Designers as agents of Sustainable Change

This paper focuses on the roles of designers for enabling sustainability of livelihoods in disadvantaged communities. This paper was drawn from my doctoral research which I completed with communities with people with physical disabilities in Amphoe Phrapradaeng, Samut Prakran province in Thailand between 2007 and 2010. The main objective of this research was to find ways to enable the people with physical disabilities in one particular disadvantaged community to attain sustainable livelihoods and to continue flourishing long after the completion of the research project. This research was guided by three main research question; what strategies and tools designers should use in order to enable themselves and the community to undertake a collaborative investigation, how these strategies and tools were used in order to achieve research objectives, and what role and contribution of designers are as design researchers for enabling the community to attain a sustainable livelihood. To achieve a real outcome, this research was designed to investigate a real-life situation of a community of people with physical disabilities in Amphoe Phrapradaeng in the Samut Prakran Province in a semi-urban area of Thailand as a case study because the research was embedded in this community. This was a collaborative research with nineteen community members of this community. The research methodology of this research project was Participatory Action Research (PAR) by using the Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF) for data collection and evaluation of the effectiveness of the implementation of this research with the participants. This research has a basis in the theoretical frameworks established in the field of Human-Centered Design (HCD), which is a specific approach to design, and Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) which is an approach to sustainable community development. The activities of this research were multiple cyclical processes. These processes were composed of a group discussion for reflection and planning a new action, the taking of that action, observation, and then a group discussion for reflection and planning a new action. These activities were set up through a series of four workshops because they were designed for facilitating and enabling the participants to improve their capabilities to reach their full potential to achieve a sustainable livelihood. The research outcomes have shown the participants and their community discovered an alternative livelihood that could enable them to reduce or avoid vulnerability in their community and become more self-reliant. After the completion of this research study, they still continued to improve their capabilities and are pursuing a sustainable livelihood in their community. This research also revealed that PAR integrated with HCD and combined with SLA were shown to be effective strategies and approaches because they facilitate the knowledge transfer to the participants and their community and enable them to generate and implement their own idea. Reflection, traditional visualization, and the communication skills of designers were essential in such research because reflection enabled the participants and to recognize a change in their community explicitly. The visualization and communication skills of designers were very sophisticated and powerful tools in this process because they made complex situations or problems easy to understand and made new ideas and potential solutions visible during group discussions for reflection and planning. In conclusion, this research has shown that these research strategies, approaches and tools would not work effectively unless they were operated by designers who work as design researchers had a mindset for and behaved as an agent of sustainable change. This role is not a catalyst because it was innovatively, consciously, intentionally responsible for enabling people to have a sustainable and satisfying livelihood. A sustainable change agent should be mindful and work responsively to support local people, especially disabled people, to attain their goals. However, the project itself was a catalyst because it sparked a new idea for the participants and their community, showed them how to identify their own problems, let them generate their own solutions, and pursue a sustainable livelihood that they designed for themselves.

Iridescent, 2011

This paper focuses on how designers can contribute to enabling sustainable livelihoods in communities, especially communities of people with physical disabilities. Designing to enable sustainable livelihoods is a new area of design research and practice. Between 2007– 2010 I undertook a design research investigation with one of the most disadvantaged communities in a semi- urban area of Thailand. The aim of this investigation was to explore the role and potential contribution of designers for enabling sustainable livelihoods within such communities. It was undertaken as a collaborative project with nineteen community members who had physical impairment in the Samut Prakran province. This community had a long history of developing craft objects as a means for income generation. The objective in this research was to explore and trial the development of new approaches for income generation that would result in an alternative livelihood model for them; including transforming their capabilities and available resources in their community into positive outcomes. Transforming the designer’s role can have empowering effects on not only the participants and their community but also upon designers themselves. To do this, designers need to change their mindsets, attitudes, and behavior about their own role and that of the participants. The designers are no longer providers of a solution for the participants but rather agents of sustainable changes who have multiple roles as facilitators, enablers, innovators, and disseminators. The community participants are no longer passive recipients of a solution created for them. They need to have an active role in the research process to generate solutions which are then implemented in their community.

Sustainable community development is a community-directed process of development. It is a process that intends to facilitate communities to investigate their own situation and enable them to transform their existing situation to a desired one with the assistance of design researchers. This paper aims to articulate how design research enables people to achieve sustainability in the community. The paper draws from collaborative research projects with a group of disabled people in the central region of Thailand between 2006 and 2011. The research methodology was qualitative research by using a case study. Participatory action research was employed as a research strategy. The participants were people with physical disabilities who produced and distributed hand-made products for a living. The research procedures consisted of three main phases. The first one was recruiting participants and collecting their data. The second phase was multiple cyclical processes which composed of a group discussion for reflection and planning for an action, taking action and observation, and a group discussion for reflection and planning for an action again. The final phase was monitoring and evaluation. The research outcome has shown that there was promising sign of sustainable community development because the participants still continue perusing sustainability in their community. The key factors of achieving sustainable community development are the shift of researchers’ and participants’ way of thinking and behaviour and the research strategy that allows the community to participate in the development process and create and implement their own idea and solution.

