Multi-Level Perspective Mapping for Elderly Isolation
Team Members: Corine Britto, Helen Hu, Anukriti Kedia, Sujan Das Shrestha, Shariwa Sharada, Eugenia Perez
Mapping a Socio-technical transition
Using the project canvas with the Multi-Level Perspective tool (MLP), we looked at the anatomy and dynamics that form the large, historical context for the wicked problem. The MLP distinguishes between three systems levels; The Landscape (large and slow-moving social/economic/political/cultural/environmental events); The Regime (networks, groups and institutions and/or infrastructure that can become ‘entrenched’); and The Niche (small, informal ‘protected’ spaces where innovations can be developed, risks taken and norms challenged). Socio-technical systems have similar anatomy and dynamics as wicked problems, that include: beliefs and norms, designed artifacts & communications, large infrastructural systems and all manner of practices and behaviors.
1. Multi-Level Perspective Map
2. Understanding Historical Transitions
2.1. Industrial Revolution:
The industrial revolution was a period in time marked by tremendous transitions brought about key inventions. These key inventions included the spinning jenny, the steam engine, the cotton gin, the assembly line among many others (Hughes, 2018). The industrial revolution happened between the years of 1760–1840. The overarching transition was going from an agrarian economy to one that was dominated by machines and industrialization. The key mindsets to this revolution were going from handicraft and personal to efficient, mass manufacturing and productive. This introduced a lot of changes for the elder population since machines replaced bodies and increased productivity. As machines became more refined age became more visible and the need to replace the older population with the younger became more delineated during this time. The industrial revolution also brought about an urbanization transition. Following the transition of agrarian to the industrial economy, many families followed the same pattern in their own lives. The American railroad era facilitated transportation and opportunities all around the country separating families and beginning to seed the ideas of individualism by encouraging the pursuit of dreams. During this time Germany’s chancellor, Otto Van Bismarck introduced an elder insurance program that marked the beginning of the age structure for retirement and for benefits for the elder and disabled. In time the United States came to adopt this by naming it the Social Security Act during the Great Depression to help vulnerable populations during hardships. Overall the industrial revolution became responsible for shifts in mindsets and movements such as placing the urban life as something to aspire to, introducing the concept of retirement as well as the introduction of healthcare and insurance policies.
Sources:
2.2. Shift in Family Structures and the Women’s Movement
The Industrial Revolution caused a shift away from farm life and incentivized families to move towards urban centers allowing them to find factory work. Families lived in crowded multi-family housing and overall quality of life was lower than life on a farm which allowed families to work together and at their own pace. Factory life caused the transition from working at one’s own pace to working set hours. Since certain jobs were more easily performed by women or children, families that once worked together now worked in separate roles in the factory.
As child labor issues were addressed, it was decided that children belonged in school and not in the workplace. The legislation mandated all children to attend public school, which in many ways resembled factory life and was designed as preparation for the workforce. As a result, families spent less time together. The separation of work and family, along with the separation of work and home gave rise to the popularity of individualization.
Some credit the industrial revolution with the rise of women in the workplace. While some women cared for the home while allowing men to be the breadwinner, many were forced into the workplace and were often paid less than men for the same work. This dichotomy of empowerment and marginalization created the conditions for the women’s movement. Increased agency of working women empowered them to fight for equal pay as well as education and the right to vote.
The breadwinner husband and the home-maker wife as the dominant form of a family throughout history has been categorized as a nostalgia-based myth by Hussung (2015) in the Evolution of American Family Structure. She mentions that although that has not been the case, the notions of change in the family structure and adaptation are elements that are consistent in America’s history. She writes, “recent changes in family life are only the latest in a series of disjunctive transformations in family roles, functions and dynamics that have occurred over the (centuries).”
For the larger proportion of the pre-20th century, the social conservative view mindset on the landscape level seemed to influence the structure of a family. It consisted of a husband, wife, biological children, and extended family — mentions Tricia. In her article, she mentions divorce was rare and people who married, lived so until death. The husband (often the breadwinner) and the wives (home-maker) had a certain role and duty to play in the household.
