explore, test and reformulate this proposal, so a better understanding of the barriers, limitations and potential space for action is made clearer both to the design community as well as other communities of scholars not thoroughly literate in design.
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