Indian Design, Technology, Art and Culture Blogs and Magazines

November 4, 2011 at 11:53 AM · Filed under art, Design, india, photography, visual culture

We had a little show and tell at IFTF on Friday where we all brought in examples of good things to read.

I wanted to bring Indian blogs that I like a lot. But I also thought I needed more than my own finds – ones that focused on design, technology, art and/or culture. Because it was late in San Francisco, I was overlapping significantly with the daylight part of India’s diurnal cycle. Who better to ask where the good content was than some trusted colleagues from the subcontinent?

It turned out to be a little more difficult than I expected. I got a handful of good responses when I posted it on my twitter feed – maybe 35% of all those I asked. Some replies were more relevant for what I was looking for: well organized, thoughtful commentary, minimal ads, a clear editorial focus, and, above all, unabashedly Indian.

However, a few replies also cited how difficult it was to think of blogs or magazines – from a specifically Indian context. I’m not sure why it’s so difficult. Perhaps much of Indian culture is derivative in one way or another and that we often run into conflicts when we cite what is “purely” Indian (I’m gonna get in trouble for this last sentence . Or maybe the blogs are just difficult to find, in a different language, or just not cool enough.

It also seems a lot of blogs don’t maintain momentum – as if they aren’t “serious” enough to be sanctioned. I was super bummed not to see much from the Center for Experimental Media Arts (CEMA) or even from Srishti for that matter. I guess new media isn’t supposed to be linkable from home institutions (but please correct me if I’m wrong).

Then again, maybe it’s not allowed. You’d be surprised how many social disincentives as leveraged at people just trying to share good ideas, insights, and sensemaking (#justmyexperience). But that’s changing – I hope.

In any case, here’s a first go, and this list is fantastic.

What are your favorites? I’d be especially down for some Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, or other links too. Post ‘em in the comments if you like – and better yet – tell me why I’m wrong. Enjoy!

http://issuu.com/wkdelhi/docs
Portland Ad Agency Weiden and Kennedy opened an office in Delhi. This is their culture mag. Really well-done, visually-compelling, and curiously out of the mainstream – but then I guess that where the advertising peeps always play.

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/
I’ve been really impressed with the quality of articles coming from caravan. Timely topics (the first I ever read was about UIDwallas) and good layout.

http://www.randomspecific.com/
A killer visual culture and design research-based collection. Smart commentary and vibrant, reality-based images permeate the senses.

http://praja.in
Want to know what’s happening in the mobility and public transport scene in Bangalore? This is transport politics writ large. Great levels of participation.

http://designpublic.in/
A series of conversations about design and innovation in the public interest – by the good peeps at CKS.

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/
It seems a bunch of massive media outlets are learning to pay attention to India.

http://masalachaionline.blogspot.com/
Desi graphic design.

http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/
Respected NID Prof. M P Ranjan on design thinking, design research, and some massive issues in sustainability and inclusion.

http://www.hobnook.com/
TBD

http://www.sarai.net/
Old school, super school, the source for critical thinking about cities, new media, art, and culture

http://poolmagazine.wordpress.com/
Looks like Tiger Beat – for the Indian design caste.

http://helterskelter.in/
chaos and control. like it.

http://www.openthemagazine.com/
Bordering on info overload, but the writing looks promising.

http://www.designwala.org/
Arch + design for developing world.

http://www.medianama.com/
Tech and business details.

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A Brief for Collaborative Design

July 7, 2011 at 8:13 PM · Filed under community interaction design, complex systems, Design, design ecology, proposals, teaching and learning

This is a talk I gave at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) for their Masters of Fine Arts program in Collaborative Design (MFACD). In the talk I outlined how I would respond to so-called wicked problems using the tools and practices of an academic program in collaborative design.

The more interesting thing to come out of the talk for me was a brief introduction to the concept of a coefficient of art in the context of indirect reciprocity for cooperation in and among groups (see pg 4).

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Insights on the Architecture of Collaborative Design

June 28, 2011 at 2:05 AM · Filed under architecture, community interaction design, Design, design ecology, service design

I recently visited Stanford University’s school of design.  They have put a lot of effort into uncovering how infrastructure affects collaborative spaces for design use and practice, or rather, what design groups need to really succeed.  Click the image for a pdf (1mb) of insights they turned into enabling resources for collaborative and design activities.

