Presented at AIGA Design Educator’s Response_Ability Conference, March 15, 2010
Abstract
Introduction: With this paper I intend to share my collaborative research, the project referred to as Social, Economic, Environmental Design (SEED). With the mission that “every person has the right to live in a socially, economically and environmentally healthy community,” SEED provides tools for like-minded individuals who are focused on directing their design practice towards an enhanced ethical and sustainable framework for project development. Shifting the paradigm from “client” to “community”, SEED is multi-faceted: It addresses a significant gap in the full spectrum of design practice as it transcends disciplinary boundaries. It redefines how the diverse disciplines of design (communication design, industrial design, architecture and urban planning, landscape architecture) are responding to quietly profound community-based projects. (Note: The blurring of disciplinary boundaries is an important sign in the evolution towards concrete problem-solving instead of designing for the application, still found in educational settings.) Many of these ventures are quite literally development projects where issues like wellness, mobility, health, productivity, and education are central to the design problem. These needs are newly defining the urgency of design that makes a positive contribution and answers the design problem. How well did the solution address the problem and meet goals that are in line with social, economic and environmental goals? SEED provides a path to design evaluation that is issue and goal specific, underscoring the requirement for social justice, economic development and environmental conservation as key initiatives for professionals and students alike.
Background: It is necessary to share some of the philosophical underpinnings of SEED so that relevance may be demonstrated as it pertains to the response_ability conference. As a network, SEED provides a vision for like-minded designers and others interested in pursuing development in the public interest. While design outcomes vary, ultimately the design solution should be in keeping with and reinforce the five SEED principles:
SEED Principle 1: Advocate with those who have a limited voice in public life.
SEED Principle 2: Build structures for inclusion that engage stakeholders and allow communities to make decisions.
SEED Principle 3: Promote social equality through discourse that reflects a range of values and social identities.
SEED Principle 4: Generate ideas that grow from place and build local capacity.
SEED Principle 5: Design to help conserve resources and minimize waste.
With these principles, SEED is a tool that can be used to: demonstrate the value of design; reveal design relevance in addressing critical social, economic, and environmental issues; establish a participatory design process through a standard logical means; explain the need for transparency in decision making on behalf of communities; prove accountability of projects that make claims of assistance; measure the positive impact of design and the growth of a community that shares common principles; and, allow for efficient sharing of knowledge.
Intent: The intent of this presentation is to detail the three major aspects of the SEED initiative: 1) how triple bottom-line concerns can not be ignored in design projects for development where the most essential needs of people are being addressed; 2) that in order for design to make sound impact and tackle the requirements of the problem, communities and others must be directly involved in the project (SEED outlines strategies for this, which I will share), and; 3) that there needs to be accountability for design in the public interest where successes and failures can have dramatic outcomes— evaluation is at the heart of this issue and is a thread of SEED. Each of the following paragraphs below provides more on the nature of the presentation.
1) Addressing triple bottom-line considerations should be integral to design decision-making and strategy at the start of any design project. Instead of being an after-thought, social, environmental and economic requirements of a project are discretely woven into the process and are automatically addressed upon project initiation. I will explain the distinct SEED design process and reveal how it can be relevant to a variety of different project types, and design scenarios for both the professional and the student. The significance of the five SEED principles will be shown in relation to triple bottom-line development projects that have identified specific issues and goals aligned with anticipated outcomes.
2) SEED provides a platform for designers, entrepreneurs, community members and vested project participants to connect with one another through an informed methodology. This set of tools guides a user-defined process for achieving specific project goals. SEED believes in the value of communication and understands the importance of actively involving participants in design development (in order to most accurately meet project goals). To demonstrate this, I will share SEED tools and processes and show case study projects that have used the SEED framework to inform the design development process. Methodology for participation, advocacy and client/community inclusivity will be discussed.
3) Why evaluate? SEED offers communication tools that allow communities to define goals for design projects and then measures the success in achieving these. How were goals defined and accomplished? What was done well and what wasn’t? What proof of accomplishment demonstrates that goals were met as anticipated in the project? Designers and others have a need to assess the outcome of their work just as clients and communities have a need to assess how goals were achieved for purposes of grants, defining community benchmarks and plotting progress toward common goals. Evaluation provides a road map, a directional pointer that can indicate vital strengths and weaknesses. SEED builds in an evaluative component to its process because it is something we need—designers and communities need to understand the impact of the work and we need to be able learn from and leverage results in any given project. The question of evaluation will surely spark lively debate. I will share models for evaluation that are currently being assessed for inclusion in the SEED process, and invite feedback.
Conclusion: As the research and development of SEED as a concept and a pragmatic set of tools is relatively new, the work shown will be timely and should be of interest to this conference track of “Big/Small.” Through the three focused areas discussed above, I plan on positioning SEED not only as a framework for the broad profession but also for design education—one that uses the mission and principles to inform an educational context focused on solving community-based design problems.