Design thinking and Margaret Archer's model of social agency

Design thinking is a set of methods used by designers to assist in addressing complex social problems. Reading Margaret Archer's recent book on social agency and reflexivity provides a better understanding of how design thinking might be a powerful, effective, designerly approach to personal development and social change.

What differentiates design thinking from traditional product design? Social agency through (collective) reflexivity. Product design works at a more mechanistic level, assuming the starting point of a user with specific needs and capabilities, to deliver a product with appropriate affordances and constraints. On the other hand, design thinking accepts that users (now participants in design activity) bring to the process their own unique and independent dynamic of value and meaning formation. The important move is to realise that this "subjectivity" is paramount - in fact it is the well-spring of all that is valuable in human life. It's not to be dismissed as troublesome variation, but rather to be engaged with as a productive, value creating dynamic. Design thinking then adds to that a forum around which a diversity of individuals can negotiate social, technical, environmental, practical change through which they can collectively express or address their personal values and needs. The result should be new practices, new objects and environments to support those practices. These collective changes are the objects of design. But it's not simple, linear. Almost certainly the individuals are changed by the process.

In her book Making Our Way Through the World (2007), the sociologist Margaret Archer argues against a hydraulic deterministic model of social mobility. Archer proposes a three stage approach:

People form their own concerns (things that matter to them) in various ways. Archer argues that the individual internal conversation mediates the acquisition and transformation of concerns. In the three stage model, action on individual concerns is taken through projects that are formed and executed, but also subject to micro-political forces (for example, time available for a personal project might have to be negotiated with others). A successful project would result in a change in the life (practices) of the individual. The modus vivendi would in effect have been redesigned.

There are three obvious points at which this social agency might be disrupted or blocked:

• The individual may have difficulty in "defining and dovetailing" concerns - Archer's main aim of the book is to explore how variations in the reflexive internal conversation might effect this.
  
• The individual may struggle to translate concerns into projects - again variations in reflexive mode have an effect, along with social pressures and the available practices (there's a chicken-and-egg problem in there, without good practices, projects will never get formed effectively).
  
• Projects may fail to establish sustained changed in practices.
  

Returning to design thinking, we can reconsider it's methods in the light of this three stage model. It provides us with methods that can help with the reflexive formation and transformation of concerns (although it needs to be informed by Archer's work on individual variation in modes of reflexivity). It provides methods that assist with the translation of concerns into projects. It is particularly good at dealing with the micro-political issues that might disrupt or block projects. Given that the aim is to design and form better practices, design thinking provides practices that can boot-strap the three stage process that leads to the design and implementation of new practices. It is, in this way, a method for enabling emergent, non-linear, designerly social action for complex dynamic social intelligences.

Robert O'Toole : 19 Apr 2011 07:36 |  Tags: Inspiration |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My Learning Technology at Warwick objectives April 2011

Following a reorganisation and regrouping at Warwick, I have been asked to identify my next set of objectives for my learning technology work. There is widespread agreement that we need to step back and reconsider our approach to developing a technology enhanced university. This need was explored well in the recent DVC Forum on New Technology with Professor Mark Smith (which I couldn't get to due to a schedule clash with my PhD upgrade meeting). A summary of the forum is online for university members. It is a very useful and thought-provoking podcast.

From the points raised in the forum, combined with my own experience and current thinking, it is clear that now need to get answers to some fundamental questions before proceeding further. I am proposing to undertake a two-month long investigation spanning all aspects of the university, and producing a report with recommendations as to how we should proceed. I have created a mind map of the questions (a snapshot of which is shown below). The Mindmanager version of the map contains notes from a transcript of the DVC Forum.

Robert O'Toole : 15 Apr 2011 11:50 |  Tags: Implementation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Chapter plan

1. Developing human intelligence through epistemographically¹-smart design.

1.1 A vision of meaningful success in higher education.

How knowledge, meaning and experience are intimately linked. A brief social and technical history of higher education and academic knowledge, from 11th Century Bologna through to Boyer and beyond. Capitalism and the hyper-enrichment of experience and opportunity. What might be meaningful success in 21st Century higher education?

1.2 Dewey and the experiential turn in the philosophy of education.

1.3 Kolb's Experiential Learning and the weakness of its constructivism.

1.4 Shifting the perspective to emergent epistemic systems and their instruments of experience.

1.5 Evidence from the study of human and non-human emergent epistemic systems.

1.5.1 Learning from robots: situated, embedded and extended cognition (and why robots don’t do art). 

1.5.2 Learning from biology: dynamic, emergent systems and cognition (and why swarms don’t think).

1.5.3 Learning from artists and performers.

1.5.4 Learning from societies: language games, actor-network-theory, reflexivity and cognition (and why humans are creative thinkers).

1.6 Epistemographically-smart instruments of experience.

1.7 Epistemographically-smart teaching and learning.

2. Case studies from arts and humanities higher education.

2.1 A field guide to observing “epistemographically-smart teaching and learning”.

2.2 Why arts and humanities?

2.3 Knowing Shakespeare (English Literature, Theatre Studies).

2.4 Finding your authorial voice (Creative Writing).

2.5 How common is this kind of teaching and learning?

2.6 Design as a methodology for enhancing teaching and learning.

3. Design thinking: developing intelligent products, services and communities.

3.1 What is design? What is design thinking?

3.2 Industrial design, experience design, sustainable and durable design.

3.3 What is meant by “non-trivial” or “wicked” problems.

3.5 The epistemographic dimension of "wicked" problems and solutions.

3.4 IDEO, participatory interaction design and the Three Spaces approach.

4. Examples of synergies between humanities education and design thinking.

4.1 Creative projects in English and Comparative Literary Studies.

4.2 Creative projects in Theatre Studies.

5. Experiments using design thinking in humanities education.

5.1 Design thinking based film making.

5.2 IDEO cards.

6. Conclusion: design thinking – an effective method for epistemographically-smart teaching and learning?

Robert O'Toole : 04 Apr 2011 02:33 |  Tags: Implementation |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem