The scope and range for the object of design being the “social” (Koskinen, 2016) in the social welfare states of the Nordics, and I use the happiest one as my base of reference, is vast, varied, and immense. Rich and deep opportunities for practice based learning, research, and interdisciplinary development methodologies.
By refining one’s focus to the human centered knowledge delivery strategy, comprised of approach, process, framework, program design and development, prototyping and iteration, rollout, one begins at the beginning of the social components of the design process and addresses the element that bridges the knowledge of the user and her own lived experiential operating environment and the knowledge of the disciplines and methodologies that act as interface between technology and its end users. I will use the example of the Scandinavian tradition of participatory design research because of its emphasis on its originating legacy and first and guiding principles, rather than on the specific methods and tools packaged within the fundamental process actions – a facilitation or guided discussion by a group on a topic or theme with some objective or goal in mind that ideally is supposed to be of benefit to the participants. Ehn recognized this early with his statement that sometimes the design goal is no more than skills enhancement and tool building to enable and support this process (Ehn, 1993).
Here, then, even facilitation of group work or multidisciplinary design or innovation facilitation – think sticky note laden workshops with ideas flying on to walls will fall under the purview of social design in this sense, as defined by Koskinen (2016; Koskinen and Hush, 2016). Facilitation is the core of the social process of co-design and rarely the focus of researcher attention which, as trained in design themselves, tends to be more attracted to designing novel approaches to problem discovery and problem solving. We look at the delivery of such novel methods and tools, from design and innovation practitioners and researchers, as the design challenge. Light and Akama, and both Light and Akama have studied the facilitation process from the perspective of its impact on the experiences of the participants as part of undergoing the process and using the tools in groups. What stands out is their emphasis on facilitation as the crucial factor influencing the quality of outcomes of the participatory design research process. However, their work does the early groundwork of reflection in practice and the importance of thinking about this chemistry between group and innovation facilitator, since practitioners and researchers have not questioned their own presence.
Even the pandemic adjacent research on various remote facilitation processes were looking inanimate technologies, whether systems and service design outputs such as the postal service, or the ever popular digital video conferencing platforms. So the important social component was now intermediated by technology that cannot replicate the human embodied experience of the creative energy in the room. We have pulled our hair out over the decades on the challenges posed by textual communication stripping all tone and nuance out of our words, now we cannot even read the room’s response to an idea we raise during brainstorming sessions. We’re guiding the creative and collaborative energy of the group in as much as we’re facilitating their innovation and design muscles into action. When one experiences one’s own sense of one’s capacity for creative expression, one can then pass it on to others by facilitating an experience of it for them to remember. We have empirical data that shows the long term impact of such recognition, self recognition in fact is a precursor to full bodied cognitive justice because you have to learn to look for what you want to see. Such facilitated collaborative activities fostered a sense of agency for adaptation (Vanderlinden et al 2020) and the cognitive justice of recognizing the expertise and experience of vegetable vendors in the informal urban food security ecosystem made them more motivated and determined to develop their own businesses and reach for their goals, regardless of the pandemic’s oncoming shocks and waves.
This can be iterated for application in the Nordic context. I’m conducting exploratory research right now in Ostrobothnia, Finland. More soon.
