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.
A draft diagram of a business process showing the line of visibility between the user and the organization dedicated to providing a service.
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
The Distribution of Intellectual Property Claims on the Human Genome. Source Data: Jensen and Murray (2005) Intellectual Property Landscape of the Human Genome. Science 310:239.
Click on the image for a Processing animation of patent locations.
Approximately one quarter of human genes are protected by intellectual property regulations. Little information about the number and distribution of gene patents is available in a manner empowering to members of the public. Existing gene patent resources rely almost exclusively on verbal search strategies for access in contrast to visual interfaces that promote exploration and discovery. This can be traced to the relative immateriality of genes which cannot be seen and whose effects are experienced through a web of medical, environmental, and social constructors.
One solution to this problem is to create a visual map of patent claims in the human genome. By representing the location, number, functional, and patent characteristics of genes, such a map could provide immediate visual access and cues for further investigation. Maps are created through the contributions of multiple constituencies and exist as objects for discussion, reflection, and mediation. Using patent data from the human genome developed by Jensen and Murray (Science 310: (2005) p239-240), we have started this project as a series of creative sketches. CAMBIA continues to update these data in accordance with current information.
Genes involved in human health, disease, and drug discovery tend to be heavily patented. A map would provide reasonably accessible information to non-specialists and help to scaffold conversations surrounding these issues. It is helps to document regions of positive selection, where specific genes are being disproportionately valued, by social and technological actors operating on human and non-human life processes.
It’s not often that unfunded proposals make their way into disinfecting daylight. Sometimes you try again, and sometimes you just let them waste away among the dusty electrons of your hard drive.
I don’t know which category this one falls into, but I do feel it’s worth sharing and making public. Perhaps someone will even comment with improvements. I can only hope.
In any case, this proposal was dependent on a constellation of partnerships (and funding) to make the project move forward–at least from my perspective. Sometime a little cash can help develop needed projects and spur collaboration. This was a submission to the Knight News Challenge which is supposed to announce its winners sometime in mid-June. Since I know I’m already out of the running, there isn’t really a compelling reason not to share—but please tell me if there is!!!
envirocasting logo
Anyhow, here is most of it—-minus some names to protect the innocent—–except one: this logo was created by Zack Denfeld, and we’ve used it on a variety of projects. For more, you should visit his launchpad.
Describe your project:
Envirocasting adapts global weather information to the cultural and operational needs of local [international disaster preparedness organization] branch offices and communities, supporting their risk assessment and preparedness needs. A wealth of information exists to support disaster preparedness, but a gap exists between the design of information services and their local use-contexts, limiting widespread use and effectiveness. The benefits of these information services are clear to local decision makers, and they are anxious to put the tools and news sources into practice.
However, exposure to digital news platforms is low, and the capacity to use them in decision making contexts is minimal as a result of this disconnect between design and use.
Envirocasting takes a design anthropology approach to inform the design, distribution, and acquisition of digital weather information services to local decision makers. Design anthropology seeks to understand the role of design artifacts and processes in defining what it means to be human. Using this approach, local patterns of information consumption and culture related to futures, information design, and technological metaphors can be identified, allowing for the design of appropriate services. Design principles as well as specific, local use-applications will aid in the distribution and assessment of weather forecast efficacy. Thus, weather news for risk assessment can flow more precipitously to decision makers, allowing them to coordinate the disaster preparedness efforts more quickly and strategically.
Simulation games for local communities will support learning and the application of information services in context. This provides use-case memories of the future and practice in managing uncertainty with minimal risk.
How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
Envirocasting aims to localize climate information by making it simple, non-technical, clear, easy to use, and as meaningful as possible. Maps are relevant when their colors, numbers, icons, and scales are relevant and supported by culture and context. Information that connects with specific actions can be used confidently in planning and decision making. Specific use-cases communicated by local communities will drive the development process and will help weave the digital media fabric with aesthetics, narratives, and metaphors. Games support critical thinking and social play to help decision makers and communities explore the dynamics of news and information-based decisions for climate-related disaster preparedness.
