Riverlab report

riverlab

Sketching Gรถteborg

Report / KIP999

RIVERLAB In 2021 Göteborg will celebrate its 400th anniversary.

A lot of different activities have been taking place and especially the area around Göta Älv is in the focus.

Göteborg City has developed a new vision which should support the sustainable development of the city. 14 HDK-students of the master progam “Business & Design” at Göteborgs Universitet brought the vision to the next level. Departing from interesting concept and ideas such as civic engagement, activism, place branding and a diversity of design methods the students designed an overall concept for the embodiment of river city: Skatchwork.

WITH A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO THE STAFF AT THE STADSMUSEET GÖTEBORG

THE STUDENTS Johan Carlsson Charlotte Ellsén Sofie Helsing Sami Huhtala Gabija Jankauskaité Marttiina Keituri Hélène Koole Nan Liu Sara Näslund Veera Pakala Franziska Schneyer Marianna Tötterman Christina Vildinge Johan Wallenheim

Vision Älvstaden p. 06

B&D students p.02

FRAMEWORK

the Assignment p. 04

TUTORS Henning Eklund Katja Avenstam Claes Johansson

for hosting our exhibition so spontaneously supporting us with resources and your helpful advice!

Place Branding p. 09 Design Methods p. 10 RESEARCH

BUSINESS & DESIGN AT HDK GÖTEBORG www.hdk.gu.se contact: Henning Eklund Director of studies Buisiness & Design

henning.eklund@hdk.gu.se +46(0)31-786 48 93

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Research Plan p. 07 Civic Engagement p. 08

Activism p. 09

DESIGN CONCEPT p.42

REFLECTION

THE EXHIBITION p.43

p.49

EXHIBITION CONCEPT p.43

EMBODIMENT

process p.26

outcome p.32

VATTENDRAKEN process p. 18

CULTURAL PROBES

CASES

riverlab

TREASURE HUNT

outcome p.40

process p. 36

PROCESS ORGANISATION

roles & tasks p. 16

documentation

p. 17 CONCEPT SKATCHWORK

Stitching Skatchwork p. 41

Discussion & Key Words p. 12

outcome p.24

Creating Skatchwork p. 14

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assignment

From Göteborg in Love A SkatchWork project exploring and embodying the vision of the RiverCity from a strategic design-driven perspective.

This project is a non-linear journey of exploring the concept of design-driven strategy in the context of city development. The paper consist of several different parts, which can be read either separately or as a whole report. The report consists of three different cases, where we, by using design methods, develop three approaches for how to embody the vision of the RiverCity.

Integrated Project The course Integrated Project is concluding the first year of the master programme in Business & Design at HDK, University of Göteborg. In this course, students representing the field of design, business and design history, have come together to interpret how the vision of the RiverCity can be understood and embodied.

The class of fourteen students have undertaken a six week explorative journey of discovering the concept of design-driven strategy in regard to the RiverCity vision in the context of city planning.

In this “SkatchWork-project” we have drawn upon knowledge gained during the first year of studies in the programme, i.e.

• Appreciating tacit knowledge and the theoretical and practical understanding of multidiciplinary work.

• Understanding the potential of us-

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er-centered design in social innovation and city planning, realizing the political dilemmas involved and emphasizing social, economic and environmental sustainability.

• Analysing the social construction of things such as city squares and businesses understand the relationship between objects and subjects in relation to its values, resources and limitations.

• Understanding how design can be applied in a business context with a focus on innovation and strategy • Learning the strategic workings of meaning-making, relationships and co-creation of brands The education has brought us to a shared point of departure which has influenced our discussions and analyses. The explorative, process orientated and open mindedness of the master programme has brought us self-confiendence in the search for new meanings, leaving the modern business perspective behind.

Instead we have experienced trust and dare to discover the embedded or “the fuzzy front end” that brings ideas to unfold in the meeting of people.

In our SkatchWork we have furthered and developed our ideas by pragmatic design work, embodied our ideas and concepts by sketching, discovering the role of artifacts in the creation of meaning.

The assignment On the 23rd of April we were given the assignment to embody the RiverCity vision in a meeting with two representatives from the city of Göteborg. During a one hour presentation we were introduced to the work that has been done in creating the RiverCity vision and our brief.

The task given by the representives of RiverCity and HDK was to craft a design-driven strategy for RiverCity Gothenburg.

We were asked to explore what the vision means to the citizens and how a vision for a changing city can be embodied. The focus in the assignment was to understand how a vision can be realized through citizens involvement, who the target group is and methods to activate and co-create in municipality vision work.

As a part of the assignment we were given a high level of freedom to interpret and translate the brief to find our own perspectives and ideas on the next step for the RiverCity vision.

Our interpretation of the assignment In the strategic crafting we have engaged in a designerly way of thinking and used design methods. The very starting-point was our discussions on what a city is and our search to understand and describe

Göteborg. Our work rests on the perspective of the city as an entity of human lives, built of relationships to other people and places.

The RiverCity Göteborg has a comprenhensive and attractive vision for the city, guided by the overall aim of sustainability. A lot of work has been put into the vision and it has resulted in an impressive document. Elaborate, involving and clear. However, the challenge is the realization of the vision, the next step and how the people of Göteborg could become engaged in the development of their city. This is where the SkatchWork-project has got a chance to contribute.

When it comes to cities, we discussed, we might need to change our focus away from the wishful thinking of Visions. Instead a focus on the concept of Mission might be of greater interest and benefit, we reasoned. In understanding and appreciating “Why do we exist?” from a citizen perspective we come closer to the actual living in the city and that a city has to be free to evolve dynamically and organically in an additive open-ended process. The invitation and initiative must come from within, empowering everyday life. A mission statement would underline the supportive and facilitating role of the municipality. This change of perspective would serve better to support small everyday actions. And in these actions the

meeting and the realization for the strategy will occur.

Living the strategy There is a difference between building the city and building the city life. A large focus in the vision report is upon how the the city can develop, which is an issue for city planners or lawyers. In our three cases we have focused more upon how the city life can develop - living the strategy!

We are by no means suggesting that a new mission tagline would solve the realization of the vision, instead a simple and more daily citizen centered point of departure, could serve as less business orientated, normative and exclusive, we argued. A vision for the city development is important for facilitating the future city life, but a vision for the development of the city life can also become normative and in this way, work against the diversity which is considered to be one of the strenghts of the city of Göteborg.

An every day-to-day perspective on ourselves and our neighbours goes hand in hand with the crafting of a design-driven strategy, contributing to the sketch of city life in a shared and co-creative process of daily actions towards a sustainable future - now, today.

City planning is a wicked-problem, a situation which can not be

solved. In situations as such, a design-driven strategy might contribute to find ways, to support change and to focus on the existing moment, in the planning, working and building of the future.

A design-driven strategy is seen as an emergent, experimental and iterative process with an understanding of diversity of perspectives and accordingly many different ways of addressing issues. In this way the design-driven strategy will be intertwined in the everyday life and embodied in how the organisation work with these issues. This way of working also brings clarity to working with city life as it in many parts involves the unfolding of emedded personal meanings and co-existence of the many.

Authorities need to surrender to the dynamics of city life, and appreciate the flux and transformations of daily life as impossible and undesirable to control. The platform will never be finished, just like the city.

To include and cherish the diversity we need to come back to what diversity really is - freedom. Can you organize that? ■

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Vision Älvstaden Introduction The River City is the area on both sides of Göta älv, from Södra Älvstranden and Lindholmen in the west, to Gullbergsvass and Ringön in the east. The vision for this area has been developed during an over two year long process with involvement from various stakeholders e.g. citizens, expert groups, the industry, etc. Over 2800 people in total have participated in the development of the vision and the three strategies for the development of the River City.

The vision The vision will act as a foundation for the continuous development of the city and it will communicate the values which the city will be built

upon. The vision also aims to support a sustainable development for the city of Göteborg and the region of West Sweden and it is based upon the future strengths and challenges which will influence the development of the city. The River City will transform the challenges into opportunities and lay the foundation for a sustainable development for the whole region of West Sweden.

The strengths of the city can all be connected to Göteborg’s heritage of diversity in people, dynamic industries and its connection with the water. The challenges are the global shift in the economy, segregation and climate change.

The strategies Each one of the three strategies concern one of the three pillars of sus-

tainable development. The aim of these three strategies is to realize the vision of sustainable development, and they are also built upon the strengths and challenges identified above.

Connect the city The strategy to cope with the social dimension of sustainable development is called Connect the city and emphasizes inclusiveness and co-creation of the city with the citizens.

Within this strategy several decisions are listed which point towards the next step in the process of the development in the River City area.

These projects concern issues such as using the River City as a test-bed for city development, eliminating barriers as well as citizen involvement in the development of the River City.

▼ Plan for the development of the city (source: Rivercity Gothenburg Vision)

BACKAPLAN RINGÖN KVILLESTAN FRIHAMNEN

LINDHOLMEN

SOUTHERN RIVER SHORE

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THE BRIDGE GÖTA ÄLVBRON

GULLBERGSVASS

THE CENTRAL STATION AREA

BEFORE

2015

BEFORE

2020

BEFORE

2025

BEFORE

2030

AFTER

2030

Embrace the water The strategy Embrace the Water aims at creating a green city in close connection with the water, and it is connected with the environmental dimension of sustainable development. In this strategy several decisions are made for how the development will continue. These are foremost connected with creating green spaces, developing green technology and integrating the water in the city development.

Reinforce the center The last strategy concerns the economic dimension and is called Reinforce the center. In this context the center emphasizes both the center of the Göteborg Region as well as the center of the region of West Sweden.

Here the decisions made concerns how the city can facilitate the right conditions for sustainable development for the industry, infrastructure which will connect the whole region and improve the attractiveness for both people and investments.

Implementation The working group has also realized that there is a need to go from vision to implementation if anything will happen. An ambitious plan for the development of River City area has been developed where the first stages should be finished by 2015.

To further demonstrate initiatives in this process of the development of Göteborg, five approaches have been developed. First of all, the River City will become a test-bed area for the further development of the city, and

in connection to that, pro-actively support temporary solutions for testing new working methods and gradually integrate it with the city.

