This blogpost is the final assignment for the Design Futures unit of the MA Service Design at LCC.
Introduction
I enjoy thinking about the future without constraints, but designing for the future is not about building a utopia. 2030 is the visible future, and it is not far away. At first, this feeling of dancing in shackles overwhelmed me until I was introduced to speculative design and Research-through-Design (RtD) design thinking.
Speculative design is a tool to help us in dialogue with the future, by provoking the present to help us form meaningful thinking, so as to stimulate thinking and promote changes in behavior (Dunne & Rubby 2013, p.12). In the process of RtD, it sees doing design as part of research, in which design is no longer a goal, but a part of contributing to research.Even though this design thinking without considering the outcome worried me a little, I was convincing myself to immerse myself in it. I was then surprised to find that through these two new ways of thinking, I experienced a new value spillover from design as criticism and design as research (Dunne & Rubby 2013, p.9).
During the Design Future unit, I enjoyed activating the debate by provoking the present, but I was also confused about how design could be applied to reality and the future, which was a new design experience that inspired some fantastic insights that I had never thought of before. In this blog post, I will first critically talk about the team’s design process, then further reflect on the use of speculative design and RtD in this project, and finally rethink my role as a service designer in creative positive change.
Background
“A Sustainable Future for Southwark” is an in-class collaborative project commissioned by the London Borough of Southwark (LBS) Climate Emergency Unit to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. MA Service Design is working with Southwark Council to envision the borough’s desirable future and the changing relationship between citizens, business and government by providing new services for 2030 to create a sustainable future for Southwark. The project has four main directions: green space and biodiversity, transport and travel, energy and buildings, and consumption.
Before this unit, our projects last term were very practical and focused on human survival and development. So when I saw the direction of biodiversity, it hit me: how do we imagine a better future for living things? It sounded challenging but exciting. So I formed a group with Ran, Raven and Ming who were also interested in biodiversity, to go through this interesting process of exploration.
Working process
Be provocative, start now!
In the first two weeks of the pre-hearsal course, our tutor Lara had us read some Essential Reading List and Briefing material provided by LBS on design, and then asked us to try to talk about the direction we wanted to focus on. At first, I was really confused: Does this begin? Why do we have to think about the direction when we have not conducted research on biodiversity?! So my team didn’t have much idea about it. In retrospect, the provocation started from the moment we got the brief, and from that moment on we should have always kept a critical mindset and speculative design throughout the design process.
Our present is made up of the past, and our present also influences the future. But understanding the present is not the end goal, we need to interpret reality and stimulate thinking with new perspectives. Through horizon scanning, we took a bird’s eye view of Southwark and global initiatives on biodiversity from six perspectives: political, environmental, social, Technological, legal and economic, and came away with several insights.
- Local policy
Like mentioned in the Climate Emergency response chapter of Southwark’s Borough Plan 2020–2022 report: Plant 10,000 new trees by 2022. Currently, in terms of increasing biodiversity, the government has set a number of targets for the number of trees to be planted. But what is the real meaning behind this quantitative target? How much do these trees contribute to biodiversity? How does the government view the presence of these trees?
In another report Draft Biodiversity Action Plan 2020 mentions action plans for many species, and here most of them are species conservation activities undertaken by professionals. In the face of the challenges of the climate crisis, can a limited number of professionals alone compensate for the damage to biodiversity caused by human activity? The government is addressing this crisis in a very narrow way and these policies and methods are limited.
2. What does it really mean to make nature accessible to all people?
In biodiversity policies and activities we always see the phrase “Protecting Biodiversity and Making Nature Accessible for All”, and I can’t help but think what is the meaning behind this phrase? Is it for nature or for people’s wellbeing, and do policy makers forget what really helps biodiversity in order to please people? Are they making policy from a human point of view or a non-human point of view? What is the relationship between people and non-human?
3. Global horizons: non human rights
While doing a global horizon scanning, I found that some people are fighting for non human rights, which gives us new perspectives to conceive the future of biodiversity. In the present law, nature is seen as people’s property, which gives some people a reason to harm it because they simply feel at the disposal of their assets. If we see nature in all its forms of life as a partner in survival and in which humans can thrive. What if human and non-human have equal rights to survive in the community?
“The rights of nature are not a legal treatment of nature as property, but a recognition that nature, in all its forms of life, has the right to survive, endure, sustain and regenerate its life cycle, and is a rightful partner with which human beings develop”
— the rights of nature
Painting the future: building scenarios
Communities need increased biodiversity to increase the stability and resilience of ecosystems. Then the community is not only a place where people live, it is also a home for all kinds of flora and fauna, a space for biodiversity within the settlement area. We wanted to highlight the environmental issues associated with non-human organisms living in the city, Can creatures also live in cities as residents? “I think that, if anything, I want people to reflect on the urban environment. If the urban environment itself can influence the behaviour of various wildlife in unexpected ways, in what ways do the spaces we create for ourselves influence our own behaviour?” (Lanthier, 2020)
If non-human beings also exist as residents like human in the community, how will their lives be changed?
