REPORT: Social Design Talk 13: Thomas Markussen: Design Activism for Social Innovation

Social Design Talk 13 was organized by the UAL (University of Arts London) DESIS Lab.

Thomas Markussen’s talk explored the practices of design activism, the specific ways it differs from other forms of activism (art activism, political activism), and how it is accounted for in design research literature. Weaved throughout his talk were inspiring examples of design activism from serial design activists such as Santiago Cirugeda (pictured above), and projects of his own undergraduate students at Kolding School of Design.

Design activism, loosely defined, is an act of design which highlights problems with the status quo (inequality, social exclusion, climate problems, the excesses of consumerism), and/ or seeks to create social change. Markussen’s argument is that although it may be similar in form to some kinds of political and art activism (he references the Situationists), its intention is different. Although design activism may happen in many arenas, drawing on a variety of design fields, his particular area of interest is the potential for disrupting and innovating in the urban realm – tweaking the urban fabric to trigger a different social interaction or behaviour (such as archi-suits that allow people to sleep on benches that don’t normally allow it), and ‘bending’ the material of the law to do so (such as creating t-shirts out of plastic bags that signal to strangers that the wearer is up for a snowball fight). He is particularly interested in work that rejects the notion of the city centre solely as a place of consumption.

In his talk he rehearsed some of the frameworks that exist in design research for understanding design activism, pairing them with real world examples, and detailing what he thought were their shortcomings. He then followed up with his own new framework for understanding design activism.

Anne Thorpe’s framework, for example, draws on  a typology of activism taken from sociology, which Markussen says doesn’t allow for enough distinction between types of design activism, doesn’t say much about the designerly nature of the activism, or about its intended effects. Carl di Salvo draws on political theory (the distinction between Politics, and The Political) to suggest ways of understanding design activism. Design for Politics might be something like designing a voting booth, however political design suggests something broader, that could be an act of protest. However this framework of course limits design activism to the political – to the world of power structures, which is too narrow. Theories of art activism (Brian Holmes) don’t say enough about the purpose of design activism. An artist’s intent can be very different to a designer’s. And the field of ‘critical design’ (Dunne & Raby) he says confines itself to communicating only with designers, leaving the everyday lives of ordinary people untouched.

His preferred framework he draws from French philosopher Ranciere, and the notion of ‘disruptive aesthetics’. To quote from Markussen’s own paper (see end of article):

“For Rancière, what  characterises the aesthetic act in particular, is that it introduces new heterogeneous subjects and objects into the social field of perception. In so doing, the aesthetic act effects people’s experience in a certain way: it reorients perceptual space, thereby disrupting socio-culturally entrenched forms of belonging and inhabiting the everyday world.”

In other words, by making a change in the physical environment, you can create a small opening in the normal order of things, that offers an opportunity for people to behave differently. Importantly, this kind of activism can be a trigger for social change without being overtly political, or violent, or concerned with the overturning of power or institutions: aesthetic dissensus offers more opportunities than political dissensus. So instead of the usual forms of activism (protests, for example) he proposed some sites of activism within the normal activities of urban existence: walking, dwelling, playing, gardening & recycling.

An example of design activism which takes walking as its site is the iSee project by the Institute for Applied Autonomy, which publishes maps showing paths through the urban environment that are unseen by CCTV. Another is by one of Markussen’s own students, who created an opportunity for a moment of interaction at a pedestrian crossing by setting up a system that turned the lights green if a sufficient number of pedestrians joined hands to connect a circuit between two traffic signal posts.

On dwelling and playing, he turned to the work of serial design activists Santiago Cirugeda, and Bureau Detourne. Cirugeda is probably best known for his scaffolding extension to his flat. Denied planning permission to create a first floor extension, he graffiti-ed the wall himself and successfully received permission to erect some scaffolding to remove the graffiti – which he promptly turned into his desired extension. Markussen also showed another project of Cirugeda’s that exploited the laws around rubbish skips. Whilst residents may not be allowed to construct a playground for their children in a certain place, they can put a skip anywhere. Cirugeda then converted these skips for a number of purposes: including making a mini-playground. Markussen seems particularly interested in projects such as these where the law is ‘bent’ slightly. He mentioned a number of others of his own students. For example, it is illegal to litter, but it’s not illegal to send a message, so one student project used old bottles to leave messages around the public realm.

