CHANGING THE CHANGE
An international conference on the role and potential of design research
in the transition towards sustainability
Torino 10th - 11th - 12th July 2008
In the framework of
WORLD DESIGN CAPITAL TORINO 2008 | © ICSID An Icsid initiative of the IDA
Newsletter 07 - May 2008
Contents:
Thank you reviewers!
Ezio Manzini (conference chair), Politecnico di Milano
Jorge Frascara (international advisory committee coordinator), Politecnico di Milano
Carla Cipolla (advisory committee secretary), Politecnico di Milano
Posing Critical Conundrums- the Value of Zebra Questions
Geetha Narayanan, Founder Director of Srishti School of Art Design and Technology, India
Changing the change: a perspective from business strategy
Roberto Verganti, Politecnico di Milano and Harvard Business School
They were once known as avant-gardes
Marco Susani, Vice President, Global Digital Experience Design, Motorola
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Thank you reviewers!
Ezio Manzini (conference chair), Politecnico di Milano
Jorge Frascara (international advisory committee coordinator), Politecnico di Milano
Carla Cipolla (advisory committee secretary), Politecnico di Milano
The blind review process of the abstracts submitted is now complete. One hundred and sixty three abstracs have been selected, after sifting through more than twice that number.
It was a very interesting process that proves that the topic of Changing the Change is present in the design researchers agenda across all continents. The conference will be a celebration of that interest, where the best ideas that are being developed internationally will find a place to be exposed and discussed, with a view to strengthening the international effort toward a sustainable society.
The organizers of Changing the Change want now to thank the work of all the reviewers that so generously dedicated their time, expertise and attention to analyze and select the best abstracts submitted.
We all look forward now to a great event!
Leave a comment on the Blog:
http://www.changingthechange.org/blog/2008/04/27/thank-you-reviewers/
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Posing Critical Conundrums- the Value of Zebra Questions
Geetha Narayanan Founder Director of Srishti School of Art Design and Technology, India
The Zebra Question is a poem by Shel Silverstein in which he poses the conundrum of order and causality embedded in our contemporary view or perspective of life. Is a zebra black with white stripes he asks or is it white with black stripes? and so on!
Perhaps we might ask, in a similar vein, if it is design and design thinking that will allow us to build a sustainable and fair world beyond 2020, or will it be that dominant visions of the world of 2020 will determine the scope, nature and field of what design is today in the year 2008?
Or perhaps we need to move beyond such simplistic and reductionist conundrums to some essential and core realizations that must underpin substantive dialogue on change.
A beginning might be to realize and accept, as David Orr and others put it, that all education, including design education must pivot around the human condition, the human prospect and the human spirit.
An addition to this would be the realization that the human condition, prospect and spirit is linked closely to our home –our mother ship, our Gaia, our earth. The earth defines the material, the matter that forms the fundamental core of our existence. It plays a big role in defining both the human condition and the human prospect.
A third realization could be centered around the understanding that contemporary discourses on matter such as the ones on sustainability, slowness or on change omit a vital part of what makes each of us human- our spirit-that which endures beyond matter and is what defines each of us as living beings on this planet- described by Carl Sagan as “the pale blue dot”
All of us, who are engaged in being critical about our societies and our futures, must learn to pose serious and challenging conundrums around these and other similar critical realizations. Using the power of the conundrum to generate genuine, equitable and critical dialogues, ones that do not focus on the generation of a series of reassuring lies but which deals with “impossible things” and ‘inconvenient truths” would result in powerful conversations on change. It will play a vital and informative role, at conferences such as Changing the Change in generating both the skeptical and the critical view of design enabled futures.
The Changing the Change conference offers an opportunity to question dominant paradigms in design, including contemporary paradigms such as sustainability thinking and green design. There is a real need today for designers, educators and thinkers to question the idea of development, not in isolation but together with notions of equity, of social and environmental justice and in doing this consider carefully the needs of both the people and the planet.
To me that would imply Changing the Change!
Leave a comment on the Blog:
http://www.changingthechange.org/blog/2008/04/27/posing-critical-conundrums-the-value-of-zebra-questions/
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Changing the change: a perspective from business strategy
Roberto Verganti, Politecnico di Milano and Harvard Business School
One of the most acknowledged (and so far unquestioned) theories of business is that competition is based on distinctive capabilities: something that one organization has and others haven’t. For years this theory has been the basis for contending the value of design for business: design makes a difference. And this approach of justifying the value of design because of differentiation has succeeded indeed. The number of companies investing on design is soaring.
Good news? Definitely. Surely for students and professionals, with an increasing demand for design skills and services. But unfortunately there is a downside: as an asset diffuses to every company, it inevitably loses its differential power. It becomes mandatory, not distinctive. It happened 20 years ago with Total Quality Management. In the late ‘80s firms considered quality as a top priority; the best quality performers were succeeding, and other companies started to invest in quality improvements with similar models and approaches: each adopted the principles of Total Quality Management, each had a manager responsible for Quality, each adopted six sigma or control charts. Two decades later quality is not among the top corporate priorities anymore. It is mandatory of course, and there are still quality managers in each firm, but quality is not considered a strategic differentiator. Is design bound to a similar destiny in business: to be mandatory, but not strategic?
I know this claim could sound awkward and outlandish to many. No one would nowadays dare to claim that design is marginal for business and competition. But as all companies around the globe are investing in design, and as all are investing in a similar way (all adopting user centered processes and techniques such as ethnographic analysis, brainstorming, rapid experimentation cycles) design in the next future is at risk to be perceived by managers as something necessary, but not differential. Design researchers, who have the attitude and the duty to look forward, have something to think and worry about. What’s next?