With this assumption, we made up a fictional newspaper from 2030: Bats can sue their neighbors because animals have the same rights as humans. Developers are also taking animals into account when building new houses. Even the friendliness of the area to non-humans has attracted more species to make their homes here.
· What if animals and people had equal rights?
· What if house builders should also build homes for non-humans?
· What if the whole of southwark became a park borough?
Back to the present: how can we get there?
When speculating began, it was easy to get caught up in thinking about these questions and we got lost in how we would present these concepts. Our fictional newspaper serves as a great provocation, but how do we get to that fictional world?
At the beginning of the project, our teachers encouraged us to explore and investigate through design rather than just thinking. So we started thinking about a lot of service possibilities, building non-human healthcare systems, building houses for non-humans, providing non-human-centred thinking tools for decision makers, providing manuals for humans to live with non-humans…
When we listed them, we found that these objects are scattered throughout the space, and they have no core design concept. At the same time, it seems that non-human rights are a matter of order, difficult to define and design. With the help of our teachers, we organized our scattered ideas and continued to brainstorm quickly, and they encouraged us to try out all the possible objects.
Ultimately, We believe that the premise of establishing non human rights is that there is a platform to help them communicate with human beings. Biometropolis is such a platfrom founded on the principle that “Every species deserve to live”, the Biometropolis listens to and involves the voices of plants, animals, microbes, and people in and around the Southwark. We use this platform to develop guidance for residents about how to increase biodiversity, recruit volunteers and publish activities and events. Among them, the main project is BIO Watch.
We went on to develop a new provocation, based on the perspective of non-human residents to highlight the power of people together
· What if the humans of Southwark had a shared responsibility to increase biodiversity in the borough?
· What if humans ensuring conviviality with non-humans?
Prototyping and testing
In fact, we think the platform focuses on too many points. But I don’t know how to narrow its focus. Why don’t we talk to stakeholders when we are confused and tangled?
After creating the prototype, we visited John Evelyn Community Garden, Southwark community, Parks of London and a biodiversity expert of Southwark Council by using our prototype. We received a few comments from their perspectives which were important for us to move forward and iterate our concept.
In an interview with a biodiversity expert of Southwark Council, we gained three main insights:
- They do have several pages dedicated to ecology, where they have Biodiversity Action Plans. Among some information there’s information on as we report in wildlife sightings, but that’s not working very well. He said “I think we need to sort of signpost that much better, which is maybe where sort of things like a welcome package “We all agreed that a welcome package would be a good trigger for people to learn about local biodiversity as soon as they move into Sounthwark, to raise awareness and contribute to activities to protect biodiversity.
- Council resources are limited, especially for things like ecological or biological sightings, which is called councils sometimes it is difficult to sort out the information of residents “so I’d love it if you haveBio Watch.” They would like to see the residents’ overall strength.
- He also mentioned that “The council plan doesn’t have a lot of biodiversity. but what it does say is, it will make nature accessible for all and protect biodiversity.” Improving biodiversity is easier said than done. It is linked to health, housing and education. Obviously having an ecologist and in-house ecologist is great because it allows someone to provide expert advice to the council on ecological and biodiversity policy and strategy and management. So we quickly developed another prototype, the non-human-centered round table
However, in a conversation with expert grower Vanessa, she expressed the importance of gathering for the non-human centered roundtable but also raised some questions. It was only through her sharing that we realized that in this roundtable, the developers were the most destructive to biodiversity. The development of buildings destroys the land, yet the builders care more about money than the environment. How do we get the builders to do this and to take a non-human perspective on their business? This is something to think about but we haven’t looked into.
Lara, our mentor, also talked to us about how the roundtable is a premature solution and we realized once again that our current research and understanding of the stakeholders in the roundtable is very shallow, with no specific approach to bring them together or design new behaviors for them. The roundtable is more of an idealized scenario than a real prototype. So we gave up this idea.
Meanwhile, when we talked with local residents, we received mostly positive feedback: “I’m happy with this parcel in my flat, it’s really nice design, like seeds I’m really happy that you guys are looking at it, it’s a great initiative”.
So we decided to concentrate on developing the bio watch project to empower people to maximize their contribution and enhance biodiversity and live in harmony with non humans.
