Designing with Dialogue

A Dialogue on

Designing with Dialogue

September 15, 2008Strategic Innovation Lab, Toronto

Greg JudelmanBruce Mau Design

Peter Jones, PhDRedesign Research

mailto:[email protected]




CHECK-IN:

Introduce yourself and tell us why you’re here.

A DIALOGUE ON DESIGNING WITH DIALOGUE STRATEGIC INNOVATION LAB, SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

QUESTION:

Share a recent challenge at work, where communication seems to be at theheart of the matter.


Why Designwith Dialogue?


Complex problems are bigger than we are. To design we must engage collective wisdom.

» Our organizations are complex problems

» Isolated solutions are insufficient

» Stakeholders must own transformation initiatives

» Diverse viewpoints & needs must be considered in design

» We, as designers, must listen.


Modes of Dialogue

» Socratic and Athenian Dialogue

» Gadamer’s hermeneutics, Fusion of Horizons

» Buber’s dialogue with self, other, God

» Habermas’ Communicative Action

» Bakhtin’s dialogical imagination

» Freire’s dialogue in education & social action

» Structured Dialogue, Dialogic Design

» Bohm’s (open generative) dialogue collective meaning

» Facilitated Dialogue, Art of Hosting


Mapping Dialogueto Design

GENERATIVE

DEMOCRATIC

STRATEGIC

OPEN GUIDED STRUCTURED

Strategic EngagementCharettes

Scenario building

Town Hall sessions

Co-laboratoriesof Democracy

Art of Hosting

Brainstorming

Socratic inquiryUser co-design


Art of Hosting:Social technologies used to create a container for collective intelligence to emerge.


Art of Hosting:Circle.World Cafe.Open Space.Appreciative Inquiry.


FROM ‘STUCK’ TO FLOW:

"A group of theatre entrepreneurs that has founded a company

together is experiencing team issues and differences of opinion on

scaling up their enterprise. We played a FlowGame, and together

we discovered patterns of behaviour that were impeding the putting

of their individual and collective dreams into healthy flow."


Art of HostingReal-World Stories

CHANGE AGENTS:

"Within a major international bank, Open Space has become the

core technology for meeting and generating inspired new actions for

a community of change agents. Participants self-organise around a

core questions of concern or inspiration that ranged from internal

matters such as employee engagement to external opportunities

such as 'what is this bank doing about poverty in the world?'"



REAL-TIME COMMUNITY

"A development agency dealing with digital divide and e-inclusion

issues in communities around the world hosted a gathering last year

where we designed a World Café process to explore:

What are our shared learnings about what makes a best/most sustainable telecentre practice?

What are the synergies and opportunities for inspired regional and international collaboration between us?

The group of 50 people discovered - and lived - the variety of

specific experiences and contexts that are shared, which reflects a

'local ecology' and identified 9 action areas to take forward."



MARTIN BUBER:

“There is genuine dialogue - no matter

whether spoken or silent - where each of

the participants really has in mind the other

or others in their present and particular

being and turns to them with the intention

of establishing a living mutual relation

between himself and them. There is

technical dialogue, which is prompted solely

by the need of objective understanding. And

there is monologue disguised as

dialogue…”


Bohm’s 3 basic conditions for Dialogue:

1. Participants must suspend assumptions. ‘What is essential here is

the presence of the spirit of dialogue, which is in short, the ability to

hold many points of view in suspension, along with a primary

interest in the creation of common meaning.’

2. Dialogue occurs when people appreciate that they are involved in a

mutual quest for understanding and insight. ‘A Dialogue is

essentially a conversation between equals.’

3. A facilitator who ‘holds the context’ of dialogue, who is "leading

from behind."


ALECO CHRISTAKIS ON STRUCTURED DIALOGUE:

“Given the complexity of political, social,

economic, & technological issues of the

Information age, & the strong linkages

among those issues, is it reasonable to

expect that the approach for engaging

people in dialogue 2500 years ago during

the Golden Age of the Athenians would

work today?”


World CaféCafé Etiquette

» Focus on what matters.

» Contribute your thinking.

» Speak your mind and heart.

» Listen to understand.

» Link and connect ideas.

» Listen together for insights and deeper questions.

» Play, Doodle, Draw – Have fun!


QUESTION:

Where is dialogue most needed in your work and collaboration?


QUESTION:

How might dialogue be used to tap the collective intelligence in a complex group situation?


QUESTION:

What are the opportunities for dialogue in your practice?


CHECK-OUT:

What key ideas have emerged for you in our conversations tonight?


WRAP-UP:

Reflections on tonight’s processes.


September 15, 2008Strategic Innovation Lab, Toronto

Greg [email protected]

Peter Jones, [email protected]

A Dialogue on

Designing with Dialogue





Designing with Dialogue

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