However, the political shift in the 19th century that granted wives to have property rights (Hussung, 2015) through the Married Women’s Property Acts (1839), permitted women who were married to “own property, sue and be sued, enter into contracts and control the disposition of property upon her death.” With the legal changes and new ideas of marriage based on companionship, love, and choice — the idea of family shifted towards a more emotional source of happiness and satisfaction. Tricia (2015) mentions this shift, in turn, caused a surge in divorce which tripled between 1860 and 1910.
The Great Depression did delay marriage and having children but by 1940s almost 2 million married couples lived apart (Hussung, 2015). The end of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War 2 however, brought about a change when the women also joined the workforce whilst still facing issues of the housing shortage, lack of schools and prolonged separation. However, the postwar scene with the economic boom saw a delay in women who were getting married and an increase in birth rate (doubled).
Productivity and efficiency that led to this economic growth as well as the invention of automobiles. Families could afford a move to the suburbs with developers such as Levitt and Sons, Inc developing mass-produced affordable housing targeted especially for World War 2 veterans. The planned community with houses designed for the American family was truly the first mass-produced suburb and William Levitt eventually gave birth to suburbia in the US.
In the ’50s, the family structure centered around the need for a secured life and the economic and global instability gave rise to a much closer knit family unit. It did result in a period with longer lasting marriages, more children, fewer divorces and the nuclear family.
The expanding role and participation of women in the workforce and education, in the ’60s, saw families become smaller, less stable and more diverse (Hussung, 2015). Adults moved out and lived separately from their family. According to Pew Research Center (2015), the number of children living in a traditional family in the 1960s has decreased to 46% from 73% with a rise in single parents (1/4th of the households) and cohabiting parents in 2014. It further mentions that a change is also seen in the number of children women had, from 40% of them having 4+ children to 41% having two children now with the number of women with 1 child doubling since the 1960s to 2014.
Another event that has played an influential role in the scene is the automobile. The invention of the automobile and more importantly the affordable car by Ford has afforded the people to live a different lifestyle than their ancestors. It has certainly been very influential the way the family structures have changed throughout history. It afforded the youths o move out of the house in search of employment or adventure — a trend that exists even till date. This niche level intervention gradually influenced the mindsets of being independent and free. Parallely, the idea of being considered an adult has shaped the historical trends as well. With the legal driving age set rather arbitrarily (Mayhew. Et al, 2000), it would help develop a mindset of reaching adulthood so would attaining the legal age to smoke, drink and marry. Being an adult, compounded by the need to secure employment, changing needs to satisfy emotional as well as security — influenced by the landscape level ideologies of independence, freedom, and efficiency have caused changes in family structures that have led to a change in the structure of families and its dynamics.
These societal changes contributed to the modern concept of the nuclear family and individualism. Developments in transit, industrialization and women’s rights led to increased agency and transformed traditional societal roles. The emerging mindset around the life course framework began to redefined societal norms thus greatly influencing the decisions we make today.
Sources:
Hussung, Tricia. “ The Evolution of American Family Structure.” Concordia University, June 23, 2015, https://online.csp.edu/blog/family-science/the-evolution-of-american-family-structure
“The American family today.”, Pew Research Center, Dec 17, 2015, https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/17/1-the-american-family-today/
Mayhew, Daniel et al, “Why 16?”, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, August, 2000, https://www.iihs.org/frontend/iihs/documents/masterfiledocs.ashx?id=1261
Wikipedia contributors. (2019, March 7). Effects of the car on societies. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:34, March 31, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Effects_of_the_car_on_societies&oldid=886570272
TILLY, L. (1994). Women, Women’s History, and the Industrial Revolution. Social Research, 61(1), 115–137. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40971024
Foundations of Western Culture
How did the Industrial Revolution alter the family
http://foundations.uwgb.org/family/
2.3 Mass media and perceptions of beauty
Why does modern Western culture glorify youth and hide signs of age? The early 20th century brought about a series of niche innovations, creating an industry out of anti-aging and eternal youth. The 1910s saw the emergence of Hollywood, where the average age of a female Hollywood star was 25. At the same time, advancements in camera close-up shots made it desirable to conceal wrinkles and imperfections. In the 1920s, advertisers at the niche level were experimenting with ways to appeal to rising consumerism after World War I. The 1920s saw the Golden Age of Advertising, where the first millionaire dollar advertising campaign was produced. Out of this market demand arose the first diet products, exercise machines, cosmetics, and plastic surgery, seen as ways to reverse the processes of aging. The landscape effect was the notion that youth is to be esteemed and age is to be hidden.