Final Production
The goal of our future service is to increase opportunities for human and non-human coexistence in Southwark and to maximize local biodiversity. By participating in our community volunteer project — Neighborhood Bio-watch, community residents can raise awareness and take action on biodiversity enhancement.
Ultimately, we showcased the service process through a storyboard and recorded the voices of the volunteers, conveying through their voices what bio watch does.
New residents moving into Southwark will receive a warm welcome pack from Bio-watch. In the welcome pack, we will provide clear, straightforward and accessible information to help residents understand the current state of biodiversity in the area. Residents will also find out how to join our organisation through the brochure included in the welcome pack. By joining the organisation, residents not only gain basic knowledge on how to enhance biodiversity in their own homes, for example how to create a lovely environment to attract pollinators, but also learn how to care for wildlife outdoors. Residents with specialist knowledge can then act as mentors to advise other residents or local authorities on biodiversity.
Our future scenario for the future is that human and non-human inhabitants can co-exist amicably in the city. Local residents will have strong awareness and enough knowledge to protect those plants and animals in Southwark, which can increase non-human habitats and the number of species. For example, locals will raise the voices of non-human by observing on a daily basis. In addition, communities are not just places where people live, it is also home to all manner of animals and plant life, serving as a space for biodiversity within a settlement area.
Reflection: from the perspective of speculative design
Speculative design first needs to attract people’s attention. The “speculation” in speculative design is the key focus, and the “design” is the medium. Its most remarkable practical significance lies in guiding people to take common actions, thus catalyzing the realization of social dreams (Dunne & Rubby 2013, p. 12). Rubby 2013, p. 12). Throughout this process we have been provocative, provoking existing limited policies and thinking about what does nature mean for humans? And how do humans view their relationship with non-humans? We evoke a non-human perspective on policy making and on nature around us, and we do attract attention. But in terms of the medium of ‘design’, I don’t really feel that this project is a perfect catalyst for the non-human perspective that I wanted to emphasize in the first place; Bio watch is about the co-existence of humans and non-humans. But one thing that makes sense to me is that through this project, we are at the same time provoking the meaning of ‘access to nature for all’ that many of the council’s policies suggest. It’s not about people enjoying the beauty of nature, it’s about people living with non-humans in a more inclusive, equal, caring way. It is a small step forward and the beginning of a catalyst.
“The way in which we view the future impacts how we set our priorities and which decisions we make today.”
- A university for the third horizon
Reflection: from the perspective of RtD
RtD and speculative design thinking have similarities. They both emphasize that design is not just a solution. Design can be part of the research process, and design can also be a medium for thinking and communication. Design activities play a formative role in the generation of knowledge. Interaction with the public and testing of prototypes is not to improve user experience and iterate products. Rather, it is about using user responses to guide and stimulate our feelings and discussions about the future, and trigger changes in the behavior of stakeholders in the future. RtD is not a linear process. We can invite stakeholders to co-design at any node to obtain opinions, contribute to research, and then continue to iterate and develop design.
“The designing act of creating prototypes is in itself a potential generator of knowledge (if only its insights do not disappear into the prototype, but are fed back into the disciplinary and cross-disciplinary platforms that can fit these insights into the growth of theory) .”
— Stappers, 2007
Reflecting on my role: Service Designer
As a former industrial design student, the education I received before was to uphold the user-centered principle and conduct Research for design to solve users’ “problems”. This kind of practical thinking will limits our long-term vision. Service design goes beyond the human-centered concept and shifts from human-centered to system-centered. It requires us to maintain an open mind and invite diverse stakeholders to create the future they want to participate in. This way of looking at the real world from a bird’s-eye perspective allows us to feel social changes more quickly and strengthen designers’ ability to adapt to changing social needs. Service designers are thought-provoking thinkers and change-makers.
Service design has the power to create utopias in the real world.
Reference
Dunne, A & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming, The MIT Press, Cambridge.
GARN. (n.d.). WHAT IS RIGHTS OF NATURE?. [online] Available at: https://www.therightsofnature.org/what-is-rights-of-nature/ [Accessed 15 May 2021].
H3uni. (n.d.). [online] Available at: https://www.h3uni.org/practices/foresight-three-horizons/ [Accessed 12 May 2021].
Koskinen, I. Zimmerman, J. Binder, T. Redstrom, J. & Wensveen, S. (2011). Design Research Through Practice: From the Lab, Field, and Showroom, Elsevier Science & Technology, San Francisco.
Southwark Council. (2020). Draft Biodiversity Action Plan 2020. SC. United Kingdom.
Southwark Council. (2020). Southwark’s Borough Plan 2020–22. SC. United Kingdom.
Stappers, PJ. & Giaccardi, E.(n.d.). Research through Design. [online] Available at: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/research-through-design [Accessed 15 May 2021].
