MAD

• Phd Cultural

Studies/KULeuven

• Research coordinator

Social Spaces

0. Social Design: question

Question for lot of

practitioners today

How to create for social

exchange in a local

community, museum,

library, with a design

product,... ?

Real life situations?

1. Social Design, links to participatory

culture

“negotiated, oppositional, and deconstructive readings, configuration and

selection, and construction are all, in their own specific way, part of what I

call participatory media culture (Raessens)”

“hybrid constellation of information technology and large user numbers

interacting in a socio-technical ecosystem (Schäfer)”

(1) political level discourse that stimulates social progress.

(2) cultural critique demanding the reconfiguration of power relations.

(3) economic level participatory creation and things, amplified by information and

communication networks, enable broader, faster, and lower-cost co-ordination of activities.

(4) psychological and social levels value and power of participatory things, is related to the

level in which various actors were engaged in the creation process.

(5) specifications of technology on a technical-structural level, participatory media are

considered many-to-many media.

2. Social Design: the components

Social design can be a support for many disciplines to create

social exchange.

Defining interactions between people, things, contexts

2.1. Social Design: context

• Evolutions in new media and society (see other module)

2.1. Social design: Things

• Thinking in concrete (collection of) things that can

mediate = exchange devices. A book, a chair, an art work,...

• Things always in process of change, ambiguous, never

agreed upon, ... Beyond classical chair, book, market

(independent on medium)

Chair

• Maartje Steenkamp

• Highchair

Book

• Unfortunates, Johnson

• Pages can be shuffled

Contexmapping

• Toys that mediate

understanding designers

and children with autism

(e.g. mirror/self-awareness,

buttons/explorative....)

• RichCollections

2008/2009, Helma van

Rijn

• http://www.helmavanrijn.n

l/Projects/richcollections-

2008-2009

Digital environment/tool

• Pachube

Pachube is a little like YouTube,

except that, rather than

sharing videos, Pachube

enables people to monitor

and share real time

environmental data from

sensors that are

connected to the internet

Things

• Can be endlessly

remixed

• open source and free

source: program's source

code available to a

distributed network of

people (Linus Torvalds)

• Pong: atari, breakout,

station, noisepong

(Bollansée and Standaert)

2.2. Social Design: people

• Social design thinking engages all relevant people in a

process of creation for social exchange.

• Library owner, creative, end-user (library visitor), his/her

children,....

People

• Little boxes

• Groupware

(glocalisation)

• Networkware

Networkware and human autonomy

People's autonomy and possibilities for participation

increased. Benkler: it improves their capacity to do

more:

(1) for and by themselves;

(2) in loose commonality with others, without the

constrains of a price system or traditional hierarchical

models of social and economic organisation; and

(3) in formal organisations that operate outside the

market sphere.

Network associated with different types of

audiences/users

• Stakeholder

• Prosumer (Toffler) – professional consumer - mass

customisation (e.g. Bricks mass produced, services

around construction customised)

• Produser: producer – user (Axel Bruns) (e.g. Music

sharing sites)

• ProAm: professional amateur (Leadbeater and Miller)

(e.g. Sims, linux)

Inequality did not disappear

• Participation inequality in culture and online is not

radically changed

• 90 percent lurks, 9 percent contributes occasionally, 1

percent creates

2.3. Social Design: relation

Social design wants to reconfigure

relations people -things - contexts.

Goal?

formal (design process)

Informal (online, in the library,...)

implicit participation, without being very

conscious (e.g. clicking a flickr picture and

in that way changing its position)

explicit relation people-environment

e.g. social field, engaging people in

community.

Informal participation (explicit and implicit)

Formal participation (design methods)

3. Formal social design: Two visions

• Critical theory, design, art.... : friction

• Community theory, design, art,...: collaboration

3.1. Critical vision: friction

• The Gods Must be crazy: Coke bottle (8.41)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66pTPWg_wUw

• Friction set language games into play

Counterculture gave birth to many

innovations

Steward Brand, 1965 Whole

Earth Catalogue

It granted access to tools for a

person to "find his own

inspiration, shape his own

environment, and share

his adventure with

whoever is interested

• The Well (since 1985)

• You own Your Own

Words

Paradox: Marketing & friction

• Apple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

• IBM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LR1Xvvch18

Today, Manifesto of Open Disruption and

Participation

Eric Paulos statements about ubiquitous computing and

design: “Ubiquitous technology is with us and is indeed

allowing us to communicate, buy, sell, connect, and do

miraculous things. However, it is time for this technology to

empower us to go beyond finding friends, chatting with

colleagues, locating hip bars, and buying music”.

“We want our tools to sing of not just productivity but of our

love of curiosity, the joy of wonderment, and the freshness

of the unknown”.

Today, antagonistic linkage

Ippolita, Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter: Web2.0. celebrated as

most important triggers for participation, do not produce the

friction early participatory culture or subcultures, reproduce old

opinions and cultural patterns

to have truly participatory and revolutionary potential, tools

should use technique of antagonistic linkage

transform tools into things that enable “the plurality of

expression of networked life”

Expect/allow appropriation of your

thing/product/...