Thirdly, the city will capitalize on its strengths up until the 400 year celebration in 2021, the result will then be evaluated for the continuous work. The forth suggestion is to continue to work in close connection, co-creatively, with the citizens and other stakeholders, and finally, create a working model which will guide the city development in connection with the vision.■

Research

Research Plan Our research phase was essentially divided into three parts; collection of inspiration and sources, discussions on the findings and recognizing and clustering keywords and themes. The aim of this phase of the project was essentially to involve everyone in the group to look into themes that could be relevant in this project and create an understanding of what civic engagement in the context of urban development could be.

The underlining goal of the research phase was to collect inspirational and informational sources, which then could be discussed further and also used while compiling our report. All the sources were gathered in one document, so that everyone could have something to look into and could share whatever

they found inspiring. More visual material and some summaries were also posted on the group blog (riverlab.wordpress.com). A set of research tasks were defined to clarify to the group what this phase was all about. The first point was to find information and inspiration for the concept creation for our project. The second task was to provide a database of sources to support the report writing and as a reminder for the whole group of how we came up with certain themes and the concept for our project.

The idea was to work together as a big group during this phase. However the first discussions were done in smaller groups which we divided in accordance with the research topics we outlined during the first week; Civic Engagement, Place Branding,

Design Methods in the context of urban development. One of the groups also looked into the River City vision and other development strategies intended for Göteborg in the future.

The topic of activism was also included in the discussion, but more as an overarching theme that might be more relevant for the method development.

From our findings and sources of inspiration we were able to have discussions that in turn helped us establish a framework for ourselves in form of key themes. These key themes were subsequently used to recognize the relevant design methods to be developed as well as the overall concept that would act as an ”umbrella term” for the project and guide the whole process. ■

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Research

Civic engagement Governments and town councils have for decades tried to engage citizens to create a more varied and vivid urban environment. Around the world, there are countless examples of interesting activities, where citizens are organizing themselves to participate and to create something interesting in the public space.

However, officials are struggling to actively (re)create these valuable phenomena – the success stories seem to be more of happy accidents than results of planned strategies.

Enablers of engagement When thinking about citizen engagement, it’s important to reflect about what’s needed for such an activity to be successful. A seemingly nice idea is not enough if people don’t see any personal reasons to participate: the activity is simply uninteresting. On the other hand, even if many people would be interested in, e.g. city gardening, the activity might be impossible due to lack of suitable space or regulatory barriers. Brodie et al. (2011) gives four requirements to fill before participation can start: 1. Personal motivation Why would a person be interested in this activity? What does it give to him or her?

2. Triggers Are there emotional reactions, personal life events or external influences that make participation more likely to happen?

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3. Resources Is there space, materials, funding etc. available? Do the people know how to participate and are they comfortable in doing so?

4. Opportunities Is there an environment to participate? Are there like-minded people to support participation?

Participation changes over time It is also important to realize that participation, after being started, can stop for a variety of reasons – an active citizen can become inactive again. Even if the enablers (above) are still strongly in place, a life event (e.g. having a baby) or bad experiences can dampen the will to participate. Brodie et al. (2011) give two examples of group dynamics that can make further participation undesirable: negative relationships within groups and poor group structures and processes.

While the inner workings of an engaged group might seem to be out of reach to the city officials, these issues underline the importance of them to be present and facilitate the processes throughout the participation.

Clash of interests One recurring theme in the literature was the conflicts between engagement and regulations and commercial interests. “Most of the changes we seek reflect values that

the market economy squeezes out”.

Unfortunately, the city councils often do not see the full value of activities that “cost money, but provide little measurable financial return” (Thorpe 2012).

In many instances city officials see forms of engagement as undesirable activism. Thorpe (2012) talks about design activism as opposed to conventional activism that is often centered on resistance: “design activism is typically generating new ideas, proposing, and disseminating new approaches”. Could it be possible to steer some of the “bad” activism to a more positive form using the design methods? Could rethinking and challenging the norms of the consumerist context help in doing so? ■

References Brodie, Ellie, et al. (2011), Pathways through participation : What creates and sustains active citizenship? Retrieved May 23, 2013, from http://pathwaysthroughparticipation.org.uk/ wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Pathways-through-Participationsummary-report_Final_20110913.pdf Thorpe, Ann (2012), Designing Activism: An Interview with Ann Thorpe. Interviewed by Nowek, Adam, Retrieved May 23, 2013, from http://theprotocity.com/designing-activism-aninterview-with-ann-thorpe/

Place branding The notion of place branding was recognized as one of the topics that might be relevant in understanding the current situation and vision created for the city. Taking into account the context of our project brief, our group decided to look into place branding beyond ”the landmark buildings”. In other words the aim was to look into previous cases where an overarching vision had been created to a specific city and how this relates to the actual place and it’s citizens.

Places beyond the marketing strategies and landmarks Place branding has become crucial especially in the marketing attempts to establish what makes the city different or interesting to visitors, but also in the attempts to uncover the identity of a place. This identity formation is often divided in two aspects; ”urban planning and architectural processes, and marketing strategies of place branding” (Julier, 2005, p. 869).

However since urban areas are made up with not only buildings but people, these strategies seem to exist on abstract or superficial level that might alienate the citizens. On the other hand these visions tend to be broad and abstract also since their initial goal often is to be as inclusive as possible (Julier 2011, p.217).

As a result the overall vision is often based on more lofty concepts, such as diversity and sustainability. The risk then becomes that the vision might ignore the power that the citizens have when it comes to construct-

ing the surroundings by attaching meanings, stories and the core identity to the place in question.

The vital component: Narratives These observations led us to the notion of narratives that are arguably one of the most undervalued and underutilized aspect in urban development and planning. The key is to try to understand that there are a multitude of stories embedded in everyday actions and objects, which are constructed and re-appropriated by the citizens. Thus the everyday life of these individuals and collectives in the city become a vital departure point for anyone wishing to engage the local people and to ensure this inclusiveness is genuine. ■

References Halkier, H. & Therkelsen, A. (2011) Branding provincial cities: The politics of inclusion, strategy and commitment. In: Pike, Andy. ed. Brands and Branding Geographies. Cheltenham:Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, pp.

200-212.

Julier, Guy (2005) Urban Designscapes and the Production of Aesthetic Consent, Urban Studies, (Vol. 42, May), pp.

869–887.

Julier, Guy (2011) Design activism meets place- branding: Reconfiguring urban representation and everyday practice. In: Pike, Andy. ed. Brands and Branding Geographies. Cheltenham:Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, pp.

213-229.

Activism In our earlier discussion about the project, the notions of activating people and activism came about.

We mainly discussed these concepts in relation to what we thought as citizen involvement or civic engagement. The notion of activating people was found to be vital in understanding how more engagement could be achieved.

Activism as intervention and encouragement for positive change Our group also recognized and discussed the negative connotation that activism tends to have in order to clarify to everyone that the type of activism we wished to explore and research further is not necessarily disruptive or destructive. Instead the idea of activism was considered more as “… taking actions to catalyse, encourage or bring about change, in order to elicit social, cultural and/or political transformations. It can also involve transformation of the individual activists.”

(Fuad-Luke, 2009, p.5) This lead us to discuss about various grassroots movements that could be used as sources of inspiration. ■

Reference Fuad-Luke, Alistair (2009) Design Activism. Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World. London: Earthscan

▼ Examples of activism around the world

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ResearcH

Design Methods Design methods are diverse tools, ways of expression and creation. As Donald Schön describes in the “reflective practitioner” the strength of the design process lies in the reflective and ongoing approach (Schön, 1983). Today, the process has been translated into “new” concepts, like design thinking by Tim Brown or “social design”.

First, playful approaches like games, sketches, role plays or observations can be used to inquire, understand and rephrase wicked problems and second, small prototypes can test and develop the ideas further. The constant testing and organic development can support a design-driven strategy.

Designing with “real” people is key to a successful and sustainable urban development. If we understand urban life as a resource and activate participation of citizens, the notion of ownership, belonging and identity will lead to innovative design and visual narratives. (Mulder, 2012)

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Biking the Future an experience lab As part of this course we could collect experiences in the field of design methods within an experience lab named “Biking the future”. One of our main learning from this project was that the use of design methods needs to be put into a reasonable and meaningful context. Design methods have to be chosen, developed and adjusted to the specific purpose. Only then a co-creational design process can take place.

Therefore we started out by researching and discussing design methods and projects that have been taking place in other cities or in Göteborg. Which methods can lead to activism and can be helpful to collect narratives in an urban context? How can design inspire people to take part in a collective process?

From our perspective design methods should be easy to relate to, create emotions and inspire people to trigger new ideas about the given

topic.

The mind-map summarizes our research and gives an overview of the methods which could be relevant for the River City project. The words which are marked yellow have been refined and developed further within our project.

On one side, design methods have been used within our process as we sketched, crafted and brainstormed our ideas and thoughts.

On the other side the research was an inspiration and a starting point for the three groups to embody new ideas. ■

References Schön, Daniel. (1983) The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action.

Mulder, Ingrid. (2012) Living Labbing the Rotterdam Way: Co-creation as an enabler for Urban Innovation. In: Technology Innovation Management Review, p.39-43.

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process

Providing support for engagement to make a meaninful change

collective sense of the place

How do different people "use" the city ? local identity

Provoke!

Toolkit

How to identify/ explore narratives/stories?

target groups

Cultural Quarters What if... historical identity

anti-consumerism

understanding what participation is about activism

Personas/ Characteristics

citizen interest vs. political & Þnancial interests

personal sense of the space

Discussion and keyword clustering After compiling sources of inspiration and information, the whole group came together to discuss the findings. First we divided ourselves in smaller groups in accordance with the research topics we had formulated on the first week of the project: Civic Engagement, Place Branding, Design Methods and the River City vision. Everyone refined their ideas in small groups and then gave feedback to the other groups on their ideas. Then each group selected 3 key words or themes that were considered the most relevant for our project and concept development.