2.4 Tech dominated socialization
The niche innovation of the transistor in 1947 paved the way to a new era of innovations and the birth of personal computers, eventually building a transition toward digital technology and technocentric society. In the backdrop of the Cold War, the scare of the Soviet Union advancements with the design of the Sputnik built a new environment of scare amongst the Americans eventually leading to new research funding in science and technology.
This marked the regime level setup of the federal government itself formed new agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), to develop space-age technologies from rockets, weapons to computers. From here emerged the ARPANET, the prequel to the internet we know today. Soon enough the technologies which were prevalent in the academic and government organizations became accessible to the public, the privatization of the internet in 1991 led to further dissemination in the society in order to reach a wider audience.
Another trend to follow was the growth of social networking sites that emerged from the mass adoption of the internet and personal computers and smartphones. What emerged as a niche with the launch of six degrees in 1977, became an emerging trend of the 2000s, eventually leading up to the launch of Facebook in 2004. The landscape use of digital platforms for social networking has changed the way people communicate with one another and have led to isolation within the communities. Where at one point there were personal, face to face interactions, with the use of internet and social networking sites, that engagement has become limited with remote and digital communication taking precedence to in physical experiences. These technologies and platforms have only further reinstated ideas of individualism, where everyone is striving to for quantity over quality of connections. As of 2018, the percentage of users in the age group of 65+ were marginally lower than their younger counterparts. Given questions of who uses these platforms and who doesn’t and to what extent, the growing dependence of social networking platforms are creating even more generational isolation within communities.
2.5 Healthcare and Ageing:
After the Industrial Revolution, the idea of healthcare as a policy or something that is offered by either the government or your employer began to develop. In 1901, the Railroad Industry was the first recorded industry to develop medical programs for its employees. Soon after its introduction, healthcare began to work its way into the regime due to the American Medical Association (AMA). Soon these policies began to need changes to better fit the needs of those using it and the growing size of a company’s workforce but due to the World Wars, these changes got put on hold with the whole country focusing on these wars and surviving. With the rise of Gerontology, medical advancements, the first organ transplant, and antibiotics, around the 1930s the idea of an increased life expectancy began being pushed at the niche level — this got realized towards the 1990s in the landscape level (the elderly population is on a steady rise). This combined with the introduction of the Social Security Act in 1935 made it possible for almost everyone to have access to good healthcare and medical care. This increased life expectancy and the new mentality that living longer is the only way to live resulted in a rise in the medical and healthcare services needed by older people. Healthcare becomes privatized around the 1930s too, so the burden is not only on the government. Privatization and corporatization has resulted in a negative feedback loop being created — the economic crises and the rising population has resulted in the price of healthcare already skyrocketing but then combining the need of Big Pharma to make money has made healthcare almost unaffordable to a majority of the population, yet everyone wants healthcare because it is proven to keep you alive and well for longer. By the 1990s, healthcare begins to cost 2x the inflation rate (obscenely expensive). Furthermore, Big Pharma begins to control the prices of pharmaceutical products putting direly needed medicine in the hands of a corporation that will do anything with money — this can be seen in 2019 where the price of insulin has increase 200% just because it can.
Sources:
https://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/history.htm
https://medicalfuturist.com/the-greatest-technological-developments-for-the-elderly
https://www.statnews.com/2019/02/19/no-generic-insulin-who-is-to-blame/
4. Current Solutions
4.1 Commoning and Cohousing
The term “commoning” has been popularized by historian Peter Linebaugh, whose book The Magna Carta Manifesto shows that the founding document of Anglo-American democracy repeatedly affirms people’s right to use the commons to fulfill their basic needs. A majority of English people, known as “commoners,” derived at least part of their livelihoods from the commons before the brutal onset of enclosures by wealthy landowners. Hence the word “commoning” describes people living in close connection to the commons. “I use the word because I want a verb for the commons,” Linebaugh explains. “I want to portray it as an activity, not just an idea or material resource.” (Ristau, 2011).
