Dear Dori, Michael, Katherine and all the others
The example provided so far are all aimed at supporting transparency at the ballot and to level inequality and differences in accessibility to the fundamental right to vote, but this is just an aspect, though very relevant, of Design for democracy. I have a slightly different view, perhaps it is because I'm Italian and the word democracy in Italy is only used by the politicians before the election, than it is forgotten until the following election (that doesn't come much later). When I think of design for democracy I think on how to design systems of products and services to support the pillars of democracy, that are the right to be represented, the transparency of those we elect, the right for citizens to define and express their own problems and, perhaps this is very typical of a design view, also to define and express also some possible solutions or preferable scenarios.
Here are some examples that, in my opinion are going beyond the horizon of the cases proposed so far.
http://www.designcouncil.info/mt/RED/democracy/ a project to reconnect local MPs to their communities
http://punchclockmap.sunlightprojects.org/ a site for MPs to record all their meetings and activities day by day
http://beyondvoting.wikia.com/wiki/Beyond_Voting is a wiki to support grassroots governance levels.
A last note on something I read before:
I think design is NOT political, but the designer is, because s/he is living in his social, cultural and political context and he has his own responsibilities.
Nicola
Nicola Morelli, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Design
Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Nicola Morelli, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Design
Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
http://servicedesign.wikispaces.com/
Blog http://nicomorelli.wordpress.com/
skype: nicomorelli
-----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 Tunstall, Elizabeth
Sent: 30. april 2008 04:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: GOOD Design, Service, and Politics
Terry, Katherine, Nicola, and Micheal, GK, and group.
The questions of how designers (in partnership with social scientists) can
influence the political process is my current area of research. Based on
my experience with Design for Democracy and now on my own projects,
courses I've taught in Design and Governmentality, and readings, designers
already influence the political process.
Specifically, all of the artifacts of the political experience from
candidate posters and ads, voting booths and equipment, policy PR
campaigns, national independence day fireworks are "designed." Perhaps not
always designed by professional designers or to great quality, but they
are designed. To provide an example, I've been reading the history of the
US election fraud in the book Deliver the Vote by Tracy Campbell
(2005,Carrol and Graft Press) and doing archival research through 19th
century newspaper articles on the controversies with the Australian
"blanket" secret ballot. I found out that there were ballot boxes
"designed" with a secret compartments to allow politicians to fill the
ballot boxes with false ballots after the official elections. This goes to
show that designers have always been involved in the political process,
perhaps not always for the greater good.
Thus perhaps reframing the issue, the challenges for designers are (1)
raising the technical and aesthetic standards of design artifacts to what
are deemed best practices by designers' standards,(2) using the
human-centered design process to increase everyday people's participation
in political processes, and (3) doing both of those in such a way that
they result in positive outcomes for the most vulnerable and/or
disenfranchised populations. These should be the intentions of any graphic
design, interaction design, industrial design, experience design,
architecture, that is engaged with politics. But the difficulty increases
from designing "good" political artifacts, optimizing political systems,
to creating the possibilities for equitable and just political systems. It
requires the cooperation and collaboration of designers, social
scientists, government officials and administrators, and community
advocates; each playing an important role.
The above describes the work of Design for Democracy on the US election
experience. To correct the view provided by the limited info available on
the AIGA site, DforD did more than just information design for ballots in
two ways.
1.
The rigorous research and design process that Design for Democracy used to
ensure the interfaces were accessible to everyone is a model for how
governments should create print and digital interfaces that enfranchise
all voters.
Design for Democracy applied a human-centered + governmental design
process that consisted of: HAVA and Voting Rights Act of 1965 requirements
analysis, existing ballots and voter information signage audits,
observations of 2006 New Jersey primary elections; consultation with
advocates for the blind, people with low vision, people with mobility
impairments, the elderly, low literacy, and multilingual/multicultural
communities; an over 500-respondent voter survey, questionnaires with
election experts, field interviews with poll workers, 54 usability
evaluations in seven states, and a pilot test of electronic ballots and
voter information signage in Nebraska's November 2006 general elections;
and three public hearings.
This was all necessary to get the US Election Assistance Commission and
its constituent groups to understand that design artifacts like ballots
and signage were directly connected to their processes of administration
and the optimized voting experiences of its citizens. It worked because
they accepted the standards as the National best practices in 2 years. To
put this into perspective, it took 10 years for the Clearview font to be
accepted as the standard for US highway systems.
2.