Thanks to Scott Witthoft for his great tour! There’s also an article here from FastCompany outlining heuristics for generating better collaborative infrastructure.

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Doing Intelligent Design with the Society for the Study of Evolution

February 27, 2011 at 12:05 PM · Filed under boundary objects, Design, making it public, metaphors, service design, symbolic systems, visual culture

Towards the last quarter of 2010, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) held an open contest to design its new logo. They constraints they articulated included dimensions and the need for it to show the work “evolution” or “SSE”.

I’ve been a member of SSE in the past, and I’ve also been interested in the dynamic between values, visual communication, and scientific advancement. SSE’s mission is to promote the scientific understanding of organic evolution, and that role has always occupied it with controversies around evolution as science and cultural currency.

For these reasons I was very excited to give it a shot. I was also very anxious to see how some of my current and former peers would respond to this sort of public engagement around something so central to communication of values – a logo. Designers and organizations that actively seek to build relationships with their customers and stakeholders know that branding and identity creation and co-creation is extremely important for a holistic engagement strategy. I count many of the stakeholders involved as friends, so I took on this project with a very deep sense of urgency and meaning. However, because it was a contest, all of the design work would be speculative. Still, I was excited to see how the SSE community and its stakeholders would react to the range of designs.

As a result of the contest, the competition generated more than 40 logos from more than 30 designers. However in the end, the kind of community discussion and open engagement never materialized. A letter about the results had this to say:

A slide show of the logos was sent to a panel consisting of the SSE council as well as a graphic artist and a publisher’s representative. Everyone was asked to explain what they liked about their favorite designs, and we took a poll. Originally, we had intended to send a selection of designs to our membership for a vote, but the council was unable to achieve consensus on which designs these could be. Neither was the council ready to adopt any particular submission as our logo. We did award the $1000 prize for the design that was most highly favored by the panel, but we will continue to work with to devise a logo that suits our needs.

As I read this I thought it was hugely interesting. A handful of things stand out:

1. Non-experts (except perhaps for the graphic artist) are being asked to make strategic decisions about branding, identity, and service design (somewhat ironic in my opinion).
2. Along with #1 is a tacit assumption that such expertise exists.
3. A formalized plan was scuttled because a non-expert group didn’t have a system for making clear choices.
4. It wasn’t made clear at the outset how the designs would be evaluated or how the visual characteristics and metaphors should map to the organization’s goals and mission.
5. It was stated in the end that there are needs, but these remain hidden or unarticulated.
6. A small number of people were involved in the selection process and were not ready to adopt any of the submissions.

As you can probably guess, it was likely a pretty lively discussion among the group. They acknowledged that the the diverse range of styles and content were useful for them to see. They also indicated that they would be more effective in working with a graphical artist to design a logo that expresses the identity of the society. That’s great for them, but has the community at large gained anything from the process, and will it embrace future designs any better than it has in the past?

Working with designers can be tough, but working with the right ones can be refreshing, especially when they are actively involved early in the process. It’s pretty clear from the context that the society was working under the archaic model of design, where logos are pretty things that don’t do much other than identify the organization – and also that everyone’s opinion is both valid and meaningful. Designers know their stuff, and they can make informed judgements about seemingly minor differences.

I do think that through the process the society gained a better understanding of how the quest for identity formation reveals unspoken values and commitments in some interesting ways. That’s one of the better things that design does: it makes things visible. Values becomes lines on paper. Assumptions get turned into letterforms. Goals become shades of color. What is really cool is how the design process can activate those discussions. Indeed it can lead to co-creation.

The value of design is to create a substrate for the vocalization of values that people are unable or unwilling to share. This is participatory design, and there are a variety of techniques for making this a more robust process. The first iteration in design is always just a starting point, with many examples to continue the process with. The design process is a continuous one with multiple rounds of iteration and feedback. Values (usually derived from mission statements) are what SSE is effectively selling to its members and society at large. With values, there is never an end point or product. A logo is simply an indicator of those values; it can be honest or something different altogether.

