As described in the literature review, design for social innovation addresses complex challenges that require collaboration between various stakeholders. The methodology applies a collaborative approach on two levels. First, the collaboration with representatives of sustainable food initiatives for the iteration and development of a tool that supports the co-creation of communication design with a focus on qualities of sustainability. Second, the use of the tool itself enables the representatives of sustainable food initiatives to co-create communication design solutions working with participants assembled for this purpose. In this research process the communication designer researcher is positioned as the designer of a tool that enables co-creation and as the facilitator of the co-creation process.
In the area of participatory design, the notions of co-design and co-creation have been growing and are seen as distinct approaches by different authors. The perspectives of Sanders (2009), Faud-Luke (2009) Koskinen (2011) are relevant and have informed the methodology. Author Elizabeth Sanders (2012) has written extensively on collaborative creative tools and describes co-design as a specific instance of co-creation (Sanders & Simons, 2009). Co-creation, the author explains, is a broader term that describes a creative process placed in the hands of people not trained in design. Co-design refers to a joint work between designers and people not trained in design (Sanders & Simons, 2009). From an angle of design activism, Faud-Luke (2009) describes co-design as an open, democratic process, that implies designing with others. The premise is, the people who will be ultimately using an artefact are entitled to have a voice in how it is designed and implies the inclusion of stakeholders/actors in the process. Koskinen (2011) describes co-design as an approach driven also by the importance of fieldwork as “design is supposed to be an exploration people do together” (2011, p.83). This viewpoint of co-creation in design process (rather than co-design) is integrated in the methodology of this research. It supports the changing role of the designer towards that of a facilitator (Faud-Luke, 2009) (Sanders & Simon, 2009) (Koskinen, 2011) where in practice it becomes “increasingly difficult to draw a line between designers and non-designers” (Koskinen, 2011, p.83) or what Manzini (2015) called “diffused design”. Considering the expanded understanding of communication design practice, the methodology for practice-led research here was based the on co-creation of a communication design tool.
3.4.1 Embracing diffused design
The methodology opened communication design practice to non-design experts: the sustainable food initiatives and a wider public. Diffused design describes people’s natural design capacity. Given the subject area of sustainable food alternatives, by applying the approach of diffused design the process is open and inclusive of existing and potential new participants interested in making a contribution to
the sustainable food movement. As described by Sanders (2009) the public desires to be more than just consumers of messages but seek empowerment to create messages themselves, resulting in a shift from consumer to prosumer (producer-consumer)3. Collaboration between participants benefits them
by identifying common interrelations and motivations that define the means and ends in response to complex social challenges. This approach requires a role shift for the participants to whom the design serves. They become collaborators and prosumers of the products and services they use.
3.4.2 Responsive design approach
The research took a responsive design approach (Thorpe and Gamman, 2011) to inform how the designer should be positioned through the collaborative design process. From this perspective, the communication designer responds to the context by creating the conditions for participants to generate their own communication design outputs (rather than being responsible for these outputs). The
communication designer is a storyteller rather than an author. This approach can be seen to enhance the empowerment of the participants (here the sustainable food initiatives) when interpreted through Latour’s perspective on matters of concern (2008). By using the word design to represent revolution, the approach renders matters of concern into matters of design. In this research, the matter of concern is the challenge to articulate the qualities of sustainability. Matter of design, is the capability to articulate which communication strategies can amplify which qualities of sustainability. The responsive design approach defined the role of the communication designer as the one who designs how to enable the communication, rather than design the piece of communication itself.
3.4.3 Reflexivity
Reflexivity, as opposed to subjectivity, is the process of examining both oneself as researcher in the research context, and the research itself. As a designer-researcher in this study, the participatory approaches employed were not just mechanisms to gather data, but also a way of being involved as a participative individual within a community of interest. Reflection on practice, as well as ongoing informative evaluation, was essential to inform the iterative practice-led research. Reflexivity was important because the methodology was deliberately open-ended. The emphasis was not to extensively iterate and test the tools and workshop format towards a final product, but rather, to understand the impact through the iteration with participants.
3 Prosumer is a term used to describe how the public becomes a collaborator in the process of communication design with the sustainable food initiatives. Prosumer is a person who both consumes and produces content, a term coined by futurist Alvin Toffler in the book The Third Wave published in 1980.
57 - DEFINE STAGE: METHODOLOGY AND DISCOVERY TOOL
RESEARCH PROCESS THEORETICAL FRAMES METHODS TOOLS
DISCOVER STAGE