Following concepts and words were listed as the most interesting and relevant:

• provoke/intervention

• narratives/perceptions/experiences : how to explore them?

From a discussion involving everyone we then used these key themes to refine five potential methods to

• cultural quarters

• meaningful change • anarchy/activism • historical identity (of Göteborg) • understanding participation • providing support for engagement • toolkit for collective solutions • what if…

• personas-characteristics • citizen interest vs. political/ financial interest • using local knowledge

Establishing Basis for the Design Methods & the Concept

be developed further: Provoke! My Block, Playground, ”What if…” and Personas/characteristics. At the end the two latter methods were dropped, a decision that was based on which methods people were interested to work with and the fact that we only have limited amount of time and people working on these methods. The concept of narratives and stories was pointed out as a possible overall concept base for our project and the methods were discussed as facilitating a platform for these narratives, perceptions and experiences of people in the city.

In order to proceed we agreed to define why these stories became our concept base and from there on we could refine the concept to completion and make sure it was in line with the methods we had agreed on. ■

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Process

The process of creating the concept Skatchwork After research and working in smaller groups the different ideas of what the overall concept could be were summarized in a whole class group discussion.

In discussing how to move forward with the vision of River City Göteborg a couple of questions arose. What could our overall concept be? How can the methods be tied together? How can we gather all of our ideas and methods under one common umbrella and with one common goal? From these questions a theme developed towards the direction of gathering narratives and stories. The reason of gathering them being to highlight the value of unique stories. They shape identities, they are emotional and personal inspirations, they discover secret life, can visualize context and opinions, express diverse perceptions.

In trying to narrow down a common concept to follow within the River Lab project four different areas of interest were collected.

• Your mark in the city, shared neighborhood, we built this city.

• The secret life of cities, sharing responsibility, observing what you can see.

• Vivid torg/square/platz/plats, sketching our city, flow, quilt patchwork party • Share your discoveries, hidden is better than secrets, unfolding someone’s treasures.

The interesting area of shared exploration or discovering the city’s secrets developed further in to seeing the city as a patchwork. This patchwork could be interpreted as a metaphor for the city the different areas being the patches. And experi-

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ences of people, different cultures or traditions as the stitches.

The consensus of having a descriptive concept as well as a metaphorical one, led us into the discussions of adjectives, something that is describing the character of our project. Still the freedom of interpretation created engagement in the class and was a good leading star for us to work towards. At the same time we wanted some sort of co-creational hands-on approach to work with since we wanted to do this project in a large group. In the action of sketching, an entire group can create a larger image and build on it of each other. The idea of “sketching our city” started to develop an increased interest within the group. Acting as a complement the more passive metaphor of viewing the city as a patchwork.

The notion of exploring patches of the city gave an exciting aspect to our project. In a sense finding the pieces of the patchwork and discovering what is not so visible.

Discovering the meaning and pow-

er behind them, and the stories that lies underneath. Patchwork is about acknowledging the differences in the city, the notion of making all different parts acceptable is central.

This research process led us to the overall concept for the project which is “Skatchwork”. A combination of the two main concepts that arose in our group discussions, patchwork and sketching our city. The key words to support the concept of “Skatchwork” are Explore, Diversity and Action.

In having one overall combining concept as Skatchwork we can find different levels of interpretation.

There is an active element within sketching, a process of thinking and creating while doing. It is not only passive as listening and observing and on a design level not only a social and pedagogical level. We want to understand it as a process, in which you sketch what is already there, actively participating and explore.

Sketching + Patchwork Skatchwork is the combination of two words: patchwork and sketching.

By using the metaphor of a patchwork we asked questions on what it actually is that holds the different parts together.

Through this we view GĂśteborg from a different perspective. By viewing the city from a distance we create a passive understanding of it.

On the other side, the second part of the concept, sketching, is something active. Instead of passively discovering something we use design to visualize what we see and experience. While sketching you do not need to speak the same language; the visuals speak.

Exploring these factors was an interesting way of looking at the three different approaches both separately and together.

Explore & Visualize the hidden secrets The notion of exploring patches of the city gave an exciting aspect to our project. In a sense finding the pieces of the patchwork and discovering what is not so visible. Discovering the meaning and power behind them, and the stories that lies underneath. Patchwork is about acknowledging the differences in the city, the notion of making all different parts acceptable is central. â–

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Process

How we work When coming from an intense project and diving into a new one we saw the need to reflect on our learning process. We saw the opportunity to take advantage of our experiences in this next project, but also to make a personal reflection. We therefore had a one-day-reflection of the guidelines we saw as important for a group work and a project. The result was a long list of sentences and exhortations. The most popular guidelines was; take responsibility to be informed if you have been away, give your opinion and challenge yourself, encouraged to bring ideas forward.

With positive experiences from working together in the whole class in earlier projects we took the decision to jointly tackle the assignment. It is a challenge to organize a group of fourteen students with no clear roles or professions. We therefore decided to work with two different focuses each in this project. One focus related to managing the whole project and one related to the development of the project and its content.

A starting point in the project was therefore to define the tasks and responsibilities needed for the project. The roles we came up with was; money management and contact person for external stakeholders, time management and group coordination, design management and visual identity, concept management and brand identity, documentation management, research coordination and finally exhibition management.

In the development of the concept Skatchwork we came up with different ideas for design methods. We decided that each of us would have a second focus in one of these design methods. Each of us chose one methods he/she was most interested in. The result was the small groups Provoke, My Block and Playground. These groups worked individually with their design method but at the same time we pointed out the importance of working with the connection to the overall concept of Skatchwork.

In between the individual work in the design methods groups we arranged meetings with the whole class. In order to make these meetings effective we had one timekeeper, one discussion leader and one documentator on each meeting. It was a security to have these roles on the meetings, one responsible for the direction the the discussion, one for the efficiency and one for the documentation for the future report.

But at the same time it was a challenge for many to try out something new and be in a role outside their comfort zone. â–

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http://riverlab.wordpress.com/

Documentation and Blog We decided in our class of 15 people that we want to work together under one big concept, but still have three separate project groups. This created a challenge to find an easy way to communicate with each other, inform the ones who are not there, document the process, our meetings, share research and inspiration information, and work more efficiently.

We solved the group work documentation issue by creating an

editable pdf form called “The Daily News” which every group had to fill out at the end of the day, shortly summarizing what was discussed, results of the day, questions and plans for the next day.

Every whole class meeting had an assigned discussion leader, documentor and time keeper to make the process more fluent and also give equal responsibilities to everybody.

For collecting everything in one place we set up a blog to which ev-

eryone of us had to contribute. To make it easier and faster to use, posts were divided under different categories ( e.g. research, inspiration, organization, etc.). But a big amount of different data still made it messy looking and hard to navigate. Therefore we gave the Riverlab blog a portfolio-like layout and created icons to visualize categories. ■

▲ Daily News template

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Cultural probes

Case 1

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Cultural probes Introduction Visions and target groups are normative and create stereotypes. If you regard a city in this way it is no longer a city, but seperate islands.

Citylife is no islands. To include and cherish the diversity we need to come back to what diversity really is - freedom. Diversity is also represented in the narratives or stories that the citizen create.

Cultural probes as a method acts as a search for opportunities and identifying the challenges that cities like Göteborg might have to face in the future. We believe this method could be a way to capture the ongoing process of a city, by inviting the people to interact and share their stories. Diversity is impossible to grasp or organize, but this method could offer a way of understanding it better.

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Why

Vision

The River City vision aims at creating a more inclusive, green and dynamic city. In the vision, it is also stated that the River City area will be considered as an opportunity for the city and the region of West Sweden to cope with future issues such as segregation, climate change and the global shift in the economy. In this sense, the aim of the vision and the strategies, streches beyond what takes place in the River City. Besides departing from the challenges mentioned above, three strenghts are also mentioned; diversity, water and driving forces, which have shaped the identity of Göteborg. The long term vision of the River City is built upon the three pillars of sustainable development, something everyone can agree upon, and in this way might also be to some extent futile.

Brief In the brief we recived, there were mainly two objectives, identify a target group and use design methods for creating new ideas for how the vision and its strategies could be embodied, i.e. how to go from the vision document to action. However, in the vision document there is already a roadmap for how the development will proceed, with for example an impressive time plan where the first steps in the development of the River City will be finished already by 2015. So why are more ideas needed for how to embody the strategies?

Skatchwork Assembling the probe kit

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In the overall concept developed for this project, we would say, meta-

phorically, that we are searching or trying to recognize the patches in the patchwork. In this metaphorical approach the patches can be compared with narratives. And narratives are the foundation upon which the identity of the city or a city block is built. The identity of Göteborg has already been defined in the vision, but does this identity really represent the people of Göteborg and are there tools for keeping up with how the identity evolves? And can you really talk about one identity of the city?

Summary In our approach to the development of the River City we have come to question the intention of the vision document. The identity of the city is built upon narratives, however these narratives will most likely be diverse and not verify a single vision. In our discussions we have mainly focused on diversity which is also considered to be one of the strenghts of Göteborg. But what do diversity mean?

In the vision report, a historical approach to diversity is developed where the international background of Göteborg is highlighted. We agree that this, multiculturalism, is one part of diversity. However, we would like to suggest that diversity means freedom. Freedom to be and express yourself. Is it possible for the city to organize diversity and freedom or does the whole idea behind freedom disapear when we try to organize it? Could the vision in this sense become normative? And is that how a city evolve? We consider the development of the city to be a never ending process, and the city will never be finished.

Cultural probes ▼ Five different interpretations of a birthday cake

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Ideation (Behind the probe kit) From the research phase on design methods, we got suggestions on methods and themes to investigate under the subject heading ”cultural quarters”. These included questions on historical and local identity and methods like “a day in the life of...” and cultural probes, all of which had an etnographic orientation. We chose to reformulate the heading to “My block”, to accentuate the human perspective. Throughout the process we have considered “the block” both as the physical, geo-

Process graphical area and the intangible, emotional construct in which a person live their life.

However, we chose to focus on the people, rather than the places, since it is our belief that it is the people that make the place. It is through the stories of the people, that we can understand the city.