Given the public controversy that can sometimes follow a group like this, engaging in a forthright community discussion about the values it intends and how they are perceived can itself be valuable for opening up the process of doing science to the lay public. I agree that it can be dangerous, but then again, physics has been very good at doing this, perhaps because its outcomes are used by so many people in everyday life and because its concepts can also be so abstract.

In general, designers are discouraged from doing speculative work – i.e. work that contributed as a reasonably finished product in anticipation of future compensation. Contests are basically speculative work, but they usually trade off the probability of a financial award with other benefits – usually in the form of some public exposure. Most designers will agree that speculative work and competitions usually devalues the profession (see AIGA’s policy on spec work). Non-profits often exploit this kind of work, though I doubt other consulting services would receive similar treatment (imagine a contest for accounting services for example). So one part of a publicly engaging discussion is just that – publicizing the results, however satisfactory, so that it opens up additional communication that may not serve the direct interests of the SSE.

I do feel it was unfortunate that the committee wasn’t able send the preliminary designs to the wider SSE community. They indicated that they didn’t have an effective mechanism in place for responding to such input. If I had been able, I would have told them about this thing called Web 2.0 and gone on to demonstrate the variety of tools for collaboration (e.g. OpenIDEO, Kluster, or some of GOOD’s contests). I think it would have served as a fun and compelling way to engage in a discussion about science and society.

P.S. The visual identity system you see here is up for grabs;)

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Platforms for Co-Creation

November 5, 2010 at 12:30 AM · Filed under community interaction design, Design, design ecology, digital design, games, heterarchy, interaction, making it public, network entrepreneurship, preferences, service design

On Tuesday evening I had the pleasure of meeting up with some fellow UM alums during an information session for the Ross Business School. I didn’t graduate with an MBA; I did my MFA in the School of Art & Design. Nonetheless, I was welcomed and had the opportunity to share my perspectives on what makes Michigan different from other universities and experiences. Actually, I think it is becoming increasingly relevant that students in art and design connect with business students and vice versa.

The highlight of the evening was a lecture by Venkat Ramaswamy, Hallman Fellow of Electronic Business and Professor of Marketing at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. During his visit to India he was launching his new book, “The Power of Co-Creation”, and he gave a very nice explanation of co-creation to the audience of prospective MBAs and Alums.

For me, the lecture was especially timely. I have been diving deep into the theory and practice of service design for the last eight months. My goal is to use knowledge of complex systems and dematerialized practices as options for thinking, teaching, and solving problems that can benefit from the engagement of multiple stakeholders. Some of these problems range from the provision of water resources, delivery of health services, discovery of patterns in public health, the maintenance and design of infrastructure, or even how learning is measured and fed back into teaching and course content.

Prof. Ramaswamy’s talk focused on examples that demonstrated co-creation as a paradigm for value creation. He provided a sample of instances where the design of platforms focuses on interactions between enterprise providers (supply chain, enterprise planning, customer relationship) on one hand – and stakeholders on the other. The key part of the value creation lies in the assembly of a platform through which the process of engagement and co-creation can take place. In this way, engagement happens first, enterprise second.

Venkat’s first example came from civic planning in Seoul, South Korea. OASIS is a platform for engagement with public services. It facilitates citizen engagement with the city council using a combination of online, video, and face-to-face platforms. To make it an effective platform, complaints are not allowed – only suggestions. The facilitators also ask/keep the suggestions limited to the goals that have already been determined. So the question civic participants have to ask themselves is, “How do we achieve our goals?”

The participation process begin with (1) suggestions which get tagged by the participants. The tags allow people to start structured (2) discussions of the ideas. About 12% then get taken for (3) off-line examinations. Eventually there are (4) Seoul OASIS meetings which are filmed live and where stakeholders and civic service providers get to interact. Finally, a handful of suggestions make it to (5) implementation where the project gets documented along with benchmarks and other accountability checks.

Another great example for India is how the Delhi Traffic Police have been using Facebook as a platform for accountability and peer pressure on Delhi’s citizens to follow the rules. In some cases, the platform has even allowed citizens to establish some accountability on the part of the police as well.

