Freire's Pedagogy..., Androgogy, Empowerment, "social" design
or "people-study method" (re Rosan's, Kerry's and all previous posts)


"It is not only poor people in Brazil who need a Paolo Freire. We all
do." (Victor Margolin)


Dear colleagues,

In the early and mid 70's, in a move to make culture more accessible
to many, the French Government created the Centre National d'Art et
Culture Georges Pompidou (Centre Beaubourg). And the Centre de
Création Industrielle (CCI) was one of the departments at Centre
Beaubourg.(1)

Within its mandate, the CCI came up with quite an innovative project:
instead of the traditional "Design Centre" that one finds in most
countries, rather, at the Centre Beaubourg the general public would
practically be acquainted with the entire national industrial and
cultural production. Instead of exhibiting samples of the national
industrial material production for visitors at the Centre Beaubourg
only "to see", the then commissioned team at CCI, composed among
others of architects, engineers and product designers, proposed
rather to account for the relationships existing between humans, the
respective living (working and relaxing) spaces, and the artifacts
(objects and signs) used in the various spaces. Data on each of the
three avenues of enquiry would be searched, gathered and fed into a
computer for the public to retrieve according to respective needs in
such kind of information.

 In those early days of generalized computer use, Video display units
were to be scattered all around the Centre Beaubourg, and the general
public would thus consult the bank, hopefully representing the entire
artifacts production of the French industry.

The rationale on which the Système d'information sur les produits
(SIP) was based is the following:

- already in the early 60's and 70's, the material production in
France, like in any other extensively industrialized country, had
reached an unprecedented volume of artifacts, and the growth in
quantity was exponential

- as a consequence, the general (French) public was faced with a new
situation, never experienced before, whereby each individual, in
order to satisfy the slightest life need, had to choose among a
sizeable array of artifacts, both of local and of foreign make, all
allegedly meant and loudly claiming to better satisfy the same human
need, both in quantity and in quality

- there must be, technically, some way to alleviate the poignant and
puzzling emotional dilemma of the individual faced with and forced
into such a wide (and sometime agonizing! (2)) choice of options, yet
on which little information is made available except that of
commercial promotion type, generally incomplete, noisy and often
aggressive and to some quite offending

- on the ideological front, since the advent of industrialization,
the individual has lost the mastership of his/her immediate living
environment, as he/she used to be during the crafts period; in order
to re-balance the acquired (oppressive?) power through material
production of the industrialists, the "consumer" should be helped to
somehow better manage his/her alienated (and alienating! - See, among
many other publications, "The Tyranny of Choice", by Barry Schwartz)
(2) daily material environment.

The 1975-77 CCI proposal was as follows:

- to make available to the general public, thanks to the
extraordinary capacity of computer machines, a list of criteria on
which the individual choice of any given artifact would be based

- criteria for selection among material artifacts should correspond
to individual recognized and rationally assessed needs

- actual human (French) needs should be identified, comprehended and
detailed, as pertaining to all kinds of life situations

- available (or desired) material artifacts should be analyzed, in
terms of intended "real" needs satisfaction

- a computerized match of needs and artifacts was going to be made
possible, in such a way that, for example, someone in need of a means
to preserve fresh and cool foodstuff, he/she should feed the
computer, via the public VDU, a list of correspondingly appropriate
requirements. Then the SIP would match the list with a number of
artifacts available on the (French) market, all with some formal and
functional characteristics more or less corresponding to the desired
performance of preserving foodstuff. Here "performance" is not meant
to be only functional, but also symbolical and social, all these
aspects inter-related to ensure a "good" (satisfactory) conservation
of foodstuff.

The above CCI proposal was so appealing that funds were allocated,
and the team under the directorship of Michel Millot, Industrial
Designer, was entrusted with the mandate to design and materialize
the project, that was inaugurated with high-sounding trumpets (the
French way!) The target performance was to bank around 30000
different general consumer items, towards the end of 1977.

However, at the end of the prototyping phase during 1978, the project
was re-evaluated mainly under two criteria: the feasibility costs, on
one hand, and the popularity of use of SIP by the visiting public at
the Centre Beaubourg, on the other hand. The ultimate verdict was
that the project had to end right away, due to unexpected exorbitant
costs, first; and second, apparently the public did not confirm, by
its assiduity of exploitation, that the SIP was really a necessity
and hence a public service to be provided. So, the funds were
immediately cut, and the CCI mission was reoriented.

With a few members in his team, now composed, besides Michel Millot
himself (Industrial Designer), only of an Architecture (Michel
Julline) and a Civil Engineer (Bernard Grenier), the three fellows
decided, nonetheless, to carry on in private with the project
of "comparative analysis of material artifacts".

The concept was then "sold", first, to the powerful French
organization for the defense of consumers rights, the "Fédération
nationale d'achat des cadres (Fnac)". Second, through one of the
bilateral cultural exchange programs, it was suggested that the
French concept be also implemented in Québec, via the Industrial
Design Department, at the Faculté de l'Aménagement, Université de
Montréal. I was the first student sent to Paris, in 1978, for a 6
months internship at the Institut des Sciences de l'Usage et de la
Conception (ISUC), created by the trio soon after their services to
the CCI were terminated. In a partial fulfillment of a Master's
degree requirements in Industrial Design, I had to study the SIP, in
the perspective of a potential transfer of the system into the Québec
context.