How is your idea innovative? (new or different from what already exists)
Envirocasting innovates by translating connections between design and use. When local conditions refract the design and dissemination of information from distant or multiple sources, innovation is an inherent byproduct. Envirocasting is designed with the mind in mind, understanding cultural legacies that influence the recognition of uncertainty and metaphors. It bridges experience, play, and interactions, creating memories of the future. The project identifies appropriate implementations of open-source digital information services and defines a set of prescriptive resources for innovating across disaster risk contexts and cultural processes based on abstractions and lessons from six local communities in three countries.
What unmet need does your proposal answer?
A fact-finding mission conducted surveys, interviews, meetings and workshops over two-month periods in 2008 and 2009.
Explicit unmet needs include:
An Increase in the Accessibility and User-Friendliness of Climate Information Products
New Products to Fill Information Gaps for Needs–Starting with Improved Flood Forecasting Tools
Training in the Use of Climate Tools and How Climate Information Could Trigger Action Such as:
Learning to access and interpret climate information tools.
Learning how to monitor seasonal forecasts in conjunction with medium and short-term forecasts.
Understanding how to take gradated actions.
Channels of communication and decision-making to receive and take action based on time-sensitive climate information.
And don’t take my word for it:
What will you have changed by the end of your project?
More-Measurable outcomes:
Prototypes that adapt weather information services to local use-contexts.
Documents that communicate design processes for cross-cultural communication.
Heuristics or ‘rules-of-thumb’ for the design of climate information services for risk assessment.
Country and local use-context reports that document specific patterns of information acquisition and behavior.
Relevance of climate information for local decision-makers.
Ability to align information with decision and action.
A folktaxonomy of climate information and categories for creating a cultural consensus model (CCM) to realize translations in cognition and practice among cultural contexts.
An index of context-specific actions and the values associated with them.
Less-measurable outcomes:
Perception of the design process and innovation pathways for news and information about climate-driven risks.
The relationship between information providers, researchers, designers, policy makers, and implementing offices providing the opportunity for continued support, training and dialogue necessary to realize the potential benefits of using climate information.
Channels of communication between information providers and decision makers and between decision makers and community constituents (incl. digital information services).
The scope of the implementing organizations to conduct cross-cultural research and information adaptation projects.
How will you measure progress and ultimately success?
The uses of weather and hazard preparedness information can be measured using surveys, interviews, meetings and workshops and compared to current estimates of use and use cases, but those data are useful differently for different people including the decision-makers, their constituents, their supporting agencies, and funders of this project. Thus, we intend to cast progress in varied terms for the different stakeholders and partners.
Some of these guiding questions include:
What are the iterations, changes, and improvements to existing systems?
What does the trajectory of individual decision-maker’s tasks or questioning look like?
How do other elements of the media ecology change and what stakeholders are invoked or leveraged in the process?
Success, on the other hand, is more elusive. Disasters are sporadic and may not always afford a direct link between information effectiveness and risk reduction. However, existing case studies show that these types of information, when combined with specific actions, can lead to significant reductions in both the vulnerability and negative effects of a disaster such as flooding. The key to assessment it to engage in a continual processes where we value choices and transitions in practice. The design of this project take into account the high-stakes involved in the decision-making and information uses by providing opportunities for both high stakes (post-hazard) and low stakes (simulation-games) assessment.
Do you see any risk in the development of your project?
The biggest risk at present is that the organizations listed do not have a history of working together (this is indicated by the generic names rather than their proper ones), but this is also where the opportunity exists. The leadership (particularly of the larger orgs) is wary of their participation in the project without first-hand knowledge of all partners and/or certain funding. This conversation is ongoing at the time of this application and continues to develop. If the proposal moves through to the next round, we should at that point be able to name each of the partners in more specific terms.
Supply-side risks (design-mediated)
Inability to generate meaning either through lack of empathy or translation of needs to designers
Research products are not absorbed and implemented during the design processes because they are non-normative, unclear for direct application, left uncommunicated, or other
Partner coalition denatures from lack of shared goals or mental models
Emphasis on technological development or information diversification over use-context and user needs
Existing insights, stakeholders, and methods are unknown or unengaged
Irrelevance, inability, or non-linkage of digital mediums and meaningful information services
Cultural heterogenetiy too great for scaling of appropriate information services
Ability and capacity of project managers to recognize and adapt to other sources of risk
Expertise of project partners is missing or unleveraged
Translation of local use-contexts into primary research is distorted or biased
Demand-side risks (user-mediated)
Low frequency acquisition of technology platforms, information services, and/or symbolic systems
Scripting of use and application to local decision making is unclear
Appropriation for local use-cases is nonexistent
Assembly does not fit into the local context of everyday life
Cannot be integrated into normal practices, culture, and concerns
Practice with information and platform is sparse
What is your marketing plan? How will people learn about what you are doing?