Caja Navarra (Spain) is pioneering civic banking using engagement platforms to make an impact in the social sector. It shows customers how much it makes from their savings and provides them with the ability to choose from an array of eight or so recipients of their social contributions. The recipient organizations are further pushed to present how they use the money as a result of the participation. The benefits also feed back to the bank’s ability to attract new customers. By providing “gift cards” with preset amounts, new participants can log on and get involved with their donations. Meanwhile, the bank is then able to show potential customers how their money would be used by Caja Navarra as opposed to the customer’s current bank.

All of this reminded me of some other platforms that tie emerging enterprises with potential stakeholders. Kickstarter is a new platform for ideas that need capital to get their projects off the ground. Anyone can contribute, and it only depends on the project’s ability to pitch their idea – and maybe some well-placed social capital (here’s some tips on managing a kickstarter project). One hugely successful project pitch that was launched is Gameful (exceeding their funding goal by over 3000%). It’s an online Secret HQ for gamers and game developers who want to help change the world and make our real lives better. The project’s developers did a really nice thing in pitching the project. They set of levels of giving, that mimicked some game tropes like secret entry points and awards.

Co-creation and service design are largely about the engagement that happens in the development of product and service offerings. Later as we ate dinner, I asked Prof. Ramaswamy what it might mean to go beyond products and services. What would happen, for example, if co-creation impacted the evolution of the core business model and plan? Eric Beinhocker explores some of the conditions for how this might happen in his book, The Origin of Wealth. One of the central themes of the book revolves around how businesses themselves are a form of design. The design of businesses encompasses how to understand the market and connected institutions, product and service offerings, operations, marketing and sales, strategy, and the organization itself. If, as Beinhocker argues, business designs evolve over time through differentiation, selection, and amplification, then it stands to reason that co-creative platforms for engagement can distribute that work as well as just the product and service offerings. The only question is where will it happen?

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Redesigning the Food Pyramid

October 29, 2010 at 10:35 AM · Filed under Design, health, india, making it public, public health, service design, teaching and learning, visualization

GOOD is one of those publishing groups that’s sort of like a cross between WorldChanging and ISO50. They pull together interesting, relevant research and ideas from the web, but they bring it all together with a stunning array of infographics designed to present information meaningfully. It helps that they bring education, design, and health directly into the fold.  And the have a good twitter feed (whoops, no pun intended).

A couple weeks back I was spending some time on pyramids, and GOOD’s link to a double pyramid showing the relationship between diet and agricultural intensity (read: let’s get away from the amorphous “environmental impact”) got me interested in their Redesigning the Food Pyramid contest.

Since I also happen to be doing some work on agricultural supply -and- what I would call attachment ecologies (these are links that create what we call health, wealth, concepts, diet, and technology), I started to wonder how the food pyramid might be implemented using the Indian version of a food pyramid and dietary requirements.

My first stop was to take a look at some of the nutritional guidelines designed by the U.S. (since this would be my main focus – for the contest at least).  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture issue new guidelines every 5 years.  I checked out guide for 2005 and the upcoming revisions for 2010 for inspiration.

At the same time I was attempting to find out what guidelines India uses.  This turned out to be trickier that I had anticipated.  The National Institute for Nutrition (NIN) issues the guidelines.  The last time they did this was in 1998.  NIN performed an array of information, education, and communication efforts.  However, despite these efforts, the 2005-06 National Family Health Survey found no significant improvement in the nutritional status of the Indian population in the seven years (1998-2005) since the guidelines were issued.

As it happened, I lucked out with a news article describing how the NIN was looking for suggestions for revising the guidelines and their dissemination – specifically around how to create awareness of the guidelines.  This helped me uncover a few different documents and sources of information.  I tried calling of course, but that was unfortunately not productive as I kept getting passed to someone else.  The basic guidelines can be found at the India Development Portal, but they must be mail ordered from NIN here.  I was able to find specific daily nutritional requirements tables here, but the providence of the document is unclear (I’m guessing NIN).