At ISUC, we were picking up a concept of a common need in French
society (for example: dust removal at home), either as expressed
by "consumers" through several means, or else, by a meticulous
investigation of the actual material artifacts provided through the
French industrial production. Several samples representing as many as
possible related material artifacts were thus acquired and subjected
to a thorough analysis. This was run as a close observation and
annotation of as many features as possible of the daily use, ordinary
life, processes. Sample artifacts were manipulated as if they were in
the real contexts of their intended respective use, a typical French
flat. And each performance, including those related to the seemingly
intangible and usually not quantified features of artifacts (re:
Daniela Buchler's enquiry on shape and other perceptual and seemingly
non-quantifiable features evaluation, in her Monday April 19th post)
were assessed and weighed, each on the appropriate scale. And data
thus obtained were then loaded into corresponding computer files, the
same way use requirements were also investigated, documented and
their scientifically proven characteristics loaded into respective
computer files.

Data on industrial artifacts were quite easy to find, assemble and
load. As well, the context of use was also relatively easy to
reconstitute, in a laboratory manner, all along the life cycle of any
given artifact. Since we were analyzing artifacts usually used within
the home and/or in the immediate surroundings, the same flat was used
for several observations and for different artifacts tests. Analysis
of other kinds of artifacts would require different and corresponding
spacial contexts of use on which data can easily be obtained.

A full analysis of any material artifact would run over its entire
life in use(3a). The material artifact life has been conceptualized
by the ISUC team, not in one but in two cycles. A first global (or
macro?) cycle starts with the selection phase of the needed artifact.
This initial phase is eventually followed by its acquisition, then
its insertion into the use context. Then follows its utilization, the
maintenance, and finally, the "recycling" phase, either by a
different task assignment as required by any other need, or through
transformation into some other things and/or artifacts.

The above utilization phase has also been conceptualized as an
internal (micro?) cycle, within the global cycle briefly described
above. The inner cycle starts with access to the artifact to be used.
The process is then pursued through preparation, operation, enjoyment
of the operation, maintaining the artifact in operational use, and
finally putting the artifact "to rest" until any next use. And each
of the above artifact life cycle phase was conceived as a research
post at various depths, both for information to users and for
specifications for artifacts manufacturing.

The most difficult part of the entire process was to gather workable
and valid data on users, both physical (ergonomics) and psychological
(psycho-ergonomics) as well as social (socio-cybernetics?).

A great range of information is presently available on most of human
aspects and needs, but this information is scattered, partial and not
necessary focused on material artifacts assessment for a "good" use
and/or making. In this respect, the most original insight highlighted
by the ISUC team was to conceptualize the use process of any material
artifact through five categories of directly concerned and/or
affected users (3b):
 
1. the acquirer (s) of the artifact
2. the operator, directly manipulating the artifact
3. the para-operator, not directly putting the artifact into
operation but some how handling the artifact in order to allow a
satisfying operation of the artifact
4. the beneficiary of the operation on and with the artifact
5. the counter-beneficiary of the undesired effects of the operation
run on/with the artifact

All the above different groups of users have each their specific
needs and requirements that are not (or less, for some) presently
addressed by the artifacts found on the market. Correcting this
lacking situation should be the prime mandate (self-) ascribed to
designers, according to the ISUC team.

The second innovative insight by the ISUC team was to propose such a
rigorous laboratory type research on material artifacts, following
the "clinical research" approach, or "Mode 2 knowledge production" as
says Professor Joan E. van Aken (4). This kind of knowledge would be
far different from the traditional marketing data and other
descriptive psycho-social findings. It would also be far from the
fundamental research results obtained though explaining and
predicting physical sciences.

Results out of the prescriptive approach would first be intended
for "users" ("users" was found to be conceptually a more appropriate
term for designers than the marketers term of "consumers")
information, education and emancipation (would it be here also that
Freire's pedagogy/andragogy could be applied?). The clinical research
results would also construe, for artifacts designers, a sound (and
credible) core of specifications (van Aken calls these "field-tested
and grounded technological rules") for "good" design, as opposed to
the usual contemplative artistic inspiration and/or engineering
technical ("inhumane"?) abstractions.

The Paris based ISUC does no longer exist. And to my present
knowledge, the above initial and seminal work done in the early 70's
by Michel Millot, Michel Jullien and Bernard Grenier has never been
pursued by any one else. Following the several interrogations raised
lately and the often expressed wishes on the PHD-DESIGN list, I
hereby propose that, somewhere, with a strong institutional support
either in private or in academy, a new team of designers resumes the
Design field foundational task, from where the ISUC activities
stopped.

Moreover, the above successive conceptualizations were thought and
initiated in the perspective of designing and informing about
material tangible (manipulated) artifacts. Would they also be
applied, in full or just in some partial applications, to other
subfields in design, particularly those dealing with immaterial
artifacts ?

Since we all are involved in what Ken calls the "making disciplines",
I would be inclined to believe that the approach and research
procedure initiated by the ISUC team can somehow be applied to any
designing endeavor. But applications in design subfields, other
then "product" design still need to be tried. And I would be most
pleased to contribute in any capacity, with memories and saved
documents, to any trial that may be undertaken along the lines above.


References:

(1) Centre de Création Industrielle - CCI
Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou
Public Relations pre-opening presentation brochure, Oct. 1st., 1975

(2) In Scientific American, April 2004, pp.70-75


(3a) Michel Jullien: "Le domaine de l'usage:
relations/usagers/milieu".In IF (Industrialisatio Forum), Vol. 9,
(1978), no. 2-3, p. 8. Free translation and slight adaptations.

(3b) Idem, pp. 11-13.

(4) "The Field-tested and Grounded Technological Rule as Product of
Mode 2 Management Research". A paper submitted on 31 March 2004 for
publication in British Journal of Management.


François-X. N.I. NSENGA
Montréal