Massimo De Angelis (2010) mentions that commoning addresses a large number of social movements that neither the state nor markets have been able to tackle. He further states that “State policies in support of capitalist growth are policies that create just the opposite conditions of those we seek since they promote the working of capitalist markets. The latter in turn reproduce socio-economic injustices and hierarchical division of power, environmental catastrophes, and stressed-out and alienated lives.” Commoning then implies the involvement of a common pool of resources sustained by a community and enact a social process that reproduces and maintains it.
Such practices of commoning have existed in society in order to deal with issues surrounding access to shelter, companionship as well as developing a sustainable community, operating by producing solidarity economies. During the 1980s Zurich faced a lack of affordable housing as the urban center grew. Tensions arose in the city among the youths and the city hierarchy. This led to the formation of a Sofa University, where the concerned discussed ideas of living together and who has rights to the city?, particularly influenced by the book “B’olo b’olo” by p.m. In 1995, a construction and cooperative housing “Kraftwerk1” was founded. This bottom-up initiative has since then helped to provide affordable housing whilst building solidarity and advancing new forms of living, if possible reframing the notion of a family as well.
The projects such as Heizenholz have been designed as places to age in the community (not place) and with more elderly adopting to stay there long term. In many ways, the production of spaces entails a value of commonality could be seen as a contemporary method to combat issues with social isolation.
Sources
http://www.onthecommons.org/work/what-commoning-anyway#sthash.TAYEZoXG.dpbs
An Architektur. 2010. On the Commons: A Public Interview with Massimo De Angelis and Stavros Stravrides. In e-flux. Issue 17, 06/2010.
4.2 Socio-democracy
All the mapping done seems to hint to the idea that the way forward is to shift from a for-profit model of healthcare to a for-humanity model where the government begins to think about the larger needs rather than a few corporations heading out how healthcare is given out to those who can afford it and those who can’t. This means that there must be a shift in the way the government is run — from a democracy to a socio-democracy. A socio-democracy is when providing universally accessible public services such as education, health care, care for the elderly, child care, and workers’ compensation, is favored. Many countries that just adapted these ideas into their policies while not being considered socialist — eg: Canada, Denmark, Switzerland. Progressive taxation will allow people who severely need healthcare to be able to get it.
Sources:
https://sarasotainstitute.global/the-case-for-social-democracy
4.3 Trends in positive aging:
Advocacy groups such as the Gray Panthers and the Pioneer Network work to create positive perceptions of aging. Ad Council’s “Love Has No Labels” campaign exemplifies public communication of love transcending age.
Mass media has trended toward visibility and positive perceptions of the elderly in order to target larger segments of the consumer market. Since the 1980s, magazine advertisements have featured an increase in the number of older people featured, as well as an increase in the overall age of models. Commercial advertisements like Allegro’s English for Beginners ad and Adidas’ Break Free ad feature the elderly in a positive, endearing light.
Brands like L’Oreal feature models of all ages, including Helen Mirren, Jane Fonda, and Julianne Moore. Makeup brand MAC stands by their motto “All Ages, All Races, All Genders.” Ethical beauty brand Neal’s Yard Remedies launched the “Age Well Revolution” campaign (pictured above), featuring stories related to aging.
There are also several organizations that tackle the problem of elder isolation and the perception of it both on a national and local level. Such examples include AARP and Age-Friendly Greater Pittsburgh. AARP’s mission is to enhance the quality of life for everyone as they age with a focus on health security, financial stability, and personal fulfillment. Such tangible actions of the AARP include supporting family caregivers by working with businesses to deliver new and innovative products to the home. Other initiatives include battling high drug costs by advocating and tracking drug prices and urging Congress to protect people instead of profit. AARP also helps educate about living healthy by doing fitness programs and involving the communities. AARP takes responsibility for literacy about safe driving, helping with taxes, and planning and saving for the future.
