DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Design principles are widely applicable guidelines, rules and design considerations. They often stem from findings from psychology, sociology and anthropology. They matter because they define your departing ground; the foundation from which people can create something, they define a desired direction, a vision from which more concrete actions follow.

Within the Responsible Futuring approach, we take a broader definition of design principles. We identify 5 design principles, propositions that capture the theoretical framework of our approach. These principles constitute the core of the Responsible Futuring approach. They are meant to guide the implementation of the approach and development of methods, tools and techniques within the approach.

1.Frame the challenge

It is fundamental to collaboratively elaborate and make explicit the standpoint from which a challenge can be tackled: to frame the challenge. The first Responsible Futuring principle is to work on framing the challenge. But what does that mean?

Framing the challenge entails an in-depth understanding of the problem, teasing out and holistically reflecting on stakeholders’ multiple standpoints and finding metaphors that describe our frame. A frame is an organisational principle, a coherent set of statements to think with. It is actionable. It is a starting point for further thoughts and tangible solutions. It provides a common ground for the discussion of the problem and of the solution.

A frame is not static: throughout a process a frame can be challenged and re-elaborated (reframing).

The concept of framing. Framing is a concept originated in social science: it is the way we describe and make sense of people’s behaviour. Framing applies to many other aspects of life and to many other disciplines, particularly to design and decision making. When tackling an issue, designers carry out a sequence of reflective practices. Designers are reflective practitioners: they develop together standpoints from which a problematic situation can be tackled. They work to resolve or tease out controversies (i.e., a disagreement derived from conflicting points of view) or dilemmas (i.e., a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives, especially ones that are equally undesirable) and make sense of challenges collaboratively.

Analyse the problem at hand. There are many barriers to the process of framing and reframing. When stakeholders tackle a complex societal challenge, they often start with a solution in mind, without questioning the idea(s) they have about the challenge. This is a problem-solving attitude that is often productive but falls short when tackling complex societal challenges. One central tenet of the Responsible Futuring approach that we take from transdisciplinary working is not to jump to solution. It is fundamental to analyse the problem at hand. Stakeholders are invited to reflect and challenge their assumption: Is it an issue?

Is it more than one issue? What are the core aspects of the problem? Then, after analysing the challenge, stakeholders are invited to elaborate a new shared frame of the challenge informed by their analysis and reflections.

A frame beyond disciplines.

Elaborating a frame beyond disciplines and with people not trained in design practices is not easy. Transdisciplinary teams will have to go through non-linear processes: the issues, the problems will co-evolve with the solutions, bringing constant reflection and re-framing. The teams will have to challenge assumptions and fixations coming from their own expertise and experiences. This process does not happen in one or two sessions. It takes time and ad-hoc activities to nurture framing and reframing. There are enablers of the framing process: metaphors, analogies, sketching, doing research on the challenge. These enablers might be used in the transdisciplinary approaches as well, but they should be adapted.

2nd Principle: Enable stakeholders The second principle is enabling and involving stakeholders. Literally stakeholder means somebody that has interest and stake in a challenge. Stakeholders are societal actors belonging to one of the quadruple helix clusters (i.e., academia, industry, civic society and governmental organisations).

Acknowledging stakeholders’ expertise. Establishing collaboration between people with various backgrounds, perspectives, generations and culture is not an easy task. It is important to enable stakeholders to have awareness of their role in a transdisciplinary team, their value and their responsibilities. Design activities in the approach are geared to increase awareness of the values of each other’s expertise and role.

Professor Kees Dorst, University of Technology Sydney, describes the frame designers use to carry out productive reasoning as:

“Although frames are often paraphrased by a simple metaphor, they are in fact very complex sets of statements that include the specific perception of a problem situation, the (implicit) adoption of certain concepts to describe the situation, a ‘working principle’ that underpins a solution and the key thesis: IF we look at the problem situation from this viewpoint, and adopt the working principle associated with that position, THEN we will create the value we are striving for” (Dorst, 2011)

Establishing common ground, discussing roles, revealing responsibilities. Traditionally, in Design Thinking and human-centred design practices, designers would try to find common ground with the people they are designing for with activities to build empathy. This is done through ethnography, survey methods, and generative co-design.

