Participation, Reconnection, and Design: presentation by Marc Rettig and Hannah du Plessis of Fit Associates, as part of the Interaction 17 conference redux for IxDA Pittsburgh.
Argues that participation in a vast and growing movement toward a sustainable and equitable future is a fertile frontier for design, and an invitation to adopt new approaches to work.
10. Day 1: You
Why is it important for you to be here?
What do you plan to get at this conference? What do you hope to give at this conference?
What really matters to you at this conference, what stands in the way of having an experience that matters?
Day 2: The conference conversation
“I’m tired of …”
“I’m grateful for ...“
“I’m missing ...”
Day 3: Our industry and future
11. We stand in a difficult moment in history. We have
inherited a world that works for some at the
expense of others. We are disconnected from the
consequences of our actions. It is alluring to participate
unconsciously and believe that “everything is ok.”
It is therefore important to step outside the comfort of
our industry and our time, and ask critical questions.
12. What might future generations ask of us?
What might those outside of, but affected
by our industry, ask of us?
So we asked…
13. Do we consider the unintended consequences of designing only for ourselves?
Why don’t we take the opportunity to change consumption habits rather than
feed technological addiction?
Why don’t we take leadership to shift the moral and ethical compass of
our design community?
Why don’t we refuse to do work that is against our moral commitments?
Why aren’t we talking about designing jobs away?
Why so many fucking photo apps?
Some of the answers we heard
15. “Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen
and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you
recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence
the outcomes–you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several
million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and knowable, a
alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists
think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the
opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief
that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who
and what is may impact, are not things we can know….”
Rebecca Solnit
Possibilities everywhere
16. Two points about that…
“Business as usual” ain’t working, it’s hurting.
1. At the same time, a lot of good things are happening,
and they add up to something big.
2. We’re finding methods, strategies and approaches that
help us all participate in those things.
17. 1. At the same time, a lot of good things are happening,
and they add up to something big.
(My job for the next four minutes is to overwhelm you with
just how many good things are going on.)
22. John Thackara
Reconnecting…
Communities with forests
Cities with the rain
Air and soil
Fragmented landscapes
Communities with streams
Cities with rivers
Cities with nature
Economies with capacity to repair
Local makers with factories
Farmers with hackers
Energy and place
Local parallel internets
thackara.com
27. Hawken has been cataloging grassroots
environmental groups around the world.
He has identified a minimum of
130,000such groups.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW8BytViI54
28. “These aren’t the last guttering candles before we
slip into total darkness. These are the symptoms,
flowers, and seedlings of the future. This is
exactly what you would expect for the early stage
of an ecological transformation.”
John Thackara
29. The Berkana Model of system change
berkana.org/about/our-theory-of-change Sketch by Chris Corrigan, chriscorrigan.com
30. We affect the grand shift by shifting the
way we participate in our own contexts,
and by creating contexts that afford
shifts in others’ participation.
Mechanisms:
participation and (re)connection
medium.com/@EskoKilpi/networks-and-leadership-d8400046eae6 | www.peterblock.com/_assets/downloads/Civic.pdf
31. 2. We’re finding methods, strategies and approaches
that help us all participate in those things.
Methods: room-of-people scale
Strategies: wisely connecting room-scale activities in sequence
1. A lot of good things are happening,
and they add up to something big.
32. We see an exciting
blossoming of methods
for doing this work at
roomful-of-people scale.
40. The key activity: Collective Story Harvest
amandafenton.com/core-methods/what-is-the-collective-story-harvest | www.uie.com/brainsparks/2016/02/23/a-story-told-about-story-listening-ux-immersion-podcast
44. We can connect these methods in series to
make STRATEGIES for participatory,
systemic, emergent acts of co-creation.
Here’s another story…
Methods: room-of-people scale
Strategies: wisely connecting room-scale activities in sequence
Approaches: engaging with bigger scales and longer horizons
51. The people who curated this process are
fluent in the work of social emergence:
convening and hosting conversations,
participatory decision-making, the dance
between acting or intervening and
stepping back to trust the creative forces of
community. We can also gain that fluency.
52. 1. At the same time as all the bad things, a lot of good
things are happening, and they add up to something big.
2. We’re finding methods, strategies and approaches that
help us all participate in those things. We can know
how to do this stuff!
And that’s my two points.
53. Shifting the way we participate in our
own contexts (and working with the
conditions for others’ participation)
requires awareness, courage, support
and practice.
A third point
58. Never before have the possibilities for action been so abundant.
Never before has the potential to interconnect all these actions been so great.
Therefore the time for putting the blame to those in power lies behind us
and the time for kick-starting small but massive action lies in front.
In a networked society the transition to a more sustainable living environment
will not only be realized by a handful of large-scale projects that are orchestrated by a few.
It will mostly be shaped by a billion tiny interrelated actions that are initiated by all of us.
In a networked society we, as citizens, have power.
We can influence decision making by posting, forwarding, grouping, choosing and approving.
We can reshape our living environment by initiating, exchanging, sharing, improving
and building upon what was developed by those who came before us.
It’s now simply up to us to be aware of these new opportunities in order to exploit them to the fullest.
Thomas Lommee
www.intrastructures.net/Intrastructures/Actions_-_The_next_big_thing_2.html