Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity
344
Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity
344Paperback(New Edition)
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781610918473 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Island Press |
| Publication date: | 12/07/2017 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 344 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.80(w) x 10.50(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Suiting Up to Shed
Participatory designers provide a personal perspective that has the potential to greatly influence design outcomes. Upon hearing about a project designers begin generating ideas, and these initial ideas often help us determine what needs to be investigated, how to approach the work, and which questions to ask. Suiting up to shed focuses on techniques that prepare the design team for self-conscious, aware engagement.
A commitment to engage with community means that the team, collectively and individually, is a participant with formative experiences, values, and ideas. To suit up is to ready yourself and your team for the role you will play given the project at hand, but also to shed the pretense that participatory design is a neutral process and the designer is a neutral facilitator. As such it is important to figure out who you are, whom you are working with, and what you expect to be the underlying site and community issues. But how to do this? What will help you check your expectations and open yourself to seeing the community's values and uniqueness?
Getting Ourselves Ready
Slowing down at the very beginning offers opportunities to test assumptions, ground information, and build a stronger network of participants and collaborators. Many community-based projects are complex in nature and require multiple perspectives and skill sets. The team's roles, relationships, expectations, and structure need to be mapped out. Similarly, the team needs to articulate the design process it will use and then communicate this to all members so that they will know when and how they can plan to take part. This often involves the team pretesting its standard procedures — from how data are collected to design generation — to better tailor them to the particularlity of people and place.
Me Relative to You
In addition to getting our initial impulses on the table we need to know the lens through which we see and respond to a place and its people. This lens consists of our values, which are often the root of what impelled us to become designers in the first place. However, our values may or may not mesh with those of the community. There are techniques for drawing out a designer's own inspirations, personal working style, demographic profile, spatial preferences, and everyday life behavior patterns. Whether you are an experienced designer with many past projects to draw from or a young designer just starting out, part of the unique contribution you bring to a project comes from within.
Once we are clear on who we are, we can see our position in society relative to the cultural and economic context of the community in which we plan to work. This in turn equips us with empathy rather than sympathy. This distinction is important because designers can find themselves in communities with acute needs that have been repeatedly ignored. Although providing technical assistance to a community in need is a critical role of participatory design, responding with sorrow or pity hampers one's effectiveness. Sympathy, even when it is grounded in understanding, can subtly convey to residents that only the designer's expertise counts. Another pitfall lies in creating a patronizing process that diminishes the community's self-worth.
Techniques to Suit Up and Shed
The techniques in this chapter are about preparation as much as participation. Some are appropriate to undertake every time your team begins a project; some are personal explorations that you will need to work through if you haven't already done so. In "What's in It for Us?" Julie Stevens provides a technique to develop a team road map that members can rely on to anchor their involvement. Randolph T. Hester Jr., in "I Am Someone Who," offers a simple test of the designer's attitudes and practices to maximize the designer's effectiveness. Sungkyung Lee and Laura J. Lawson illustrate how a team can explore its assumptions about a locale in "Challenging the Blank Slate." The technique "Environmental Autobiography Adaptations" provides two alternative approaches to reconnecting with one's childhood places using self-guided hypnosis and environmental autobiography. In "Finding Yourself in the Census" Marcia J. McNally proposes a simple way to contextualize oneself by working up a demographic profile and then comparing it with similar data on the community. "Consume, Vend, and Produce" allows the designer to identify commonplace and frequently overlooked activities, while recognizing things that are out of the ordinary.
Technique 1.1
WHAT'S IN IT FOR US? DESIGNING A DURABLE TEAM
Julie Stevens
When it comes to community design, one person can't do it all — we need teams as dynamic as the communities with whom we work. However, it is difficult to assemble and maintain a team, especially for long-term-engagement projects that evolve in scope and require new inputs of skill and expertise. If you are the leader, you must continually evaluate the needs of the project, the abilities of teammates, and, most importantly, the human connections among members of the design team and community. Because successful teams often form around shared interests and ethics, determining mutual rewards — or team members defining What's in It for Us — can be a critical technique for developing and managing a team.
Instructions
1. In order to understand the expertise, skills, and resources needed, first map out the project. What is the purpose? What will you need to achieve it?