The conduits for marketing are, in many respects, already in place. The organizational structure and extent of [intl. disaster preparedness agency] branch offices will facilitate branding and distribution using existing networks of community organization, tactical planning, and response offices. Though the value of the services should be self-evident in the design and cognitive acquisition of the services, the goal is to help users to practice using and applying these information services. We also recognize that aesthetic values can elevate the recognition of value and the maintenance of that value through everyday use. Thus, arriving at these values will be a principle objective for all participants.
In order to increase domain knowledge, the outcomes can be shared among the participants, their centers, and via professional and interest networks including the design research community which actively engages with similar project goals. Because some of the project partners include university centers, schools and research organizations, the outcomes will be shared with emerging professionals including graduate students and visiting fellows.
Tactically, the marketing plan for simulation game-based training is slightly more difficult because it requires additional preparation, training, and presentation. Nonetheless, with a bit of effort, these games will reinforce the marketing strategy for the primary goal of adapting weather information using the same local community branch office network structure. We also expect to develop videos that demonstrate our process as well as the use and value of the informations service under construction. But ultimately, the best marketing will be the effectiveness of the adaptation process.
Is this a one-time experiment or do you think it will continue after the grant? If it is to be self-sustainable, what’s the plan for making that happen?
Envirocasting is the application of a process to translate meaning across cultural contexts with relevance for local concerns. We do not view it as an experimental process so much and an underutilized one. Luckily, there are many resources, case studies, and additional expertise to draw from in the process. Our goal is to assemble them and to draw the pieces together into relevant platforms and prototypes for weather information services.
The project will accomplish this goal as a one-time research project that will publicly document its methods and outcomes as guides so that they can be applied in new use-contexts and for wider information arrays. We fully expect that the different project partners will continue to apply the work and experience in varied ways after the initial project, although they may carry it out to their own ends.
Our method for fostering rhizomatic-like dissemination of the results (and thus, sustainability) is to link with additional strategic partners whose networks span varied social groups, languages, use-contexts, and concerns. Furthermore, the acquisition and integration of the research (as well as the information services it supports) can be broadly advocated from a policy perspective because successes arise from its application and benefit in specific, local communities. The overall plan for sustainability is to demonstrate that these information service platforms reduce risk by enabling decisive action before pending hazards become disasters. If this is demonstrated, sustainability will ensue, even if not in the form described in this proposal.
This was a post that I initially wrote for the ‘Telling Stories’ discussion group that is made up of recipients of the Wellcome Trust’s International Engagement Award. The group practices public engagement with public health and science from a variety of different perspectives and goals. In this post, I was exploring the role of narration and also looking at the idea of suspense as created by communication (or the lack of) between researchers and members of the public.
Part 1.
I can start by locating the visual arts as a source or medium for engagement. The answer is: myriad. In the last ten years or so (and even before) the arts domain has taken on science and technology in bushels. Some of the response of the arts has been driven out of curiosity and the desire to take on the mantle of science for aesthetic reasons. For others it has been a source of tactical engagement with the very substance of knowledge production in the sciences, defense and military establishments, and the diffusion of technology in everyday life.
There are way too many example to adequately cover here, except to say that the Wellcome Trust is a major stakeholder in this area and has been for at least a decade as far as I know. I remember a festival in South Kensington that I happened upon almost ten years ago called Sparks which featured may artists working specifically with the life sciences in some form or another. Exhibitions were held at the Royal College of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Natural History Museum, among others (http:/ /news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/festival_of_science/91…). It was largely a cultural series of events, continuing a dialogue which I have witnessed firsthand in many forms and places afterwards. It seems to me that the role of the arts in these debates has largely been restricted to Europe, but I have seen some signs in the US and now in Asia that the visual arts are playing a more tactical and more integral role in the development of engagement vectors with the public, practitioners, and policy makers.
Some examples:
Last year we conducted a workshop for artists at NCBS (http://cema.srishti.ac.in/content/bioart) which focused on introducing cell and molecular biology methods to artists so they could use them as media for performance, communication, and engagement. It was conducted in collaboration with Oron Catts, a well-know bioartist from Australia (http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/) with extensive experience in using the trappings and discourse of the lab to open up critical thinking about future scenarios and paths of social and technological development.
