Social Impact Design

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Christopher Hethrington Prof. Hanno Ehses Dr. Nick Webb Assoc. Prof. Michael LeBlanc NSCAD University Master of Design Program July 1, 2009

SOCIAL IMPACT DESIGN ENABLING SOCIAL MOVEMENTS THROUGH META-DESIGN

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Table of Contents

Introduction

3

From Design to Meta-Design

7

Design’s Place in the Current Social and Environmental Paradigm

8

What is Meta-design?

13

Towards a Meta-design for Social Service

21

A Global Social Movement

28

Meta-design for Social Impact

33

A Place and Context for Social Service

34

Some Background on a Region and its People

35

Objectives of the Indigenous Movement in Chiapas

39

Meta-design for an Indigenous Social Movement in Chiapas

40

A Social Meta-design Scenario

49

Conclusion

55

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Introduction The first generation—our own—to worry about global threats like nuclear proliferation and climate change is effectively ahistorical; for most activists and campaigners, environmentalism has little or no history, no lineage. It is a response to immediate conditions, a reaction to waste, pillage, damage, and underneath it all lies the deepest grief about the shattering of the world.

(Hawkin 29)

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Today, there is a renewed movement aimed at curing the world of its significant and spreading ills. Social injustice and environmental degradation are directly or indirectly impacting every living thing on this planet and the evidence of it can be found in both empirical science and in the uncertain existential malaise that is being felt by individuals of diverse location, culture, and socio-economic background. Studies at Harvard University have found that money, beyond the amount required to provide basic essentials of life, does not make people happier (Lambert http:// harvardmagazine.com)—yet in the West people define their identities by signifiers of wealth, and the economic system depends on this for its long term sustained growth. In order to perpetuate the required growth in wealth and consumption, more human and natural resources are required than the planet can provide, leading to an unsustainable situation where an isolated few gain an unsatisfactory wealth at the expense of the impoverished many and through the destruction and contamination of a natural environment that is meant to provide for everyone. Though past generations have also experienced problems such as deforestation, erosion, pollution, heavy metal poisoning, and social exploitation, “the past provides little guidance for present woes” (Hawkin 29), as these and many other ills have accumulated dramatically in scope and volume—today we have reached something of a tipping point.

Since the founding of the United Nations after World War II, many institutions have been created ostensibly to deal with the symptoms of social inequity and environmental degradation.

Large institutional organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Environment Programme, and the myriad national level institutions1 all work to mitigate the distress associated with symptoms

1 In Canada these include such organisations as Environment Canada, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

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of a burgeoning population and seemingly exponential consumption. However, the vast majority of these organisations are inextricably tied to the system that is perpetuating the problem in the first place. As a result, the solutions envisaged and approaches taken by such institutions are constrained by the requirement that actions contribute to, or at least do not hinder, the current socio-economic paradigm2. These institutions are also based on top-down hierarchical models that make it difficult to account for the true exigencies of a given individual or community and, perhaps more importantly, they are typically based on a certain ideology and therefore act on the basis of belief or theory (141).

The new social and environmental movement developing around the world today is a bottom-up movement and rather than being ideological, it’s existential—it bases its ideas on observation (141) and attempts to find effective solutions that are both local and systemic (20).

Fuyuki Kurasawa has referred to it as a “network of informal actors (social movements, NGOs and activists) that are driving global justice from below” (Kurasawa 6). It’s connectivity that allows these typically small organizations to be task-specific and to focus their resources precisely and frugally, in a space where “incremental success is achieved by consensus operating within handmade democracies, where no one person has all or much power” (Hawkin 144).

In design thinking, recent theories and practices can be seen to lend themselves to the principles and approaches being utilised by this new developing movement; collaboration is a hallmark of design practice today where designers work in interdisciplinary environments, sharing and leveraging disparate knowledge for optimum results; in user-centred or participatory design the emphasis is placed on the individual users’ wants and needs rather than being imposed 2 For example, many governments provide financial or food aid but require a large percentage of that be invested with the donor country, even if this proves economically detrimental to the borrower nation. Another example is where the World Bank requires open capital markets and the privatisation of public services before a country can qualify for loans, many of which carry high interest which further indebts the borrower country.

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by the designer; and co-creation has designers working with users to assess need and develop effective solutions together. This presents new design thinking and practice with an opportunity to contribute to this movement and, in doing so, contribute incrementally to the betterment of society and the environment.

Where any of these design practices alone can be a valuable contribution, potentially the most significant contribution, and one that is particularly suitable to such an organic and individually centred movement, is meta-design. The practice of meta-design utilises the above mentioned design practices and leverages current design and communication technologies in order to design systems that enable users to act as designers themselves—it puts the power of design practice directly in the hands of the user. In the case of small and disparate social movement organisations, or SMOs, this will enable them to design the solutions to their own unique problems, make assessments, and revise accordingly. It will enable them to make use of technologies that will better enable them to extend their existing knowledge, to communicate more efficiently with external audiences, and to collaborate more effectively with other organisations or individuals from diverse backgrounds and distant locations. In a time when it has been said that everyone designs, meta-design will help to ensure that everyone does it well.

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From Design to Meta-design It is about time that […] design, as we have come to know it, should cease to exist. As long as design concerns itself with confecting trivial “toys for adults,” killing machines with gleaming tailfins, and “sexed-up” shrouds for typewriters, toasters, telephones, and computers, it has lost all reason to exist.

Design must become an innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the true needs of men. (Papanek X)

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Design’s Place in the Current Social and Environmental Paradigm The discipline of design may be a relatively recent development, but the practices it utilises have ostensibly existed since the beginning of civilisation, in fact, civilisation is the result of these design practices. Historically, design was directed toward mediation between man and the natural world, and there are numerous examples of how early cultures used design to improve the conditions of life. Shelters designed by the nomadic plains Indians3 of North America, entire floating communities of the Uro Aymara4 culture in the high Andes, or the Sumerian5 development of organised agriculture—in the face of a natural world that challenged not just man’s creature comforts but his very existence, design has been intrinsic to the development of mankind and civilisation.

Design for the purpose of communication can also be traced back thousands of years. An early example of this is the songlines of Australian aboriginal culture. For thousands of years, on a continent that held families of disparate spoken language, the song was used as a way to communicate visual way finding. These songs, taught to one another at meeting or junction points in a journey, translated the visual and physical spaces into an aural map that, through singing,

3 The plains Indians designed a shelter that could be constructed with readily available material, simple tools, and relative ease of construction. The tipi, made of buffalo skin and tree saplings, could be taken down and packed up easily for transportation, making it an ideal solution for a culture that used seasonally nomadic practices of hunting and gathering.

4 The world’s highest lake, in the altitudes of the Andes Mountains, would not surprisingly be a place where nature would challenge man’s existence. Yet here on Lake Titicaca the people of the indigenous Uro Aymara culture continue to make use of the reeds that grow on the lake’s shore much as they did before their subjugation by the Inca civilisation hundreds of years ago. Not only do they make their famous totora rafts of this material, they also construct mats, baskets, fishing traps, homes and even floating communities. These design solutions allowed them to adapt and survive where there was no ready access to timber and allowed a degree of protection from other groups.

5 Around 5,500 BC the Sumerians utilised what could be called early systems design in the development of large scale and intensive land cultivation that included the planning of crop location and rotation, organised irrigation systems, labour practices, storage, and product distribution. Along with the domestication of animals, the organisation and later commercialisation of agriculture would allow for the expansion of the Sumerian culture and early empire building.

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would reveal points of significance such as landmarks, watering holes, and hunting grounds.

Centuries later, the industrial revolution can be seen to have carried forward this simple theme—it was a design-centred epoch that sought to make things better for people. There are many lucid arguments that claim the industrial revolution substituted one form of indentured servitude for another6 and that much of the human suffering of the period was merely supplanted from the countryside to new urban centres of industry, but it’s also beyond dispute that with this change came many advancements in social freedom and access to products and services that improved the quality of life across Europe.

However, as early as 1754 Jean Jacques Rousseau questioned the optimist notions of western civilization in “Discourse on Inequality”, laying the foundations for modern day concerns of social injustice. A little over a century later, in 1867, Karl Marx wrote the famous critique of an economic system that had its roots in the Industrial Revolution. In “Das Kapital”, Marx dedicated a large portion of Volume 1 to the consumption model that, having developed out of industrialization, today has spread throughout the vast majority of the world. Marx explains how the capitalist economic system requires continual increases in production in order for it to sustain itself and, as a result, an ever-increasing level of consumption is required to create the demand for such production. This consumption would not be possible if not for what Marx called “commodity fetishism”, a condition where there is a perceived intrinsic value in a commodity that extends far beyond the labour required to produce it.

Design was an effective tool in adding such value to a commodity. Whether decorative or utilitarian, design was capable of modifying an existing commodity and making it either more 6 One cogent example of this is the chapter on slavery, in An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin. Here Zeldin uses a socially current existential exemplar to suggest that indentured servitude has never really left the human condition (1-10).