The major critique of most of the projects he discussed, and design activism in general, was the extent to which they triggered a permanent reordering of things, as opposed to a temporary moment of dissensus, a problem he recognised. And others remarked on the fact that whilst social innovation usually requires some collaboration across groups, design activism in the examples he presented seemed to still be very much the ‘designer’ doing something to (rather than with) others. There seemed to be little participation or co-production evident, but this implies a further question about activism in general: about whether it can ever be truly participatory and therefore a practical mode for social innovation.

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Thomas Markussen is Associate Professor at the Kolding School of Design. The arguments explored in his talk are presented in detail in his paper, ‘The Disruptive Aesthetics of Design Activism: Enacting Design Between Art and Politics.’

Social Design Talk 13 — Design Activism as Social Innovation

Download flyer

Date & time: Wednesday 20 November, 1830h

Venue:
The LVMH Lecture Theatre  (E003)
Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design
King’s Cross Campus
Granary Building, 1 Granary Square
London, N1C 4AA

Speaker: Thomas Markussen, Kolding School of Design, Denmark

Free admission, all welcome.
Please RSVP if you would like to attend: d.d.davies@csm.arts.ac.uk

Thomas Markussen will focus on design activism as holding a valuable, but rather unexplored potential for social innovation. The economical and financial crisis has made it abundantly clear that there is an urgent need for finding alternative models for growth and development in our societies. By going through a number of interventionist projects in urban and public spaces, Markussen demonstrates how design activism can play a vital role for community building, citizen participation, and the addressing of intractable social problems.

Thomas Markussen is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Design and Head of PhD Education at Kolding School of Design in Denmark. In his research, teaching and work Markussen focuses on design activism and design fiction as critical practices manifest within design, art and architecture.

This Social Design Talk has been organized by the UAL (University of Arts London) DESIS Lab.

Reflections on Rewarding Social Design – INDEX Design to Improve Life

Social Design Talk 12

Friday 20 September, Victoria & Albert Museum

Speaker: Liza Chong
Respondent:  Jeremy Myerson

‘There are enough white teacups in the world’ is one of INDEX’s mantras. And coming from Denmark — land of clean modernist lines and of domestic coziness — this may seem a strange declaration. But this represents a clear move to signal another side to Danish culture and politics.

Photo credit: Jenni Parker

As respondent Jeremy Myerson noted, cities and countries brand and differentiate themselves as ways of attracting inward investment and know-how; it is interesting, he added, that Denmark should use social design as a tool to do this. INDEX certainly reflects the democratic, consensual and socially motivated politics of its host country and Liza Chong explained how it allowed for a championing of this other side to Danish design discourse.

Liza Chong eloquently took us through the background, rationale and processes of INDEX to show that ‘improving life’ doesn’t stop at the front door. It courses through all aspects of public life.

At the heart of INDEX’s activities are its biennale design awards. Five of these are made, each being for €100,000. This is an gargantuan amount in the tight margin world of design and it is admirable that the Danish government commit so much to this. Past finalists range from humble but impactful products such as Lepsis’s grasshopper growing kit through to entire Copenhagen’s city plans for dealing with changing climates. Many more of the awards and finalists can be found on INDEX’s excellent website.

INDEX also undertakes outreach work, developing design and innovation workshops in schools. It is also engaged in linking designers with impact investors in order to marry financial investment with creatives who have strong social design concepts but can’t, as yet, bring them to market. The commercial potential of social design is an important consideration for INDEX. Where social design is more engaged in public sector, NGO, not-for-profit or charitable institutions, valorization has to be reframed and recalibrated. Liza Chong agreed that we have to find other ways of demonstrating value beyond pure monetary success.

Another issue emerged in discussion regarding the kinds of problems that social design addresses. At the core of design thinking at INDEX is that social design starts with the problem. Thus it is admirably media agnostic — it doesn’t use traditional categories of, say, urbanism or digital design. Scale, client, public or design approach are therefore multifarious within their award rationale. It is how appropriately and effectively a problem is dealt with that is most important, not whether it is the best graphic design or product.