However, empathising creates a disparity between the designer and the people to design for. Even when the designer takes the role of facilitator in the design process, the ultimate reflective role is in the hand of the designer. The asymmetry falls short in enabling multiple parties with the various backgrounds to join the reflection in actions. While a division of work and roles is fruitful, the pitfall of this approach is a sort of messianic role of the designer which can be perceived as patronising the people we are supposedly designing for.

There are power dynamics inherent to the process that need to be tackled. Moreover, involving all the stakeholders to the table means to find ways to learn from each other and work in ways that are comprehensible for each of the stakeholders.

That is why the DesignLab approach focuses on establishing common ground, discussing roles and revealing responsibility

“Finding common ground” is a technique people use to facilitate interpersonal relationships. To find common ground between parties, participants must search for signals of recognition, which are often subtle and prone to misunderstanding.

Discussing roles can be done in many ways, but from a transdisciplinary perspective it means integrating worldviews and establishing knowledge flows, in which we learn from each other and build on each other’s knowledge. Hence, we also merge and discuss disciplinary methods.

Furthermore, it is important that stakeholders become aware not only of their role but also of their responsibilities. Stakeholders explore what impact their decisions, perspectives and actions, plus they become aware about what they are accountable for in a design process, sharing their methods.

3rd Principle: Tangibilising

The third principle is related to making thoughts, ideas, perspectives tangible. In other words, to make it visible and embody them in physical representations, such as visualisations, maps, dioramas, prototypes, physical objects. We define “Tangibilising” as an act that supports sense-making, facilitates the design process and the collaboration among stakeholders.

Ideas, thoughts, perspectives, points of view are often difficult to express. Bringing a message across through words or written text is not trivial: the message needs to be heard, read and understood correctly. In particular, communicating ideas, thoughts, perspective and points of views about complex issues entail many interconnected relationships, facets and implications. Hence, the complexity of communication is higher.

Communicating ideas, thoughts and perspectives is fundamental in any participatory process, particularly when collaborating in transdisciplinary ways to tackle societal challenges. But even, facts, realities and concepts are difficult to communicate only with words. By communicating with written or spoken words it is also difficult to collaborate on thoughts, facts, perspectives.

One way to go, to make ideas and points of view more transparent is to use visualisation or physical representations. In so doing we allow a greater comprehension or even stimulate new perspectives to be expressed. In Responsible Futuring, when we engage in “tangibilising” we engage in visualising, in cognitive unloading, probing.

Visualising. By visualising we mean sketching, making maps, doodling and constructing with objects. All these actions are meant to “represent” complex problems, perspectives, dynamics and points of view. Visualising is known to be a powerful way to engage people in “representing” meaning instead of facts and opinions. The purpose is not to make a realistic picture, but to present an insight. It enables reflective interpretation.

1. to attract people to engage with the visualisation a designer should consider reducing perceived complexity and enable them to notice the backstories at hand;

2. to support sense making, a designer should consider two possibilities: structuring the visualisation in such a way that it helps identify and understand the different perspectives involved, or designing it in such a way that it engages people for a longer period of time to explore the multiple perspectives;

3. to enable reflection a designer should consider relating perspectives to each other as a space of contestation. Particularly, the aspect of attracting engagement with a visualisation sparks our attention for the purpose of triggering participation” (p.182)

Cognitive unloading. Our thoughts and ideas are not only processed in our mind. Much of human cognition is embodied: it resides in the body. Our cognitive activity, for example trying to understand how a complex construction works to build a puzzle, is enhanced by movements and actions that can simplify the task. For example, in solving a jigsaw puzzle, a person might offload some of the difficult tasks of visualising puzzle pieces by rotating the pieces with her hands and making spatial comparisons. This is a form of cognitive unloading: we transfer our thoughts into actions and object manipulation to better understand or reflect an idea, a point of view, a concept. Hence, through activities that nurture cognitive unloading we can support stakeholders’ collaborative sense-making.

Probing. Probes are materials to provoke or elicit response. In the field of design research and humancomputer interaction, probes are objects that help people self-reflect and self-document dynamics, experiences and perspectives and make them tangible through pictures, diaries, objects, colleagues etc. Probes help gather and represent accounts from people’s lives, values and thoughts. Through probes stakeholders engage in reflective participation, becoming aware of actions and interactions and describing them in some way, and making actions accountable. Probes also provoke reflection and evoke the ‘materialisation of the speculative’.