Buchanan’s Nightmare Or the Fragmented Landscape of Design Practice
Its within little known and less cited literature published at the very end of the previous century that hints of the challenges we face today can be found. Stumbling through these dusty old archives, I came across some thoughts and words which capture contemporary issues so well that I was moved to write this post. […]
Core values guiding Nordic social design practice
Distilling the core values underpinning my conceptualization of Nordic social design, as introduced yesterday, and adding links to previous writing on each selected word. To review briefly, I introduced the concept of Nordic social design by combining Koskinen’s (2016) definition where the object of design is the social for ex. social structures, processes, practices, forms […]
Designing an organization for delivering Nordic social design
I arrive at the concept of Nordic social design by combining Koskinen’s definition of ‘new social design’ (Koskinen, 2016) as that where the object of design is the social for ex. the social structures, processes, practices, forms of actions, etc., with elements drawn from Markussen’s original framework (Markussen, 2017) to set the purpose of this […]
Informal Community Boundary Spanners Build Knowledge Bridges to the World at Large
Now that I know what I am looking for, after the two rounds of data analysis focusing on the links between the training experience and the real world unassisted experience of the facilitators, and the kinds of beneficial outcomes experienced by the participants, some effects of which were explicated by participants reflecting more than a […]
Lost and Found: The Music of my Keyboard
I have been super productive over the past week and I can only point to the creative rush of energy that fieldwork with team members as sounding board can provide. What struck me however was the fact that while I cannot deny the music of my keyboard has returned, I must admit that it is […]
Day 2, Exploratory Discovery and Sensemaking in rural Ostrobothnia, Finland #taiketukee
For design before design, I prefer immersion in the field location and alternating thinking and writing with observations and interviews in order to tightly frame the problem space and the social design challenge. My RQ is whether the application of the guiding first principles of the Scandinavian tradition of participatory design research (also known as […]
Fieldwork after three years #taiketukee
Sitting here at the end of Day 1, Fieldwork on the local culture of coastal Ostrobothnia in Finland, the oldest settled part of the country and where the language and cultural minority of Finland, the country – only 5.2% of the total population, the Swedish-Finnish community, is in the majority. We drove down from Espoo. […]
From the Exploratory Musing Dept: What might be social design’s role in the SDGs in the Nordics?
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 […]
Is it engineering or design?
Looking back at the last year, since I began writing again on the blog looking for the magic of my keyboard, I can see how far I have shifted my perspective – one of the goals for the initiating the introspection. Just over a year ago, I was lamenting intangible losses – vocabulary, for example […]
Unlearning and Learning
Today it struck me that one of the challenges in my learning journey will be to shift my perspective – a long established habit of thought and practice – from writing reports for clients at the “working knowledge of the topic” level to formulating interesting and original research questions (RQs) for journal publication. As the […]