Furthermore, we settled on a holistic view of the process of collecting these narratives, emphasizing not only the end results.

While deciding on methods and the design of them, we asked ourselves: who will be participating, who is part of our target group? And

following that, how to motivate and engage them in sharing their narratives?

We felt it was important to look beyond the stereotypes. We did not want to settle on a cliché target group of Young people or Parents.

Would it perhaps be possible to see patterns and new groupings, from the outcome of our process? Or is it perhaps irrelevant to group people, perhaps we should treat them as the individuals they are?

Essentially, if we want the narratives of the people of Göteborg, we should not settle on one narrow group, but on the whole, diverse

Preliminary plan for the probe kit

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Cultural probes

group that lives in this city.

Browsing the internet, you could sense the urge to share stories. We thought we saw a lovable exhibitionism in the status updates, the pictures of today’s meal and outfit of the day. Would people be willing to share their view of “their block” too? How to tempt them to do that?

We focused quite early on a method we all wanted to explore and which seemed suitable for our aim - cultural probes.

Why Probes? What are cultural probes and how they are used?

The next step for us was to explore cultural probes and their variation design probes further to understand how we could use them for our purposes. Probes are essentially exploratory in nature (Mattelmäki, 2006).

By using probes the participants are placed in the focus. They are given a more active role as they themseves document what they are doing with the probe tasks. In this way we might get an insight to “the user’s personal context and perceptions” (Mattelmäki, 2006). The aim is to map out human phenomena and it is especially useful in recording people’s daily activities. This mapping out of daily life by the means of self-documentation has some significant advantages. Firstly it enables data to be collected from various situations and without someone observing and interpreting the participant’s actions. In this sense it is

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a more reliable way of recording the daily activities of the target group since it minimises the influence of the observer.

Probes as a method are more focused on finding new ideas and approaches than dealing with present problems and looking for solutions.

In this sense they are a good tool for creating an ability to listen to other people and understanding their experiences and needs in a way that is not reliant on stereotypes that are often hard to let go otherwise.

Probes also aim to provoke and spark the participants imagination to observe and interpret “their experiences from different angles”(Mattelmäki 2006).

(Mattelmäki, Tuuli (2006) Design Probes, Vaajakoski: Gummerus Printing.)

For example, we wanted to distance ourselves from the look of a survey.

Therefore we chose to package the prototype in an unbleached, textured envelope and mark the five task envelopes in handwriting.

Moreover, we thought that this would communicate a personal and down to earth relationship to our participants.

But it is also important to communicate professionalism to a certain degree - to show that participating in probing is a task of significance and that your stories are important. The uniform design of the instructions, task cards and the diary, keeps the kit together, as a whole. At the back of the diary we added the logo of Riverlab, showing the context of the probe kit, as part of a bigger project.

The instructions of the methods were kept short and simple. We also included a brief explanation of our thoughts behind each method, as a motivation for the participant.

Prototype

Designing the kit

In this project, we created a prototype probe kit, which we tested together with 5 participants. This prototype kit consists of five envelopes containing the five methods, one for each day, two felt marker pens, one ballpoint pen, one diary and an instruction.

Though we did not focus that much on the physical design of the prototype kits, we felt it was important to convey certain properties.

Through brainstorming possible probing tools, we came up with a number of method clusters using maps, photos/video, drawings, postcards, games, digital apps.

From this, six methods for our probing kit evolved:

• New viewpoints • Needs, attitudes, experiences • Daily lives • Stimulate imagination

From Gothenburg in love For this method, we drew inspiration from an art exhibition evolving

Cultural probes around love stories and the PostSecret project, where you anonymously share your deepest secrets on a postcard.

The participant is encouraged to write a love letter to something, someone or someplace they love.

To keep the letters anonymous, we chose to include an envelope with a pre-written address and a stamp, rather than having the participants returning them with the rest of the kit. We did not want to use e-mail, for the same reason, but also because we did not want to loose the personal, handwritten and tactile qualities of this method. We chose a pink envelope and a thicker, structured paper for this task.

Menu today

◄ ▲ Map showing a road that makes the participant stressed, and a beautiful love letter

The idea of taking photos (of something) and the idea of creating a cookbook or food diary fused together into this method. Instead of asking for the material ingredients of their dinner, we wanted to focus on what’s immaterial - the meaning and stories people connect to the food. By asking the participants to name their dish and share why they decided to cook it, we hope to set the spotlight on these often unvoiced elements of eating.

This task consists of taking a photograph of the dish and a menu card with the mentioned description. We considered including disposable cameras in the kit, but in our prototype we asked participants to use their smart phone or digital camera and to e-mail us the picture.

This decision was made because of concerns of photo quality and processing time.

Greetings from...

A postcard is often a stereotypical image of a place. By making your own postcard, you can challenge the official image of Göteborg and share your personal view of your neighborhood. In this method we connected to the concept of “cultural quarters” and local identity.

Tag your city

▲ Individual pages from the diaries

This method was born from the notion of playing. We wanted to complement the other methods with one that actually brought the participant out on the streets. Starting off with the concept of treasure hunt-

ing, we discussed “geo-caching”, where we would hide something in the city for the participants to find with the help of GPS coordinates.

This could be a time consuming task and perhaps too much to ask for.

The task should be possible to do on the go.

Instead we found the concept of “tagging” appealing. In contrast to the geo-caching, our tagging would be carried out in the actual city, not on a digital map, and with real paper tags. Through tagging, the participant share messages with their neighborhood and create small treasures for others to discover. In that sense, this method is still connecting to the treasure hunt.

Material wise, we chose an unbleached paper tag and a cotton string. Also in this method we thought of a disposable camera, but settled on the same solution as previously mentioned.

This is the place One of the first ideas was using a map to show your daily route - where you move and when. With less focus on the actual spaces and places, but more on the emotional associations to them, this evolved into what we call “emotional topography”.

The material for this probe is a basic tourist map of the city and coloured stickers representing the emotions. We discussed whether we should decide on which emotions to use or leave it up to the participant, but reasoned that a set of given emotions would decrease the time required for the activity. The idea of having one day- and one night-map came up - to explore if places would have diffrent emotions connected to them, depending on time. In the prototype we included only one map.

Diary The act of self-documenting everyday life, brings a diary to mind. It is an obvious, well-known and self-explanatory method. We decided to include prompts to inspire and trigger the participants. The diary was designed in a small format, with a minor drawing task and a writing task for each day. The diary is the red thread of the probe kit, to be filled in daily, in parallell with the other probe methods.

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Cultural probes

4 ▼ Tags around the city ▼▼ Summerplate (Menu Today)

refining the methods: defining the concept behind each probe

In this part of the chapter each part of the probe kit will be described in detail. The concept for each method will be developed to create an understanding for the overall concept.

From Gothenburg in Love Cities are made by the people who live in them. The idea behind this probe was to collect a patchwork of narratives by engouraging people to share things that they might not think about or share with others on daily basis. So the focus of the probe was to let people share their secret love stories in an anonymous way.

When we talk about love stories, we thought of how one can love various different things. For instance the participant could write a loveletter to an object, a place or perhaps even a moment or a memory. The idea was that the letter is handwritten, yet the participants remains anonymous by sending it back in pre-stamped envelope with the return address on it.

We hoped that the returned letters could demonstrate the diverse ways to love that are out there in the city.

Menu Today Food is something we consume with more than just one sense. We have associations we attach on certain dishes and how we sense them.

Based on these observations, the idea of this probe was to encourage people to explore further something that tends to be a daily activity. The idea was to uncover rituals and little things and stories about the food that people make. By naming the dish and sharing it with us we hoped to inspire people to explore further these type of daily activities and to give us an insight on the real diversity of the city, since food reflects aspects of different cultures as well.

Greetings from...

The idea behind this probe task was to invite people to create a postcard collage of their neighbourhood by using visual materials. They were asked to attach what they had col-

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lected on a pre-stamped postcard, which they could then send back to us. By doing this they can create an example of how they see their surroundings and how they relate to them. The idea was also to have participants working with tactile material like photos cut out from newspapers and magazines, but also to draw or sketch on their own if they wish. This will give us an idea of how different people relate to their surroundings and have their own interpretation of what they see and experience everyday.

Tag your City If you could write a message to your neighbourhood, what would you write? We wanted the participants to explore their surroundings and perhaps observe something they have not seen before, the small everyday things. The main idea was also that the tagging would be done by using real and tangible material, provided in the kit. And that the participants can write or draw what they wish to share with their neighbourhood and leave it where they wish. The idea was to stray away from more digital form of tagging and bring it to “the real” environment. And by doing so also activating people to go out and to do something with their surroundings.

This is the place The aim of this probe is to create an emotional topography of the city.

In this sense we want to shift the focus from the physical artifacts to peoples feelings and emotions.

This will show upon different patterns for how people use the city and how they connect to different areas in the city. An emotional topography will also show how the citizens identify different places. This is also a way of challenging the homogenity of certain parts of the city, and a way of understanding the diversity of the city when it comes to how we move. This probe will be a tool for the understanding of places and hopefully go beyond stereotypes but

Cultural probes maybe most of all understand people and their needs in the city. By using a normal map of the city the subject will use small stickers, symbolizing different emotions, to describe thier connection to different parts of the city.

Diary (name, content, design etc.)

In the diary we hope to capture the everyday life of people, the small stories which describe who we are.

This diary will be written in parallell with the other five probes, one new entry for each day. Each day the subject have to fill in the gap in a preprinted template. Not only will we learn about the subject, but the subject will also be provoked to think about themselves and what they do in their everyday life.

During five days, the book will be filled with short stories and illustrations, describing parts of the everyday life in Göteborg.

Postcards created by ► the participants (Greetings from...) ▼ Drawings from the diaries

The Gift When the week is over, and all the probes are made, there will be a ceremony. At this ceremony, the participants will be given a book as a token of gratitude. The book will be handmade with a few different texts and images preprinted, however most of the pages will be empty for the owners to fill and use for whatever purpose they wish: for example as a cookbook, notebook, diary, sketchbook - a book of big stories in a small format. The book will express the tactile and personal qualities, the importance of small things and everyday stories, that is emphasized in our probing process.

