Social design theory and practice
- 1. MAD • Phd Cultural Studies/KULeuven • Research coordinator Social Spaces
- 2. 0. Social Design: question Question for lot of practitioners today How to create for social exchange in a local community, museum, library, with a design product,... ? Real life situations?
- 3. 1. Social Design, links to participatory culture “negotiated, oppositional, and deconstructive readings, configuration and selection, and construction are all, in their own specific way, part of what I call participatory media culture (Raessens)” “hybrid constellation of information technology and large user numbers interacting in a socio-technical ecosystem (Schäfer)” (1) political level discourse that stimulates social progress. (2) cultural critique demanding the reconfiguration of power relations. (3) economic level participatory creation and things, amplified by information and communication networks, enable broader, faster, and lower-cost co-ordination of activities. (4) psychological and social levels value and power of participatory things, is related to the level in which various actors were engaged in the creation process. (5) specifications of technology on a technical-structural level, participatory media are considered many-to-many media.
- 4. 2. Social Design: the components Social design can be a support for many disciplines to create social exchange. Defining interactions between people, things, contexts
- 5. 2.1. Social Design: context • Evolutions in new media and society (see other module)
- 6. 2.1. Social design: Things • Thinking in concrete (collection of) things that can mediate = exchange devices. A book, a chair, an art work,... • Things always in process of change, ambiguous, never agreed upon, ... Beyond classical chair, book, market (independent on medium)
- 7. Chair • Maartje Steenkamp • Highchair
- 8. Book • Unfortunates, Johnson • Pages can be shuffled
- 9. Contexmapping • Toys that mediate understanding designers and children with autism (e.g. mirror/self-awareness, buttons/explorative....) • RichCollections 2008/2009, Helma van Rijn • http://www.helmavanrijn.n l/Projects/richcollections- 2008-2009
- 10. Digital environment/tool • Pachube Pachube is a little like YouTube, except that, rather than sharing videos, Pachube enables people to monitor and share real time environmental data from sensors that are connected to the internet
- 11. Things • Can be endlessly remixed • open source and free source: program's source code available to a distributed network of people (Linus Torvalds) • Pong: atari, breakout, station, noisepong (Bollansée and Standaert)
- 12. 2.2. Social Design: people • Social design thinking engages all relevant people in a process of creation for social exchange. • Library owner, creative, end-user (library visitor), his/her children,....
- 13. People • Little boxes • Groupware (glocalisation) • Networkware
- 14. Networkware and human autonomy People's autonomy and possibilities for participation increased. Benkler: it improves their capacity to do more: (1) for and by themselves; (2) in loose commonality with others, without the constrains of a price system or traditional hierarchical models of social and economic organisation; and (3) in formal organisations that operate outside the market sphere.
- 15. Network associated with different types of audiences/users • Stakeholder • Prosumer (Toffler) – professional consumer - mass customisation (e.g. Bricks mass produced, services around construction customised) • Produser: producer – user (Axel Bruns) (e.g. Music sharing sites) • ProAm: professional amateur (Leadbeater and Miller) (e.g. Sims, linux)
- 16. Inequality did not disappear • Participation inequality in culture and online is not radically changed • 90 percent lurks, 9 percent contributes occasionally, 1 percent creates
- 17. 2.3. Social Design: relation Social design wants to reconfigure relations people -things - contexts. Goal? formal (design process) Informal (online, in the library,...) implicit participation, without being very conscious (e.g. clicking a flickr picture and in that way changing its position) explicit relation people-environment e.g. social field, engaging people in community.
- 18. Informal participation (explicit and implicit)
- 19. Formal participation (design methods)
- 20. 3. Formal social design: Two visions • Critical theory, design, art.... : friction • Community theory, design, art,...: collaboration
- 21. 3.1. Critical vision: friction • The Gods Must be crazy: Coke bottle (8.41) • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66pTPWg_wUw • Friction set language games into play
- 22. Counterculture gave birth to many innovations Steward Brand, 1965 Whole Earth Catalogue It granted access to tools for a person to "find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested • The Well (since 1985) • You own Your Own Words
- 23. Paradox: Marketing & friction • Apple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8 • IBM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LR1Xvvch18
- 24. Today, Manifesto of Open Disruption and Participation Eric Paulos statements about ubiquitous computing and design: “Ubiquitous technology is with us and is indeed allowing us to communicate, buy, sell, connect, and do miraculous things. However, it is time for this technology to empower us to go beyond finding friends, chatting with colleagues, locating hip bars, and buying music”. “We want our tools to sing of not just productivity but of our love of curiosity, the joy of wonderment, and the freshness of the unknown”.
- 25. Today, antagonistic linkage Ippolita, Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter: Web2.0. celebrated as most important triggers for participation, do not produce the friction early participatory culture or subcultures, reproduce old opinions and cultural patterns to have truly participatory and revolutionary potential, tools should use technique of antagonistic linkage transform tools into things that enable “the plurality of expression of networked life”
- 26. Expect/allow appropriation of your thing/product/... • Koulamata, Machinama • Hacked game engine to tell story about Paris riots
- 27. Integration appropriation in professional process • Haier • Sweet potatoes
- 28. Critical Design • Reaction against user centred design (people can test products/services we make) • Critical things make us think/participate • Social Mobiles, Ideo
- 29. Vision • “From our expert view point we can create systems that disrupt the status quo, allow people to participate in a better, different,... way” (cultural)
- 30. 3.2. Community visions: collaboration • Two ingredients (1) the collaborative production of things, (2) the recognition of the individual contribution in this collaborative process.