The rationale of the CtC conference comes from observation of the challenges that are faced by society and its implications for design researchers. Our discussion above points out that there is an additional reason for changing the way we have been thinking about design. A reason that is pragmatically rooted in the dynamics of competition and of strategy. Also businesses will be shortly looking for a radical change in their processes of change. Design needs to propose a new paradigm if it wants to stay high in the agenda.
Leave a comment on the Blog:
http://www.changingthechange.org/blog/2008/04/27/changing-the-change-a-perspective-from-business-strategy/
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They were once known as avant-gardes
Marco Susani , Vice President, Global Digital Experience Design, Motorola
Well known for their iconoclastic power, they were recognized as major driver of linguistic change in the arts and in architecture.
They also had the stronger, although less direct, role of anticipating and catalyzing major socio-cultural and political change.
In design and architecture, it was their ability to “give shape” to change that allowed them to have a revolutionary role comparable, if not larger, to the one of “true” politicians.
At the end of the last century, the independent exploration of designers grew inside large companies, and took a different format, combining the scenarios of a future life with a potential vision for the whole company and its strategy. In this case, the culture that designers try to change is both the external one, the user culture, and the internal one, the one of the company.
Today, the role of Design Research, or Strategic Design, is giving to designers in a company the responsibility to represent the transformation of the world “Out There” and bringing it inside the company. Among the many ‘sensors’ that a company tries to develop to get in touch with its users, Strategic Design is the one that has the most visionary role: rather than asking users what they may like in the future, Strategic Design needs to imagine the future before taking it in front of users. Designers in this case need to be involved in a sort of mutual ‘seduction’ with their audience: designers need to be ‘seduced’ by the desire for change that people is about to express, but they also need at the same time to create visions that are so exciting, tangible and plausible that can catalyze this desire for change and spin it into demand for new products and services.
To be so concrete and credible, designers cannot just rely on ideas or concepts. They need to develop a new aesthetic, an innovative language that can at a time render anything past obsolete and uninteresting, and open new iconic references for the future.
In this sense, visionary designers today wouldn’t be much different from the ‘constructive iconoclasts’ of the original avant-gardes. They just work in an environment much more integrated in their company.
But there is another dimension that makes this job today way more complex that in the past: the eco-system dimension. Eco-systematic approaches are not only limited to environmental eco-systems: it seems that any major innovation today needs to face the complexity of large systems that no designer, or even no single company, can control. Any innovation in digital communication, for example, such as social networking or mobile communication, touches multiple points of contact with the user and multiple networked systems that support them. In the same way, an innovation in manufacturing, like a new material or manufacturing cycle, touches many globally sparse components and suppliers.
Under these circumstances, any design vision needs to be supported by a certain degree of feasibility that spans across the whole ecosystem, which translates in the opportunity to steer the whole ecosystem toward a better balance.
And this is what makes visionary design today so exciting and important: never before the culture of design has been so strategically necessary (for companies), so socially relevant (for the users), so impactful (for entire ecosystems) and so communicative (of new aesthetics). It has also probably never been as difficult before, but this challenge is what makes it even more interesting.
Leave a comment on the Blog:
http://www.changingthechange.org/blog/2008/04/27/they-were-once-known-as-avant-gardes/
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Last news / now on line
- Bursaries application form is now on-line
- Participation fee: date change
- Conference programme (in progress)
- Blind peer review committee
Changing the change.design visions, proposals and tools.
Promoters:
Co-ordination of Italian Design Research Doctorates with Conference of Italian Design Faculty
Deans and Programme Heads
Organizers:
Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino
Endorsements:
CUMULUS
BEDA
ICOGRADA
Design Research Society
IFI
Torino World Design Capital
Important dates
April 28: until this day authors of approved abstracts have priority registration NEW DATE!
April 29: from this day registration will be available on-line also to general participants NEW DATE!
May 11: deadline for bursaries application NEW DATE!
May 20: bursaries results NEW DATE!
May 25: registration fee rate will increase from this day on NEW DATE!
July 10-11-12: conference
NEWS AND NOTES
_Bursaries application form is now on-line
Pursuing broader international participation the registrations' proceeds will provide bursaries for participants that require financial support. Bursaries will support registration fee, air flight ticket and hotel expenses in Torino during the days of the conference.
Only authors of approved abstracts can apply. Only ONE author for each abstract approved can apply.
The evaluation will consist in two points:
* The quality of the abstract presented by the applicant (evaluated by the blind peer review and scientific committee)
* The rank of the applicant's country of residence in the List of countries by GDP per capita(*). For this evaluation is considered the author's country of residency in the moment of the application, not his/her nationality (your country of residence is where you have been normally resident for the last three years). Authors residing in countries with lowest GDP per capita will be privileged.
(*) Data refer to the year 2006. Total GDP 2006 & Population 2006, World Development Indicators database, World Bank. The list can be consulted here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
Deadline for applications 11 May. Results: 20 May.
Please visit our website for additional nformation.
_Participation fee: date change
Registration fee rate will increase by 25 May (it was postponed). More information here: http://emma.polimi.it/emma/showEvent.do?page=439&idEvent=23
Please remember that authors of approved abstracts have priority registration until 28 April. From 29 April it will be available on-line also to general participants.
_Conference programme (in progress)
The first version of the conference programme is now on-line.
More information here: http://emma.polimi.it/emma/showEvent.do?page=371&idEvent=23
_Blind peer-review committee
Notifications of acceptance have been sent on 7 April. The list of members of the Blind Peer Review Committee therefore is now on-line here:
http://emma.polimi.it/emma/showEvent.do?page=609&idEvent=23
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