Based on CY school of design's vision, our research focuses on the analysis and design of sustainable transitions.
Transition Design Lab research relies both on design studies and design science. Focusing on transition paradigme, we recognize three major challenges for design practices:
Those challenges lead us to identify, in a multidisciplinary litterature review, five crucial dimensions to design for socio-environmental transitions.
We are a multidisciplinary team of researchers and experts, all convinced of the importance of moving towards a sustainable transition.
Our partnerships, whether academic or with experts in the field (from independent designers to members of major groups) are multi-disciplinary, multi-domain and multi-faceted.
Rights reserved: Anthony Ferretti, Annie Gentès et Justine Peneau
How can we inform stakeholders about the current and evolving state of the systems in which they live, and on which they can rely (what is already in place, what works) or which they want to remedy (what needs to be changed)?
Design research focus
The research focuses as much on system representations as on design methodologies.
We analyze and design representations and visualizations of systems in their current state for heterogeneous audiences and a diversity of purposes: data visualization, information vizualizations, systemic design 9 and meta design 10 11 12 13.
How ecological and societal awareness can take hold and spread? Who are the "concerned" 14 ? How capturate and maintain their attention ? What supports sustainable behaviors ?
Design research focus
We need to dentify the new entrants, human and non-human 15 16 17, and their roles in decision-making 18 19. We investigate the issues of opinion leadership and influence with a focus on actors as well as media 20 21 22 23 24.
We design and organize new formats of engagement and feedback: nudge 25 26, positive reinforcement and gamification theory, engagement management 27, etc.
Elaborating on participatory design, how can we design for fruitful debates and decision making processes involving a heterogeneous range of "concerned" parties ? How do we design debate modalities 28 29?
Design research focus
We need to understand and identify all forms of debating situations involving different "concerned" actors, in different places, at different time, by different modalities and with different media.
We analyse debating situations and design tools, intefaces and media to support the configuration of a fruitful debate : stakeholders mapping 30, contreversy mapping 31, representativeness and governance formats 32, to ensure the material and human conditions for a fair debate 33 34 35 and to support closure and the moving on to decisions : rethink negociation and voting methods (e.g. quadratic voting 36).
What are the tools and media that enable heterogeneous audiences to project themselves intimately and collectively into possible futures ?
Design research focus
The research focuses as much on the pragmatic caracteristics of projecting media and tools as on their ideological, teleological and dramaturgical effects on actors and collectives.
We identify the best practices 37 and the potential of each media and tool for reproductibility and scalability in different contexts, as much as alignement spaces that organize flows and this scaling 38 39 among a large range of practices: code scenarios 40, representation tools of imaginaries and projection to choose possible futures 41 42 43 44 such as frescoes, foresight narratives co-created with AI, simulation design tools from weak emerence to strong emergence 45, etc.
How to draw up an action plan with tools for evaluating the stages and the values and impacts created? What are the media, communication situations and actors likely to define and implement desirable futures?
Design research focus
The research focuses on the nature of KPIs and designs evaluation interfaces, accounting instruments, dashboards for activities.
We critically question, analyze and design evaluation methodologies: criteria, values 46 47. We identify the actors and resources needed 48 to counter the obstacles to the desired future. We identify the stages of organizational transformation based on the dimensions of organization design 49.
This diagram represents the three spaces involved in design, the dynamics and operations of design among those three spaces : médiums space, actors space and culture space.
Rights reserved: Anthony Ferretti, Annie Gentès et Justine Peneau
All our research is based on the AMC model (Actors/Mediums/Cultures). Based on media studies the AMC model allows us to analyse the material culture of design milieu from an anthropological standpoint. In particular, we focus on the informational literacies and communicational infrastructures that support the mediation between actors in transition. We also analyze how artefacts and actors “work together” to achieve innovative goals.
Thus, the Actors / Mediums / Cultures model studies design activities as both tangible and symbolic operations between actors, media and cultures. It highlights:
Drawing on Dewey 50 and Schön 51, our model is media-centric, i.e. it starts from a definition of the media as material, medium and mediation. Mediums enable designers to distance themselves 52, to engage in a "conversation" with materials 53, to project imaginaries, to support embodied activity and to make sense of the history of their uses 54.
We see design mediums as formative matrices 55 that give rise to possibilities based on both material and symbolic properties, and the designers' gestures and imagination.
AMC design model is based on a theory of culture as a design environment, but also as a creative mediation between the inner self and the outside world.
Design practices are analyzed as operations that organize a playful interaction 61 between actors, malleable mediums 62 63 and cultures :
AMC Design model thus emphasizes the media literaties of actors in both production and reception.
Drawing on media studies and semiotics, we analyze the tools of expression, mediation, narratives and data visualization and culture, documentary formats and mediums of expression that enable actors to take a reflexive and creative step back collectively 64. In addition, we implement an anthropological analysis of material cultures, design, consultation, and decision-making rituals, as reservoirs of inspiration for designers. Finally, we study the operations of extraction, discretization, composition and expansion that actors use to transform their environments in a sustainable way.
The AMC design model allows us to
Design and development of the laboratory website with Osuny, an open-source content management system that enables the creation of accessible, simple, high-quality, sovereign, and secure websites.
A voting platform to experiment with quadratic (non-binary) voting, enabling participants to express the intensity of their preference by distributing their "vote credit" among a set of proposals.
The "fresque tous RSE" (all CSR fresco) is a tool developed by the Lab SNCF Impact. This two hours workshop is a tool to raise awareness towards global stakes (environnemental and social), and to help teams create their CSR action plan.
We want to invent the tools and instruments that will support creative and fair decision-making processes.
By adopting the Open Schooling concept, five pilot sites will create replicable climate action plans, transforming schools into community innovation hubs. The project will raise citizen awareness, promote sustainability education, and foster efficient, eco-friendly energy use.
LINDDA: Living INfrastructure to Design responsible Digital technology for Agroecological transition, aims to understand the design modalities in place or needed for digitally-supported agro-ecological transitions.
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