- 31. Collaborative production In a process of collaborative engagement, people collaborate in each other's content to extend or improve it.: aided by environments that provide or point to tools or structures that pre-configure collaboration, like Wikipedia. Can be supported by formal classes and courses, rehearsals, training sessions and informal mentor-ship: most experienced can pass on knowledge and practices to the less experienced. Can be developed in an iterative, evolutionary way: evolution of things could be made traceable in remixes or via archives, through various stages and a multi-layered document (e.g.: Pachube discloses online which participatory adaptations were made to their application). Participatory work must be experienced as common property wherein people can discover individual merit.
- 32. Peer recognition Room for user-led content production Heterarchical community structures (very open and structured at the same time, like open source environments): low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, with - on the other side - strong support for producing and sharing creations. Alternative approaches to intellectual property (e.g. open source or creative commons). Participatory work has to be rewarded via the representation of members’ views to the wider community and society at large. Forms of peer recognition through events, displays and performances that allow people to believe that their (potential) contributions are valued
- 33. Participatory Design • Users, other disciplines are partners in creation process • Originates in collective design • Trade unions 1970s: computer technologies in workplace, designing systems that empower all parties: workers, employers, machines • 1981, in North America, the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR)
- 34. Variants Community architecture (Turner, Habraken, Alexander,...) Universal Design: ‘Design for All’ has two goals: 1. creating environments, artefacts and experiences that are functional and pleasurable for everybody, including people with disabilities, 2. the rejection of the division of people into able and disabled people, to avoid stigma. “Focus on ‘handicap situations’ instead of ‘handicapped people’ ” Inclusive design (disabilities reader) Co-design
- 35. Community Art • Made by OYA • Textile workshops in favelas Brazil
- 36. Vision • 1. people have the right to participate (politics) • 2. systems are better when you allow people to participate in the process (technical)
- 37. 3.3. Design participation • More hybrid model • Combines benefits of friction and social connection • 1. political, 2. technical, 3. cultural domains combined
- 38. Documentary • Stavager, Jeanne Van Heeswijk • It runs in the neighbourhood
- 39. DIY video • The Patching Zone • Digital Dreams Festival
- 40. Pass through video • World Wide Westwijk • Peter Westenberg
- 41. Participatory platform • Cool media, Hot talk show
- 42. Participatory setting • Talkaoke • http://www.youtube.com /view_play_list? p=61AC3C7F98E4A235
- 43. Hybrid model of remixing • All (not expert or user) perspectives, designers, users, other discplines work together in 'tactical' ways • Over time, in sustainable ways • Remixing 'templates'
- 44. templates Habraken proposed to split the built environment in two spheres: support structure reflects the communal realm of decision making, which is the constant element in a ongoing process of change. ’Detachable units’, or ‘Housing assembly kits’ he gave explicit room to the individual. Frans van der Werf, Molenvliet, Rotterdam, 1974
- 45. templates • Isadora • Real-time manipulation of video
- 46. Professional implementation of remixing • Bricophone • Mobile phone infrastructure, set up network of about 10.000 people • Wireless sensor network technology out of industrial technology • In any place: far away, festivals
- 47. GRL • GRL: “It is a low-cost eye-tracking apparatus & custom software that allows graffiti writers and artists with paralysis resulting from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to draw using only their eyes”
- 48. Design Participation • Expert/critical matches the social • Disciplines create risky things encouraging tactical behaviour by other perspectives • Tactical behaviour during process has predictive value for tactical behaviour after process is over
- 49. Risky things • Used in formal/informal creation processes • open/friction
- 50. Risky things • LilyPad Arduino (practices) entering new communities as strange element and coming out in new forms, re-assemblies, old and new, digital and physical • documentation!!!
- 51. Risky things Every thing has potential to become risky
- 52. Risky things: people are agent Routes and Routines (Constant vzw)
- 53. Risky things: relate to context Patching Zone. Go-for-iT! • Creating hybrid objects between – observations youth culture – low tech prototypes, Tic-tac- toe: folk game • Image Patching Zone
- 54. Risky thing: relation of remix is possible Unfold. Ontwerpbox l'Artisan Electronique
- 55. Risky thing: time = most difficult Patching Zone. Go-for-iT! • final installation: hybrid site specific and larger folk culture • Time problematics of sustainability of outputs of social design Image Patching Zone
- 56. Conclusion: Social Design • Things are drivers of formal and informal participatory creation processes • Always prototypes (>< end-products) creating – Vision 1: friction – Vision 2: open/collaboration – Vision 3: remix into time • Social design proposes different approach in art education, creative professions and policy: cross-overs users, artists, engineers, architects, sociologists, relate in tactical ways and co-construct things + hand over control from time to time and know how to hand over
- 57. Contact liesbeth.huybrechts@mda.khlim.be www.socialspaces.be www.e-cultuur.be http://twitter.com/liesbit