Day 2-Panel Discussion
Moderator
- Ben Reason (BR)— Cofounder, Livework
Speakers
- Luke Roberts (LR)—COO & Cofounder, highfive
- Christian Bason (CB)—Co-Founder, Transition Collective
- Amanda Woolery (AW)—Organizational Development, Consultant Facilitator and Coach
Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining
We all discussed what you bring to table and are interested in, so will start to reflect on those things and home territory first. Amanda, how has what you saw today connect to what you care about?
— AW: Appreciated cohort conversation and great experience in forcing me to be more curious for things I was comfortable in
- Lens about people and how to make work work for actual people and getting them to show up
- Things have jumped out today
—Try not to shoe-horn humanity back-in, of pushing HCD change to stuff humanity back into dehumanizing system built in
- Challenge to build HCD from first principles, as things like technical infrastructure shapes service quality
— Start from beginning and technical stuff part of creating a humanizing system
- Fan of self-determination theory; Autonomy an control ourselves and sphere of influence— sense of mastery and competence
- Social connectedness as another function
— Thank you to not making it more comfortable, but designing it be good for our society
— People stepping into space with expertise and help need to recognize we are showing up as collaborators not as experts in a process
- Need to show up curious and humble and open to learn
- Tension between humble and being confident in value you are bringing to table.
- Confidence of knowing the value you’ll bring to others allows you to make space for conversations with everyone else.
— Can be heartbreaking to not see change, as change is often slow, and active waiting in change that is difficult
- Lovely to be part of conversation where you are not alone, and work is important
- And what we can do to be here
How is systems leadership different from executive leadership?
— CB: Having traced evolution of service design over decades, interested in role of leadership
- External aspects and recognize HCD might ask more around ecosystem leadership with array of actors and live-centered design
- People in healthcare can design for patient and planet
— One shift of dealing with mess of wider ecosystem and need to travel through system, in order to discover it as service designer
— Internal aspect of what it means to be human, and what humans are
- Work of what decision about human nature would mean about organization design
- Presumption of human are kind and can collaborate and be responsible— would inform broader design
- Ask about underlying values and methodologies to critique
— Questions about value
- Co-wrote piece about CEO positions and said we need to trust in hope and love and future leadership
- New principles of leadership that are regenerative and inducing hope
Question if there is room for emergence?
—LR: Think will be devil’s advocate here where systems are coercive and distort
- Emergence can be good or terrible thing from good people coming together
- Emergence is amoral, and outside of value judgments
- We can go in with good intentions into system, and can be weaponized against the new
— When you look at linear planning, and focus on start as opposed to middle or end
— Ask what are we advancing it to, and be cautious of feedback and sensitivity to system, and causing harm in guise of doing good
What do you advise designers do as part of practice to keep their eyes open to adverse affect?
— LR: Ask where does system end— danger in proving part, but not the whole— you can create best service in the world within a terrible system.
- Undertow of waterfall and we need to see if we can speak truth to power, even as you leave system
— Can trace system and see path it will take if things will go well, and how to spot that
— Use of anticipatory idea of work.
- What happens if we do nothing?
- What will energy required to continue service after you leave the system?
- Energy moves around system, and where does it go, and how do designers evaluate it
Had feeling designers don’t have insight into how power operates, and things that might be weaponized or other powers that come into play?
— Definitely systems that have terrible outcomes that we need to reimagine and what power distribution is today
- Working with political science and design functions like innovation team with Danish government and government mandated and still find actors not aware of power they hold or that they misuse
— Ask better questions for values, mindful of beautiful service in broken system
- If designers partnered with government for last 100 years to use profession and craft, for how it’s going
- Where commercial enterprises are becoming aware of how they are harmful to people
— Example of Australia banning social media for those under 16, and reckoning with different avenues
— Hope for advancing service design and need to ask heavy questions on how design industry partnered with other industries to detriment of society and planet
— AW: Temptation to come in with expert space and have paternalistic view
- Idea of pre-programming it all out
— Taking people’s autonomy and potential for own mastery away
- Working with designers and creatives to have different perspective and frame on what you are working on
— Power to draw boundaries is real-power and not pre-determined answer
- Be aware of stepping into someone’s space and being in it
— Celebrating other people as part of it
— Danger of not thinking about it. Listening out for challenging voices and values that underpin this
- How have you engaged with system and different from showing up as collaborator in shared endeavor to get something good done
— Luke wrote book about energy systems of attention, resources, information
- Power of guiding attention and energy you can move around and has it’s own power, by shifting where things go in a system and can be drawn in other ways
- Attention can be drawn in a harmful way
- Don’t underestimate power of not acting, and letting dynamics work their way out
- Avoiding the drama triangle as a goal
Describe fairly new discussion in design, and can be true of design’s soft-power, but lot of us are often working for financial power and directing design. How do you see design’s ability to speak truth to power?
— LR: Opportunity to say things can be better, and things can be intentionally better
- Do you really want these changes and certain systems don’t work at moment
- What is purpose of UK prison system— To make people hopeless?
- What happens when stakeholders say this is rubbish and needs to be designed and conduit for voices that aren’t heard and telling people what they don’t want to hear
What are other traditions to look out for?
— AW: Lot of things spoke to me about interdisciplinary practice and talk to people and collaborators and speak to people at different levels of abstraction in the system
- Going from concrete interaction to service users, and high-level pieces about budgets
— Traverse levels of abstraction and help other people travel those levels with you, and see how that is done
— Often talk about ‘system vertigo’, and seeing someone fail to get health treatment, and in meeting with department of health
- Vertigo is seeing connection between levels of system and not having others see it
- Sign of being aware of levels of abstraction and grace and agility between different levels
Other humanists?
— CR: Designers in unique position for trans-disciplinary work as it enables other disciplines to collaborate and being concrete and work with artifacts and move up the ladder
- Going bigger and recognizing context and something big at stake
— SD doesn’t have monopoly on being humanist, and many human sciences out there from culture and arts to architecture
- Humanism under pressure, including whether global system of believing in human rights
— Understand when we move up ladder to what other discipline are seeing— and whether country is doing well or not with GDP as ranking index
- Not only humanistic roots of design, but roots of other professions shaping the world
—LR: Into “More than Human” centered way of being and not just nature, i.e. biomimicry
- How we combine things to advance service design and add value and excitement
- Games as complex systems. Something about play mitigates language of risk, allowing people to be creative without fear of risking reputation, career
— Echoing games, and the book the grasshoppper by bernard suits
— BR: Thank you for all your reflections and now we focus on final presentation