A group of our students is taking part this week (and won an award) in the international genetically engineered machines (iGEM) competition held at MIT in Boston, USA. This is a group of art students working at NCBS (our host in Bangalore) to develop synthetic organisms, in part to provide a forum for engagement and critical dialogue at these meetings that is not just motivated by the accumulation of capital wealth or basic functional research via biotech (http://hackteria.org/). The result was a highly influential discussion about the role of amateurs in creating public knowledge using science and technology.
Project Vision (htt p://symphysis.wordpress.com/designing-for-converging-cultures-a-diplo…) is an ongoing project here in Bangalore that uses new media (i.e. web 2.0, sensors, physical computing, interactive story-building software, locative media like mobiles and GPS) to develop forms of intimate science where urban, poor, school-aged students run their own experiments and communicate first-hand experiences with nature and their environment.
Moon Vehicle is a community project maintained by Joanna Griffin (http://www.aconnectiontoaremoteplace.net) that bridges storytelling, artifacts, and arts-based methodologies to create peer communities between the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), astronomy buffs, schoolchildren, and others in order to reconstitute new narratives of science and technology as they apply to satellites, space exploration and the once and future missions to the moon.
Another timely example comes from Denmark. The Rethink exhibition (http://www.rethinkclimate.org/) combines contemporary art into political debates surrounding climate change responses in anticipation of Copenhagen.
In the US, The Center for Post-Natural History (http://postnatural.org/) takes on biotech and the conversion of biological organisms to intellectual property.
There are many, many others. But I think it’s safe to say that they have had varying impact and effect. Unfortunately (in my view) we haven’t yet developed a coefficient of art to assess its effect on other domains. Some of the examples I have cited have a distinctly critical edge. Others are more about raising awareness or, more to the point, about connecting different social communities and groups (e.g. science practitioners and schoolchildren).
One of the most important things I have learned in the last few years about public engagement with science comes from the field of science and technology studies. Sociologists, philosophers, and historians have started to demonstrate the value of media (especially visual) in the production of science and technology and the resolution of debates about scientific truth and public acceptance. The production of artifacts, objects, and “things we can wrap our heads around” is very important it turns out.
I think the lessons from history and sociology leads to some clarifying questions such as “What is the material basis for engagement?” and “What is engagement made of and where does it live?”
Part 2.
My perspectives
Many of my perspectives on public engagement are shaped by my experiences as both a practicing scientist studying evolution, ecology and behavior in lab and field settings, as an artist and designer working to develop communication and engagement tools, and now working to assess options for better decision making in public health, energy, and infrastructure.
As a biologist, my perspective is further shaped by host-parasite dynamics and their implications for disease in populations. I am also influenced by network science and complex systems. As such, the interaction is the focal point of engagement. How the interaction is created and maintained is significant for me.
As a designer, so-called design thinking influences my approach to engagement. This often means thinking critically about how the engagement process can transpire as part of everyday life–that is, part of the daily routine that people struggle with and recreate everyday.
I think the questions raised in previous posts about the motivation behind “science’s” engagement with the “public” and who makes up the “public” are critical because they help to identify the costs and benefits of engagement and the location of engagement as it pertains to the public. Still I think we need to constantly open up our assumptions further to scrutiny.
Of Scientists and Risk
I know scientists to be a very heterogeneous community involved with many others in the production of knowledge. In general, the people are exceedingly nice, driven by their own curiosity and desire to create understanding that will make a difference, however far downstream. Science, however, is also composed of lots of others, including the organisms and the tools used to develop new hypotheses and results. By far the most practical defining feature might be its place–where it is done and how that place structures the kind of interactions that in turn lead to what we call new knowledge.
Let’s be clear. In the West, science and by extension public health is hardly the product of scientists alone. Many individuals are involved from students, to researchers, financial managers, glassware technicians, viruses, lab rats, secretaries, publishers, reviewers of literature, politicians, middle-school teachers, clergy, university boards, ethics review panels, biotech company shareholders, news media and so on. All of these individuals are possibly working to do one thing–identify sources of risk and manage the uncertainty that arises out of the everyday interactions of people and their environment. If they can scrape out a living in the meantime, all the better for them. So yes, in a sense I would also say that because risk and uncertainty are trying to be minimized, science and technology have a lot to do with securing and locating ways to create wealth. And yes, all of this scales greatly with the complexity of the science (think: CERN or the HapMap project).