2. As the leader with the responsibility of building the team, clarify your own strengths and shortcomings in terms of organization, communication, project management, professional expertise, and so forth. You should know what is motivating you — what is in it for you?
3. Make sure you also understand what's in it for the community by working with community members. Methods to gather this information include informal interactions, formal administrative meetings, focus groups, and town-hall-style meetings.
4. Identify the skills and expertise needed on the team. Look for critical skills as well as different perspectives that come from diverse backgrounds and interests. As the project progresses, additional skills may be required.
5. Based on conversations with potential team members, fill out a "What's in It for Us?" worksheet (see sample provided), or, if appropriate, have the team members fill it out themselves. Use the worksheet to identify or select new team members and to refresh an existing team member's role.
6. Work with the team to establish ground rules, structure, and a positive working environment. Work toward consensus when possible, but at times it may be necessary for you, as a leader, to make decisions in the interest of time and progress. How does your team want to interact? When, where, and how often will you meet? How will the topics of each meeting be determined? How will the team communicate and how often? What are the expectations for individual members of the team? What are the team's expectations for the leader? Investing time in this process encourages all to claim an equal stake in the responsibilities of the team. These questions may need to be revisited from time to time as the team and project goals change.
7. Use your team to build a bigger team. Focus on finding well-connected collaborators who can liaise with the community or help secure resources. Potential team members may be affiliated with local businesses, government, and the community. They may also be specialists in an allied area or distant experts who help from afar.
8. Evaluate what is working and what is not. This step can be useful at various points of the collaboration and is effective during transitions. For example, we evaluate when starting a new phase of the project or when we have a new crew, in the middle, after the crew has had some time together, and at the end to inform future endeavors. Give each team member an index card and ask members to answer "What is working well?" on one side and "What is not?" on the other. Gather the cards and read through the answers while a team member records them on a flip chart. Build themes and threads to discuss openly with the group. Transfer the themes to another chart and add a column for action items and another to assign team members to each item. This is a good time to revisit the What's in It for Us? worksheet. What skills and expertise are missing in the current team? Who might fill these gaps? Does a team member's role need to be refreshed?
Case Story
The Environmental Justice in Prisons Project of Iowa State University has worked with the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women (ICIW) in Mitchellville, Iowa, since 2011. The initial request from the Iowa Department of Corrections (IDOC) was for a five-month project to generate planting plans for the newly expanded minimum- to maximum-security prison. We took a more holistic approach and generated ideas for therapeutic and production gardens, outdoor recreation, and native habitat. At the end of our first phase, we gathered ICIW and IDOC administrators, offenders, and project architects and engineers and decided to continue the partnership, which is ongoing. Each year, the team and focus become more complex as we deepen our understanding of the prison community and strengthen our partnership.
With the help of extension specialist and team member Susan Erickson I developed an assessment tool called What's in It for Us? to help manage our ever-evolving team. This was first developed to select interns for the summer design-build program, but I've used the tool with community members and research collaborators as well. With interns, I conduct a formal interview and ask them what they hope to gain from participation and what they offer to help meet the goals of the project. I also note social skills and personality traits, such as "good people skills," when appropriate. In some cases, I ask potential team members to answer, "What can you do for this project?" and "What can this project do for you?" Other times, I exercise my leadership role and answer these questions more discreetly based on conversations or interviews with individuals.
This assessment has provided clarity to the selection process and diversified the skills and expertise of the team, making project management and construction more positive and efficient. There are several good examples. As incarcerated women are released, new women are needed on the crew. By involving the sergeant early on, we established buy-in and were able to fill open spots quickly and with women who were really interested in the project. In another case, I nearly dismissed an application from a potential intern because his essay did not express any compassion for the prison population. In terms of what he offered to the project, I recorded that he had experience with construction tools and equipment. In terms of what the project could do for him, I recorded that this young, white man might benefit from a summer working with women from much less privileged and much more racially diverse backgrounds, which could open up new worlds as he engaged people both informally and through design. His inclusion on the team was validated when I saw him give an incarcerated woman a high-five after completing a difficult retaining wall.
Recently, our focus shifted to studying the impacts of the environment on the health and well-being of correctional officers. Many aspects of this project required knowledge beyond the reach of the research team. The chart helped us determine who was needed in order to fully understand this important topic. We connected with an environmental psychologist who is an expert on the impact of the environment on workplace stress and job commitment.
