This is short presentation I gave to the Melton Foundation’s Symposium on Innovation which was held in Bangalore in August, 2009. I spoke on Innovation in Education, coming from the perspective of someone with the aim of bridging disciplines and interpretations.
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!!!
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:
And don’t take my word for it:
What will you have changed by the end of your project?
More-Measurable outcomes:
Less-measurable outcomes:
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:
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)
Demand-side risks (user-mediated)
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.
After ManU went up 2-0 against Arsenal I started browsing and commenting on the submissions to this year’s Digital Media and Learning Competition that the MacArthur Foundation and HASTAC run each year.
Some observations:
But after culling through them for an hour and a half, I think I got a good sampling of the 800 or so submissions to the Learning Labs track. Here are a few that seemed interesting, relevant and promising….to things I’m interested in..
ENERGY & CLIMATE ADAPTATION
The Wild Life Virtual Barnyard… Saving The Planet One Climate Cartoon At A Time!
Powerhouse: A Social Game That Teaches Players About Energy Efficiency
Climate Changers: An MMO virtual lab game to save a planet
Young People Take the VITAL SIGNS of Climate Change, Build Scientific Habits of Mind
Disadvantaged Youth Exploring Sustainable Energy Collaboratively Through Video Games
Pooling Resources Project [Prp]
OUTLIERS
WATER
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We agree that the global water crisis presents a communications design challenge of urgent immensity. From where we sit, paani (water), ghats (steps), vidhushak (trixter), matkas (containers), ulat bansi (upside-down story), and melas (fairs) are the mediums of our message.
However,
Current public understanding about the use and management of water is broadly defined by embodied practice, everyday experiences, and faith. The perspective that developing regions have outmoded experiences and assumptions ignores the reality of daily practice and serves to create a hierarchy of meaning that places certain forms of water use and practice above others despite the apparent and real effectiveness of available options.
Rather than “powerful, fact-based narratives”, we believe in narratives that change and respond to their audiences and allow for multiple interpretations. Sarcasm, word play, exaggeration, juxtaposition, false-belief, humor, optimism and rebellion are tactics needed to engage and inform diverse, international audiences of varying demographics and geographies. Facts may be starting points, but because we cannot control interpretation, they are not ends in themselves.
We believe that the water crisis is a social problem that cannot only be solved by scientific or technological means or other rational approaches. Irrational responses are therefore positive, justified, and appropriate.
The water crisis is not in need of novelty or innovation. It needs relevant visual identities, mantras, mythologies and stories carried by relevant mediums that entertain, inform, and inspire audiences that are socially, politically, and economically isolated.
Because policy makers lack political will and personal motivation to implement existing, effective, small, scalable solutions, we will always lack the full scope of raw field data and the presentation tools needed to make water crisis understandable and actionable for policy makers.
We value varied groups, not select groups. We value practice beyond thought. Leaders in our opinion are those that use personal invention and creativity to affect everyday practice and demonstrate how political, social, and economic barriers to water availability can be overcome.
The crisis is a complex mix of global and local implications for matter and meaning. It therefore requires responses that connect many locations from the most broad panoramic view to the most minute, localized interaction.
Four main issues characterize the water crisis:
1. The problem is not scarcity. We have an abundance of water. The problem is access limited by changing ecological conditions, costs of technology, and social, economic and political disparities.
2. The water crisis is fundamentally complicated by outmoded ideas of rights and ownership. These concepts seek to create additional divisions and further amplify problems of access.
3. Inequitable distribution and out-of-equilibrium use cycles make available water unpotable and unsafe for living.
4. Standards do not currently represent or account for contemporary water use. These standards create incompatibilities in both meaning and matter when policy is made and when technology is developed to respond to the crisis. The existence of current standards, their role in international trade, and their high cost of acquisition and participation means that so-called developing regions are placed at a disadvantage.
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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.
Sometime this evening (Bangalore standard time) HASTAC and the MacArthur Foundation announce the winners of the digital media and learning initiative. Last October, CEMA submitted a proposal designed to create knowledge-networking at the intersections of art, science, and technology. You can read the main part of the proposal below. Things like these always seem a both awkward when you’ve been distanced from it for awhile, but it’s surprising just how closely the proposal matches our activities these days. In upcoming posts, I’ll be writing about and sharing images from some of those activities.