I prefaced this as part of the Western tradition 1) because it is of direct lineage from Christian emphasis on divine intervention and design, and 2) because I have found that (in Asia at least) very different traditions underlie the identification of risk and the communication of uncertainty. My sense is that in Asia these are intrinsically related to variation in the ordering of time, and I’m anxious to discuss this with others that know more than I do.
“The Public”, User Needs, and Witnessing
On the public side, I would prefer to say civil society–that is those who are engaged in social contracts relating to economics, technology, common goods, governmentality and so on. And I agree that it is correct to say that it is an even more heterogeneous group.
One way to think about civil society is much like designers think of their users. There is a simple axiom that underscores the work of many successful designers: user needs drive the acquisition of a product or service. Public heath knowledge and science can be that product. Yes, this is a very functionalist way of looking at it, but this principle of participatory design involves end users in the design process to help ensure that it meets user needs and is usable. It has been a successful strategy for architecture, software, and business (the customer is always right, right?). Why should science and its cognitive technologies be an exception?
By adopting user perspectives the scientific community can recognize that its practices may or may not resonate with user needs: socially, by ensuring equal access for disenfranchised groups, economically: by creating new opportunities for capital development and financial transactions, and politically: by improving the quality, speed, and sensitivity of social technologies to the needs of local users. It’s not that science doesn’t already do these things. It just isn’t always evident to the average user. In the realm of health, sometimes it’s just a matter of making the benefits clear so that they justify whatever costs there are in the user’s mind.
One of my favorite case studies come from evolution and its approximately 50% public acceptance in the United States. Margret Evans, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, studies some of the ways that children, potential users of evolutionary theory and biology, acquire evolutionist and creationist beliefs. Evans describes how Western religious and philosophical traditions emphasize essentialism, teleology, and intention, and in the process limit the cognitive appeal of natural explanations for the origins of species. She argues that because these ideas tend to show up repeatedly in public representations, they constrain the inferential reasoning capacities of the developing mind. It’s an observation that suggests science’s own predilection for categorization is at the root of evolutionary biology’s social friction.
I think these cognitive biases come into play often, for good and bad. I’ll want to describe some others, but I need to take a detour first.
Engagement, Stories, Suspense, Scenarios, and Fallacies
I personally feel that if scientists, policy-makers, and funding bodies are willing to involve cultural workers like artists and designers in the process of science and its associated applications, there is good news for broader participation because they cultural workers tend to excel at reconfiguring essentialist categories, and they often like to do it in public. There is some indication that this may be a general rule because visualization involves so much codification, creation of meaning, and translation of concepts and ideas into tangible, material artifacts for cognition and discourse. In effect, the sensory object is a vector for witnessing.
Witnessing
In their book, Leviathan and the Air Pump, authors Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer describe three types of public witnessing of science: the direct performance of experiments in social spaces (imagine if the laboratory were a chapel or temple), reporting experimental methods in a manner that enables someone to replicate the experiments themselves (like primary journal articles that recount the plot), and virtual witnessing by producing in a reader’s mind an image of an experimental scene that displaces the need for direct witness or replication (this, I argue, is much like a story in someone’s mind constructed from the plot). We need more of this public witnessing if science is going to connect with society in a dynamical way.
Suspense and Narration
The idea of witnessing in science is intimately tied to the production of suspense in narrative. 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 curiousity 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 thinking about public engagement 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.
The difference between surprise and suspense is also relevant. This passage from a conversation between Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock in the book Hitchcock/Truffaut helps to make the difference clear.
“We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the audience knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There’s a bomb beneath you and it’s about to explode!”
“In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed.”
Suspenseful Science?
My reason for taking this detour is to try to show some of the different narrative techniques that can be used in the construction of public health engagement and of science in the collective mind of civil society. Curiosity, surprise, and suspense (pure/impure) are all narratives tactics for engagement.
Curiosity is important for people attending to and learning on their own, but I don’t think it necessarily develops in people unless the benefits are of satisfying it are known to them.
