NEW WAYS OF DESIGNING: A Review
Discussion Leadership notes for the Wednesday, April 20 session of Transition Design Seminar II; collaborative effort with Chris Donadio.
Today’s session was a review session where we looked back on what we learned throughout the semester with regards to Transition Design tools and concepts. We went through a series of mapping exercises to understand how Transition Design tools and concepts fit into the traditional design process. We completed the day’s class with a discussion of what was interesting to the students throughout the course.
Exercise 1: Crowdsourcing Transition Design Tools and Concepts
Brainstorm all the Transition Design tools and concepts we have learned throughout the semester.
Exercise 2: Map the Design Process.
Create a visual diagram of the traditional design process as you have learned in studio or other classes.
Exercise 2.1: Identify where Transition Design Concepts and Tools fit into the Design Process diagram.
Plot Transition Design concepts and tools as they relate to the traditional design process.
Exercise 2.2: Abstract from the Transition Design concepts and identify the required skills from designers.
Indi Young Mental Models — identify the products encountered at every level of the journey, and identify the particular item that is an opportunity for leverage.
Identify the skills needed by designers to make use of the tools and concepts of Transition Design, and plot it on the diagram.
Exercise 2.3: Take the current trends that are happening in Design, and note how they are impacting the diagram. Identify what trends disrupt and what trends enable the process.
Use a contrasting PostIt or marker to identify how these trends are impacting the process.
Exercise 2.4: Synthesize the exercise into one paragraph. I.e. “This is what a Transition Designer thinks and does.”
Make the paragraph or sentence succinct enough such that someone who is unfamiliar with design can understand exactly what you do as a Transition Designer.
Exercise 3: Bring your case study to one of the diagrams on the wall, and use the map of the course to ‘check’ the case study.
Discussion
On traditional strategy vs. T.D. value proposition: The strategy discourse is to capture value, whereas Transition Designer tries to enable value. The T.D. tries to create new ecosystems of value rather than to capture this value. T.D. enables people to live in certain ways, creating shared value.
The Guardian. Facebook and context collapse — people are sharing, but not themselves.
What is Transition Design in relation to critical design, ontological design, new moments, de-colonial design, speculative design, etc.?
DesignX, Don Norman’s approach to solving wicked problems. Contrast Norman’s approach to the Transition Design approach.
What readings were interesting to the students?
- Behavior change. Conceptual frames in communications.
- Max Neef
- Wikinomics
Q&A: Case Study Presentations
- Monday: Everyone presents; 15min of presentation, the rest of the time on feedback. Walk through the entire case study. Focus should be what you learned, how you framed the problem, what the process helped you understand better, and how you will look at solutions differently now.
- Wednesday: Feedback session from students on the course and the case study. Think about what you thought about the course in general, the assignments, the case studies, readings, everything.
Whiteboard Documentation
Transition designers critically understand their own mindset and posture, allowing them to analyze the origins and underpinnings of the sociotechnical regimes their work is embedded within. As empathetic and plastic thinkers, they oscillate between high-level thinking and detail oriented craft. In particular, they challenge the field of design to consider life-cycle, interconnectedness, unanticipated consequences, human experience, place-based design, and long loops. They are able to effectively envision a future and design strategies for approaching those futures. — Group 1 Paragraph