On a local level Age-Friendly, Greater Pittsburgh is about the city of Pittsburgh striving to build a community that benefits people of all ages. It brings people together to rethink how neighborhoods are built and to really inspire inclusivity in every corner of the city. Such cornerstones of their values include access, connection, and innovation. Access will improve points of entry within neighborhoods. By creating spaces in Pittsburgh that are inclusive social isolation for the elders will be prevented and community initiatives will place relationships first. Lastly, advocating technology that is useful, usable and desirable for people of all ages.
There are also campaigns that focus the attention towards perception driven by the media in regards to aging. One of them is #disrupt aging with a campaign that showcases how we can change what it means to age and the possibilities that are still endless for elders.
Sources:
https://www.swppa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/AgeFriendlyPGH_ActionPlan.pdf
5. Leverage Points Mapping:
We started the process of recognizing leverage points by mapping them to Donella Meadow’s 12 leverage points and their structure. We created a Google spreadsheet where each team member could identify an area of intervention per leverage point. This process got our thinking into motion and allowed us to think through all these potential points of intervention to narrow down on the final ones.
6. Points of Interventions:
6.1 Redefining Family Structures through communal living
Leverage Points: 1. The power to transcend paradigms + 2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises + 4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure.
With predominant mindsets of individualism, globalization, and migration, our MLP map showed us transitions in family structures which emerged from the post-industrial revolution to now. The shift from extended to the current trend towards singles implies a greater reliance on the immediate community of an individual. On a broader level, this increases the need to change the definition of family to include those beyond kin and the need to shift the current mindset of individualism to commonalism.
We found leverage points within pre-existing trends of co-working and particularly co-housing structures which have slowly gained momentum as projects across the world. While the seeds of these models had been established in the 60s in Denmark and had also found their way to America through the popularisation hippie movement. While the movement may have died its own death, we have seen a new emergence of projects that embody the idea of commoning and self-regulated & organized assets into communal living. Instances described earlier such as Kraftwerk1 and Kalkebrite in Switzerland grew as bottom-up initiatives but are now a prominent actor. Especially in Zurich, cooperative housing accounts for almost a quarter of the housing and real estate stock. However, traditional forms of cooperative housing in Switzerland should also be taken into consideration such as Siedlung Hallen and Siedlung Friedorf when looking at communal living. We found this intervention particularly noteworthy, given its power to transcend many leverage points and paradigms, eventually leading to the building of inclusive and multigenerational communities.
6.2 Shift from Private Healthcare System to Universal Healthcare
Leverage Points: 11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows. +10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population age structures).+ 9.The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change. +4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure.
Our research showed that our current for profit healthcare prioritizes a focus on diagnosis and profit. This positive feedback loop of the for profit system causes practitioners to overlook holistic solutions and focus on a mechanistic approach to the body. Privatized health care is also the cause of inflated cost of care that is a fraction of the cost in countries with universal health care. These costs are the greatest financial burden on the elderly and their families. Regulation of the for profit system would begin the shift of goals for profit to for humanity.
Current innovations in healthcare outpace the rate of adoption and access. Focus on innovation for its own sake is not improving outcomes. A delay in innovation and resourcing access to standard care would have a greater impact on the common good. For example, Innovations prioritizing the extension of human life at any cost but neglect the quality of life for older adults. A holistic focus on gerontology which includes social and mental well being would positively affect the social isolation crisis facing older adults. The goal of the healthcare system needs to shift to extending human life to allowing human life to thrive. Social isolation would also be improved by a communal approach to housing and care. The mechanistic approach which focuses on the individual could transition to a holistic approach which allows the community to support an elder’s well being.
A shift from a democracy to a socio-democracy might be exactly what is needed. Everyone is treated equally and those that need the care are able to get it without worrying about running through all of their savings. A socio-democracy is when providing universally accessible public services such as education, health care, care for the elderly, child care, and workers’ compensation, is favoured. Many countries that just adapted these ideas into their policies while not being considered socialist — eg: Canada, Denmark, Switzerland. In Sweden and Switzerland this is also done through the use of actual parameters within a health care environment — there is a cap on monthly spending on pharmaceuticals, a cap on how much you have to spend per month on your medical care, a cap on how much you have to spend per day on a hospital bed/room. This also allows for current innovation sin medicine to be used by everyone rather than the select few that are able to afford it — this is due to the focus on a life lived while flourishing rather than surviving.