Website To make this project continous there is a need for a platform; e.g. a website or a exhibition, where the stories can be collected and visualised. Our intention with this platform is to prove upon the evolving process which goes on within Göteborg. The different narratives or stories expressed on the platform will highlight the diversity and visualize the patchwork of the city.

This platform will be facilitated by the officals from the city, but the focus will be upon stories created by people from Göteborg for people of Göteborg. ■

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Cultural probes

final concept 1

Cultural probes collecting stories

Observations and Further Suggestions After we received back our prototype probe kit from our participants, we were able to make some observations about how it worked. We were also able to have some short discussions with our participants and got some feedback on how they perceived the tasks and the probe kit in whole. We could then also make further suggestions on how the final concept and the probe method process could look like.

The kit was perceived as fun to do by most of the participants and most of them also clearly put some considerable effort to it. Especially the task called From Gothenburg in Love generated some very beautiful and clearly well thought out responses.

The Menu today task also created some very diverse responses. Anything ranging from more fancy dinners to recipes and take away food was included. These results also reflect the diverse lifestyles and habits that people have when it comes to food, thus it could be useful for further reflections on social behaviour.

The postcards we received for the Greetings from task also reflected the overall diversity we wished to uncover and people had used their imagination when it came to filling in the card. Tag your city seemed to be the one task all the participants engaged in doing. It also gave us an insight into how people relate to certain places and what type of associations they have of them.

We noticed that in the This is the Place probe task, some of the emotion stickers were more used than the others. We considered this to also reflect the fact that some of these places have a very personal emotional association to the partici-

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pants. Thus this task has the potential of uncovering more than something that is obvious, something maybe more hidden. As a result we also discussed the possibilities of prototyping this task and the map further by testing it with a different set of emotion stickers that the ones we had. The possibility of asking participants to write additional information to the map was also considered as a part of further development. With the Diary we discovered that people were very much into the drawing exercises. We also noted that these drawings could give an insight into the diversity of the environment in the city and also into the diversity of expression among the participants. In terms of further developments, the drawing tasks in the diary could be formulated further, such as instead of asking the participants to draw a house, ask them to draw a home.

There were some minor confusion about where to send or how to return some of the probe tasks. This can easily be resolved by refining the instructions and there was also a slight difference here between the prototype and the envisioned final concept. Our prototype was given to people who could then hand it back in person, but there would be an option that with the refined version the participants could just send in all the tasks back in a return envelope (excluding two tasks we would like to receive by mail, Greeting from and From Gothenburg in Love).

In some cases the participants were left unsure about the purpose of the whole task kit and how the results would be handled. This issue is related to the overall question of how to convince people about the importance and relevance of their participation and how to encour-

age them to contribute actively. Our idea about how the overall probe “journey” would be for the participants, with it’s different sections from selection to hand-out ceremony and to the end ceremony with the gift could possible clarify some of these concerns in the future.

How: The Journey In this part will elaborate on the journey of the cultural probes and the structure for how they will be used in our refined concept. The cultural probes are the main focus of the method, but there must be a supporting system to make sense of the final concept and how the probes can be utilized.

Selection Our intentions with the probes are to encourage participation, create empathy and search for opportunity. This will be done through the collecting of narratives. To avoid creating a stereotypical picture of Göteborg, the importance is to emphasize diversity among the participants. There is also an importance to create an interest for sharing your stories, so that the participation is voluntary. Creating an atmosphere where every story in the city is considered important and inclusiveness can attract a wide variety of participants. And from the beginning it should be obvious that the participants are not doing this for the City of Göteborg but it is made by people of Göteborg for people of Göteborg, where the city will act as a facilitator.

Those selected will receive a personal invitation, first by phone and later also a written for confirming the interest. This invitation will

Cultural probes

consist of an introduction to the project and a personal invitation to a ceremony where the probes will be handed out.

and that their personal contribution is of importance for the city.

Hand-out ceremony

During the week of probing the participants will be considered as representatives for Göteborg. The appreciation for the participants will be substantial, and their stories, collected through the probes described above, will considered as the treasures of Göteborg. The probe kit includes six different tasks. Five of these six tasks will be done each day and the sixth task is to keep a diary during the week with one entry for each day.

For each week there will be new participants an event will be held. This event will act as an inauguration where the participants will be the central figures. At this event, the participants will also receive more information about what will happen during the week at the same time as they receive the package with the probes. The facilitator introduces the probe kit and talk about the concept of diversity and the importance of people engaging in the creation of the city through reflection and recording of stories. This will be an opportunity for the facilitator to make the participants feel chosen,

Probing

Book ceremony In the end of the week, when all probes are made, a second event will be held. This will be a closed event,

only for the participants, a potluck party where the participants bring food of their own. This will be an opportunity for the participants to meet each other and exchange experiences. With the handover of the book, this event will also express the gratitude for their participation and the book will also represent the relationship between the single citizen and the city as a whole. In line with the concept there will be a focus on the value of the small stories created in the everyday life in Göteborg.

The cultural probes will be a tool to find these, but the citizens will be the source. The book will symbolize the citizens, where the stories in the book will represent the everyday life in Göteborg, and just like the people create the identity of the city, the book will represent the identity of the owner. ■

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Vattendraken

CASE 2

Intervention and the Vattendraken Within the concept of Skatchwork we see the role of our project and the approach we developed as the stitches that holds the parts of the patchwork together. The interest lies in discovering what the patches are made of, what stories can be found and created. Stitches hold the patchwork together, they are important for its overall appearance and its character. By using the patchwork as a metaphor for the city of Gรถteborg we want to see the river as the stitches, something that unites rather than divides the city. The river together with elements such as communication, culture and emotions holds together and creates a stronger connection between the people living in different parts of Gรถteborg.

Our project Vattendraken is like the seam going through different parts of the city and connecting them through the river and to the river. By using this river connec-

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tion, Vattendraken functions as the facilitator in the stitches, helping to bring the city of Gรถteborg together into one community.

these aspects were relevant for working further with the provoking directions, and with the overall con-

Brainstorming and discussions

Research and Inspiration gathering

Starting out from the concept of the Skatchwork and deep discussion around design methods and provocation, we found three directions:

We sat down together and discussed earlier experiences and thoughts.

We all were really excited about exploring design methods that could provoke or create a reaction. But we felt that we needed to gather inspiration and do research from other kind of projects or exhibitions. Therefore we made research in how to activate people and involve citizens in the city development, how to provoke and create curiosity, but also what kind of areas we could work with our design methods in Gรถteborg.

1. Provoke visual or verbal reactions with pictures, statements etc.

2. Provoke physical reaction with objects, pictures or happenings.

3. Provoke new mindsets.

Designers can utilize and play with different aspects like geographical space, people, emotion, culture, wired objects, communication and tradition. Through these aspects they can interact or change their context and meaning. We saw that

cept Skatchwork.

Inspirational pictures โ บ

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Vattendraken Thinking and planning

Intervention vs.

Provocation Since the word or expression provoke is charged with a negative meaning, we found it difficult to continue our process. Therefore we decided to rename our overall theme to Intervention. The word and the approach switches its meaning into a positive and active direction. We combined different techniques to test our further steps within our first prototype.

â—„ The planning process

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Vattendraken Prototyping The first prototype at Gullbergskaj We explored the river city while walking along the waterfront and discovered some unexpected places, the beauty and the harsh climate of the harbour. One of the hidden secrets of the River city is the open boat workshop in the very center of the city - Gullbergskaj - an area with a lot of unused potential.

Gullbergskaj is an old institution in Göteborg, also known as the “Drömmarnas kaj”or “Pier of Dreams”. Boat-builders can rent spaces to moor their historical vessels along the waterfront and maintain, park and/or live on them. A 600m long path guides the visitors along a “real” museum of ships, tools, old rusted engines and workshops. Benches and green spaces invite visitors for a moment of reflection, to enjoy the view or have a

▼ Gullbergskaj

little chat.

We chose Gullbergskaj for us to test how we can reach and activate people that are already using that area. The area caught our attention also because of its originality and contrast to other parts of Göteborg, as a truly un-commercial side of the city.

Fold a boat We folded two overdimensioned paper boats, took home-made cakes, cookies, smiles with us, and waited for reactions. Our presence and props created curiosity and people got very suspicious about what we were doing. The pedestrians looked at us and passed by, some were easy to engage into a conversation and mainly inhabitants or shipowners actively began to talk to us. A few of our visitors could even be up for folding a paper boat with us. They placed it into our little installation and proudly took pictures of the boat.

From our prototype #1 we found out that an unexpected object work better than written information on posters and creates much more attention and awareness. The more people that stopped at our spot, the more pedestrians would also stop and talk to us. People are eager to participate, but they want to know the purpose of their participation. Furthermore, people wish to be facilitated and guided through the task. But once a task is finished, the pride and the joy creates a bond between the creator and the creation.

From our perspective, having an experience together can create a strong community and this experience can be embodied within an object. The small prototype gave us a lot of inspiration and ideas how people interact with the unexpected.

▼ Prototype at Gullbergskaj

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Vattendraken

We decided to choose water as an overall theme for our collaboration and civic engagement platform called the Vattendraken. In this way we want to embrace one of the most important assets of Göteborg.

The Dragon Boat Down at the harbour an abandoned creature floats in the river: the dragon boat. In 1991 the boat was brought to Göteborg from Shanghai and has been used as a floating restaurant for a few years. After travelling around Northern Europe, it came back to Göteborg in 2002.

The restaurant closed in 2005 and since then the dragon boat waits for its renaissance.

The part of our team that hasn’t grown up in Göteborg was absolutely surprised to see such a out of place object in a scandinavian harbour and were inspired and curious of the stories it carries.

After clustering the experiences we collected from prototype #1 at Gullbergskaj and combining it with the inspiration we got from the dragon boatw we decided to create a bigger concept in which the dragon boat should play a key role.

We started out with building a boat that could be our representative and

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a playful approach to the project.