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appealing or more useful. Design was also capable of persuading consumers that new products or services were a significant improvement over what they were meant to replace. Communication design could create the perception of value where little existed, and by doing so it could contribute to increasing the production required to perpetuate economic growth.

As the economy grew, other ways of creating demand were needed. The rapid successions of product improvements or aesthetic changes were not enough to perpetuate the short consumption cycle required to maintain a growing economy. While the creation of new emerging markets for consumption was one way of addressing the problem, advertising and design began providing opportunity for further growth in existing wealth economies. In 1972, Jean Beaudrillard reintroduced the term “commodity fetishism” to explain the relationship of objects as signs that represented, or stood in for, individual identity. Through advertising, branding, and communication design, consumers could be persuaded to purchase goods and services as a way to help construct their personal identity and display their self to the community. Though the presentation of identity has always existed, the commodification of individual identity would not have been possible were it not for the work of advertisers and designers.

By the mid 70’s, “design for need” had become, what Tony Fry refers to as, “a functionalist rally call.” Led by the work of Victor Papanek and explored in his seminal text, Design for the Real World, the movement was a significant step toward a return to the principles of what design is really about—“making things better for people” (Seymour quoted in Design Council) . But as Claudio Pinhanez has pointed out—if you go to the design section of your local bookstore “you will find books on […] furniture, houses, gardens, books, cars, clothes, posters, textiles, glass, type, ceramics, literature, logos and, more recently, software interfaces and websites” (3)—it suggests the ambiguous nature of design but also challenges the notion of need in design. The

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“true” need that Papanek refers to in Design for the Real World is an important qualifier and one that addresses the importance of examining what is meant by the word, particularly in the context of its use as justification for design and production. Need is often “called upon as if it were a self-evident empirical reference [and yet] the needs of the poor are not the same as the needs of the well off” (Fry 42). There’s been an absence of recognition and clarity within design theory when it comes to felt need, and this has limited understanding “of all design activity during the rise of industrial culture” (42). Given the historical role of design in the context of a consumption-based capital economy, it’s unlikely that these traditional design practices can effectively address the true needs of our priviledged western society let alone that of the underpriviledged, particularly when these practices have contributed significantly to the ecological and social paradigm that currently challenges both.

Design was originally a response to the true and immediate needs of people at a time in which everyone designed, but it has evolved to become responsive to the false needs of a divided class system, where underclass labour is used to produce the objects of upper class consumption and where the waste from everyone is threatening our shared future. There have been attempts within the design community to address this problem and with them have come some positive results, but real change has largely failed to take root in a fundamental way. Design is currently faced with a perceptual and real problem—it no longer knows its role in society and the one that it has adopted is viewed by many in a negative light, particularly given the unsustainable social and ecological situation that we currently find ourselves in. While the relationship of designer and commercial client is continually being refined, we have lost our mandate to design for society—to make things truly better for people. As a discipline, we seem unable to adequately assess

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the true needs of individuals, communities and our global society7. Now, technology has returned us to a paradigm where once again everyone designs, albeit in a different sense than in the past.

Today the computer-based digital domain of design practice has made it open and accessible to more people than ever before8.

If we are to again design for the betterment of society then we need to first acknowledge these realities. First, “the screen of mediation between us and need is so thick [that] the authentic is unviewable” (Fry 49) and we can know longer assess true need. Second, we can’t continue to practice the kind of design we have grown accustomed to and also ensure a socially and ecologically sustainable environment—the two are not compatible. Finally, given the existing communication and technology paradigm, design can no longer be viewed as existing within a silo of elite knowledge. Ezio Manzini clearly expresses what he perceives to be an emerging challenge for today’s designer: In the present times, designers have to operate in a society in which, as contemporary sociology points out, “everybody designs”. In other words, they have to consider themselves part of a complex mesh of designing networks: the emerging, interwoven networks of individual people, enterprises, non-profit organizations, local and global institutions that are using their creativity and entrepreneurship to solve problems, to open new possibilities and, sometimes, to take some concrete steps towards sustainability. (1) This paradigm can pose a challenge to some design practice, particularly that type which is rooted in traditional modernist notions. Many designers today continue to “advocate for educating the public in modernistic design values [rather than] promotion of the design values of consultation and participation” (Holm 59). Where design tends to impose its ideas on society, 7 This should not be viewed as an isolated critique of the design community. The capital economic model has become so ingrained in western culture that it seems to be wholly unassailable and individuals in every walk of life have found it difficult to recognise its limitations and potential negative impact.

8 3d modelling software, WYSIWYG web design, desktop publishing software, and online software like Google’s Sketch-up, are all making it easier for the layman to become the designer.

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albeit with good intention, it will face resistance to its historically paternal approach.

Rather than warning signs, these should be viewed as opportunities for transforming professional design practice and, in doing so, finding new and effective ways of designing for a socially and ecologically sustainable society. Recent developments in design thinking are showing resilience in design practice and methodology. Adaptations within design suggest an acknowledgement that there is need for significant change if we are to point a new direction. This is notable in areas of investigation and practice such as open source, multidisciplinary collaboration, user-centred design, and co-creation, all of which are methods that re-envision the role and responsibility of design in the context of both present opportunities and the emerging future of our highly globalised society.

And then there’s Meta-design.

What is Meta-design?

Meta-design, as a form of design practice, places significant emphasis on the process side of design and the need for a model that is dynamic and adaptable. It involves the creation of sociotechnical environments in which people can be creative, and has been clearly characterized as the “objectives, techniques, and processes for creating new media and environments that allow the owners of problems to act as designers” (Fischer, Meta-design: Beyond User… 1). Central to metadesign is that these environments enable users to “engage in informed participation rather than being restricted by the use of existing systems” (Fischer, Meta-design: Beyond User… 1). Also—and this is important—from a methodological perspective, meta-design does not define a product or specify an outcome, rather it defines and designs the conditions for a process of interaction (Fischer, Meta-design: Putting Owners… 16). By focusing on the general structures and processes, rather

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than on fixed objects and contents, meta-design seeks to better anticipate unforeseen changes with an eye toward adaptation (Giaccardi, Metadesign 346).

Figure 1: At design time, a multidisciplinary group of developers work with representatives of future users to design the system, which is made up of social and technical components. At use time the system is available to end users who interact with it by utilising existing products or services of the system and by modifying or introducing new products and services to the system.

Figure 1 shows a meta-design model separated into two phases of operation or activity that are defined as design time and use time. At design time a system is developed whereby the social and technical environment is conceived and implemented to ensure that future users of the system can effectively identify problems and resolve them through a newly acquired knowledge and capacity for design thinking and activity. Design time development of the system would typically be the result of collaborative efforts by experts from a variety of different disciplines depending on the focus of the particular meta-design project, and through a process of consultation with potential future users of the system. Use time refers to the second phase of the project where the consumer for which the system was designed uses its various tools, services and networks, to extend their own existing capacities and to further develop the system itself to suit their needs窶馬eeds that may have been unanticipated in phase one or that only become apparent

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over time. At use time the activity is driven by the users themselves who, with the requisite resources provided, act as designers by assessing needs, researching, planning, and implementing solutions—carrying the project forward through unforeseen changes in situation and exigency.

Figure 2: Here developers work with selected future users to initially seed the system space. The system develops further through the contribution of users, creating an evolved system space. These contributions become integrated into the system at the reseeding stage and a new reseeded system space is created. This is followed by a second iteration of the process, starting with a new round of evolutionary growth from the reseeded space. The iterations are perpetual, continuing for the life of the system. Figure information from the following source (Fischer, Meta-design: A Manifesto for… 5).

This continual evolution of the project at use time is made possible by meta-design’s employment of the Seeding, Evolutionary Growth, and Reseeding (SER) model9 (shown in Figure 2). It acknowledges Herbert Simon’s premise that complex systems must constantly evolve in order to be effective (Fischer & Scharff, http://www-jime.open.ac.uk). The SER model is not dissimilar to the frequently described iterative process10 of design practice, but it differs largely in that its implementation takes place at use time and is like an open circuit that is intended to continue 9 This process model was first presented in 1994 at a conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Boston, MA under the title Seeding, Evolutionary Growth and Reseeding: Supporting Incremental Development of Design Environments. (Fischer, G & McCall et al.)

10 Design iteration can take on many forms, from rapid prototyping in industrial design to usability studies in interface design, but in whatever context it is used it usually follows a simple circuitous process of designingtesting-analysing-designing. A hallmark of many design methodologies, the iterative process has been thoroughly addressed by everyone from Jacob Nielsen to David Kelley.

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indefinitely, ensuring adaptability and continued efficacy in the face of what Richard Buchanan refers to as “the indeterminacy of wicked problems [where] the problem for designer is to conceive and plan what does not yet exist” (17). The iterative process, on the other hand, is ostensibly a closed circuit where, after a series of passes, the process must come to an end.