Surprise is also relevant and critical to sensations of astonishment–and of being placed in a new reality that will cause dissonance and therefore growth.
Suspense, while composed and related to surprise and curiosity, has a more pedagogical function. It builds up knowledge of scenes and constraints using what I think Shapin and Schaffer described as virtual witnessing. The audience/spectators build the story themselves, creating it from the narration and plot to fit their own needs, and to adapt it to their own context and location-based experience. I think this is especially true for impure suspense because pure suspense rings of master narratives and the hindsight needed to create contrasts among moral outcomes. Life is not so much like that. Impure suspense allows us to decide the moral outcome during the process. We are never sure if we have chosen the right one, and we may not know even after the “movie” has ended.
So how can public engagement efforts use suspense to build better acclimation and participation among its audiences?
Scenarios and Fallacies
One possibility lies in the construction of scenarios about the future. Scenarios are descriptions of alternative future states where narration helps to articulate the shape and distribution of actors, procedures, and resources. Scenarios can be general or highly detailed, and they can be shown or represented in a variety of ways from verbal description, acting or role playing, visualization and imagery.
I’ve recently delved into the techniques of scenario development. They serve a number of important functions for individuals and organizations. The most important is perhaps building out aspirations and ideas of what the future could hold–even if the present lacks those characteristics. In this way preferred futures can be imagined, but even when the future is imagined to contain destructive relationships, it aids the processes of critical thinking and adaptation. For individuals, recognizing opportunity and constraint is the first step to capitalizing on it or avoiding its pitfalls. Arjun Appadurai has been highly influential in defining aspirations, or the capacity to aspire to a better future, as an important feature of cultural capacity. Scenarios, as extensions of aspirations, are a way to work forward, to rearrange the systems and see what new hybrids emerge and how they might affect well-being.
For organizations, scenarios can help create common ground. The dredge up assumptions and interactions to create a big picture where knowledge can be exchanged. When scenarios are combined with games and simulations, they provide an opportunity to work through challenging situations, to create memories of the future, and out of these take the confidence to undertake critical adaptive change without incurring any of the risks that real experiences entail.
One of the discussion themes asked what happens when artists and others ‘misinterpret’ the science or present it in a biased or misleading way. Rather than seeing this as something necessarily counterproductive, creative interpretations provide circumstantial detail that may be critical for the social fluency of science. A creative depiction of evolutionary technologies, such as Chris Landau’s The Flocking Party (http://theflockingparty.com/), should therefore be seen as a ‘minority report’, suggesting possible avenues for experimentation or areas of conflict between science and society.
On the contrary, critics of scenarios have argued that they aren’t effective in the development of policy precisely because of the detail they incorporate into their ‘worlds’. Morgan and Granger (2007) have argued that scenarios come with an implicit expectation of liklihood–that any particular scenario is more likely to occur in the future. As I already stated, predicting the future is not a goal for scenarios, but critical responsiveness to uncertainty is. Morgan and Keith based their argument on a common fallacy (and I will include another) that I think are important for us to consider as we take on public engagement through narrative.
In adding detail to a scenario or, let’s say, a compelling tale of science, we create compounding descriptions that run the risk of invoking the conjunction fallacy. A frequent example was developed by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. They gave respondents the statement:
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
and asked: Which is more probable?
1. Linda is a bank teller.
2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
Logic and probability tell us that #1 is more probable since it is increasingly unlikely that she is both a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.
The issue here is that we want to include more detail and visualization in our stories, but in doing so we possibly risk compounding peoples’ expectation of what is and is not likely to happen.
Vividness is another concern. According to wikipedia, “The logical fallacy of misleading vividness involves describing an occurrence in vivid detail, even if it is an exceptional occurrence, to convince someone that it is a problem. Although misleading vividness does little to support an argument logically, it can have a very strong psychological effect because of a cognitive heuristic called the availability heuristic.”
The availability heuristic says that we often place events we have just seen or experienced in our memory more prominently, even if we know them to be less frequent occurrences. I can’t tell you how many times my Mom called me late in the evening when I was in college to warn me abut something she might have just seen on the evening news as a possible risk. The detail that many forms of media and engagement provide can also bias judgments that we would otherwise weigh more carefully.