By folding various origami shapes which we glued together we crafted a little model of the dragon boat.

The water and the river Water is crucial for our existence and is our source of life. Great civilizations flourished around rivers. Water means life, travel, freedom. Our world is connected by water.

Göteborg is full of water and this asset is undervalued. Göteborg is placed at Göta älv and hosts the biggest port in the Nordic countries.

You would expect that the water is the vibrant center of the city, but in Göteborg Göta älv is seen as a problematic division. The city has a high average rainfall and a mild oceanic climate. But the public spaces and squares are mostly still developed for summer and good weather conditions.

Water is a unique and organic element: we swim in the ocean in summer, hide from the rain in autumn and play with the snow in winter.

The changing seasons in Göteborg are one of the important points for us in creating a concept that could work all year round.

We decided to choose water as an overall theme for our collaboration and civic engagement platform called the Vattendraken. In this way we want to embrace one of the most important assets of Göteborg.

Prototypes of the dragon ▼ ►

Vattendraken ◄ The dragon boat

The Vattendraken The Vattendraken is the unusual, eccentric and attention-attracting object in Göteborg. We use this interest for our benefit, to involve more people into urban development and encourage them, not only to participate in events, but also to create events by themselves. The Vattendraken creates dialogue and community, encourages to discover new things and uses your imagination and the water to unite the city.

An important aspect for us was to revive an object that is already in place, and therefore we do not implement something new to Göteborg. The dragon boat has been in the city for more than 20 years and it holds symbolic meaning for Göteborg’s citizens. This meaning encouraged us to choose the dragon as our main object of intervention.

Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, hurricane, and floods.

In the mythology of the vikings the dragon is a symbol of power, strength, and good luck. They are believed to be the rulers of moving bodies of water,such as waterfalls, rivers, or seas. In our project this connection to water and the chinese symbolics created the Vattendraken.

The travelling concept Activating the area around the river and the citizens of Göteborg was crucial for our project. The Vattendraken is a platform for civic engagement and social design. Designing curiosity and interest was key to the travelling method. A travelling method is not necessarily tied to a specific object. It can be transformed and

used in different kinds of environments. Therefore the Vattendraken can be used for different occasions, by different interest groups and at different spots all along Göta Älv.

This travelling method could be used in different cities or countries with a different type of facilitator than the dragon boat.

Stories and communities How we interpret narratives Through the concept and the facilitator Vattendraken we are collecting stories stemming from the different parts of Göteborg. The dragon in it self is a story, taking inspiration, gathering culture and stories from along the river and the entire city.

Acting as a connection between the citizens, for them to share their stories in a co-creational way.

Designing communities!

Vattendraken is facilitating interactions, providing a platform for action and communication. It is a place to gather and share experiences. By experiencing something together we believe that a bond is created between people. In creating that bond, Vattendraken is also creating communities. The concept in itself is based on the idea of designing communities through joint experiences. ■

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Vattendraken

final concept 2

Vattendraken facilitating stories

At the exhibition we presented four visuals to demonstrate our Vattendraken concept. Those visuals were self-explanatorily displayed in the

shape of a handbook, a stop motion movie, a playground for people to interact, and a poster. We made the decision to communicate our idea to

the visitors in the most suitable way — which was the visual.

â–ź The Handbook

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Vattendraken Handbook In order to easily hand over the Vattendraken to the people we designed a handbook as way to show our concept. With a handbook we have the chance to show the citizens of Göteborg our idea in an easy and fun way. This handbook embodies our thoughts and should encourage the citizens of Göteborg to use the Vattendraken, take advantage of it and use their power to affect the city.

We underline the symbolic of the meaning of the dragon in Chinese as well as the relation to the water, which are the stitches in the overall patchwork metaphor. An explanation is given on how to invite the Vattendraken and what the Vattendraken can be used for. This handbook is interrelated with the stop motion movie we showed at the

exhibition. Since we say “pictures are better than thousand words” we wanted to present what we said in the handbook in another dimension.

Stop motion video The stop-motion movie illustrates possible scenarios of how the Vattendraken could be part of Göteborg’s yearly life. The playfulness of the movie should inspire the viewers to develop the concept further or submit an activity or an idea to the Vattendraken. These ideas are always connected to the main theme of the Vattendraken, which is the water.

Four scenes are presented throughout the storyboard displaying the dragon boat as the main actor, travelling the river and unifying

both sides. We took a great care in the choice of places, seasons and activities that could happen at each time of the year.

The technique of stop-motion made it possible for all our team members to take part in the production. Illustrating with pens and virtually, working with cut-outs, origami and watercolour, taking pictures and editing the movie. Every team member contributed with their individual skills, which made it a very exciting project to work on.

Story of the movie The movie opens up with a brief explanation on an idea that Oscar (main character in the movie) submits to the dragon boat. This idea gets selected and the Vattendraken moves to Röda Sten during the

▼ Prototyping

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Vattendraken summer for “The Art of Fishing” day. Different activities are happening simultaneously; the visitors arrive, boats arrive at the harbour, fishermen are fishing and so on. A fish-painting contest takes place where fisherman’s have to paint only using their fishing rod, and fishes that have previously been covered with paint.

As we are in Gothenburg where it often rains, why not take advantage and organise the “Vatten Fest” at Eriksberg, during the Autumn?

Different activities on the theme of water are organised. People in umbrellas are jumping and dancing in the rain, it is celebration time!

The winter approaches, the Vattendraken travels to Lindholmen for the “Filmfestivalen”. It is snowing, the crowd is queuing to buy movie tickets; others are warming up with a glass of glögg. The Vattendraken projects movies and is transformed into a cinema.

The winter has been long but the spring is back! Its time for “Spring cleaning” at Gullbergsvass. It is a very nice atmosphere, citizens come in a mass to repair, screw, hammer and paint the Vattendraken to be ready for the summer. Everyone is very excited about the upcoming projects and now it is time to submit your ideas!

Playground We had a lot of fun while recording the stop motion movie and we wanted visitors to try out and suggest their ideas/storyboard. Therefore we displayed the illustrations and the background scene that we used for the movie.

It was a playful way to interact with the visitors, since they were using illustrations that had been previously drawn. These illustrations made it easy for them to communicate their ideas. ■

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Vattendraken

▲ Making the movie

▲ Playground during the exhibition

▼ Stills from the finished movie

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Treasure Hunt

CASE 3

Treasure Hunt Development process of Treasure Hunt The brief from the River City included the proposition of how people in the city can take part in developing the city, by doing something by themselves that is not permanent but interactive. When thinking of how this civic engagement could be done in practice, the thought of the Restaurant Day came up. Using the already existing platform where citizens can have their own restaurants for one day and mark the location of their restaurant on a virtual map included all of the elements from the brief. Inspiring people to do something of their own, in a pop-up manner, the Restaurant Day would encourage citizens to explore the city and other citizens in a positive atmosphere. The event is held four times a year and is organized by the citizens. It is already running in 19 cities around the world with over 800 pop-up restaurants during the latest event. This is something

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that could be of great interest for the River City, but we decided not to organize a restaurant of our own. Instead we took some inspiration from the Restaurant Day and applied it to the final concept.

One suggestion for making the method more tangible was to have a board game about imagining and creating the future of the city. The idea was that the game could be used as a tool to bring citizens and decision makers together in order to cooperatively decide on the city planning. The restrictions with board games is though that it can include only a limited amount of people due to that it is a physical object. From this the idea of using Gothenburg as the playground was born.

Urban gaming How to make the method interesting as well as how to connect it back to the idea of playground were the starting points for the development of urban games. Taking inspiration from Geocaching, Urban racing, hiking tours, rooftop tours and other urban adventures we started to create a game where the playground would be the city, especially the areas around the River City. The idea behind these challenges and games was to learn more about the city in a fun way. Through gaming we thought people can go around in areas they are not familiar with, feeling comfortable going there when it is made interesting and worth visiting. Moving around in the forgotten, in hidden or unfamiliar places might inspire people to create new stories and urban legends in the city.

We biked around in the River City area in order to look for the hidden places and stories that could be pre-

Treasure Hunt

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Treasure Hunt

we started to create a game where the playground would be the city, especially the areas around the River City.

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sented for the citizens through our method. For some of us who had not been in the areas before were impressed and inspired and felt that the places could be used for something more inclusive and be formed into being more welcoming for the public. The thought of how to inspire and engage people to move around in places they are not very familiar with in their own city and how the city and playfulness can be combined triggered the thought of making games attached to the specific places and areas around the River City.

The app In order to make something that is not bound to one place, like a board game would be, we started thinking of alternatively using an app.

There were suggestions on using an app where an area and it’s planning and architecture can be seen when scanned with a smartphone or tablet. We finally found an app which you can build on and develop yourself according to your preferences, including layers with buttons. This works as a QR-reader or barcode scanner that recognizes the posters that we put up in the different locations in the River City area.

When the poster is scanned with a smartphone or tablet, using the Layar-app, the player will be presented with symbols on their screen. In front of the poster symbols pop-up, which include a link to a page with history about the area, future planning, short videos with instructions to the game and pictures from the area. The pictures are selected by us, but the goal is that everyone could

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The locations were chosen in order to include a big area with a variation of locations in the River City.

The game could be further developed into something consistent, where the posters would be permanent, which at the moment is not the case. We live in a reality where posters can’t be put up without someone taking them down sooner or later. The game was made available also on Google-maps so that people can get it from there if the posters at the different locations are taken down. The location of the app-stations are marked and the game instructions are easy to access. ■

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This way the citizens of Gothenburg can be inspired to explore their own city like tourists. By crafting something in practice we wanted to show that we as citizens engage in the development of the city instead of only trying to make others do so.

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Treasure Hunt

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Treasure hunt creating stories

Treasure Hunt sketches and creates new stories by taking people to secret or hidden places of the River City. New places and perspectives inspire people and create stories that people will share with others.

The goal is to encourage and inspire people to explore places through the Treasure Hunt platform. The concept could be seen as a seedbed for civic engagement.