Iteration of this type takes place at design time when experts are designing the system itself or at use time when users act as designers and work toward specific outcomes. Comparatively speaking, the iterative process is a micro level closed process which is suited to project based situations that must have a conclusion, while the SER model operates as a macro-level open process to enable the system itself to viably persist.

The SER model starts at design time with the initial development of a system by designers, experts, and potential users—a system that is open to change over time. At use time there is support for a culture of design that isn’t self-conscious, where it is expected that users experience breakdowns and “bad fits” but where end-users can modify and improve limiting experiences— an evolutionary growth through incremental modifications that are referred to as seeds. This is followed by the reseeding stage where the system is significantly reconceptualised by accounting for the incremental modifications, mitigating conflicts between the changes, and thereby establishing an enhanced system (Fischer, Meta-design: Putting Owners… 43). This new system can then be fed back into the evolutionary growth stage and continued in a manner that accounts for changes over time.

Though it is sometimes compared to other practices or methodologies such as collaboration, co-creation, or user-centred design, it more accurately utilizes these approaches within its own practice and methodology—so rather than being associated with open source development, it is actually the methodology that makes open source possible.

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Since meta-design has its roots in computer science and design11, its not surprising that the computer should be seen as a catalyst for creativity and that new media specifically could be used as a means of enabling communities. Much of the research into meta-design focuses on software development and the creation or use of web 2.0 technologies (see figure 03)—the primary focus of the technical in “socio-technical environments.”

One standout example of meta-design is the development of systems that enable the creation, evolution, and dissemination of shared bodies of knowledge. John Thackara refers to this as conviviality, and quotes NYU law professor Yochai Benkler’s description of this commons based approach to peer production.

We are seeing the emergence of a new mode of production, distinguishable from the property and contract-based modes of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals— rather than market prices or managerial commands. (130)

At Wikipedia.org, users generate essentially all the content and, as new iterations of the wiki project develop, users contribute to the design and development in varying degrees based on their interest and knowledge12. Open source software is another example of the results of metadesign. The Mozilla Foundation develops a wide range of computer applications from web browsers and mail programs to something called Ubiquity. The Ubiquity project has hundreds of contributors throughout the world all working toward intuitively languaging the Internet. This is more than user-generated content; users are actually developing the programs through everything 11 Meta-design, as described in this conceptual framework, was developed at the University of Colorado’s Center for Lifelong Learning and Design, or L3D. It should be noted that the earliest conception of meta-design can be traced back to the 1960’s, but has generally developed more consistent characteristics since the 1980’s and is now being significantly refined at L3D and somewhat differently at the Laboratory for Architecture and Urbanism, or Lab[au], in Brussels (Giaccardi, Metadesign 343-345). The conceptual framework for meta-design, as expressed in this paper, is most closely associated with that of the L3D in Colorado.

12 In meta-design, not all users are designers; the enabling of users to contribute, develop and design is about enabling choice and to what degree a user chooses to participate in the process is up to them.

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from “beta testing” to “writing in code snippets” that build out greater capabilities, using everyday language and by leveraging existing mash-up applications to make for more efficient user-experiences and communications. Most of these mash-up applications themselves are meta-design projects. Facebook provides add-ons, extensions and other services that have been developed by users; the content itself is all user-generated, content that is often drawn from another mash-up application such as YouTube or a Wordpress blog. Wordpress too is a meta-design project with users designing page templates called styles, developing extensible add-on applications for embedding in blogs, and linking data from other mash-ups such as Twitter or Flickr. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these new Web 2.0 technologies and applications in various stages of ongoing development13 and most would not exist if it were not for the

Figure 3: This diagram shows some comparative differences between early web characteristics and the change taking place within Web 2.0. (Fischer, Meta-design: Putting Owners… 9) Many of these changes are the result of a meta-design type methodology.

principles and methodologies of meta-design. What makes this environment so interesting is that these open design systems are all interacting and feeding one another. This network is so organic, dynamic and complex that it couldn’t ever be effectively mapped but it might be analogous to a garden where plants, insects, soil, sun, and water all interact in a highly complex eco-system.

Beyond the technological characteristics of meta-design there are the arguably more 13 It’s the nature of these projects that they are always in development. They are not closed end products but rather open systems that are changing organically based on designer/user contribution and the existing context of technological advancement and user requirements.

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important social characteristics. In 1984, Horst Rittel wrote of the communication challenges evident when people from different cultures had different norms, symbols, and representations, calling it “a symmetry of ignorance” (317-327). Meta-design views this as an opportunity for creativity where “having different viewpoints helps one discover alternatives and can help uncover tacit aspects of problems” (Fischer, Symmetry of… 1). The emphasis on multi-disciplinary collaboration that exists within meta-design embraces the notion that the required knowledge to solve complex social problems is beyond the scope of one individual or discipline and that in true collaborative and co-creative environments participants teach and instruct each other.

In this case the role of the designer is one of facilitator and a co-designer of systems that will enable access by user-designers to various practical bodies of knowledge and experts, whether pedagogical or practical, specialist or layman. Both at design time when the system itself is being developed and at use time when user-designers continue the meta-design project, there is an understanding that social creativity emerges when participants teach and instruct each other.

A meta-design project will typically investigate social factors within a community such as cognition, collaboration, and motivation, utilizing the outcomes of that learning to help model an open system that takes into account the existing social context. With regard to cognition, emphasis in areas such as individual and group comprehension, decision making, planning and learning all contribute to assessing social environments and modelling appropriate approaches in order to optimize ongoing outcomes. This is an example of where, at design time, a multidisciplinary approach to initial systems design is required. Here psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists or cognitive scientists can make invaluable contributions to the design process. In a broader system context, multi-disciplinary collaboration might also include computer scientists, industrial and information/communication designers, environmental engineers, business leaders, politicians,

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and lobbyists—the list is as long and diverse as is the number of possible scenarios for applying meta-design. And then there are the users—consumers, individuals and groups all willing, and often eager, “to engage and cocreate their own personalized experiences” (Prahalad & Krishnan 325).

There is a fundamental shift in the focus, the sources, and the processes of innovation and value creation. Forced by digitization, connectivity, and open and free access to information and social networks, an informed and active consumer base is emerging. (Prahalad & Krishnan 325)

This emergence offers an opportunity to re-envision the user as an informed and engaged practitioner of their own design solutions, thus contributing to the evolution of product or service development in such a way that it represents ideally and actually the needs of that individual or

Figure 4: This can be viewed as an evolutionary process that’s taking place in design. It could also be considered a democratisation of design as stakeholders progressively play a more significant role in the design process. Figure data source (Fischer, Meta-design: Putting Owners… 19).

community. In meta-design we see an evolution of design methodologies to a more democratized form of design. This evolution begins with users adapting to the designed product and ends with the creation of new opportunities for users to become engaged in a co-creative practice of design.

Meta-design transcends the traditional consumer mindset associated with the consump-

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tion of products and services, and instead, is far more tightly integrated with the use of those products or services—an integration that continues throughout the life of the system.

Keeping the system open to participation and evolution at use time is meant to join social and technical systems, not only to make them optimized and efficient, but also to let new conditions, interactions and relationships emerge. In this way—by sustaining emergence and evolution—new forms of sociability and creativity can develop and innovation can be fostered. (Giaccardi 346-347)

Towards a Meta-design for Social Service Many in the business community are turning to design thinking14 as a means of revitalizing existing practices and finding new ways for staying competitive in a time where rapid change is the only constant. As a result, many exemplars currently exist that show the successful implementation and ongoing practice of meta-design within the domain of commercial business enterprise.15 In varying size and application, these enterprises run the gambit from a small MIT software licensed16 and open source CMS17 program like Concrete 5, to the broadly based integrated online application systems of Google, one of the most successful and profitable businesses in the world. Where business has played a significant role in how meta-design can be utilized within a

14 The term design thinking is one that has been adopted by many within design research to describe not just the thinking but also the processes and methodology behind design practice. It has become a particularly popular conceptual framework for implementation within the business community and often emphasises a variety of approaches that include but are not limited to multidisciplinary collaboration, co-creation, user-centred design, and iterative processes in design practice.

15 These enterprises are regularly documented in design, technology and business journals such as Wired Magazine, Fast Company, Design Issues, the Economist, to name only a few. They are ubiquitous and are widely recognised as the new face of business and innovation.

16 The MIT software license is an Open Source Initiative that grants, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the software to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to [also] do so.

17 CMS stands for content management system. Blogs typically operate on a CMS platform but it is becoming more common to see commercial web sites developed on CMS platforms as it enables users easy access to site modifications and updates without necessarily having the traditional requisite web design and development skills.