Even so, is there a danger that sometimes the solution to the wrong problem is being addressed? Can a brilliant solution have low impact because of other issues that are not confronted? The example of a cycling helmet (well, actually a kind of worn air-bag) was given by a member of the audience in the plenary discussion. Does the problem reside more in other road users’ use of the roads (irresponsible car drivers, pedestrians on cycleways etc.)?

Copenhagen is the enviable city where 36% of daily commutes are undertaken by bicycle. It is inspirational in the way it has returned cycling into something that is dignified, stylish and democratic:   www.copenhagencyclechic.com is not just about being sartorial on two wheels; it shows how cycling needn’t be about festooning oneself in reflective gear to be seen (although in London I would recommend that). It makes everyday, social and sustainable practices visible.

So here’s a thought:  why doesn’t INDEX (or any other institution) also make awards to innovations that are not necessarily design-conscious in that they are not undertaken by professional designers? Can there be awards for bottom-up or evolutionary actions that don’t take design as their ends but end up in design-type outcomes? Equally, should there be recognition for actions (such as copenhagencyclechic) that bring social design into wider acceptance and adoption? (See my Design Culture Kolding blog where I expand a bit on this.)

Suneet Singh Tuli, gave a fascinating talk after SDT12. The event was programmed by the Contemporary Team of the V&A to create a social design double-bill. Suneet is CEO of Datawind, the company behind the $35 Akaash tablet. If ever there was an example of someone who is not necessarily a designer, but who marries product innovation with a deep understanding of economic models and of users toward social change, then this is it. In certain contexts, there is too much stuff. For others (e.g. much of the population of India), there isn’t enough.

The statement that ‘There are enough white teacups in the world’ has, indeed, been around for a long time, particularly in Nordic design circles. In 1968 a poster went up at Norway’s National College of Applied Art and Craft proclaiming ‘Vi har tekopper nok!’ (We have teacups enough!). Similar calls frequently appeared in the Norwegian design magazine Boyntt around this time (see Kjetil Fallan’s 2007 PhD on this). Of course, this resonates with many contemporaneous concerns of designers, particularly in Nordic countries and especially after Victor Papanek’s famous Helsinki workshop of the same year.

Forty-five years later, Liza Chong and Jeremy Myerson both give a strong sense that we are getting there a bit faster now. In particular, the representation of design that isn’t just about discreet objects, but also incorporates systems, strategies or services, that mixes tangible and intangible outcomes, is gathering afoot. Perhaps in 10 years time, the kinds of design that are seen at the INDEX awards will be very different.

Social Design Talk 12: Rewarding Social Design – INDEX Design to Improve Life

Date & time: Friday 20th September, 6pm

Venue: The Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre, Victoria & Albert Museum

Speaker: Liza Chong, Strategy and Development Director, INDEX: Design to Improve Life (read more about Liza here)

Respondent: Jeremy Myerson, Director, The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design (read more about Jeremy here)

The Social Design Talks series is back with a bang during the London Design Festival. Liza Chong, Strategy and Development Director of pioneering Danish design organisation INDEX, comes to London to talk about their mission to ‘Inspire, Educate and Engage people in designing sustainable solutions to global challenges’.

INDEX: Design to Improve Life is a Danish NPO with global reach. It was originally conceived in 2002 by designer Johan Adam Lindeballe and Danish Permanent Secretary Jørgen Rosted as a world event for design. It now runs the biggest design award in the world worth €500,000. It sends its award-winners on a world tour. And it supports design education, city collaborations and other investment initiatives.

Find out more about INDEX here.

If you’d like to join us on the 20th please RSVP to michael.folkerson@policyconnect.org.uk or call 0207 202 8588.

Please note: this is a change to the original schedule as Kigge Hvid is now unfortunately unable to join us on the 20th. However we very much look forward to welcoming Liza!