The previous work that DforD did, which persuaded the Election Assistance
Commission to give it the contract, engaged in nearly every aspect of the
election experience. See PDF of visual for 2005 Index Award. But here is
the list of all that DforD designed with ethnographers/anthropologists,
undergraduate graphic and industrial design students and their faculty
Marcia Lausen and Stephen Melamed:
Strategic posters based on ethnographic research outlining: 5 voter and
non-voting typology (Avid Voter, Civic Voter, Issue Voter, Excluded,
Apathetic), voting experience process model (Register, Get Info, Vote,
Monitor Choices), polling place experience model (highlighting role of
election judges, layout of space, lack of signage, etc.), and an
opportunity matrix, which informed the design of the following materials:
Programs and literature used to recruit pollworkers and educate young voters.
Posters designed to reach Asian-Americans, Mexican-Americans,
Polish-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and other potentially disenfranchised
communities.
Voter education literature, state and county voter information websites
provide information in the way voters wish to receive it - organized into
categories of learn, serve, register, and vote.
Voter Registration Card design makes information clear and accessible to
voters while addressing new election code compliance issues.
Prototype designs for punchcard and optical scan ballots respect existing
technologies and introduce user friendly layouts with clear information,
and greater legibility.
Polling place set-up: guidelines for improved space management and flow
Informational signage; indicated by blue color provides useful information
Instruction signage: indicated by red color provides process demonstration
Wayfinding: signs to help voters find their way.
Pollworker Station Trays: save time and provide information
Voting Supply Carrier: improved handling and organization of materials/set-up
Voting booth design improved technology and privacy
Universal Voting booth: for both seated and standing voters
Election Judge Manual: reorganized and clarified content and established
graphic standards with simplified drawings and navigational aids.
Electronic Training Support: presentation in alignment with the Election
Judge Manual that is used in the day-long training session for all who
serve in the 2,500 polling places in suburban cook count.
Administrative forms + envelopes system revolutionized behind-the-scenes
administration by clarifying procedures and decreasing the possibility for
error.
Although I admit I am somewhat biased, DforD provides one of the best
examples of how designers can directly engage in the political process in
ways that are not just "speculative," but are actually adopted by
government institutions, thereby becoming government policy.
Dori
On 4/29/08 8:37 AM, "Michael Schmidt (mschmidt)" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> As a graphic designer, I say we can and should contribute to both the
narrow,
> artifact-improvement perspective and the wider conceptual and
systems-oriented
> approach. With regard to the latter, my colleagues and I in Memphis are
> working on policy advocacy for children. Infant mortality and low infant
birth
> weight are worse here than in many developing nations. We've partnered
with a
> political science center housed within a large local advocacy institute to
> conceptually frame and visually, verbally, and interactively represent the
> resources and the actions required to support healthy families and
> communities. We are still in early stages, and we are just beginning to
work
> out the study design, testing, and evaluation issues. Though extrinsically
> very different, this newer work is intrinsically very similar to what we've
> been doing as graphic designers in the realm of bioethics, where changing
> healthcare practice is similar in scope to affecting policy creation and
> decision making. The upshot: graphic design can indeed help with government
> forms and ballots, and this is laudable and needed, and it can help
> multidisciplinary groups frame complex problem spaces-defining the problem
> space essentially-and then pose novel solutions that exploit the advantages
> and ubiquity of contemporary media.
>
> Michael
>
>
> On 4/29/08 4:56 AM, "Nicola Morelli" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> HI all,
> I understand graphic designers focus on forms and communication issues to
> increase the efficiency of public systems and I agree that there is a
lot to
> do in that area. However when the problem is "design for democracy" or how
> design can influence political process I think the discussion should be
much
> wider than this. Even the AIGA page on design for democracy seems quite
> limited to me: is it possible that the whole issue of design for democracy
> should be limited to the question of making the ballot paper easier to read
> and to use? I have seen graphic design works (I remember the
presentation of
> Bernard Canniffe at the DETM conference in Ahmedabad in 2005) that have
a much
> wider perpective than being a support for government communication.
(Bernard,
> are you in this list?).
> Beyond graphic design the possibility for design to influence or even shape
> political agendas is even bigger.
> As Jennie Winhall says: "There has been a shift in conventional politics; a
> realization that top-down policies no longer work and that public
services in
> particular must be redesigned around the user. Conventional policy
makers are
> not readily equipped to do this. Designers are"
> (http://www.core77.com/reactor/03.06_winhall.asp), perhaps this is too
close
> to the usual designers' ambition to create the world, but in fact designers
> have a good capability to create things around users, .i.e. around
citizens,
> rather than over their head. In this sense they do have a political role.
>
> I think there are several cases of socially responsible design that
have, or
> could have, a strong political influence, and in fact I can see that the
> policy document of some government bodies (see for instance
> www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy) and the activities of some design groups
> (see for instance http://www.designcouncil.info/mt/RED/) are incredibly
> similar. The UK government seems convinced that the best and most efficient
> public services are those created around the citizens. This is what many
> designers have been doing for a while. (I have no information on how RED or
> other designers in UK have influenced public policies, but I think that
> directly or indirectly, they shaped them).