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commercial context, it has also contributed to social service. Today, many free and open source products and services are enabling users from diverse socio-economic backgrounds to develop skills and knowledge in a variety of technical areas. This in turn is enabling mash-ups of blogs, video, and image applications, all tools that are extending communication opportunities for users previously unable to access expensive communication technologies. Business centred meta-design has already created a paradigm shift with respect to democratising access to knowledge and services, and yet, we are just at the early stages of its development and utilisation.

The design discipline and individual design practitioners have also begun to direct their practice toward service design. Perhaps the most notable design company in the area of design thinking, methodology, and overall innovation is IDEO. This design consultancy is regularly cited as an example of how a successful practice should operate and now they’re taking a leading role in the area of social service design as well. In 2008, as a project for the Rockefeller Foundation, IDEO developed Design for Social Impact. This project included a comprehensive guide for designers who wanted to participate successfully in designing for social impact and even included a supplementary workbook to help facilitate the process. Through the utilization of working practices that are also found in meta-design, design practitioners are returning to the traditional domain of social design praxis, where design is seen as making things better for people. With the recent focus on service design, the traditional view of design as centred “around the creation of tangible artefacts” (Pinhanez 3), is slowly opening up to alternative perceptions.

The new social design practitioners are often from the industrial and communication disciplines and their work has garnered significant attention, particularly in the United Kingdom. RED, which is a unit of the Design Council, the UK’s official design agency, is “an interdisciplinary team of designers, policy thinkers and social scientists” (Steffen, http://worldchanging.

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com) who are re-envisioning existing and future public services. Designers are taking on a wide variety of socially directed projects, working both in the system modelling stage and as facilitators within the ongoing projects. For example, RED developed a project in the county of Kent called Activmobs, which discovered new ways to encourage and maintain healthy living choices.

In this project a system was designed whereby individuals could link up by way of a website, creating “self-organised groups of people with a shared interest” (kent.gov.uk) in their own type of healthy activity—they could also share tips among the network of groups, connect with trainers, and develop their own group appropriate routines. This successful co-creative project was then turned over to a social enterprise that is now developing the system as a broader and ongoing concern. Part of a project titled dott07, or Designs of the Time, Activmobs was just one in a number of significant service design projects that ranged from urban farming and working happiness to community planning of a new school. These projects, to varying degrees, all shared a methodology that emphasized user-centred and multidisciplinary design, collaboration and co-creation, which resulted in early enthusiasm within the participating communities and a greater public awareness of what design could achieve in the area of social service. However, none of these projects fully embraced the conceptual framework of meta-design that emphasizes the creation of “social and technical infrastructures [which ensure] users become co-developers or co-designers” (Fischer & Giaccardi, Meta-Design: A framework for… 1). A system that empowers users with the capacity to grow18 the project at use time seems not to have been fully developed, resulting in an uncertain future for some of these projects19. In describing the princi-

18

Refer to the evolutionary growth stage of the earlier described SER model.

19 The dott07 website has overviews of the various projects and the “What’s Next?” sections tend to reflect an uncertainty and lack of ongoing results, and further searching found very little in the way of documentation showing a continued user engagement with any of these projects.

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ples behind another RED project, Cottam and Leadbeater refer to an organizational model called “communities of co-creation” (24) that gets closer to meta-design. They envision this model as one that needs only “a minimum level of external, professional design to allow bottom-up initiative from within society” which is possible “through concerted reforms to create more distributed capacity [and] provide spaces in which people can collaborate and devise co-created solutions” (24). Meta-design concerns itself with designing the “enabling systems” (Manzini 2) that ensure a distributed capacity. But whereas co-creation emphasizes users working together with designers, meta-design emphasizes enabling users to ostensibly become the designers. This distinction provides the best opportunity for creating a sustainable project that can continue to evolve in spite of a changing environment, parameters, and exigencies.

The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) is a particularly good example of a project that, from conception through continued operation, adheres to the meta-design framework. Participant groups include a governance body, the DLESE Program Center (DPC), and the community. The governance body includes a steering committee that is responsible for guiding overall policy for the project, the DPC is responsible for developing the core infrastructure and provides a coordinating role20, while the community is made up of participants that involve themselves in the project through either personal activity or by participating in committees, discussion groups and events (Wright 5-6). The projects framework is based on two “facilitation mechanisms to support the collaborative process: a social facilitation of participants; and a technical facilitation of communication infrastructure and technical artefacts” (6).

Online forums, emailing, teleconferencing and face-to-face workshops all work to facilitate an interaction among the geographically distributed user-participants who contribute directly to the 20

The DPC can be compared to the multidisciplinary developers in the design time stage.

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ongoing development of the project21. As a check to ensure the project is developing effectively, “a level of formalization” is done on user-seeded modifications and overall system changes through usability testing by the DPC in collaboration with the community22. The result of this meta-design project is that, thanks in large part to the “distributed effort and energies of [the] broadly engaged community” itself (3), the DLESE is continually providing new services and knowledge to the Earth Systems community (7).

Meta-design is not just a practice in design—it’s also a pedagogical practice. Whether in the form of teaching design methodology, related research practices, or technical proficiency, part of designing an enabling system involves the transfer of knowledge. As a result, centres for learning, and institutions of design in particular, could prove to be excellent incubators for the development of social meta-design projects. One institution in particular that’s making a significant impact in the area of service design is Stanford University’s Institute of Design, or d.school, and with their existing emphasis on multidisciplinary collaboration and co-creation, they are well positioned to take a leading role in this incubation. Headed by IDEO founder, David Kelley, d.school is bringing together leaders from diverse domains of knowledge and experience such as sociology, business, economics, philosophy, engineering, and design. The emphasis on collaboration, co-creation, and design thinking has resulted in a number of innovative pedagogically centred projects within service design, from campus bike safety to participation in developing Bhutan’s new education system23. Another pedagogical project that corresponds to meta-design

21

This can be compared to the evolutionary growth stage of the SER model in Figure 2.

22

This is the reseed stage that takes place after evolutionary growth in the SER model of Figure 2.

23 Students from d.school worked with the Royal Education Council of Bhutan to incorporate design thinking approaches into the curriculum in order to “help them develop citizenship skills and 21st century illiteracies, like innovation and creativity, while remaining true to their [“strong Buddhist ethical core “and] heritage.” (Pferdt http:// www.pferdt.de/archives/608)

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methodology is Project Peru, based out of NSCAD University. This multidisciplinary project involved students collaborating “with professionals in business, marketing, web development, fundraising and textiles” (www.projectperu.ca) to come up with a framework that would see improved commercial opportunities for indigenous weavers in a Peruvian highland community.

By providing a local NGO with design-centred skills and knowledge, students created a sustaining situation where facilitators could continue operating the project long after the students have left. This project has great potential to evolve into a systems-centred meta-design project, with many opportunities to extend the pedagogical benefits both to the community and the university.

Through their research, NSCAD students discovered that “initiatives such as weaving groups [also] aim to provide [the community’s] women with social networking opportunities, childcare and forms of education concerning health and hygiene” (ibid). The students’ skills in research, collaboration, communication and design thinking could be engaged to develop a framework that addresses some of the above mentioned social benefits and, by networking with other disciplines and institutions, empower the community with a distributed knowledge and skill set to act as designers themselves and tackle some of these issues directly.

Then there’s Barefoot College, which in 1972 was started up by Bunker Roy in Tilonia, India. Barefoot College’s mandate is to address problems of discrimination, injustice, exploitation and inequality by creating a place where the dispossessed can talk and be heard with dignity and respect and be given the tools, training and skills to improve their own lives (www.barefootcollege.org).

It’s a place where the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher. It’s a place where people are encouraged to make mistakes so that they can learn humility, curiosity, the courage to take risks, to innovate, to improvise and to constantly experiment. It’s a place where all are treated as equals and there is no hierarchy. (ibid)

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Perhaps like no other institution, Barefoot College operates by principles very similar to those of meta-design, providing a social, technical and pedagogical environment where owners of problems become the problem solvers. Today the college has 20 campuses throughout India with nearly 1,000 trained experts in 1,000 villages, providing half a million people with basic services such as solar energy, clean drinking water, health care, and education (Vilaga). Whether further afield or in our own backyards, educational institutions are recognising the significant contribution that design can play in social service. They are immersing themselves in experimental research, multidisciplinary networks and traditional teaching, all with an eye toward making things better for people through design.

Whether within commercial design practice, pedagogy or institutional implementation, recent practices in collaboration, co-creation, and community-centred design are opening up new possibilities for design practice and bring us closer to the place where a meta-design approach to design practice can have a positive social impact.

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A Global Social Movement Along with gross violations of human rights are other endless indignities that billions endure: loss of water for agriculture, theft of local resources by government and corporations, incursions of mining companies that pollute, political corruption and hijacking of governance, lack of health care and education, big dams that have displaced millions of poor people, loss of land, trade policies that bankrupt small farmers, and more. What people want in their place is universal: security, the ability to support their families, educational opportunities, nutritious and affordable food, clean water, sanitation, and access to health care.