In the meantime, I started formulating suggestions for how to improve the dissemination of the guidelines.  I sent these to NIN, and a follow-up call revealed that they had seen them, but hadn’t yet responded.  I’m actually optimistic that they might find them useful.

What initially interested me about the pyramid was the opportunity to represent the notion of a networked diet – one that ties into a variety of cultural and ecological options & constraints.  Etching through the design and layout process, I started arriving at some ‘solutions’.

The U.S.-based diet guide arrived first, and as I started wondering what to do with the leftover empty space (while trying to figure out how to make it less flat), I realized that food icons would do both.  Then as I started thinking about how the graphic “assembles” into everyday life, the concept of the food refrigerator magnets started to materialize.

Turing out the Indian version is going to be a bit trickier.  For one thing, “My Weekly Food Choices” and “My Food Web” looses relevance in places where someone else makes decisions for you.  Plus, the collective aspects of eating means the choices are often negotiated within families or groups.  Thus, it will probably become something like “Our Food Web”.

In representing amounts, it’s interesting that Indian guidelines are purely in grams (except milk which is mL).  The U.S. system uses two types of volume (cups and ounces equivalent) and one weight (grams, for oils).  However, I think the next big challenge will be to get some food icons for Indian foods (north and south).  Any takers?

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The Pure and the Impure: Points of View for Designing Services

July 13, 2010 at 7:58 PM · Filed under cinema, community interaction design, Design, interaction, making it public, narration

Service designers identify and order goals in service systems.  Service systems are a unit of analysis for an exchange of skills and capabilities which leads to the production of value in use (Vargo et al., 2008).  Service systems are developed though the creation of value, where reinvention can transform the relationships of use and practice. Service systems are characteristically intangible, heterogeneous, simultaneous in production and consumption, non-perishable, and grounded in times and places that maintain their meaning and value (Kimbell, in prep).

One of the ways that designers understand service systems is by using a variety of approaches and concepts that isolate or concentrate focus on the relevant aspects of a system so they can drive experimentation and change. An example of this is a touchpoint, which means the aspects of the service are visible and come in contact with the users of that service (but see this discussion of its origins). You may have suspected that in a relationship of co-creation, touchpoints multiply quickly when production and consumption are linked since users are creators and vice versa. Another example that designers use is the line of visibility. This is similar to the touchpoint, and it describes what users see and experience in their relationships with a service system. It helps in rendering a system so that its processes and organizational structure are visible.

Because touchpoints and lines of visibility exist not only as tools but in practice, service experiences are tightly bound to tied to the production of narrative. Suspense in particular is a common experience for users when parts of a process, system, or set of relationships are hidden from view.  Just imagine a time when you were the creator or recipient of a service.  Much of your uncertainty or satisfaction was probably driven by what you knew or could expect about the outcome as well as the communication process that was taking place while the service was being delivered.

Richard Allen discusses suspense in his book about [Alfred] “Hitchcock’s Romantic Irony”. Allen cites Meir Sternberg’s distinction that, “suspense derives from a lack of desired information concerning the outcome of a conflict that is to take place in the narrative future, a lack that involves a clash of hope and fear; whereas curiosity is produced by a lack of information that relates to the narrative past, a time when struggles have already been resolved, and as such it often involves and interest in information for its own sake.”

So when working in service design we should decide if we desire to create curiosity or suspense and design our process accordingly. Allen also incorporates Ian Cameron’s view that suspense is a “channeling of emotions”. Clearly emotions can be powerful, but how and why? In Allen’s analysis, suspense is something that happens in us as we are forced to take up the prospect of narrative outcomes that are contrary to the ones we desire. Suspense is constructed out of moral uncertainty, balancing our expectations with potential outcomes.

Allen discusses Hitchcock and develops descriptions of two types of suspense: pure and impure. Pure suspense is broad and objective, prolonged by tension, delay, and narration that is unrestricted, moving between vantage points and locations. It leads to an anxious uncertainty and an increased expectation of a bad outcome as the deadline looms. Arbitrary delays segment time and increase the tension because a bad outcome seems close at hand. Often, the audience sees a threat before the protagonist and surprise happens through the manipulation of time. The outcome almost always favor of the moral victory, especially in popular media.