Talk 11: Evidence Based Programme Design: Report and Reflections

The short hand definition of design as a ‘problem-solving’ activity is increasingly inadequate. Indeed the definition of ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ has been challenged by designers and researchers since the early nineties (Buchanan, 1992). More recently, the aim of establishing a more expansive view of design has taken on greater pertinency in the field of social innovation and service design and for those working in public policy, where the processes and methods by which design can intervene can vary considerably. The context of international development, the theme of this social design talk, provides a useful case study in illustrating the limits of the problem solving idea. Entering into this environment with confidence about what the problems are, never mind what the solutions might be, is a challenging proposition.

Moreover, although it might be increasingly accepted that design methods are applicable to public policy, it can sometimes be challenging to decide which tools are most usefully applied, and where. The literature on social design methods is wide and varied, and the concept of trial and error a defining principle. Uncertainty, a major strength of the social design methods approach, might appear to be a risky entry point into sites of conflict.

It was therefore refreshing and invigorating to hear from two speakers who spoke clearly and in a grounded way about their experiences of using design methods in this context.

Speaking from over 15 years of experience in working in security affairs through his work at Policy Lab and at UNDIR, Derek Miller began by setting out the cultural issues underpinning the projects through which he has developed his evidence based design approach. Establishing the shared cultural space between individuals and communities, as well the cultural logic embedded in language is a key step, he stated. For instance, the term ‘protection’ made more sense to people in Ghana than the word ‘security’. Similarly, the relationships between child and parent are very different in Nepal and Ghana.

Although these observations might seem like fairly obviously considerations in a development programme, Miller argued that the designer’s approach to uncovering these issues is unique. “It is very difficult to provide answers to people who do not ask questions… You can talk at them, but not to them”, Miller stated. Brokering a dialogue between people is therefore integral. As he put it, debate is design. Egos aside, he argued that designers are good at humbling themselves before questions. In other words, the natural uncertainty from which designers work, is an advantage in this context. Miller rather eloquently described the process of using design as a bridge into policy, as a ‘pull system’, whereby institutions cannot move between A and B without asking questions.

The evidence-based programme design tool Miller and his team has been working with rests on the idea of ‘evidence as something other than a base’. He illustrated this by asking the audience to consider a crime scene (a fitting example, given his own best-selling foray into crime lit). What is the evidence in the room? The books on the shelf-the lighting-the knife- these are all facts that can be gathered together to build a theory that has ‘explanatory force’. You are not proving the fact to be absolutely true, but proving that it is not false. In the case of Somalia, Miller argued that this approach had been key in talking through a process of falsification, through conversation and debate.

This Framework Document describing in detail this approach is available here . He outlined some characteristics are as follows:

·        What is the goal: be strategic. This can’t be method driven. Maybe the method is a stupid idea- the goal is an end state that will change a state of being in the world. This must foreground all approaches.

·        Understand all perspectives- what does being re-integrated look like? This will vary according to gender, for instance.

·        Using standard design tools- knowledge-maps, post-it notes, visual tools-  ‘create a design space’ where ‘we create imperatives for asking the kind of questions bringing knowledge into action’.

·         Falsify all the facts and try to figure out what is wrong with the idea.

·        Look at local indicators to identify and measure impact.

Most of all, he argued, the evidence-based approach must have deliverable outcomes, facilitated through the adoption strategy. This, he suggested, separates his approach from that of service design, which often design prototypes that may not be accepted in full, but will contribute in some sense to a shift in outlook. By contrast, ‘If we as a policy design institute have not done anything that can be used and will produce results, we haven’t actually done anything of value’, he stated.

Zaid Hassan responded to this by opening up a bigger picture, with some thoughtful statements about the broader cultures within which these design approaches are situated in practice. While in general Hassan complimented Miller’s view, stating that there are ‘no predictable patterns’, he also provided some useful examples that pointed towards the practical obstacles that divide ‘two cultures’ of response in the field:

1. Current dominant approach, which involves a plan, with a defined time limit, followed by assessment, after which a new plan is implemented. This is the approach favoured by current governments, inherited from the Soviet Union, and has dominated the Climate Change agenda, he said.
2. The designerly approach, characterised by trial and error, prototyping, improving to find a model that works.