• Koulamata, Machinama

• Hacked game engine to

tell story about Paris

riots

Integration appropriation in professional

process

• Haier

• Sweet potatoes

Critical Design

• Reaction against user

centred design (people

can test

products/services we

make)

• Critical things make us

think/participate

• Social Mobiles, Ideo

Vision

• “From our expert view point we can create systems that

disrupt the status quo, allow people to participate in a

better, different,... way” (cultural)

3.2. Community visions: collaboration

• Two ingredients

(1) the collaborative production of things,

(2) the recognition of the individual contribution in this

collaborative process.

Collaborative production

In a process of collaborative engagement, people collaborate in each

other's content to extend or improve it.: aided by environments that

provide or point to tools or structures that pre-configure collaboration, like

Wikipedia.

Can be supported by formal classes and courses, rehearsals, training

sessions and informal mentor-ship: most experienced can pass on

knowledge and practices to the less experienced.

Can be developed in an iterative, evolutionary way: evolution of things

could be made traceable in remixes or via archives, through various

stages and a multi-layered document (e.g.: Pachube discloses online

which participatory adaptations were made to their application).

Participatory work must be experienced as common property wherein

people can discover individual merit.

Peer recognition

Room for user-led content production

Heterarchical community structures (very open and structured at the

same time, like open source environments): low barriers to artistic

expression and civic engagement, with - on the other side - strong

support for producing and sharing creations.

Alternative approaches to intellectual property (e.g. open source or creative

commons).

Participatory work has to be rewarded via the representation of members’

views to the wider community and society at large.

Forms of peer recognition through events, displays and performances that

allow people to believe that their (potential) contributions are valued

Participatory Design

• Users, other disciplines are partners in creation process

• Originates in collective design

• Trade unions 1970s: computer technologies in

workplace, designing systems that empower all parties:

workers, employers, machines

• 1981, in North America, the Computer Professionals for

Social Responsibility (CPSR)

Variants

Community architecture (Turner, Habraken,

Alexander,...)

Universal Design: ‘Design for All’ has two

goals: 1. creating environments, artefacts

and experiences that are functional and

pleasurable for everybody, including

people with disabilities, 2. the rejection of

the division of people into able and

disabled people, to avoid stigma. “Focus

on ‘handicap situations’ instead of

‘handicapped people’ ”

Inclusive design (disabilities reader)

Co-design

Community Art

• Made by OYA

• Textile workshops in

favelas Brazil

Vision

• 1. people have the right to participate (politics)

• 2. systems are better when you allow people to

participate in the process (technical)

3.3. Design participation

• More hybrid model

• Combines benefits of

friction and social

connection

• 1. political, 2. technical,

3. cultural domains

combined

Documentary

• Stavager, Jeanne Van

Heeswijk

• It runs in the

neighbourhood

DIY video

• The Patching Zone

• Digital Dreams Festival

Pass through video

• World Wide Westwijk

• Peter Westenberg

Participatory platform

• Cool media, Hot talk

show

Participatory setting

• Talkaoke

• http://www.youtube.com

/view_play_list?

p=61AC3C7F98E4A235

Hybrid model of remixing

• All (not expert or user)

perspectives, designers,

users, other discplines

work together in

'tactical' ways

• Over time, in

sustainable ways

• Remixing 'templates'

templates

Habraken proposed to split the built

environment in two spheres: support

structure reflects the communal realm

of decision making, which is the

constant element in a ongoing process

of change.

’Detachable units’, or ‘Housing assembly

kits’ he gave explicit room to the

individual.

Frans van der Werf, Molenvliet,

Rotterdam, 1974

templates

• Isadora

• Real-time manipulation

of video

Professional implementation of remixing

• Bricophone

• Mobile phone infrastructure, set up network of about

10.000 people

• Wireless sensor network technology out of industrial

technology

• In any place: far away, festivals

GRL

• GRL: “It is a low-cost eye-tracking

apparatus & custom software that

allows graffiti writers and artists

with paralysis resulting from

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to

draw using only their eyes”

Design Participation

• Expert/critical matches the

social

• Disciplines create risky

things encouraging tactical

behaviour by other

perspectives

• Tactical behaviour during

process has predictive value

for tactical behaviour after

process is over

Risky things

• Used in formal/informal creation processes

• open/friction

Risky things

• LilyPad Arduino (practices)

entering new communities as

strange element and coming out

in new forms, re-assemblies, old

and new, digital and physical

• documentation!!!

Risky things

Every thing has potential to become

risky

Risky things: people are agent

Routes and Routines

(Constant vzw)

Risky things: relate to context

Patching Zone. Go-for-iT!

• Creating hybrid objects

between

– observations youth

culture

– low tech

prototypes, Tic-tac-

toe: folk game

• Image Patching Zone

Risky thing: relation of remix is possible

Unfold.

Ontwerpbox

l'Artisan Electronique

Risky thing: time = most difficult

Patching Zone. Go-for-iT!

• final installation: hybrid

site specific and larger

folk culture

• Time problematics of

sustainability of outputs

of social design

Image Patching Zone

Conclusion: Social Design

• Things are drivers of formal and informal participatory creation

processes

• Always prototypes (>< end-products) creating

– Vision 1: friction

– Vision 2: open/collaboration

– Vision 3: remix into time

• Social design proposes different approach in art education, creative

professions and policy: cross-overs users, artists, engineers,

architects, sociologists, relate in tactical ways and co-construct things

+ hand over control from time to time and know how to hand over

Contact

liesbeth.huybrechts@mda.khlim.be

www.socialspaces.be

www.e-cultuur.be

http://twitter.com/liesbit