2018

A “changing paradigm” with a focus on design for social innovation (SI) has emerged over the last decade. (DESIS, 2012) The title of this article refers to a perception of design schools and design students as potential “agents of sustainable change” adding new designdomains to the existing traditional design domains. (Chick, 2012, Emilson, 2010, Manzini, 2008, 2012, 2014). The study finds it is hard for the design-students to establish their “roles” as designers and have a natural “authority” working in complex and time-limited process’. The paper produces recommendations for other educators in terms of preparing, planning and doing a SD for SI course and discusses the critics views on future requirements for Designeducations. (Bason, 2013, Mulgan, 2014, Norman, 2010) The empirical basis for the article is a case used as part of the collaboration between VIA Design; Design for Change (DFC) in 2014-18 and four external partners; Teknologi i Praksis (TiP), the City of Aarhus, BorgerD...

Design Studies, 2018

Tendencies in contemporary participatory design suggest a move away from engagement of limited stakeholders in preconfigured design processes and predefined technology outcomes, towards more complex and long-term engagement with heterogeneous communities and larger ecologies of social and technological transformation. Building on core values of participatory design, we introduce three dimensions of engagement of scoping, developing and scaling that we argue can be essential in developing a holistic approach to participatory design as a sustainable practice of social change. The dimensions foreground central aspects of participatory design research that are discussed in relation to a long-term project exploring design and digital fabrication technologies in Danish primary and secondary education.

2016

The aim of the research was to create a model for sustainable socio-economic development in selected informal areas of Cairo, through collaboration of NGO members, informal area inhabitants and designers. The objectives were as follows: Using design intervention to develop more effective socio- economical empowerment program for informal areas through NGOs Repositioning the role of designer in relation to social change Providing a sustainable project that lives on after the designer has left. After conducting field research, including extensive interviews with NGO project managers, it was concluded that many of their economic development programs were having limited impact, and new strategies were needed. The selected strategy was to bring design thinking to the development of new product lines to be made by women in informal areas. The concept was to implement a well branded line of clothing targeted to a specific market segment; to be promoted through social media; sold through an online store; to be manufactured by informal area inhabitants, thus the money gained will be returned to the informal area inhabitants. Therefore a pilot project was implemented for 12 months, where 4 trails were made in 4 different informal areas until acceptable quality of products were produced. The concept is creating a sewing workshop in the homes of the informal area inhabitants where they produce clothes designed through participatory workshops where potential customers are gathered to design for their needs. Then the NGO team uses online marketing to sell the products through a well-branded online shop. Consequently, after holding 4 participatory workshops, 16 products where selected and produced and eventually promoted through Facebook and Instagram. This resulted in the informal area inhabitants gaining a minimum of 30 LE per piece rather than their previous pricing (2 LE, 7 LE and 14 LE).

About a decade ago, as a design student, my mind began to open up to the idea of design as a trans-disciplinary problem-solving practice capable of improving life. Prior to this revelation, I had chosen a career path in design because I enjoyed art and was convinced that design, like art, was a creative discipline, yet one with better prospects of getting a job. Half way into my degree my outlook broadened as I became aware of participatory design. My understanding of this approach, which features the active involvement of community members in the design process, was greatly informed by the teachings of author and professor Jorge Frascara. My instructors encouraged practical explorations of participatory design through collaborative concept generation exercises and feedback sessions with the public. I learned that designing with people can change not only what we see but how we see it. I no longer consider design as simply a profession, but rather as a lens for seeing, being, knowing and doing in the world. My ever-evolving practice of designing for a better world has taken me to many unexpected places, close to home and far away, where many ordinary people's ways of living life have impressed on me in profound ways. In what follows, I share insights that can inform and elucidate participatory design processes with an eye to some broader notions of human experience. Because I believe in theory that is directly connected to action, I relate each teaching principle to specific design projects. My hope is to provoke a renewed dialogue around the potential role of design as an ethical practice committed to the creation of synergetic partnerships for improving lives both locally and globally.

Advanced Science Letters, 2017

This article presents challenges and opportunities of employing participatory design approach with underprivileged citizens of developing countries. Through our on-going community project that develops recycled craft products in the interest of obtaining extra income for the mothers of Penjaringan, Jakarta, obstacles and prospects of employing participatory design method has been identified. The method which is known to bring the whole stakeholders into the design process is now preferred when the end product is intended to respond the real needs of its users. However, for such methods to be successful, designers in charge to work with underprivileged citizens must understand that they will be working under very different conditions than when doing participatory design in an established society. There are economical (quantitative) as well as cultural (qualitative) discrepancies among plural settlers of Jakarta, where the underprivileged suffers the least access to good quality infrastructure, which in turn affecting their self-actualization, aesthetic sensibilities and workmanships. Our field study revealed that participatory design methods may be advantageous only if the designers firstly take the lead and empower those who have been hindered economically and culturally, before we can expect them to participate in the design process optimally. As long as the empowerment process is carried out, we realized that participatory design with underprivileged citizens of developing countries has a prospect to bring out outcomes of at least two types: First, products that suits participant’s existing socio-economical condition, and second, the empowered design process itself improves citizens’ workmanships valuable for their own future productivities.