6.3 Creating opportunities for Inclusive Design
Leverage Point: 4.Self-organization of system structures + 3.The goals of the system + 2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises goals of the system + 1. The power to transcend paradigms
Consumer demand for the fast and new undermines the need for products that communicate meaning, products that create relationships, and products that live beyond a fashion season.
Youth-centered culture is a landscape-level leverage point that might be affected. To pinpoint the mass industry as the culprit is to misunderstand the market forces of supply and demand at play; industry caters to what they believe consumers want. Perhaps we create tools or messages or education/frameworks to help people see the actual underlying values they are looking for, beyond age or surface judgments. When a company touts itself as hiring the “youngest, brightest minds”, they make a biased association, when really they might be looking for the “brightest minds”. When we look for youthful beauty in our fashion models, are we looking at pure aesthetic form, or are we looking for age-agnostic things like joy, health and strength? As designers, we might help people see more clearly.
Co-designing with the elderly:
Product trends are often forays into new experiments, forgetting or under-utilizing the collective wisdom of the past. How might we better integrate the voices and needs of our aged populations into the products we design? How might we incorporate the learnings from old traditions (and from cultures outside our own)?
As a leverage point for inclusion, the public sphere for stories of aging may be considered. Stories of aging can inform the design of our products, provide feedback on the products we design, and create meaningful relationships and conversations. Stories of the elderly today and of the past might produce different insights. In this way, we might create conversations that transcend our own limited lifespans.
The radical development of technology has been closely associated with signs of progress in society. Perhaps, now would be the perfect time to alter that perception and look at the use value more prominently rather than the aspects of exchange value. Industries, research, and development are geared towards creating something new that is supposed to aid us but this is where the problem arises. What possibly took years to innovate, now takes a few months and with it comes the need to become more aware and conscious of the products out in the market. Failure to do so could often lead to being termed outdated or lacking experience. This, in fact, is what has driven the aging population out of the current workforce. Perhaps we should value innovations and technologies that address the large spectrum of the population which implies that a slower design lifecycle is adopted so that a larger percentage of the population can cope with the change and has access.
6.4 Influencing positive perceptions of age, beauty, and social constructs
Leverage Point: 9.The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change. + 3.The goals of the system + 7.The gain around driving positive feedback loops
Our social constructs and perceived life course framework communicate that age is associated with certain milestones, that a certain age indicates schooling, marriage, and retirement. What milestones might exist post-retirement? Should age milestones exist at all? What other frameworks might better portray the fluidity and opportunities of life?
Our value as contributors to our families and economies is largely determined by our careers and exchange value in the market. Beyond meeting basic physiological needs (sustenance), should the value of human life be something to quantify and capitalize on? For the elderly, what does the value of life mean after retirement, and how might we re-frame positive perceptions around it?
In order to influence positive perceptions surrounding age, beauty, and social constructs there are many possible interventions that we reflected upon as a team. The first one included redefining life course framework through family awareness campaigns, “you are more than your career” initiatives and positive campaigns surrounding aging. For example in the United States after age 18 it is very common that the child graduating from high school has a lot of pressure to go to an out-of-state university and move away from the family. After having done this the pressure to continue the career and being able to pay off student debt is the main driver of looking for the job. These fuels ideas of hyper-individualism and begins to tear through the fabric of family unity.
Family awareness campaigns can be deployed in elementary and middle schools to reconstruct the importance of family and career. School campaigns that redefine success metrics outside of the annual salaries and degree may be beneficial to the reconception of self-development. A new view of self-development may show that it is possible to achieve dreams while staying close to the full extended family.
Through these campaigns that can be done via social networks, schools, and higher education institutions a broad appeal may be achieved. For example, another crucial cornerstone of self-development is that of mindfulness and taking care of your mental health. These campaigns can be geared towards the strengthening of current social networks and expanding on those as well. The sooner the growth and maintenance of these caring units of people the lesser the chances of elder isolation for the future.