Impure suspense on the other hand is local and subjective. It is developed from points of view that provide different sources of knowledge often through the eyes of the protagonists and antagonists, keeping the audience informed while the characters remain unwitting. Deadlines are set early on and acceleration commonly heightens the alert attentiveness of the spectators who are active participants in the construction of the suspense. Knowledge is not made by the director. It is made by the audience in cooperation with the information provided to the characters. All too often, the audiences senses the outcome before the characters do by filling in blanks sources of meaning that haven’t been provided. Impure suspense favors empathy for the character, as if we were living through them. The moral outcome is less certain and often unrealized.

In order to try to make the differences between pure suspense and impure suspense more tractable, I imagined what users in a service system might say if they were experience one or the other.  The result is in the chart below, and it adapts these distinctions and starts to resolve how one might go about implementing different narrative objectives for a service system.

	Pure suspense	Impure suspense
Locations	I move unrestricted between vantage points and locations.	I stay highly local and subjective.
Points of view	My perspective is omniscient and wide-ranging. I tell everyone what is happening everywhere.	I get different sources of information through the eyes of the others. I keep some people informed and others in the dark.
Time	My day is prolonged by tension and arbitrary delay.	Deadlines are set early in the day and acceleration commonly heightens my emotional state.
Emotional states	I have anxious uncertainty and an increased expectation of a bad outcome as a deadline looms.	I am alertly attentive, experiencing empathy for others.
Knowledge Production	The person in charge chooses and focuses attention on the priorities.	I cooperate with the information provided to learn what to do next.
Expectations	I can explicitly identify a threat. I am frequently surprised.	I sense an outcome before others. I fill in blanks with sources of meaning that haven’t been provided.
Moral outcome?	I favor the best outcome – like what happens in popular media.	The best outcome is less certain and often unrealized.

References:
Vargo, S. L., Maglio, P. P., & Akaka, M. A. (2008). On value and value co-creation: A service systems and service logic perspective. European Management Journal, 26(3), 145-152. doi:10.1016/j.emj.2008.04.003

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The Shifting Balance of Design Practice

July 13, 2010 at 4:16 AM · Filed under architecture, biology, community interaction design, complex systems, Design, design ecology, evolution, interdisciplinary, network entrepreneurship

In the 1930s, evolutionary geneticist Sewall Wright pulled together research strands in the biology of inbreeding, the genetics of coat color in guinea pigs, statistical methods (including path analysis), and mathematics that codified the changes in gene frequencies in populations as a result of natural selection, mutation, and migration.

His resulting description of these threads set the stage for qualitatively different perspective on the evolutionary process.  Wright described his perspective as a “shifting balance” model of evolutionary change, and it highlighted the role of small populations in the transitions between periods of high and low fitness.  This pattern, which followed from his use of the term “drift”,  describes the fluctuations of gene frequencies that result from the random sampling of small populations.  This random sampling comes from mating in small populations that, because of chance, produces small deviations from the numbers of genes originally represented in the population.

Wright’s Shifting Balance perspective coincided with his introduction of the adaptive landscape as a term to describe the space in which random fluctuations of gene frequencies in small populations could push the populations away from adaptive peaks or periods in which they were reproductively successful, and which would in turn allow natural selection to push them towards new adaptive peaks – areas of differential reproductive success.

Though Wright’s perspective on evolution is controversial (in a generative way), the perspectives and tools that emerged from his ideas have endured.  For example, Wright’s work preceded algorithmic approaches to optimization problems in mathematics, networks (traveling salesman), metallurgy (simulated annealing), and artificial intelligence – to name a few

The process of Shifting Balance is described as a series of three dynamic phases:

Phase 1, the exploratory phase, the action of small groups explores new combinations. Most stay on the suboptimal fitness peak (reasonably successful), but some get caught in adaptive valleys (unsuccessful).

In Phase 2, selection causes the groups that are in the adaptive valleys to move toward new, higher-fitness peaks.

Finally, in phase 3, groups at higher fitness peaks send off migrants helping other groups move to higher fitness peaks.