According to more than 190 nations in the world, these are not entitlements; they are rights. (Hawkin 13)

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It has been said that “the division between ecology and human rights is an artificial one, that the environmental and social justice movements [are] two sides of a single larger dilemma” (2).

When we look at social movement organisations (SMOs) today there is an understanding that they have a common goal of improving the human condition—the overall objective is to make things better for people. A local organization’s objective to preserve a nearby wetland impacts not only local plant and animal life but also provides educational, recreational, and even economic opportunity for the area. Moreover, as this local community is only one part of a large and complex system, the impact at the regional, and eventually, global level is immeasurable.

The movement for social equity and environmental sustainability is populated by groups that typically view the issue of human rights from the position of the oppressed rather than from that of the elite. The movement’s participants are largely concerned with ending activities that violate traditionally held notions of human rights and justice. Many studies24 have suggested that this movement represents an “alternative globalisation” where the civic associations represent a counterbalance to the “role of hegemonic states and transnational corporations in national and world politics” (Kurasawa 7).

Due to its constantly evolving qualities and its exceptional diversity at a micro level, the movement may be quite difficult to define at a larger macro level. However, some general characteristics are beginning to emerge such as its natural organic complexity, the capacity for inter-organisational collaboration, and a sense that the strength of the movement lies in the individuals as it grows from the bottom up.

Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of the movement is its complexity. There are an incalculable number of social movement organisations at work with a wide variety of goals 24

In a footnote, Kurasawa cites at least 12 researchers in 14 papers that have suggested this.

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and approaches to attaining them (Hawkin 18), organisations that are inextricably and, due to their incalculable number and impact, inexplicably tied to one another. In what Naomi Klein calls “the movement of movements” (458), political, social, regional, and ideological boundaries of all types are crossed and often intertwine25. This is a movement that, rather than attaching itself to that one big idea in the hope of solving the world’s problems, offers in its place “thousands of small and useful ones” (Hawkin 18). Each of these small ideas that are carried forward by one or another social movement will have the impact of adding significantly more complexity.

The very nature of attempting to address a problem that exists within a larger multi-faceted one, which in itself is part of a larger complex and interconnected system, excludes any big idea approach.

Typically, there are hundreds26 of organisations all operating individually to achieve similar though discrete objectives, and while they can and do “co-operate on key issues without subordinating themselves to another group” (18), their diversity in place and objective can pose challenges when it comes to greater collaboration. There are however exemplars that show the capacity for, and impact of, significant collaboration within this movement and certainly the most publicised is the historic anti-globalisation protest at the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle, Washington. This broad-based global justice coalition was organised to bring together SMOs and individuals of diverse background to raise their voice and make public the various and often disparate grievances they had with the WTO’s growing dominance and worldwide exploitive practices. In the streets were representatives of foreign governments, educators, 25 Paul Hawkin poses the following question: “Should the idea of using renewable sources to achieve localized energy independence be categorised as radical, conservative, ecological, good long-term economics, or socially equitable?” (18) 26 Depending on how broad or general their objectives, there may actually be thousands of organisations working toward the same cause—both the issues global warming and animal rights are examples of this.

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trade unionists, environmentalists, animal rights lobbyists, farmers, doctors, lawyers, ministers, students and more. All told, it’s been estimated that more than 40,000 protestors from numerous organisations joined together in Seattle and, though not generally publicised in the North American media27, the Seattle protestors were joined by other organised protests in over 40 cities around the world (Tarrow 171).

While the possible opportunities for greater development of this type of global collaboration within the movement should not be overlooked, the most significant characteristic of the movement is its cumulative impact through the activities of individual actors, communities and organisations—a growing wave of social entrepreneurship that has become the foundation of a movement that’s growing from the bottom up. Social entrepreneurs are beginning to transform the landscape of the movement from the traditional institutional boundaries of social and environmental agents, into a space where activists take the form of innovative risk takers who use ideas, resources and opportunities to tackle systematic social problems (Hawkin 151). This kind of social entrepreneurship already has a wonderful developing narrative with success stories like the Grameen Bank, a microcredit project developed by 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and inspiring examples such as Ryan’s Well Foundation, a project started by 7-year-old Ryan Hreljac to bring clean drinking water to underprivileged communities. Whether a small organic apprenticeship program or the multi-billion dollar Gates Foundation, entrepreneurs of all sizes and stripes are applying small and big business thinking to social philanthropy, and as earlier examples have already shown design thinking and practice is also beginning to 27 It should be noted that local and international media coverage of this event was largely focused on the military lockdown of the city by the National Guard and the resulting chaos that ensued in the streets. This, along with some isolated violence by a small group of radical anarchists, largely distracted attention from the concerns being aired regarding WTO operations (Nacos 70). The significant organisational success of these diverse associations within an undefined global movement was also overlooked at the time, though it has become the focus of much attention in recent years.

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play a significant role in this area as well. When Gui Bonsiepe talks about creating a new interpretation of the term democracy28, he is referring to individuals and activities such as these who breathe new life into a participatory democracy where “dominated citizens transform themselves into subjects opening a space for self-determination, and that means ensuring room for a project of one’s own accord” (29).

28 Bonsiepe is quite contrarian with regard to today’s western notion of democracy. He states that formulated differently, “democracy involves more than the formal right to vote. Similarly, freedom goes farther than the right to chose between a hundred varieties of cellular telephones; or a flight to Orlando to visit the Epcot Center, or to Paris to look at paintings in the Louvre.” The democracy Bonsiepe is alluding to requires a level of responsibility and contribution by its benefactors.

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Meta-design for Social Impact We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is. (Kurt Vonnegut)

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A Place and Context for Social Service As it has been described, the methodology associated with meta-design is well suited to addressing the kinds of complexity that exist within the objectives of many social movements.

The following sections will begin to explore what a social movement, informed by meta-design principles, might look like. Through the presentation of example situations, a contextually driven understanding of meta-design methodology within social movements will help to reveal its potential. One of the challenges when envisioning the application of meta-design principles to a social movement is the diversity of movements themselves—each has their own unique characteristics whether in size, intention or regional emphasis. As such, no one movement will be an ideally representative exemplar of how to apply the meta-design model, but the principles of a meta-design methodology should be consistent and prove useful as a framework that could at least inform the approach taken with other SMO projects.

The SMO chosen for this model situates itself in the midst of many other organisations: •

It has a median level of active direct stakeholders numbering in the thousands.

•

It has a regional focus but its network spans from the local to the global.

•

Linguistic characteristics of the organisation are diverse

•

Political ideology and social justice are deeply entwined in the issues

•

Economics and environment both play significant roles.

•

Violent conflict has taken place.

The indigenous movement of Chiapas, Mexico has had its share of successes and tragedies in the past but in recent years it has largely dropped off the international radar. The concerns, however, that caused 6,000 rebels to come down from the mountains and occupy seven major towns in Mexico’s south on January 1st of 1994 remain unresolved (Higgins 169).

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Whether they’re members of the Zapatista Army, traditional supporters of the federal government, or non-affiliated individuals and communities, there is still significant progress yet to be made in this region to bring a better standard of living and overall improved quality of life to the indigenous and campesinos29 of southern Mexico.

Figure 5: Image on left shows Zapatista Army marching with the flag of Mexico. To the right is a rare image, taken

by Antonio Turok, of the day the Zapatista Army occupied the town of San Cristóbal de las Casas.

Some Background on a Region and its People Most people became aware of the problems facing indigenous people in southern Mexico when the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, or EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) declared war on the government of Mexico. They may have had their very public debut on that day in 1994, but their grievances can be traced back to the late 18th century, when economic liberalism and independence encouraged a renewed expansion into the lands of Chiapas and encroachment into the traditionally autonomous areas of the local indigenous (Higgins 73-81).

Early indigenous Chiapanecan history is marked by numerous injustices. Under Bourbon

29 Though the term indigenous is primarily used throughout the following pages, a movement such as this would not likely seek to exclude non-indigenous who suffer similar inequities within their daily life. Local campesinos, or typically poor small landholders, could also be expected to participate.

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reforms, the liberal agrarian laws of 1826 and 1832 defined the legal size of ejido land30 by population, limiting the access the indigenous communities had to farming and pasture land, while at the same time freeing up the newly defined territory for purchase and occupation by private citizens—the government essentially annexed land that had been held in trust and sold it. A form of indentured servitude developed where the new ladino31 land owners would allow the subsistence farming to continue on sections of their newly acquired land in exchange for labour by the indigenous32, amounting to between 3 and 5 days without compensation. Those indigenous that left their traditional lands to seek a new living elsewhere often found themselves working as labourers on other ladino land holdings, but after deductions for accommodation fees and other charges associated with purchase from the ladino owned shop33, workers found themselves with very little and often further indebted themselves to the landowner. Finally, the encroachment of traditional land corresponded with a new commerce in alcohol that was directed to the indigenous who had previously only been exposed to it in ceremonial situations, causing dramatic increases in alcoholism problems and, as a result, further financial indebtedness and dependency (82-84).