7. Our Process
7.1 Understanding Landscape, Regime, and Niche
For the process of the MLP, we first had to discuss what landscape, regime, and niche meant to us as a group and how we were going to apply it to our own problem of Elderly Isolation in Pittsburgh. We consistently referenced the Geels article in regards to the evolution of the horse-drawn carriage to the automobile. At first, we thought that landscape meant bigger world-wide events such as the Great Depression and World War 1. However, we quickly discovered that it is much more than that. The landscape is about the zeitgeist and the general attitudes of the time that led to such events. This allowed us to see things even at the broader scope and contextualized the events of the time. Following landscape, we were able to identify regime as much a more grounded concept of infrastructure and real institutions that govern certain systems and become entrenched with others. Lastly the niche it was easily understood to be small experiments that must be protected within its space to allow it to grow and hopefully swim its way up to the regime and/or landscape. By understanding these three modes in this way we were able to clearly map out the socio-technical systems within elderly isolation.
7.2 In-Class Exercises and Mapping Techniques
The in-class exercises that we did over class were reflective and allowed us to map threads between landscape, regime, and niche in different topics. As a team, we divided the information into different topics for each of us to research. Such topics included the industrial revolution, family structures, the women’s suffrage movement, healthcare, life-course framework, dot-com boom along others. Individually we categorized each post-it by topic and color in the Miro digital map. We came together to discuss the main takeaways and to build the timeline-like structure of the map. We discovered interesting patterns with the structure of the timeline and historical threads were easier to identify this way.
7.3 Discussing Leverage Points
These points were taken from Donella Meadow’s 12 leverage points and their structure. We created a Google spreadsheet where each team member could identify an area of intervention per leverage point. After filling the entire spreadsheet we decided to condense it into two main points per category and expand on those. Max Neef’s needs and satisfiers were also considered and discussed during the in-class discussions concerning interventions.
8. Reflections on the Process:
Mapping the MLP was a fulfilling yet daunting task. The process felt like a practice into what Ellise Boulding defines as the idea of ‘the long now’, extending our own knowledge of the current point of time to 100( and more) years into the past to see the historical transitions that came into being and got integrated and entrenched systematically into the society we live in today.
Once again, we felt constrained by the size of the canvas given to us and shifted to a digital mapping platform to see these interconnections and layers at play through a medium which allowed us to collaboratively and effectively explore the space.
8.1 Learning from what history teaches us:
As we look towards design to solve some of our deeply rooted social issues, a lack of knowledge towards where these issues stem from can drive us to alleviate symptoms rather than tackle root causes. To understand history is to understand this cause and effect relationship. In understanding history, we can trace back these problems to their root causes, to a considered sense of reality which has occurred in order to solve them and their resulting effects. As designers, we are too invested in the now and the future, and often forget to reflect back on the past. This multi-layered perspective became fundamental to analyzing the system over time, to see where the leverage points lie.
8.2 Mapping without bias:
Another important learning for us was to engage in this activity with a (seemingly) neutral perspective. Our approach to understanding the different revolutions before jumping into the issues that we had outlined in our wicked problem map definitely allowed us to explore different facets, and understand factors which weren’t a part of our initial map. The idea of commoning and to understand the women’s movement were some factors that we understood through this method. As designer’s we are too privy to confirm bias, always looking for ways to support and validate our initial hypothesis. This format allowed us to take a step back from our initial undertakings to build in a broader perspective of the transition we face currently.
8.3 Extending the map into the future:
We discovered that the map becomes an even greater tool when we extend it further into the future, to see what we can leverage and establish the landscape of our preferred future. This extension of the MLP allowed us to locate our leverage points on the different layers of the map, and to envision a long term future by recognizing the present day niches to determine what becomes to landscape and regime of the future.
8.4 Need to remain adaptive to change:
It became pretty evident then that change is the only constant theme across the MLP. Any intervention proposed on either of the three levels would need to enable the people to become adaptive to change and not restricted by it, something that the tech companies are so fond of doing by engulfing the user base into their eco-systems — making it difficult to make unrestrained choices.