I think somewhere there is a sweet-spot. I like this account of The Critical Art Ensemble as a group that routinely replicates scientific experiments in public spaces such as malls and parks in an effort to publicly verify political claims ranging from the presence of GMOs in the food chain to the terror threat of biological warfare. One of CAE’s projects with co-collaborator Beatriz de Costa is described by Regine Debatty from the blog we-make-money-not-art this way:
GenTerra is essentially a participatory “theater”…Scientists and artists are talking the public through the process and implications (whether they are purely profit-driven or feature some utopian qualities) of transgenics. Materials are then provided to allow people to get a hands-on experience by creating their own transgenic organism…After that they become actively involved in risk assessment by deciding whether or not to release bacteria from one of petri dishes of the release machine.
Even if the feedback generated doesn’t make it back to the lab or policy office, it’s a form of participatory design that seeks out users of science.
Another example was developed in Europe and has now spread. Some of you may have read about Science Shops as one possible form of engagement that pits user needs in direct contact with professional researchers. Here is a blog post about this that I wrote awhile back (http://blog.cstep.in/?p=319).
There is a fantastic series of podcasts produced by the CBC a few years back. The podcasts interviews many noted historians, philosophers, sociologists, and scientists to help distill what science is, how it’s claims to knowledge and facts are produced, and what many of the critical themes and questions are that science has to wrestle with including objectivity, fallacies of “historicity-turned-relativism”, and others.
Many influential authors contribute including: Richard Lewontin, Peter Gallison, Lorraine Daston, Steven Shapin, Bruno Latour, and James Lovelock..among many others.
This graph represents the difference between demand and supply in Bangalore from the years 1988-2001. Blue circles are per capita supply of water in Liters per day.
The first day was organized to enumerate problems and the criteria by which to evaluate responses to those problems. The second day focused on our responses as ‘designers’ and the methods that we could use to find tactical responses to the difficult problems posed by water (and the lack thereof).
We began by discussing what it is that designers do. I asked students what is is that artists and designers do? I asked the students to describe what they felt was their strongest characteristic as an artist/ designer. Surprisingly, almost all of them described characteristics that were domain-free and overwhelmingly social. I showed them Burt’s (2002) concept from sociology of a network entrepreneur, and we used his assessment tool to see how individual personalities and the class as a whole tended towards network entrepreneurship.
We continued by discussing Bowker and Star’s (1999) article about classifications an boundary objects. I expanded the initial discussion by showing them examples according to Star and Griesemer’s four types of boundary objects. We came to realize that boundary objects do and could play an important role in mediating different groups, particularly those that might have conflicting goals.
We concluded the morning session by sharing candidate solutions to the difficult problems posed by water. A couple of these dealt with making groundwater (and its hidden concerns) visible ‘above the ground’. This would be a metaphor to build on later that day.
In the afternoon, I showed them Paris: Invisible City and navigated through the multimedia map- a demonstration of all that helps to construct Paris as a city. With this in hand, we questioned how we come to describe the components of a city and how existing ways of seeing are, perhaps, constrained by existing representations. We discussed sex differences in navigation as one example relating to how maps are rendered and what it means for cognitive justice. We started to see that all of the components of a city- its water systems, street systems, entertainment systems- are constructed in numerous places and not just at the sites of consumption.
As the afternoon waned, we adjourned to the water cooler in the corner of the room where we were able to have a refreshing drink and a new perspective on the networks that supported our taking that sip. We reflected and surmised deeply all of the actions and passing of signs, documents, and behaviors that are needed to make sure that the water cooler is there when we need it, that it tells a particular story, and what we miss when we take is existence for granted. WE connected it to the electricity plant, to the staff that keep it clean and full of water, to a history associating the color blue with water, to the friendliness of ‘eco friendly’ technology, to the construction people who built the building, to the architects and the central planning board whose permits probably had something to do with the fact that it was in the southwest corner and very near the bathrooms whose water systems run all alongside the building there.
We all shared what technical skills we had after that…from illustration, film shooting and editing, writing, 3-D rendering, and so on. We decided that we would make boundary objects as our designs and solutions for creating awareness and solving problems associated with water’s future. We decided we would make films to share our scenarios because they carry stories and build empathy. We decided that we would be like the tide, starting from shore and moving out to sea, returning to shore with our collections and documentation, moving back out again during the interim, and then back again…to sea what we can see.