Under the presidential leadership of Lázaro Cárdenas, between 1934 and 1940 a process of implementing agrarian reform began, reforms that during these six years would account for 30 Ejido lands are autonomous areas that are set aside for indigenous use. They are for community use and title to the land cannot be held by any single individual.

31 Ladino’s are generally individuals of European, particularly Spanish, descent. At the time they were the elite of society in many respects and today this continues to be true to a significant degree. Ladino land holders tend to practice commercial agriculture, using modern methods and technology, while indigenous farming is more of a subsistence model (“Ladino”).

32 These were the same indigenous whose land had been taken by the government and sold to the new landowner, ostensibly changing the indigenous from independent and co-operative landowner to a slave on what was once his own land.

33 These were often the only places where workers could access foodstuffs and other necessities, and the land owner would often inflate the costs as a result—the supply and demand model at its worst.

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one third of all land touched by agrarian reform between 1917 and 1970, with “Cárdenas’ land reform alone […] reach[ing] the communities of some 726,000 ejidatarios (collective farmers), [and] encompassing some 20,137,000 hectares” (Rus qtd in Higgins 113 & 214); it was a significant rewriting of the exploitive policies of the early 19th century Bourbon reforms. At the same time, Cárdenas’ recognition of the indigenous cultures qualitative value, their plight, and their entitlements had significant impact.

What we must support is the incorporation of the universal culture of the Indian, that is to say, the full development of all the potential and natural abilities of the race, the improvement of their living conditions, adding to their resources of subsistence and work all the implements of technology, of science, and of the universal arts, but always based on a respect for the conscience and society of the racial personality. (Cárdenas 173)

Figure 6: Images of Chiapaneco indigenous from the early 1900’s. From left to right: Tzotzil woman, Chol man and boy, Zapotec woman, and Lacandon men.

These ideals, along with the recognition of many indigenous claims, at the time led to significant indigenous support of the Cárdenas government. Today Cardenismo, or the political and social ideals of Cárdenas, still carry a significant amount of support among many rural indigenous and campesino Mexicans (Higgins 113).

In the 1980’s the same neoliberalism that had occupied much of the west including Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s United States, had also taken root in authoritarian form throughout much of Latin America, with Mexico becoming a prime example of neoliberal governance under the leadership of Carlos Salinas de Gortari—Salinas’ policies would bring a return to the

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early liberal Bourbon tradition (142). By repealing or reforming the original agrarian reforms instituted by Cárdenas, Salinas “negat[ed] any possibility of obtaining land” (Marcos qtd in Collier 87) for the indigenous of Chiapas and furthered “the privatization and commercialization of peasant and Indian-held parcels” (88). Other effects of the imposition of neoliberal policy included the phasing out of benefits for Mexico’s poor such as, price controls, subsidies on basic foods such as tortillas, the removal of agricultural subsidies for peasant agriculture, and significantly, the disbanding of the state-run coffee organisation that had ensured credit for crop related needs and a guaranteed market for their crops (140). As a result of these and other policy changes, the indigenous of Mexico found themselves significantly poorer, less secure, and more disenfranchised than they had been in the past.

It’s these continued injustices that precipitated the Zapatista revolution in Chiapas and though the first few days of violent and bloody insurrection were short-lived, the effects of a low intensity counter-revolutionary war have continued.

Indian communities now find themselves surrounded by a military force estimated to be some eighty thousand strong, [whose] incursions leave the communities intimidated and tense. It’s been the training and arming of unofficial paramilitary groups throughout the region that has given rise to a refugee population of some sixteen thousand and, most horrifically, resulted in the December 1997 massacre of forty-six Tzotzil Indians, mainly women and children, in the community of Acteal. (Higgins 169)

In June of 2005, after community meetings held in the various Zapatista villages throughout Chiapas, the Zapatistas reaffirmed that their struggle had become a political one that focused on peaceful approaches to self-governance. Though this has not ended the military occupation of the region, tensions have declined on both sides. Recently, since around 2007, the popularity of the Zapatista organisation has seen a significant decline in the region. The reason has generally been attributed to the thawing of relations between the Zapatistas and the PRD, a politically left

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party whose followers had formerly supported the Zapatistas. The organisation has also significantly cut ties with a number of international aid organisations whose agendas were not seen to correspond with those of the Zapatista organisation. Events such as these, and a public sense that there hasn’t been a significant improvement for many of its supporters, appear to have caused an alienation of their various bases of support, both locally and internationally. It remains to be seen whether the movement will remain a significant presence in southern Mexico, though they do appear to be taking renewed steps to further their significance in the rest of the world34.

Objectives of the Indigenous Movement in Chiapas Regardless of its current levels of indigenous and public support, the Zapatista movement has significantly contributed to a greater awareness of the concerns and exigencies surrounding the lives of indigenous and campesino Chiapanecans. There has been thorough documentation of the demands made by the Zapatistas in the years since they first appeared on the world stage. The organisations public relations spokesperson, Subcomandante Marcos, has made regular communiquĂŠs that outline the claims to justice of the members he represents. In general terms, the concerns of indigenous and campesino Chiapanecans correspond to those of the Zapatista; The demands of the EZLN can be found in the [first] Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle: work, land, shelter, food, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice, and peace. These demands are supported by the majority of the Mexican people, and the EZLN is fighting for the fulfilment of these demands for all Mexicans. (CCRI http://govt.eserver.org)

These general terms are useful but with regard to specific details and agendas, it may be misleading to interchange the true needs of indigenous and campesinos with the demands communicated 34 Recently they have begun focusing on developing collaborative relationships with diverse indigenous groups from the Americas and other parts of the world. (EZLN http://www.inmotionmagazine.com‌)

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by the Zapatista. During the peace talks that took place in February of 1994, Marcos and the eighteen Mayan representatives of the Committee of Clandestine Indigenous Revolution, or CCRI, demanded that 34 issues be addressed involving political, economic and social reform (Collier 5). Of these 34 demands, some addressed national and state concerns, and others referred primarily to concerns of the indigenous and campesinos (CCRI http://govt.eserver.org). Many of the state and national level demands were patently unrealistic35 and do not help to inform an understanding of the needs of local indigenous, but the demands related to campesino and indigenous people are significant in that they were based upon a thorough consultation process with indigenous communities and are tied to their everyday existential experience. This document and the many communiquÊs that have come out of the Zapatista movement are very useful for gaining insight into the social justice issues of Chiapas but it’s important to separate the details from the media-directed and often highly persuasive rhetoric.

Meta-design for an Indigenous Social Movement in Chiapas What follows is a model or framework for the development of a meta-design system that is open and organic, contributing to enablement of local user-designers that want to create a movement capable of achieving its member defined needs and objectives.

In the development of a meta-design model for a social movement it is important to remember that a fundamental objective of meta-design is the creation of socio-technical environments that enable users to act as designers. Particularly in the context of SMOs, the social aspect of any model would be paramount and so a fundamental objective of any meta-designed SMO

35 One such demand was that the entire government of Mexico must resign! A detailed list of demands can be found at http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/Zapatistas/chapter12.html

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would be the mapping of a user enabling social network. However, in today’s information and communication society the physical aspects of a social network will require the tools and capabilities of a significant technical contribution, both to enable and inform36 the system. Therefore, such a social network can be seen to have two distinctive characteristics; the physical social environment, which includes the various individuals, their responsibilities, their interaction and how they contribute to the larger system; and the technical social environment which facilitates the interaction as well as empowering and extending the capabilities of the participants.

In the physical social environment individual stakeholders will have varying degrees of association to the needs and objectives of the overall movement itself. As the intention of the movement is ostensibly to improve the conditions of life for the local indigenous of Chiapas, they are the most directly involved in the needs, objectives and activities of the movement and should be considered stakeholders who are both active and internal.

In this indigenous social movement, three levels of participation can be distinguished. At a regional level some neighbouring individuals, farms, or communities will also have an internal stake in the movement as a result of the direct or indirect impact the movement may have on them. After the indigenous themselves, these people are most exposed on a regular basis to the conditions of their indigenous neighbours and the ongoing relationships that they maintain with them will also directly impact their own lives. However, these internal stakeholders could be either active or passive depending on whether they are actually participating in the movement or are just being impacted by it.

At a national level, participants in the movement may have seen directly the impoverish-

36 For example, there many possible lessons that can be learned from the success had by technical social movements such as Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo, Flickr, or from those that now struggle for relevance, like My Space.

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ment or inequity that exists in the region and, for their own sense of national identity and social justice, feel the need to contribute in some way. In the context of a national identity and psyche, the movement also affects these people, but it isn’t a direct or concrete impact and, as a result, they would be considered external stakeholders.