While Wright’s process was intended for population genetic systems, an increasing convergence between social processes, cognitive psychology, technology, ecology, and creative practice suggests that the concepts apply well to the exploratory, form-finding processes that precede the design and production of materials and services. The implementation of the Shifting Balance process as a analog for social and creative strategy is useful for the production of highly original and robust creative solutions – or, at least it’s a testable hypothesis.

For some, analogies between biological and social processes are difficult to comprehend.  However, the design of services and interactions is dependent on the ordering and reordering of processes, materials, people, and ideas. Combinations and recombinations of these things, when developed thoroughly and communicated, can impact the delivery and relational aspects of individuals working in cooperation or separately.

We could envision this process as a sort of charette (period of intense design in collaborative groups) activity where:

1. The exploratory phase initiates adaptive schema (creative combinations) which are driven by the interactions, specializations, and diverse perspectives of small groups;
2. Intergroup selection resulting from evaluation, the inherent heterogeneity among groups, and intended service platforms begins the iterative process of amplification of good combinations;
3. Export and translation of valuable forms/schema to other groups in order to test them against different problems, social contexts for cooperation, and consumptive patterns.

The immediate benefit of this strategy is the demonstration of expertise in practice, the role of discourse, and the chance events that can drive innovation.   Participants from different disciplines will have to opportunity to observe and engage in creative problem solving within highly diverse communities. Here the focus is on collaborative ideation followed by problem-solving across disciplinary and expertise-based boundaries and ultimately an exercise in cooperative translation, storytelling, and communication.

There is enough social scientific research to at least point to the benefit of diverse groups, although it would be worthwhile to have a better handle on an ideal number – i.e. what counts as a small population.  Plus, how do we go about choosing?  What is the process of selection…or should we instead be saying, “What is the process of attachment?”  And finally, are there specific patterns of translation or dissemination that we should aim for?  For if migrants endowed with the most successful schema do disperse and link up with others, they have an opportunity to cooperate and raise the capacity the other groups elsewhere. But through which mechanisms to we initiate and implement these processes?

There are a few other ideas that seem uniquely coupled to the Phases of Shifting Balance. An example is the goal of participation as a unique form of empowerment in community planning exercises. One particular model of participatory engagement provided by Conde et al. (2004) is used in the context of climate change planning (below).

This example shows transitional categories in participation. When viewed through a model of culture which emphasizes process over characteristics, these are skills acquisition categories that indicate differences with an impact on fitness – i.e. reproductive success.

Each category represents a different level of engagement, a level that itself suggests a tighter relationship between participants and the tools of participation or cooperation.

1. Informative participation is an exchange of information, which may or may not be meaningful.
2. Consultation requires that participants begin asking questions as well as providing information.
3. Functional engagement means that different participants identify and agree to share goals, thus ordering their actions in accordance with each other.
4. Interaction means the initiation of feedback, where signals and shifts in the participation is met with responsiveness and dialog with the others.
5. Self-motivated participation is demonstrated by the points at which processes are acquired and reorganized by the participants themselves.
6. Migration ultimately expands the instances of participation which have been successful, sharing them with other communities, and finding cooperative allies elsewhere.

References:

Conde, C., Lonsdale, K., Nyong, A., & Aguilar, I. (2004). Engaging stakeholders in the adaptation process. Adaptation policy frameworks for climate change: Developing strategies, policies and measures, 47–66.

Johnson, N. (2008) Sewall Wright and the development of shifting balance theory. Nature Education 1(1)

Wright, S. (1977) Evolution and the Genetics of Populations. Vol. 3: Experimental Results and Evolutionary Deductions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

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A Visual Study Guide to Cognitive Bias

June 8, 2010 at 6:03 AM · Filed under cognitive justice, Design, preferences

Good find..thanks to Zack.

Cognitive Biases – A Visual Study Guide

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Ulat Bansi: Designing Water Futures

January 8, 2009 at 9:39 AM · Filed under cinema, community interaction design, Design, ecoregionalism, india, proposals, sculpture, teaching and learning, watercasting

Ulat bansi from CEMA on Vimeo.

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