Why? A city is full of different kinds of stories. People tell and listen to stories that become urban legends and a part of the city’s identity. Stories are the spirit and soul of the city and are inherited from one generation to another. They make people feel emotionally connected to a city.

Discovering new places and seeing things from fresh perspectives evokes new stories. By taking people to secret places of the city Riverlab Treasure Hunt encourages people to seek for the hidden and inspires people to create stories of their own.

The experience creates a personal bond between the citizens and the places. The tales spread through word of mouth creating new narratives and urban legends.

How? Geocaching, GPS-tours, and different kinds of urban games have rapidly become popular leisure activities, as well as effective educational methods. It seems that people thirst for real adventures. We have connected elements from these different games to create an interesting and exciting urban game tailor-made for Göteborg. We believe that gaming is a fun way to explore the city.

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The River City functions as the playground for the game. The purpose is to increase people’s awareness of the area, encourage people to go to places they have not been to, and inspire them to explore the areas by themselves. If the places feel unsafe or unwelcoming, the fact that they are presented in this way brings assurance. People feel more secure to visit the hidden and forgotten areas when somebody has ensured they are interesting and worth exploring.

The central elements of Treasure Hunt - civic engagement, collaboration, and inspiration - form the game platform.

What?

Treasure Hunt is a round trip in the River City area, where people can discover secret places. You find your way to a station with the help of the map, which you can find at Älvrummet or from the homepage. At every station there is a sticker, which you scan with your smartphone/tablet using the Layar-app. When the sticker is scanned several buttons appear on the screen. These buttons contain information about the place as well as a small game that can be played on the spot. One button directs you to read the history of the area in order to create background and interest for the place. At some stations a button contain pictures and sketches of the prospects. The Layar-app also reveals a button that shows the map of the River City. The map directs you to the other stations and includes the transportation options (tram, bus, boat, bike, walk – paths and stations). With the help of the map you find your way to the area where a sticker can be found.

The interactive part of the app is the

button that contains a game.

People can go on Treasure Hunt alone or together in order to explore the city. The stations are not dependant on each other, citizens can choose only one area to visit or go around the River City and discover all of them. Treasure Hunt started May 22nd, 2013 and will go on until the stickers at the stations disappear.

Suggestions for development: The game can be co-created with citizens. They can use the Treasure Hunt platform to share stories, pictures (both old and new), experiences and development suggestions for the River City. They can also create their own stations, such as games, pop-up shops or restaurants, which can be tagged on the map.The River City can add more information to the Layar-app, e.g. an application where people can, through their smartphones or tablets, see how the city has planned the area to look like in the future.

A homepage for Treasure Hunt can be created including the map of the area. The River City can introduce the concept of Treasure Hunt at their homepage where a direct link to the app and the homepage can be found. Currently the stickers are temporal, and in places where people can tear them down. Ideally the River City would maintain the stickers at the stations and Treasure Hunt would be turned into a permanent activity. Additionally, the stations could have different levels of gaming, both creative, active and logic. ■

Stitching together the concepts The concept of Skatchwork, a combination of two metaphors patchwork and sketching, was the starting point to all three project groups.

The idea was to use this concept as an umbrella term and a link between the sub concepts. We decided together that the theme of the sub concepts would be storytelling, since it could be used in many different ways and in different contexts.

The River city gave us a brief where they wished that we would use civic engagement in our concepts.

The groups approached the task from different perspectives. One of the groups, Vattendraken, focused on water as a connecting element, whereas another group, My Block, dig into the diversity of the city.

The third group, Treasure Hunt, explored the hidden or forgotten places in the River city area. All the groups built their concepts around storytelling, but connected it differently to their concepts.

The concept of Vattendraken can be seen as the stitches in the overall concept of Skatchwork. It stitches together the different parts of the city, the patches. Vattendraken considers the river as a connecting element rather than segregating.

The aim is to change the function of the river from a mode of transportation to include more cultural and human-centric elements. The concept uses storytelling to connect and create stories, but also as a platform for citizens to be active. Civic engagement without facilitation is a difficult task and therefore Vattendraken creates a platform to empower the people of GĂśteborg.

The concept of My Block can be treated as the patches in the concept of Skatchwork. Diversity of the city reflects the different kinds of patches in a quilt. My Block records and expresses the diversity of the city and documents its continuous development. Storytelling is a central

element of the concept. It encourages and inspires people to share their stories and strives to show the diversity of the city through these stories.

It regards the city as a whole, not as segments or divided areas. My Block may lead to civic engagement, but currently it acts as a facilitator of a platform for people of GĂśteborg by people.

The third concept, Treasure Hunt, in turn can be seen as the sketch of the overall concept. Treasure Hunt sketches and creates new stories by taking people to secret or hidden places of the River city. New places and perspectives inspire people and create stories that people will share with others. The goal is to encourage and inspire people to explore places through a platform.

Treasure Hunt is also a concept that could be seen as a seedbed to civic engagement. â–

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15˚ 30˚ 11˚

Design concept The design process started democratically with voting. When we had reached an understanding about what our project should be, it seemed that participants had already started to form mental pictures of the identity. We made a quick post-it vote where each participant were asked to write 1) a color, 2) an emotion or a feeling, and 3) a word that they thought would describe how they saw the project.

After collecting and sorting the voting results it seemed clear that all of us had quite similar feelings about the identity. The results were used to generate ideas that we collected and discussed in a design team meeting. When the first design artifacts were done, a blog page was created to collect all the final design decision.

Typography During the design meeting we discussed about the typography and agreed that even though our “emotion words” were expressive and vivid, the typography should remain more traditional to give the project credibility and to have some ties to the visual language of Älvstranden Utveckling. We also felt that using a more showy typography would have made the look too busy and restricted other aspects of the design.

The typefaces selected were Caecilia LT Std and Fedra Serif A. These typefaces are undoubtebly modern, but they have the typographic heritage clearly visible. Both have tall x-height, open counters, and beautiful true italics – making them a very nice pair. In our case, Caecilia was meant to be used in general typography and Fedra when extended text was needed.

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Colors The results from the vote clearly indicated that most of us found the suitable color from the light blue – turquoise axis. This kind of color is already connected to Göteborg thanks to the well-known tram system. Also the fact that the project is closely related to the Göta älv helps to explain the popularity of the color blue.

Other hues – green, yellow, orange and red – got two votes each, making all of them equally popular.

As they form a nice warm spectrum contrasting with the cooler blue, we decided to use all of them as secondary colors.

Logo The first idea for the logo came when one of our groups started folding origami boats as a part of their engagement activities. We felt that origami connected well with our idea of sketching and the triangle planes resulting from folding connected to the idea of patchwork. To make the logo feel even more sketch-like, we remade the originally vector logo with watercolors.

Caecilia LT Std

abcdefg Fedra Serif A

abcdefg #00a7de #17c15c #ffd400 #ff7f00 #d30000

Other visual elements Using the triangles of the logo as a starting point, a more formalized design framework was created. This framework uses three different angles (11°, 15° and -30°) that can be used to create diagonal lines to be used a base for the design language.

Quick prototyping revealed that these could, with the addition of horizontal and vertical lines, make a variety of different designs suitable for our needs. ■

▲ The logo in vector and watercolor

Time: Thursday 30.5.2013 Place: Stadsmuseet, foyer

Exhibition

Exhibition Among several suggestions presented during the introduction brief, the class were left with the impression that the Älvrummet was the obvious choice for the exhibition and other suggestions (e.g. on a square in the city centre) would be more experimental or that it was up to us to find somewhere we thought suitable for the exhibition and presentation. The scheduled time for planning the exhibition were therefore pushed late in the project to discuss the location and concept for it, since no one knew what the outcome would be and how we would like to visualise and present our result. One thing was clear form the beginning and that was that the exhibition needed to be done in a public place and aimed to have an impact on the citizens.

When the discussion and planning for the exhibition was intensified during the last two weeks, it became clear to us that the exhibition and the presentation would not take place in the Älvrummet. We contacted Cornelia Lönnroth, head of the Göteborg City Museum, after a quick brainstorm concerning the location and she and her staff kindly invited us to exhibit our work and have our presentation in the foyer of the museum. A visit to the museum was made and we found the location perfect, the staff very friendly and helpful and the timing perfect e.g. since the Westpride week were having lectures there, the very same day. We hoped that this would mean that even more people and visitors would come to the location and that it would have a positive impact on our exhibition.

During the preparation and discussions concerning the exhibition, Franziska presented an idea that she had been influenced by, from another exhibition. The idea was to use threads, to create a web as a transparent wall and at the same time make it easy to attach and experiment with the information attached to the web. This idea turned

out to be great for the location we were provided with and that helped us create the feeling of a room in the big foyer at the City Museum. At the same time the web walls made the space feel big and welcoming to visitors at the museum.

We decided on presenting each of the cases with one poster each, with similar design to unite and connect them to the Skatchwork that also was illustrated on one overview poster presenting the Skatchwork concept and us, the Business and Design class. The different cases were given the freedom to present and exhibit their method and work with it in a way they thought was fitting for them.

The Presentation On the 29th of May 2013 we welcomed a small group of guests to the opening of our pop-up exhibition, for one day at the Göteborg City Museum with a minor ceremony followed by our presentation. We welcomed everyone with a short summary of the intense and very creative and developing ten weeks during which the project was running. We introduced our overall

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concept of Skatchwork and how that connects the three cases and the methods used in them.

The Playground group presented their case with insights in their work and how they narrowed down their ideas in order to make their case tangible. They succeeded their goal to create and install their case in the area of River city, available for the public, rather then having a report with the concept presented as an idea for someone else to actualize. A short demonstration of the case was given and the presenter showed how easy participants, or players as the called them, could interact. The group also presented their vision of how the concept could be developed further and grow with civic engagement and how they saw it as something iterative that can improve and change shape

and enlacement over time.

Next group, the Cultural probes, presented their research process and methods followed by the result of a method with the same name as the group. With the help of external participants the research was done during a week where their participants, in short terms, documented their everyday life. The outcome of this was on display and presented as a patchwork, backed by maps of GĂśteborg arrange to form a River City.