The participants at an international level, who may have a similar degree of direct experience of the situation in Chiapas, are ostensibly contributing to the movement for the same reasons as those participants at a national level. These contributors tend to be what Fuyuki Kurasawa refers to as “philosophical normativists—people who ”interpret global justice via the prism of the elaboration of a cosmopolitan ethics [and have a] self-understanding as a citizen of the world and a concerned member of humankind” (5). In this sense they view themselves as fellow members of a larger global community, of whom the national, regional and local participants are all apart. This kind of cross-cultural diversity is a functional characteristic of meta-design.

“The ‘symmetry of ignorance’ requires creating spaces and places that serve as boundary objects where different cultures can meet […] These boundary objects serve as externalizations that capture distinct domains of human knowledge and they have the potential to lead to an increase in socially shared cognition and practice”. (Fischer, Symmetry… 2)

International participants in this process can be seen as external stakeholders who contribute to the organisation but who are not directly impacted by the movement in any significant way.

At any geographic level there may be either passive or active external stakeholders.

Regardless of their location, active stakeholders would be those who regularly and directly contribute to the organisation while passive stakeholders would contribute indirectly and intermittently in response to some outside influence. It may be that some people contribute funds or services to the organisation, or publicise activities, or even bring a bill forward in some government chamber somewhere; these would be considered passive external stakeholders since

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they have some impact but they are not actively participating in the movement in any real sustained way and they are typically responding to external requests by active internal or external stakeholders. These categories are not static—many passive stakeholders will enter the system temporarily while others will become more engaged over time and become active stakeholders.

The opposite is also likely to be true, where active participants become passive ones over time or stop participating in the system altogether37.

One particular type of active internal stakeholder is the user-designer, and though all active internal stakeholders will contribute to the organisation in a meta-design system, not all users will participate as user-designers. This may be due to a system that hasn’t yet developed a thoroughly inclusive model—in other words, it doesn’t yet provide the required social and technical support to enable them. In other cases, for whatever personal reasons they may have, individuals will choose not to directly contribute to the design process, whether at design time or at use time. It should be noted that not actively participating as user-designers does not preclude active participation of other sorts such as knowledge contribution or participation in local level consultative processes.

At design time, user-designers would contribute to the designing of the base system model, ensuring that it accounts for factors that would have been overlooked by others who lack the unique existential knowledge and experience that the local indigenous community possesses. Part of the process of design time development would also include participation in co-design practices that involve user-designers from a diverse range of communities, cultures, and languages38. Due to the

37 This should be recognised as one of the fluid aspects of a complex social system that a meta-design methodology is meant to accommodate and effectively manage.

38 In Chiapas there are a number of different indigenous groups, each speaking their own language and maintaining unique traditions, practices, and cultures.

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remote nature of many of these potential communities and the lack of resources available in them to facilitate the most effective co-designing environment, these design practice sessions would likely be held in a central location convenient to most participants. As regional, national, and even international participants may well be involved in these co-designing projects, the location could be seen as a boundary centre where diverse knowledge is shared.

At use time there may be a growing number of user-designers in any one community, all of them working together in order to maintain, assess, and adapt—in an iterative manner—the ongoing operation of the system. Their roles and responsibilities would vary considerably based on the exigencies of the community but might include any of the following: collaboration with a neighbouring user-designer on shared sanitation and clean drinking water, working with a regional participant on developing a web presence for the community to gain more public awareness, or filing a legal complaint in a municipal court with the help of an international specialist in conflict resolution, a national lawyer, regional translator, and a user-designer from a community 200km away who recently participated in a similar process. The design time development of a system that is open and flexible, ensures user-designers have access to the knowledge and social environment that will enable them to work effectively as well as to seed the system itself and, in collaboration with facilitators and experts, re-seed for the next evolutionary growth cycle39.

At the regional level, and particularly in boundary centres40, it is expected that certain individuals will be actively involved in facilitating a communication exchange between local internal stakeholders and national/international external stakeholders—this facilitator role might include language translation, cultural understanding, navigation and transportation needs, or the 39

Refer to the SER model in Figure 2 on page 16

40

A system might start with one boundary area and add others as the needs of the evolving system dictate.

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locating of services, or consultants. At use time, regional consultants would work primarily41 with internal stakeholders as media technologists, agricultural specialists, business and trade experts, health service providers, educators, engineers, or designers, to name just a few possibilities. As a result of the diversity of requirements and interaction between local and wide area networks, these regional level participants will create a robust and vibrant collaborative environment within and around the boundary centres that would become the dynamic and creative epicentres of the movement.

Participants at the national and international level will be dispersed across typically cosmopolitan centres throughout Mexico and the world and will be able to provide a range of skills and knowledge that might otherwise be unavailable at a local or even regional level. This will be particularly the case where needs of local stakeholders transcend the local/regional level in scope of operation, such as extra-governmental lobbying, international media and public relations, specialised knowledge of diverse and alternative practices, or consultation with the meta-design practitioners42 who may have been co-creators of the original system. The one significant difference between the national and international levels is that national participants have a greater experiential knowledge of the various historical, socio-cultural, and technical aspects of the society and may be able to engage in national contexts far more effectively. It is also important to recognise that the multi-level and multi-disciplinary aspect of collaboration within a meta-design system encourages knowledge sharing that can help to mitigate problems associated with potentially parochial regional or national perspectives.

41 Typically the use of regional consultants for direct work with internal stakeholders is the ideal, as they are more familiar with local realities and are more easily accessible. There may be some exceptions where external stakeholders from a national or international level may directly participate in use time relationships with internal stakeholders where a regional alternative isn’t feasible.

42 There are currently only a few active centres where meta-design is being practiced but that number is growing. It is highly unlikely that there currently exist any practicing meta-designers in Chiapas, the regional level.

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The development and implementation of an effective technical network first requires a thorough accounting of the conditions, services, tools, and existing knowledge in the area. An open system model would enable access to technical assets and knowledge as user need dictates, rather than externally imposing, tools and techniques on the user. However, during design time of the system some of these needs might be anticipated. From a communication perspective tools such as computers, software, digital and DV cameras, or cellular and satellite phones might be required, as well as introduction to the wide range of existing social networking services. But depending on the specific problem at hand it might also involve tools such as medical equipment, vehicles, navigation devices, or building and construction equipment. Training in the purpose, use and operation of the provided tools would also be an important pedagogical component of the technical system, and could provide an opportunity for academic and technical institutions to play a contributing role. In cases where the cost of providing the tools is to prohibitive or where instruction and training would be too time or labour intensive, access to a consultant providing the services would be an alternative43, and a recognised aspect of the technical model.

In order to envision a social movement organisation developed using the principles of meta-design methodology and the interaction of the social and technical structures of such a system at work, a speculative44 example could prove useful. In the following section a social meta-design scenario is provided to contextualise the system around a real world environment where it might actually be implemented.

43 Ideally those providing the services would be active participants in the organisation, who were available as required. In other cases these service providers may be occasional passive participants or commercially contracted services.

44 To reiterate, this is a speculative exercise for the purpose of envisioning how a meta-design model might work in a complex social environment such as Chiapas. Any real design of a sociotechnical system would be developed collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders through various different consultative and co-designing processes.

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Map of Social Environment Relationships

Figure 7: A simple map of the social relationships might look something like this. At the community level collaboration between active internal stakeholders is consistent but intermittent (c#01) while user-designer collaboration is regular and ongoing (c#02). Certain user-designers will have ongoing collaborative relationships with boundary area facilitators who will enable intermittent collaboration/communication with active external stakeholders (c#03).

In one situation above, a passive external stakeholder in Japan provides GIS data to an active external stakeholder

Hethrington 48 in Mexico City who has been maintaining ongoing collaboration with a group in the boundary area, via the help of a facilitator (c#04), a group consisting of user-designers from various communities and a visiting active external stakeholder.

Another situation shows an active internal stakeholder who’s in Chile on an educational exchange and is using a boundary area facilitator to make occasional contact with his family and friends in a remote indigenous community not shown in the diagram (c#05).

The last situation shows a donation made by a resident of Fredericton, in eastern Canada, directly to a community in Quintana Roo, Mexico (c# 06). This direct contact between a passive external stakeholder and the community itself was made possible through the developed social environment, technical tools such as online translators, web blogs, social networking sites, and the training to use them effectively. Further nurturing of relationships between the community and passive external stakeholders could result in those passive participants becoming more active over time.

Finally it should be noted that, while this may be a movement that has its roots in southern Mexico, it would not be unexpected to see nodes of similar activity develop in other areas where individuals share similar socio-economic concerns. As a result, there are a few discreet representations of participating communities and boundary areas cropping up in places such as northern Scandinavia, western Canada, and central Australia. This is meant to signify the unforeseen changes that would take place in an open and complex system over time.

