CO-DESIGNING A SUSTAINABLE CULTURE OF LIFE - Changing the Change, Turino, July 2008
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Co-Designing a Sustainable Culture of Life
Design tools: designing research methods for sustainable change
Viveka Turnbull Hocking[1],

Abstract

This paper is a reflection on research into a methodological tool for change towards a sustainable future. The paper’s purpose is to communicate this metadesign project in order to open up the ideas for discussion. The project’s sustainable context will be explored, as well as the role of design and in particular design research within this context by setting up the system in which design operated and the need for developing a co-design model. The paper will then outline the design-led method developed for fieldwork in Tumut ,which initiated the process of desinging the method for the co-design model. The paper will conclude by considering how the model might be further developed into a comprehensive design research method.

1. Introduction

Our culture of life has become un-sustainable; humanity (especially of developed nations) has formed interconnecting systems – natural[2], artificial[3] and un-natural[4] – supporting our everyday practices which now jeopardizes our future and the habitability of our world. We need tools for change, methods for co-designing a sustainable culture of life. The discipline of Design has an important role to play in developing sustainable change.
The word ‘sustainability’ is distinctly ambiguous; it has come to mean a kind of change (or transformation) for the better. When considering sustainability in terms of a kind of change for the better ambiguity is revealed in a series of question arising from contemplation of this statement; what kind of change?, what is better?, for whom?, who chooses?, how can it be achieved?. These are the questions the research community involved in sustainability is trying to determine. This contemporary struggle to determine the nature of the sustainability question is fundamentally a question about our design for the future; what do we want our future to look like and how do we transform our current present into a changed present? It is a question not just for the specialists, but for all people, since it requires a fundamental change in all of our everyday practices towards a sustainable culture of life. The why part of this question has been well documented; why do we need fundamental change for the better? Prominent scientific pieces from Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ to the Brundland report on ‘Our Common Future’ and a myriad of others (scientists, social scientists, design theorists, etc) have outlined why we need to change towards a sustainable future. They warn of a looming environmental and social crisis; climate change, food security, water wars, to name a few. The discipline of Design had a part to play in the creation of the materialistic culture of more which has contributed to the looming crisis we now face. The discipline of design now has a role to play in transforming our culture of life towards something more sustainable. Design’s role in this transformation should not only be in developing sustainable artifacts but also in providing tools for developing sustainable change. Design can revise its practices to change the way it constructs our artificial environment of making ecologically friendly stuff; doing more with less, lowering energy and material intensity, recycling, reusing, multiple uses, multiple users and so on. Perhaps Design research can also offer the wider research community aid in grappling with the question of ‘what kind of sustainable future?’ by sharing the design process’s aptitude for what next.
If we see design as a kind of research (Frayling 1993, Glanville 1999, Downton 2004) “concerned with how things ought to be” (Simon 1969, 4) then from the methodology of design I propose we can develop tools for a sustainable kind of change for the better. The ensuing method form both design-led research and research-led design. In designing this method I am using what already exists within the discipline of design; a design methodology, a design process and instances of design methods. By putting them together in a coherent fashion that articulates design as a kind of research we should be able to grapple with the systemic messiness of sustainability. The development of a design guide for research, I believe, is important in terms of our own field’s ability to see design as a legitimate form of research and for other fields to gain access to methods that generate a different perspective particularly equipped to deal with questions about the future.
Design for sustainable change requires a fundamental shift in the practice of everyday life. This kind of change has not yet gained the momentum needed to divert our socio-environmental crisis. We need new models of designing for change that enables co-design by all actors in the system of the everyday. In order to develop such a model for co-designing sustainable everyday practices we need tools that ‘enable design to operate within change and influence its direction’[5]. Such tools are already emerging from within the design field in the form of design-led methods such as cultural probes (examples of which include projects by Gaver et.al., 1999, Ivey et.al, 2007 and Hielsher et.al, 2007), game format (such as the Interactive Institute project Underdogs & Superheroes, Mazé and Jacobs, 2003) and scenario building (such as the Sustainable Everyday: Scenarios of Urban Life project, Manzini and Jégou, 2003). These existing design-led methods form the foundation from which the method for a co-design model can be developed.
For more information contact Viveka email: viveka.hocking@anu.edu.au

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