Reflection
The technique presented here is based on the revelatory process inherent in community design projects. It works best when the leader has spent ample time getting to know the place and its members and can make some assumptions about the skills needed and the capacity-building opportunities for the team, while also acknowledging ongoing evolution and reassessment. The partnership and resulting built work appear to be having impacts. Interns express changes in perception about incarcerated individuals. The ICIW staff psychiatrist reports improved mental health and lower medication needs for several incarcerated women on the landscape crew. An ongoing study reveals that 86 percent of women incarcerated report that the gardens help to relax and calm them, and 76 percent report that the gardens motivate them to make changes in their lives.
Technique 1.2
I AM SOMEONE WHO
Randolph T. Hester Jr.
This technique helps clarify the various personal values and beliefs that influence the designer. The goal is to honestly assess your own personality traits and reflect on what they suggest about your intentions for being involved in and the ways you might most contribute to participatory design. This exercise can be revisited over time as a means to reflect on your changing perspective. It is an updated version of the one first published in my book Community Design Primer. The case describes how the list of skills community designers need has changed over time and gives a brief example of how the technique was useful.
Instructions
1. Hand out the worksheet "I Am Someone Who" (next page) to your group for them to answer individually. Have them check yes, sort of, or no for each answer. Then ask them to add additional characteristics at the end of the checklist.
2. Next instruct group members to go back over the statements and circle the 12 that best describe them.
3. Instruct the group members to put a star next to the ones they feel most influence their approach to design.
4. Ask a series of questions to follow up. What most motivates them about community design or a specific project? What do their answers reveal about special skills they have for participatory design? What skills do they need to develop?
5. Instruct members to share the results with other people on the team and have someone who knows each member well give feedback about the statements circled and starred. Suggest that they do this exercise often (you should too).
Case Story
I first used this exercise when I was developing a plan for a schoolyard, a design-build project. The participants were parents, teachers, and children at the middle school I had attended two decades before, as well as landscape architecture interns. I wanted to know why the interns wanted to be involved and what they would be best at doing during planning. As it turned out several were self-proclaimed leaders, whereas others preferred shared responsibility. One was an experienced carpenter; another had been a playground supervisor. The interns created one of the most interesting play environments I had ever seen. One who was central to the success of the construction had few hard skills but had said she was patient with other people.
This first version of this exercise was brief — a dozen or so questions — but the responses helped us divide up the tasks based on what each of us was most skilled at doing and thus mobilize effectively. A few years later I conducted a survey of leading community designers around the country and asked them questions similar to those in the "I Am Someone Who" exercise to determine what principles guided the work they tried to accomplish, and what skills and personality traits they considered essential for success in participatory design. Collectively there was significant agreement about necessary skills, but the design motivations were far more varied. And the respondents had dramatically different strategies for achieving the same goals. I expanded the exercise accordingly.
I continue to use this exercise to help designers expand their democratic design capacity, thereby improving the outcome of dozens of projects. The exercise continues to evolve in response to the values and skills needed in participatory design. For example, the idealistic motivations of 1960s Great Society designers have been supplemented with the need to partner with nongovernmental organizations, be entrepreneurial, embrace science, and discover new avenues of radical practice.
Reflection
This technique helps emerging designers clarify motivations, skills they already have, and ones they need to develop. For more experienced designers, it is a useful annual checkup. For everyone it reveals fundamental motivations, and it often uncovers newfound skills. This is why it is critical to have blanks at the end of the list so that designers can define characteristics of their own identity and abilities. The blanks can reveal a unique skill that becomes the key to a project's success.
Responses often predict who will be an effective community designer. Some of the factors have remained unchanged since I first used this technique — good listeners, optimists who are concerned about diminishment of community and the rise of inequities. Other answers were added to the list with increasing awareness of the importance of attention to detail, power mapping, and other forms of expertise. Whiners made the list for the first time in this version.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Design as Democracy"
by .
Copyright © 2017 David de la Peña, Diane Jones Allen, Randolph T. Hester Jr., Jeffrey Hou, Laura J. Lawson, and Marcia J. McNally.
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