Hassan posited the two as very distinct approaches that do not overlap. The idea of pursuing a spectrum of plans and responses to a problem might be the outcome of a social lab approach, but would be outright rejected by the planning culture. In this sense, he put Miller’s discussions about the importance of establishing ‘design spaces’ in a broader context.

He also made the important point, which recurred throughout the talk, that ‘the idea of a known problem is a misnomer’. For instance, while the Danish government is funding education programmes to address the problem of landmines in Yemen,  people there are baffled about why there is no snake bite programme, which claims the lives of more children by a staggering degree. Thus, the process and methods used are absolutely key, not in ‘solving the problem’, but in identifying what it is in the first place.

Adam Drazin, who chaired the talk, asked about the challenge of balancing long-term design approaches with institutions that motivate themselves through more short-term strategic steps. Miller used the metaphor of Russian dolls, whereby there is a general directive and smaller pieces of the project which fit in.

Another question came from a designer in the audience who wanted to know about how Miller planned to ‘scale up’ the model he had been building. He replied by stating the importance of ‘getting right’ what they already had done and reflecting properly on what had actually been achieved. Leading on from this, Lucy Kimble, who co-organises the event, suggested that amplification through the concept of ‘positive deviance’, was another successful approach being pursued in parallel.

It was inspiring to hear design methods being described as a confidence building exercise in this way. The risk-seeking, rather than risk-averse premise that underlies many design methods emerged from the talk as one of the most important ways in which design can achieve real social impact.

Social Design Talk 11 — Evidence-based programme design in international policy contexts

Speaker:  Dr Derek B Miller, The Policy Lab and UNIDIR
Respondent:  Zaid Hassan, Reos Partners
Chair:  Dr Adam Drazin

Thursday 30 May, 1830-2030 

The Darryl Forde Seminar Room
Department of Anthropology
University College London
14 Taviton Street
London    WC1H 0BT

Miller will be speaking on the topic of “evidence-based programme design” in public policy. The Policy Lab is now working in close collaboration with Lisa Rudnick at The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, with design support from Live|work in Norway and the UK, on building a new “evidence-based programme design tool” for the United Nations on the topic of reintegrating excombatants in post-conflict societies. In recognizing that “knowledge does not apply itself,” the project team’s goal is to provide UN field staff with a better means of mobilizing existing knowledge as an asset in the design of local reintegration programmes. The normative goals are to help the field teams “guard against error” while “enabling cooperative innovation.” In particular, Miller will be speaking about their work in Somalia and the challenges — and accomplishments — in bringing this new form of design practice to UN operational conduct, so that peacebuilding practice can be better informed by, and aligned with, local socio-cultural systems.

http://thepolicylab.org/
@Policylabtweets

If you would like to attend Social Design Talk 11 please rsvp to joe.julier@policyconnect.org.uk

Talk 10 Designing for Sharing: Report and Reflections

Design for sharing is an enormous, but fascinating challenge. A number of start-ups and initiatives have appeared recently that facilitate peer-to-peer exchange systems. These promote swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting over individual ownership. They would include Freecycle, Zopa, Ecomodo and WhipCar. A shorthand for describing their overarching concern is in what Rachel Botsman has termed ‘collaborative consumption’.

The concept of doing more with less through creating new ways of configuring, accessing and moving resources, is compelling in this age of scarcity, as Jeremy Till would have it. Indeed, this can be extended across goods and services, including the provision of public services. It is rich territory for debating social design.

So much of design, design criticism and history of design studies has been focused on objects for private consumption. Collaborative consumption, as I have briefly discussed elsewhere, challenges this model and forces us to think about how value is represented. Products and services within collaborative consumption are relatively unmediated by complicated financial calculations. Their use is mediated more through social relationships more than through the abstraction of value which, according to George Simmel, is money. In turn, these social relationships, however, depend a lot on trust.

There is a tendency to bundle up collaborative consumption as a panacea to resource constraint. Closer examination shows that each field of everyday life where this might be employed throws up its distinct problems. The design of a sharing system for private car ownership strikes right at the heart the tension between private and social practices.