The third group is called the Vattendraken (water dragon), named and influenced by an old chinese restaurant in the city, built to float on water and put out of use some years back, now resting in the east part of the river city area. The Vattendraken made a great impact on the group during research for the

project and became a symbol for their case. The Vattendraken was presented as a symbol for interaction, events and meeting point for the citizens of GĂśteborg and how it could work as a mobile location where people can come to be inspired and share ideas, stories and knowledge. A short movie was presented, visualising in a very nice and inspiring way how a year, or series of events, with the Vattendraken could be.

We then summerized the presentations, pinpointing how the cases fit together with eachother and the overall Skatchwork concept.

We opened up for questions and discussion and then a short break were followed by reflection and evaluation. Meanwhile the exhibition was opened for anyone to interact with and be inspired by. â–

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Exhibition posters

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Exhibition posters

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reflection

Reflection why do we exist and what do we believe in?

This project started out as a search and exploration for what design methods and a design-driven strategy can do in the context of city development. However, at this stage of the project, a more existentialist approach to the role of Business & Design has emerged. The process has ended in a reflection, not only on the process of developing our three cases, but foremost on the subject of our own role and the role of Business & Design. This discussion will end a year of working with new and radical concepts and processes and it is only natural to start to think about ourselves; what have we learned, and most of all, what comes next?

Extractions from a mindmap-process In the report, there are three case studies connected through a few concepts such as narratives, SkatchWork, public participation etc.

These concepts created a common ground for the continuation of the project and served us a lens to guide our understanding of the task and of our role. These three case studies have many similarities but also some differences.

The task was to craft, explore and search to understand:

• a design-driven strategy for RiverCity Göteborg • the meaning of the vision from a citizen perspective • the embodiment of a vision for a changing city • the realizations of visions through citizens involvement • who the target group is • methods to activate and co-create in municipality vision work.

When using wordings such as crafting, design, embody, methods and activate, we tend to indulge in a more pragmatic work. This is also how we understand the core of the design-driven strategy concept. But, in connecting the vision and mapping the strategic road of its fulfillment we need to reflect on value and meaning, decide on our percpective on ourselves, others and the world we live in. For whom, why, what and how?

In the strategic crafting we have focused on the use of design methods, targeting the citizens. The inhabitants of Göteborg stood in the forefront in the description of the assignment, the target group also fitted our perspective of the city as an entity of human lives. The focus on the citizens as the target group also goes hand in hand with in the user centered approach as it is

known from design. But there are other perspectives on the city, other target groups to take into account too. We did not, and this is a discussion we miss out in retrospect.

Maybe the pragmatic approach has narrowed down the discussions too quickly; maybe we were too eager to get organized in solving the task, or did we cut the analysis phase short due to the lack of time, or guidance?

The mindmap, introducing this report, is very much a visualization of how to approach and understand how we have worked during the last six weeks. The report should not be considered as the answer to any specific question but as a documentation of our process both as a project and as a group of students.

In the process we have made several different assumptions, which led to different perspectives in understanding the brief. And just like the mindmap is non-linear so was the process in this project.

The core of the RiverCity vision stands for sustainablility and the unification of a segregated and divided city. The concept of the SkatchWork has served as a hub for our exploring mindmapping journey. We have choosen to study this patchwork of lives using sketching approaches, to unfold the embedded personal meanings and support

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co-existance and co-creation. This is done to reach the diversity and escape the normative aspirations, to include and cherish instead of unify or conform.

From this perspective the design-driven strategy serves our ends well in understanding vision work.

In an environment characterized by transformation and uncertainty, we can not claim to fully grasp the world we are living in. Appreciating that, we might turn to the pragmatic small scale daily explorations, it later apply to our understandings in the larger picture. So, what has this work brought to us? What conclusions have we reached and what ends do they serve?

From the perspective of a Business & Design student In this project a large focus has been upon design methods. In this sense, many different design methods has been used in the development of the three case studies. However, we must also acknowledge the strenghts and weakness of these methods. Just like strategy development, design methods are depending on the context. And in this sense, what can Business & Design support city development with? We must acknowledge the importance of different kinds of knowledge as well as understand the complexity and diversity of the organizational context in which we work, and it is difficult to find a more complex organizational structure than a city.

Probably, Business & Design as a discipline do not have all the answers to city development, there is a need to work with other people to open up for other discussions, guidance and creating content.

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Our exploration of citizen involvement in the realization of the RiverCity vision work was presented in the entrence of Gรถteborg Stadsmuseum during one beautiful sunny day in the end of May. To embody and exhibit is a direct way of presenting the essence or meaning. The Business & Design program serves as a relevant context, for business to open up from traditional framworks of assumptions, for design to relate to existing platforms within industry and society. But in our search for understanding, working to meet the task given, the Integrated Project course came to reveal a lack of overall content. When gathering our thoughts and cases on the RiverCity vision, we stood there pretty empty handed. We had been dedicated, organized and focused on solving the task, but in our understanding of what, we had no answers.

Our work with the three case studies missed out of the essence and the meaning. What are we really exploring and why? Is it democracy? For example, we are questioning the business perspective but when doing so, we have nothing to offer in return. We are using design-methods, but we only reach the idea generation and the formulation of concepts, and when trying to embody or exhibit our work it becomes obvious how we miss out the understanding of an essence or meaning.

To reach such outcomes in our interdiciplinary work, we need means to guide our discussions.

As it works now we have full freedom to choose what ever theories and fields we see fit, and create our own lens, to understand ourselves and the work we live in. That is a fantastic freedom for diversity, but it also leaves us with no course of direction - an ad hoc strategy by which

it is easy to get lost. Or by far much worse, do not get any where at all.

Instead of exhibiting, communicating a powerful message to a given audience, we composed the three case studies into a spatial presentation of Riverlab, adressing our three tutors. By the time of the exhibition it had become clear to us that the content was insufficient to match the expressive format, instead we presented a patchwork of thoughts lacking the core of a gestalt.

Living the strategy What we can be sure of is that we are not the same people who entered this project six weeks ago, just like the city of Gรถteborg is not the same city today as it was six weeks ago. But what has changed? In all strategies there is the importance of knowing the context, both inside and outside the organisation. Gรถteborg is in a never ending evolving process, both internal and external processes create changes, which makes it difficult to create a fixed strategy.

In this project, a large focus has been upon design methods, however a single design method might not be the answer for a design-driven strategy. A design-driven strategy is a process, constantly evolving, which always forces us to ask ourself, what will the next step be? A design-driven strategy can not be created with a single design method. If a design-driven strategy can be seen as a mindset, design methods becomes tools. These tools must, however, be understood in different stages or levels. The design methods must always be put into context, within which the process or outcome must be reflected upon. There is a need to be aware of that designing do not end with the design method, it is

only the beginning. The question comes to how we take it to the next level?

City development can be seen as a non-linear system, a wicked problem that cannot be solved. But what that means is that if we see this development as a game, it is possible to change the rules while playing, i.e. hacking. In this sense, it is important to understand that different parts of the city change with different speed. As mentioned in the introduction, there is a difference between building a city and building city life. The buildings and artifacts change much slower than the people and the city life. This means that the objects changing slower might prevent the faster changing objects from developing. A design-driven strategy might be able to cope with this complexity in city development. In this sense a design-driven strategy can be compared to a lubricant between the parts changing at different pace.

In the vision there is a strong focus on sustainable development, the question is what kind of outcome is wanted from this concept. All cases concerned narratives and all cases also touched upon different kind of interventions to recognize these narratives. These narratives represent a kind of energy created by the life of people and organizations in the city, the question then becomes how to create interventions that create more energy within the concept of sustainable development.

However, even if a design-driven strategy can be good in an ever-changing context, there are some conditions which are necessary for creating success. Some of these

conditions are experience, knowledge, team-work and flexibility.

During our working process we have got an understanding of these factors, the team-work and flexibility has worked out well. However, our experience and knowledge of city planning has been lacking. We have learned different working approaches and design methods, but what are these without knowledge about the context?

We are not sure that we have answered the question of what a design-driven strategy is, but we are getting more aware of our perspectives through our interactions with others. This enhanced awareness is followed by more questions, for example of how we can continue to work to understand and develop Business & Design as a concept?

What are our future roles? And what are our real contributions to society?

What is the core concept of this interdisciplinary Business & Design? Is it sustainability, creativity, growth, competitive advantages, organization or something else? In any case we search for knowledge and tools to explore the field. We need to give the concept a meaning to search and questions to discover.

Vocabulary is somewhat missing, but to a larger extent it is the content we run out of. Without a concept it becomes an endless search instead of a methodical discovery.

And what do we need, to get to that level? We all have an understanding and a urge to use design for creating more than a surface. We want to create meaning and content. In a world changing and evolving faster than ever, there are great opportunities and needs for such creations. The design process might be one way of finding and creating these opportunities, e.g. reaching to connect questions like sustainability and lucrative lives for all. But there is also a need for guidance. Where do we find this guidance? We suggest that we turn to philosophy as that includes logic as well as aesthetics and ethics; as in understanding our role in city planning, we need to understand what a society really is.

Business & Design becomes normative if we think we can solve every problem with the help of our mindset, working processes and tools. Our work depend upon the diversity of knowledge and fields of studies. Our professional future depends upon how well we understand the world we live in and how well equipped we are to deal with the next step. â–

What comes next?

What knowledge?

As has been concluded here above, we have not fully developed a design-driven strategy yet. What is needed then, to take the next step?

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Defining the concept of Skatchwork Skatchwork is the combination of two words, patchwork and sketching. By using the metaphor of a patchwork we are viewing the city/ community/river city/organization in different ways. We are allowed to ask questions on what it actually is that holds the different pieces of the patchwork together and what they consist of. Exploring these factors will be an interesting way of looking at the three different methods both separately and together. By viewing the city from a distance we create a passive understanding of it. To complement another perspective in the shape of sketching was added.

Sketching is something active that we do together. Instead of passively discovering something we use design to visualize what it is we see and experience. In sketching you don’t need a language, it is the visual that speaks.