>
>
> Nicola Morelli, PhD
> Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Design
> Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
> http://servicedesign.wikispaces.com/
> Blog http://nicomorelli.wordpress.com/
>
> -----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
Katherine
> Hepworth
> Sent: 29. april 2008 04:38
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Design as Service
>
> Hi Terry, Gavin and GK
>
> In response to Terry's question about how designers can practically
> influence the political process. I am a graphic designer, so my answer is
> angled this way...
>
> Communication design can be used to increase citizens' experience of
> democratically elected government in so many ways. The big ones are in
> improving access to government services (information and forms) and
> understanding of the political process (education and information). David
> Sless's latest blog post about the impact of government form design gives a
> good example (http://www.communication.org.au/dsblog/). However, this needs
> to be acknowledged at a policy level, with the commissions coming from
> inside government departments. To have any hope of raising awareness of the
> impact of design (or absence of design) on the efficacy of government
> services among politicians or government staff would probably require
> quantifying its effect.
>
> To take the form example, raising awareness of the problem and the value of
> design in solving it would involve collecting usability data on a sample of
> forms, calculating time taken to fill in forms within government
departments
> alone (let alone for the public), error rates, cost of error rates and
> projected error and time savings from well designed forms. The projected
> time savings and other arguments would have to be developed - as Gavin has
> stridently pointed out - based on previous research in the field. Finally
> this information would need to be communicated in a format that politicians
> and government workers would be receptive to (backed up with cold hard
> academic papers, of course). SmashLab's Design Can Change website
> (http://www.designcanchange.org) is a good example of such a targeted
portal.
>
> AIGA's Design for Democracy is an excellent illustration of how
> communication design can be utilised in governmental communicaiton once
> policy makers have a basic awareness of its potential impact
> (http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/design-for-democracy).
>
> Cheers
>
> Katherine
>
> ---
> Katherine Hepworth
> Researcher
> National Institute of Design Research
> Swinburne University of Technology
>
> 144 High Street Prahran
> Victoria 3181 Australia
>
> Telephone +61 401 408 804
> Facsimilie +61 3 9521 2665
>
> www.swinburne.edu.au/design
>
>
>
>
>>>> Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> 24/04/08 1:57 PM >>>
> Dear Ranjan and Katherine,
>
> Thank you for your sensitive responses about how design might be
involved in
> politics.
>
> I was wondering how you see the practicalities of designers influencing
> politics. What are the practical processes?
>
> At the front of my mind is the last 50 years of often unhelpful activity by
> the World Bank and development agencies in designing new infrastructure as
> part of development agendas.
>
> What will be different about what you propose of how designers should be
> involved in deciding the path of development?
>
> Best wishes,
> Terry
>
>>>> Katherine Hepworth <[log in to unmask]> 23/04/08 1:10 PM >>>
>
> Hi Terry and Ranjan
>
> I'm not so sure Ranjan's point implies designers playing god. It is a
> fraught area though, graphic design and political governance. I agree with
> Ranjan that design in itself is political, and most visibly so in work that
> is intended to effect widespread social change (either in awareness or
> behaviour). As Terry points out, this becomes fraught when design is in the
> service of democratically elected politicians, as it can appear as if
> designers are or are at least attempting to dictate the political message.
>
> Politicians who commission designers to assist with communicating policy do
> sacrifice some control over the message. The extent to which the designer's
> influence is felt perhaps depends on the individual designer or design
> firm's intent, whether they see themselves as a service provider or more of
> an author. The effectiveness of the work perhaps depends on whether the
> designer comprehends the fundamentally different nature of this type of
> commission to all others. Acting as an intermediary for democratic process
> is no small responsibility!
>
> There is a case to be argued that design services interfere in the
> democratic process by mediating messages from politicians to the public.
But
> politicians use graphic designers (and host of other pr, marketing and
> branding professionals) precisely because they are experts in
communication.
> The designed message is certainly more mediated, but is also presumably
more
> effective. Does this make the message less democratic, or more?
>
> A fascinating can of worms.
>
>
> ---
> Katherine Hepworth
> PhD Candidate
> National Institute of Design Research
> Swinburne University of Technology
>
> 144 High Street Prahran
> Victoria 3181 Australia
>
> Telephone +61 401 408 804
> Facsimilie +61 3 9521 2665
>
> www.swinburne.edu.au/design
__________________________________________
Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall, PhD
Associate Professor, Design Anthropology
School of Art + Design
University of Illinois at Chicago
Associate Director, City Design Center
University of Illinois at Chicago
[log in to unmask] email
312.282.2893 mobile
312.996.9768 office
Blog at http://dori3.typepad.com/my_weblog/
City Design Center
820 W Jackson Blvd, Suite 330
Chicago, IL 60607
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