If you’ve just followed the link to WhipCar, you will have found out that on 12 March 2013, sadly, it ceased operating. To listen to Ben Reason of Live|Work discuss their design labours for WhipCar was therefore an extra special treat. It is rare to hear open, reflective discussion of how things don’t go right.

Ben Reason explains WhipCar

WhipCar’s key technical advance was in establishing an insurance system that gave easier coverage for peer-to-peer car rental. Anyone who has been involved in car-sharing through informal networks across households will know that this has been a huge stumbling block. Once through this hurdle, a system like WhipCar allows car owners to release further value of their vehicles, which otherwise might sit outside their homes gathering cost. For users, it provides variety, good value and a sense of engaging in non-mainstream economies.

Car as underused asset

This last issue was also a trial, as Live|Work discovered. Much hinges on the importance of social relationships in non-mainstream exchange. After all, you are renting a car off its private owner — you probably have to shake their hand and look them in the eye before you speed off into the distance. At the same time, there is an expectation from both parties of the system working in a business-like way. You expect someone to be available to hand over keys. You hope that the car you have rented will be clean. It seemed that no amount of putting emphasis on people through the WhipCar website (by, for example, including featured participants’ photos and profiles) could make up for anxieties over levels of service. The service design challenge is very much on the before and after of car use, rather than on the cars themselves.

By contrast, Ben Reason also shared his experiences of designing for StreetCar before it became ZipCar. Here, these challenges are partially circumvented. You belong to a club, but you don’t have to worry too much about other members.

WhipCar bows out

The unfortunate demise of WhipCar contrasts obliquely with the global success of AirBnB. This service allows peer-to-peer room, apartment or house rental; but this service even extends to lighthouses, tepees and igloos. I think the clear advantage that AirBnB has is that it is built on a centuries-old tradition of renting private rooms to travellers. Equally it rides on travel and adventure (as does CouchSurfing) rather than the mundanities of getting from A to B. Travel and tourism carries an expectation of social interaction with strangers. Driving a car… less so.

If the tasks for the social designer seem ever daunting, then perhaps these were reinforced by Iain Borden‘s response. In it, he focused on the beguilingly simple question:  ‘Why do people like to drive?’

A brief, bullet-point list of some of Iain Borden’s ideas shows why private car ownership is so desirable.

• driving is often presented as a democratic right and therefore a way of exercising this;
• a car provides a sealed, social space (e.g. a chance to talk to your kids without interruption);
• a car provides a media space (radios, CD players, video games in the back etc.);
• driving puts you on the edge of transgression (e.g. how far over the speed limit can you go without getting a ticket);
• driving is also about anticipation (the car in front, arrival, your next car) — an analogy of being in the modern world;
• driving is cinematic (you pretend you’re in The Italian Job, looking through the windscreen is like cinematic viewing).

This is a powerful set of experiences. The list also highlights why designing a car club has probably got to extend to re-designing the entire experience of automobile use in order to provide persuasive alternatives to private ownership. This is particularly so if driving itself is taken to be an expression of modernity. But it doesn’t have to be. It can possibly be reframed as something else…

It seems that in the meantime, private car owners are prepared to put up with the dull parts of ownership (e.g. organizing insurance, servicing, mending) for this exhilaration of driving, if it really is exhilarating.

Driving a car, though, can also be dull (think M25). Comedian Eddie Izzard has recently observed on his Force Majeure tour, that there exist two very incompatible emotions, these being boredom and fear. Driving often engages both of these. Meanwhile, WhipCar tried to make things either side of driving more interesting, or, at least, more convenient while making car ownership more environmentally sustainable.

The approaches taken by Iain Borden and Ben Reason perhaps expose the commonalities and differences between their professional interests of, respectively, cultural studies and service design in car culture. They both start with the routine and ordinary. Cultural studies then looks for the more spectacular aspects that exist as experience within these. Service design attempts to create something richer and distinct out of them.

This leads to the very final words of the evening’s discussion. Speaking from the audience, and referring back to a debate I chaired that had taken place earlier in the week at the V&A, and on which he’d been a panelist, Adam Thorpe asked:  ‘Is service design done for a public, or should it be actively producing publics?’