We started by looking at the neologism ‘watercasting’, coined for the purposing of re-imagining what it is that we would be doing in the class. Casting for the purpose of making a mold, a cast that one would find in theatre or film, to broadcast, and even futurecasting were brought up by some of the participants.
We discussed difficult and wicked problems by comparing them to tame ones such as one would find in science and engineering. We formed groups based on complementary zodiac signs (in part to introduce forms of classification and grouping). Students were asked to develop symbols or logos for each of the characteristics of difficult problems as described in Horst and Rittel (1973). This required them not only to have read but to work toward synthesizing that information in the form of a visual response.
We ended the morning session by brainstorming and expanding a list of difficult problems associated with water. Pairs of students articulated the problems and then as a class we grouped them according to the themes they seemed to be suggesting.
After lunch I introduced the students to twitter and kluster, software platforms for 1) assembling a symphony of interactions around water in the case of twitter, and 2) choosing among proposed solutions in the case of kluster.
I asked students to come to the class with examples of good and bad design from around Srishti. They described many instances, and for a minute it seemed as if it would be a ‘crib’ session about the things the students didn’t like. Instead, we found out that things we might perceive as being ‘designed’ were often vestigial or happenstance. We also used examples of so-called bad design to recognize was it is that we value that seemed to be missing. In this way we turned these examples into opportunities as we transitioned into finding a list of criteria that we could use to evaluate or responses to difficult problems over the course of the semester.
We ended the afternoon session by compiling a list of these criteria as a first step towards understanding what kinds of traits our designs should have if they were going to be progressive responses.
The compelling section of the report was its recognition of its own limitations, and the kinds of tactics that the intelligence community needs to better understand complexity and difficult social, economic, and environmental issues.
Our analysis could be greatly improved if we had a much better understanding and explanation of past and current human behavior. Continued research to model social human dynamics at the individual and society level would support this improved understanding. This would necessitate the ability to integrate social, economic (infrastructure, agriculture, and manufacturing), military, and political models. Continued research in these efforts—while a significant challenge—could have high analytical payoff. In the interim, assessing the future of a society’s evolution will by necessity be a scenario-driven exercise and an imprecise science. The continued use of outside experts is critical to our success.
It’s somewhat comforting to know that at least the intelligence community is starting to learn that it takes diverse groups of people and disciplinary perspectives to solve difficult problems. Who knows, maybe they will even be willing to seek out non-traditional perspectives from the arts and/or oppositional discourses in their futurecasting.
So here is something neat: I was recently appointed a Senior Researcher at the UCLA Art |Sci Center. I’m currently working on a community website for the Leonardo Education Forum, and organization focused on promoting the intersections of art, science and technology– particularly in educational contexts.
Here is a brief for the project:
How do individual perspectives and group identities impact the development of diverse collaborative networks such as those exemplified by the Leonardo Education Forum? The Leonardo Education Forum is composed of educators, artists, scientists, designers, historians and students from many regions of the world and of diverse ages, backgrounds and perspectives. The main objective of the research is to create an online portal for individuals and groups to find common ground through which they can develop interactions and perspectives that will allow them to establish long-term and robust collaborative and interdisciplinary relationships. Diversity refers not only to the disciplinary affiliations that characterize, for example, artists, scientists, historians, sociologists and designers, but also to different age distributions, regional, and language-based perspectives in addition to the opportunities afforded by differences in socio-technical networks.
We endeavor to create a space that shares events and opportunities for individuals to identify and take part in–i.e. to model behavior across time and space. There is a social networking aspect that seeks to make visible that spaces and regions in which these people, events and opportunities are available so as to extend an existing global network of interactions and perspectives on the relationships of art and science. In particular, we are interested in making best-practices in projects and pedagogy visible and available for students and educators that seek to establish methodology for cross-fertilization among disciplines. Of particular concern are areas of technology whose relationship with individuals is complex and where solutions tend to be controversial (e.g. nanotechnology, climate change, genetic engineering, analysis of human behavior, etc). These tend to be spaces where the interactions among diverse domains are both most necessary and less clearly articulated. They are also areas in which the Leonardo Education Forum can provide creative models for these interactions.
We started by looking at the neologism ‘watercasting’, coined for the purposing of re-imagining what it is that we would be doing in the class. Casting for the purpose of making a mold, a cast that one would find in theatre or film, to broadcast, and even futurecasting were brought up by some of the participants.
