Dear Alice,
This sounds like an interesting and useful and very real project.
There may be more practical advantages, particularly in terms of a
successful outcome, in using the well-developed literature of design of
community development projects rather than service design. The community
development design literature is focused exactly on that kind of situation.
What you describe is a classic intervention design of the form developed by
Youth and Community workers in the UK in the 1980s who were trained to
design these interventions, measure their effectiveness and redesign to
enable the interventions to sustain
A brief for design of a community development intervention might be
something like:
"Given a mixed group of students living together in accommodation of a
private accommodation provider, design and implement social, physical and
information structures for increasing positive social interactions between
students and between students and accommodation provider such that this
improves measured levels of trust, cultural sharing and communication
between the students and increases the measured levels of positive opinion
of the service provider by the students. Include in the design all necessary
changes to the building environment and interactions between students and
accommodation provider (bill payment, behaviour management etc). Undertake
measurements, before, during, immediately after completion of the project
and at 2 years after the completion of the project (this to identify which
things remain functioning and sustainable after the intervention). Where
possible, identify longer term processes for improving positive community
building particularly across years and changes in student population."
It may be useful to look at the Youth Work and Community Development
literature in the UK (try a Google on "community development UK"). There
is a reasonable library at the National Youth Agency in Leicester, There are
good resources in many other places. Also perhaps try some of the more
serious texts at the Fellowship of Intentional Communities at Twin Oaks in
the US. Unfortunately the Wikipedia entry on Community Development is
somewhat one-sided and omits a lot of the classic information about
developments in the UK, Europe, Middle East and Oceania.
In practicla terms, one very simple design solution is to appoint a
community development worker. They would do the design for all necessary
changes and implement everything. To get an idea of the design work of
community development workers see this job ad
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/p/types_of_job/community_development_worker_job_d
escription.jsp although this particular position isn't strong on changing
the building and interaction environments to support the building of
positive interactions (often physical changes, e.g. the installation and
removal of a small wall or window in just the right place can be incredibly
effective at changing levels of trust and communication. In saying this, I'm
aware I must be careful. On one project a few years ago, I commented
something similarly general about the use of decorative bollards to a city
planner and before I knew it there were hundreds of decorative bollards
strewn throughout the city!)
Best wishes,
Terry
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FRDS, AMIMechE, PMACM
Director Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research Group
Researcher, Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute
Associate, Planning and Transport Research Centre
Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Visiting Professor, Member of Scientific Council
UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alice
Andreoli
Sent: Thursday, 30 April 2009 6:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Socially responsive design
Hi all,
I am a master student exploring the area of socially responsive design for
my dissertation.
The project is going to be a service design approach to improve student
accommodations in Oslo, Norway.
The aim is to create services to improve the experience of living in student
accommodation and the relationship between students and housing provider.
Problems in student accommodation are created by the situation of living
together and sharing common spaces often without knowing each other. This
usually generates issues connected to trust, culture and communication.
I'm thinking to use social responsive service design to:
- try to improve the experience of living there
- improve social relations
- try to change people's behavior
I wonder if anybody can give me any advice about literature or any reference
about projects in the same field/direction.
Also just thoughts about the project are welcome!
Thanks in advance.
Alice
--
Alice Andreoli
Master student Industrial design
AHO - Oslo School of Architecture and Design
0047 41018669
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