This is the über question of design in general, these days I think. Do we find ways of refashioning what is already there? Or do we look to design to produce new practices and socio-material relationships?

It’s not about either/or, though. A crucial question in this and for social design in general is that of scale. WhipCar is also an upscaling and formalisation of informal systems that already exist. Groups of households sometimes share or lend cars. As a facility, WhipCar  streamlined this. As a business, WhipCar had to extend its reach to cover its margins.

Equally, perhaps social design can also engage in downscaling by, for instance, looking at ways by which collaborative consumption systems that don’t necessarily work on a large scale can be relocalised. Just as reuse can sometimes be designed into products, so it could be designed into services.

Guy Julier, 9 May 2013

Report: Ethics in Practice

The ninth social design talk interrogated the (perhaps overlooked) ethical questions prompted by social design practice. Very crudely, social designers, unlike social scientists, are not required to apply the same rigorous analysis to the appropriateness of intervening, or making certain judgments, in the situations they confront. Why is this? And do we need to address it? Our speakers, one from social design, one from anthropology, outlined their own professional engagement with these questions.

Mary Rose Cook

Mary is founder and co-director of Uscreates, a social innovation agency whose work often involves engaging and working with ‘hard to reach’ communities. Through co-design workshops with such communities and other stakeholders, Uscreates devise design interventions which will improve and or generate radically different forms of services in the public sector.

In describing the ethical considerations and dilemmas which this user insight work prompted, it was clear that whether activities are categorised as either ‘social research’, or ‘design’, makes a difference in determining ethical responsibility.

Mary described how after working on a project in Bristol looking at teenage pregnancy, and conducting a lot of work in the field with young mums, the Uscreates team really felt they needed more guidance regarding their ethical responsibilities. However, when they looked for advice, the guidance they were given was that if their work involved making some kind of direct intervention, at any point, it was not classified as research and therefore did not require ethical sign off – only the adoption of broad brush ethical principles.

Interestingly, the guidance Uscreates received mirrors the key debates on ethics in the social sciences, where making a positive impact on participants is often the anchoring point the discussion, and the key issue assessing what constitutes ‘good ethical practice’. Thinking about ethics in the context of social design therefore raises the interesting dilemma; what does ethical practice mean when having a positive impact on participants is a given from the outset?

Reflecting on Mary’s talk, it seems that closing down the debate about whether to intervene early on fosters an approach which is much more attentive to the everyday practicalities of ethics, and also prompts a more critical assessment of the stated benefits of a (social) design brief.

Addressing the everyday practicalities, Mary outlined several ethical hotspots which Uscreates encountered. These included;

• The ethical responsibility to the research participant/informant/user and the need to dedicate time and space to thinking about how the research might affect participants, and what steps need to be taken to manage this impact.
• The need to extend considerations about well-being to researchers as well. What were the implications for those conducting the research, what needed to be done to ensure they were kept safe and provided with the support needed to deal with emotionally difficult issues? This seemed to be particularly important in a commercial environments where researchers are less able to manage the terms of research interactions and process themselves.
• The importance of constructing an exit plan which fits with both the design brief, contract, and the completion of the project. Working on a Chlamydia awareness campaign Uscreates found that, as the result of significant structural changes in the organisation which commissioned the work, the volunteers who had co-designed the process were left without the support needed to continue the project. Uscreates felt that, given the time and effort the volunteers had put into to project, they could not simply stop working on it because the contract had ended, and consequently had to continue running the project until they could find someone within the new structure who would agree to take it on.

In addition to these specific ethical hotspots Mary also raised some broader questions about ethics in a social design context. Firstly she questioned whether, if co-design is truly a collaborative process, we should consider paying those volunteers who participate in co-design workshops. Mary admitted she had no clear answer to this difficult question, other than to say giving thought to how those who put energy and time into the co-design process was important. It was also pointed out that, although perhaps volunteers should be paid, or rewarded in some way, this can jar with the client demands which are often underpinned by the government discourse on the big society and volunteerism.