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A Social Meta-design Scenario The sociocultural and political landscape of Chiapas has become increasingly complex, with many Indians choosing the church, opposition political parties, or independent trade unions as a means through which to explore alternative ways of organizing communities that would be truer to their own sense of themselves.

(Higgins 126)

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In south-eastern Chiapas, close to the border with Guatemala, there is a small community of about 200 people that’s looking to improve its socio-economic situation. A villager named Ramón has brought back news about an organisation where many different people are coming together to address difficult problems. Ramón had been in the neighbouring community of Frontera Corazón, about 30km downriver, where he met Miguel who was on his way to Guatemala. Miguel was from Oxchuitic, a Zapatista town that was able to reduce the military’s direct presence in their community by working with people in this organisation. They had been provided with cameras, laptop, internet access, and the training to use them in order to document the occupation and harassment by some of the soldiers. They were also put in touch with someone

Figure 8: Image at the left shows military intimidation of indigenous women in Cuyuca de Catalan. Middle and right images show a funeral mass for victims of a paramilitary massacre in the town of Acteal where 45 indigenous people were murdered (victims included many women, children, and infants).

in San Cristobal de las Casas who was able to contact a lawyer in Mexico City who used the photographs to pressure the military to take action against the individual soldiers and to reduce the overall military presence in the area. In Ramón’s village they had no problems of that sort but they did have their own challenges; particularly their isolated location and the problems associated with it such as no electricity, no ready access to health and education services, and little economic stimulus to improve the general conditions. Though their town lay on the banks of the Usumacinta River, they had very limited trade with boats that travelled it, and had tried to sell to

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the occasional tourists travelling through to Guatemala, but had not been very successful. The community of Desenpeño decided they would send Ramón to the next meeting of organisation representatives to see if participation might present some opportunities.

After a nine-hour trip by boat and bus, Ramón arrived in San Cristobal de Las Casas where he was provided accommodation by an external stakeholder facilitator. That evening he attended an informal gathering where he met some other members (user-designers) of the organisation, including Carlos who turned out to be from the neighbouring town of Frontera Corazón.

The following day Ramón attended the collaborative working session that included many more faces than he’d seen the night before. Others in attendance included an agronomist and a sociologist (active external stakeholders, or AES), both from Tuxla Gutierrez, an indigenous doctor of traditional medicines (active internal stakeholder, or AIS) from OMIECH45, a representative of a microcredit program based out of Oaxaca (AES), a meta-design student from the University of Colorado, two IT students from Technológico de Monterrey’s Guadalajara campus, a GIS specialist from ESRI (all AES’s), and numerous local indigenous stakeholders (some AIS’s and many user-designers) with varying degrees of diverse knowledge and experience having worked collaboratively on a variety of interdisciplinary projects. After three days of working with many community representatives on a number of different issues, including those of his community, Ramón returned to Desenpeño with a proposal to improve the village’s situation. Here are some of the things that were suggested: 1.

The organisation would begin by providing them with access to a satellite phone

available in a neighbouring community from where they could receive messages and 45 OMIECH is an acronym for the Organization of Indigenous Physicians of the State of Chiapas, an NGO of physicians, traditional indigenous midwives, farmers, traditional practitioners, Mayan health promoters and mestizo advisors.

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make calls relating to organisation operations.

2.

A representative from one of the eco-tourism groups would be coming to discuss

organising visits by tourists to the old Mayan complex in the next valley and the natural hot springs. The village will be able to generate a small income from these trips and by supplying fresh fruits and vegetables to the company.

3.

The extra produce they grow could also be sold for a good price in one of the

larger centres. A new distribution network in place could transport the produce from specified locations and sell it for a commission. As a co-operative that was developed by local communities with the help of the organisation, all profits would go back to the co-op members. Carlos, the man from Frontera Corazón who Ramón met his first night in San Cristobal, was one of the founding members of the co-operative.

4.

The community would receive a microcredit loan from the Oaxaca organisation in

order to purchase a larger boat for transport of village produce to Frontera Corazón, one of the designated locations in the distribution co-operative.

Figure 9: The traditional dugout canoe, pictured left, is still used on the Usumacinta River for basic transportation and for tasks such as fishing and gathering resources. However, they aren’t suitable for extended travel over longer distances on the river or for transportation of larger volumes such as commercial produce. In this case, a boat with a relatively powerful outboard engine, like the one pictured right, is required.

With time, income generated from tourism and produce sales, enabled the community to pay back the boat loan and purchase a solar power generator that was subsidised by a one of the

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organisation’s member groups. Two villagers were trained in operation and maintenance by an installer contracted from Tapachula—this provided basic electricity for public area lighting and the knowledge that would enable them to expand the system on their own when it became necessary. Two years later a political science student from UNAM in Mexico City spent a semester living in the village, learning about traditional practices, taking part in language learning exchange, and sharing knowledge about basic computer operation, software, and online

Figure 9: IMAGINE Africa-Students from University of Michigan install remote satellite internet in a small African community in conjunction with a local NGO and with the support of Google.

communication. A computer with internet service via satellite was provided by the organisation in order to facilitate management of the increased local agricultural production and the changing dynamic of their tourism related enterprises46. In time, a teaching volunteer would arrive from Tuxla Gutierrez and though formal medical services never reached the village, two community members were trained in natural health practices by OMIECH and reasonable access became available when a clinic opened in a neighbouring town to serve its residents and those of the surrounding area.

All these changes came about through a process whereby the exigencies were decided upon and solutions developed through collaboration between the various internal stakeholders 46 Due to challenges with the size of the tour groups, and the impact that was having on themselves and the neighbouring Lacandón community, the village opted to take the tourism enterprise into their own hands and offer small exclusive packages directly to consumers.

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and, at times, through consultation with external stakeholders who had specialised knowledge.

By actively participating in regular working and training services provided by the organisation, Desenpe単o ended up with six user-designers who continued to develop their innate conceptual

Figure 10: From left to right-Engineers from Barefoot College work on a solar panel, panels being carried to a village in Nepal, worker installs solar array for community power generator in Africa.

ideation and problem solving abilities that enabled them to address community issues without external stakeholder assistance. Other community members gained skills and knowledge in midwifery, herbal medicine, computers, permaculture, and even small-scale solar and hydro generation. Much of this was made possible by an appropriate socio-technical environment and individual dedication to improving the prospects of their community.

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Conclusion My heart is moved by all I cannot save:​ So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those Who, age after age, perversely, With no extraordinary power, Reconstitute the world.

-Adrienne Rich

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The example described here helps to contextualise a conceptual framework that uses the guiding principles of a meta-design methodology and suggests what it might look like if implemented in a social and environmental space such as southern Mexico.

A meta-design proposal of this sort must contend with certain controversial design issues, such as the problems of anticipation, participation and emergence (Giaccardi, Metadesign 346).

The ill-defined and constantly changing nature of complex social problems challenge any attempt to anticipate or project outcomes. Participation by a diverse range of co-creators at design time and the unanticipated needs or actions of user-designers at use time compounds the difficulty of projections. As such, no tool provided or object created can define some tangible outcome— “rather than an ideal or social construction, [Bruno] Latour describes a sociotechnical system which enables the object to build its own context and generate itself alongside the subject in a process of emergence” (Giaccardi, Principles 37). This process of emergence is perhaps the most important stage of the meta-design process—“it’s the stage […] in which planning is superseded by participation and the open processes of co-evolution and co-creation” (Giaccardi, Metadesign 348) and not only does it represent the genesis of new creativity, it also creates the foundation for a resilient practice and an adaptability that make the challenges of anticipation less relevant.

For the professional designer there is an element of faith that rests at the heart of a meta-design proposal—one can plan and project at design time when the system is being developed, but in the end envisioning the outcome is essentially an impossible task.

For decades now, the empirical approach to addressing the world’s social and environmental challenges has been greeted with limited success, regardless of the ideological position that informed it. Whether the socialist model of modernism that sought to impose homogeneous designed solutions on an unconvinced society, or the corporatist globalisation model of a capital-

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ism where neo-conservative ideology supersedes any social or environmental objective, these top-down imposed solutions are being challenged by an alternative approach.

The new social movement, as yet and possibly always ill-defined, is showing a promise that is still to be realised—to connect people of diverse culture, community, and geography, with the objective of working in common cause to help address the social and environmental exigencies facing our global society today. Meta-design is an ideally suited design methodology that holds the promise to enable individuals, communities, and organisations to maximise their own innate knowledge and skills. The enablement through a sociotechnical meta-design system can provide opportunities for more effective cross-cultural communication, collaboration, problem solving, and the overall implementation of design thinking and practice in the movement’s activities.

The words of Adrienne Rich seem to capture the spirit of this new movement, and that of its members in their many unique forms. The discipline of design has an opportunity to do the same—to cast its lot with those individuals of no extraordinary power who are, each one of them in their own way, seeking to reconstitute the world for the better—and meta-design can be one way to do that.

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