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The IDEOGRAM project proposes the development and implementation of epistematic architecture for knowledge-networking at the intersections of art, science, and technology. Epistematic architecture is information technology that scaffolds our ability to create new knowledge. We intend to make visible the connections, activities, and characteristics of the Leonardo/ISAST network and its affiliates, to learn from them, and to recontextualize this knowledge into solutions for doing informal science. Our goal is to connect the benefits of digital media and learning to underrepresented communities, provide creative mechanisms for redressing their concerns via informal science, and incorporate these concerns into the epistematic architecture project.
We propose to situate the project in the CEMA lab in Bangalore, India (see below). This will facilitate additional perspectives as we implement social frameworks and technologies to reach our goals. In this manner, we hope to more closely involve local individuals in India whose disengagement with science and technology can stimulate creative interactions and help bridge knowledge-networking gaps.
The Leonardo network is composed of 8000+ individuals and organizations from across the globe and whose engagement of science and technology characterizes their creative work. Using existing and lab-built technologies, we intend to make the network’s creative activities available as a medium for understanding how science and technology are leveraged in the cultural landscape. For example, what are individuals looking at, searching for, reading or doing? Do the metaphors used to couple knowledge vary with age? We will connect these semantic patterns to inform tactical media projects and recontextualize digital media and learning for local situations. Tactical media solutions could involve anything from creative visualizations and physical computing to social technologies.
Combining the characteristics of digital networks with local epistemologies and embodiments creates scaffolds for positive interactions among groups typically isolated for reasons of geography, age, or educational level. Scenarios for these interactions include:
The exciting thing is that aspects of these scenarios are already being carried out. However, because the information/epistematic architecture linking these activities is solely the result of volunteer work, they have lacked the financial and institutional support necessary to bring them to a critical level of exposure.
Contributions to the field of digital media and learning include some of the methods we will use to accomplish this goal.
The Emerging Economy Report is coming! This is a project I’ve been working on over the last few months. It’s been in development for almost a year and a half and represents research in seven countries, all of which have been identified as emerging economies. An emerging economy is a country that is experiencing sustained economic growth as a result of rapid informationalization and limited or partial industrialization. Economic growth in the information economy will continue to be driven by these emerging economies who will benefit from rapid informationalization, innovation, and ephemerilization of the economy, leapfrogging many of the requirements and costs of the Industrial Revolution.
We’ve been working to develop insights into global trends and user perspectives across seven nations including: India, China, Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, Egypt, and South Africa. By examining specific case studies, visual research, economic trends, and user perspectives on (among other things) technology, access to information, heathcare, and economic resources, we have been able to create strategic knowledge for those wishing to do business in these emerging economies.
The 7 emerging economy countries studied in this report account for 46% of the world population. The report offers a variety of innovative recommendations that will help businesses engage with these economies.
Visit emergingeconomyreport.com to find out more.
A&D Life Mini-Grants
With support from the Rackham Graduate School, A&D Life is pleased to be able to offer small project grants in support of activities that make bridges between art, design, and life science-related concerns. Small grants of up to $300 are available to teams whose projects share the concerns of A&D Life.
The focus of A&D Life is to:
1) understand the diversified viewpoints and approaches that structure creative engagement with the life sciences,
2) identify historical and contemporary precedents for work in these areas,
3) employ these theoretical and historical connections as catalysts for creative practices,
4) register creative work as research that documents the complex, shifting relationships of art practice at the interface of contemporary social and scientific endeavor.
Up to three (3) such grants are available and will be awarded on a competitive basis. Funds may be used for materials and/or expenses related to the project. Recipients will be asked to provide a brief presentation of their work (in progress or otherwise) at an A&D Life workshop.
Requirements:
Teams must be composed of at least two individuals including at least one faculty member and one graduate student.
Applications should not exceed a one-page description of the project, research, or creative work to be carried out. Include a list of team members, and a brief list or description of the interdisciplinary connections or network to be realized.
Applications may come from any Rackham department or school-associated teams. Please submit proposals by February 25th to gharp@umich.edu
DEADLINE EXTENDED