Mary also emphasised that even though Uscreates were dedicating time to thinking about ethics they weren’t looking for strict guidelines, or procedure, as offered by organisations like the BSA (British Sociological Association) or AAA (American Anthropological Association). They felt the kind of tick box mentality these guidelines can engender might restrict innovation in the research process, and distract from the important issues – these concerns were echoed by Adam Drazin later on.

In drawing her talk to a close Mary described how the process of talking about ethics has led Uscreates to respond to the briefs they receive differently. Now briefs were placed under more scrutiny, and refined in negotiation with the client to be more realistic and Uscreates asked themselves where the felt comfortable spending public money more frequently too.

Adam Drazin

Adam started by emphasising that ethics needs to be viewed as a process which is both reflexive and reactive, as something which emerges and is situated in the relationships between people, and with materials. As such, we might call all ethics ethics in practice.

Adam then highlighted that we can see ethics as something which is present in the means and the ends. Ethics can be focused on the delivery of an ethical outcome or ends, either in a service, product or the facilitation of certain behaviours, and it can also be embedded in the means, the research or generative process itself.

Like Mary, Adam also pointed out that ethical consideration needs to be given, not only to the relationship between ethnographer and informant, or designer and user, but also to the relationship between collaborators on a project.

Building on the issue of collaboration Adam highlighted how differently design and social sciences research approach the issue of ethics. Adam noted that in books on social research you will find an individual chapter dedicated to the question of ethics, it is a clearly named issue, and a clearly defined object of academic interrogation. In contrast, within books on design, ethics manifests itself in the concerns about the values that design, and design methods, should embody. This difference could be summarised as one between a distanced, intellectualised approach and a practice imbued with ethics so closely you could miss their presence altogether.

As an explicit object of anthropological work, the encounter with an ethical dilemma therefore also becomes key to proving your ability as a researcher; how you negotiate an ethical dilemma is a way of demonstrating your sensitivity to the values of your informants, the quality of your engagement and your sense of responsibility. As Adam put it, it is a “badge of honour”.

Building on this Adam argued that part of developing meaningful research relationships – an ethical means – might also involve a situated negotiation with important ethical principles, most notably informed consent. What should you do if presenting yourself overtly as a researcher in the first interaction causes damage to the engagement, and how can you resolve this whilst still following the principle of informed consent? Furthermore how do we define informed consent? As anthropologists and other social scientists develop long term engagements with people’s lives the boundaries between what should and shouldn’t be shared become more blurred, and the expectations of the informant may change.

Adam argued that the difficulty anthropology has in managing the material lives of its informants is also important to consider. If the material interaction is the area where cues for improved interaction, or particular issues are addressed by proxy, how should it be accounted for in ethics?

Alongside these issues Adam emphasised the potential of collaboration as a way to expand and enrich the ethical debate and in turn improve practice. Adam raised the possibility of the social researcher or anthropologist acting as a critic and analyst within a multidisciplinary team. In this arrangement researchers can recognise they are not best placed to intervene but can work in a collaborative team with people who can (designers), and then take responsibility for drawing attention to instances where interventions might ‘violate systems of value’ of user-informants. Equally, designers can hold ethnographers to account, interrogating the kinds of materials they produce, questioning whether publishing a policy report or in an academic journal is the most ethical course of action, once fieldwork has been completed.

Talk 10: Designing for Sharing

Date/ Time
Friday 3rd May 6.30 – 8.30pm

Speaker
Ben Reason, Director, LiveWork

Respondent
Prof. Iain Borden, The Bartlett UCL

Venue
Lecture Theatre, E003
Central St Martins College of Art & Design
1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA

About the talk
Ben Reason from service design agency LiveWork will be discussing the design aspects of collaborative consumption from the point of view of the various car-sharing projects he has worked on (Street Car, VW Quicar, and the unfortunately now closed WhipCar). Clearly there are interesting behaviour change challenges embedded in making these new business models work, as well as questions about the sustainability of collaborative consumption business models. The talk will reflect on the role of design in encouraging new forms of interaction and consumption.

Ben Reason Biography.
Iain Borden Biography.

If you would like to attend talk 10
Please rsvp to joe.julier@policyconnect.org.uk / 0207 202 8588

Innovation and the NHS – slides