About the Transition design lab

Based on CY school of design's vision, our research focuses on the analysis and design of sustainable transitions.

Table of contents

Transition Design Lab research relies both on design studies and design science. Focusing on transition paradigme, we recognize three major challenges for design practices:

the change in geographical scale;
the heterogeneity of actors and their interests;
the introduction of long-term regeneration issues.

Those challenges lead us to identify, in a multidisciplinary litterature review, five crucial dimensions to design for socio-environmental transitions.

The 5 Dimensions of Transition Design

Vizualizing / Monitoring

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^[1] and meta design^[2][3][4][5].

References

^[1]Blomkamp (2022), ^[2]Giaccardi & Fischer (2008),^[3]Sevaldson (2013), ^[4]Allee (2008), ^[5]Haraldsson (2004)

Engaging

How ecological and societal awareness can take hold and spread? Who are the « concerned »^[1] ? How capturate and maintain their attention ? What supports sustainable behaviors ?

Design research focus
We need to dentify the new entrants, human and non-human^[2][3][4], and their roles in decision-making ^[5][6]. We investigate the issues of opinion leadership and influence with a focus on actors as well as media^{[7][8][9][10][11]}.

We design and organize new formats of engagement and feedback: nudge^[12][13], positive reinforcement and gamification theory, engagement management^[14], etc.

References

^[1]Peneau (2023)^[2]Favret-Saada (1977),^[3]Favret-Saada (2009),^[4]Latour (2017), ^[5]Latour (2018), ^[6]Karana et al. (2020), ^[7]Rogers & Cartano (1962), ^[8]Roger (1983), ^[9]Flynn &Goldsmith (1996), ^[10]Valente & Pumpuang (2007), ^[11]Akrich et al. (2002), ^[12]Thaler & Sunstein (2009), ^[13]Ölander & Thøgersen (2014), ^[14]Andriof et al. (2017)

Debating

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^[1][2]?

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^[3], contreversy mapping^[4], representativeness and governance formats^[5], to ensure the material and human conditions for a fair debate^[6][7][8] and to support closure and the moving on to decisions : rethink negociation and voting methods (e.g. quadratic voting^[9]).

References

^[1]Gentes & Mollon (2015), ^[2]Bonaccorsi & julliard (2012), ^[3]Reed et al. (2009), ^[4]Venturini (2010), ^[5]Berthet & Hickey (2018), ^[6]Umney & Lloyd (2018), ^[7]Meadowcroft (2009), ^[8]Gentes & Perez (2022), ^[9]Lalley & Weyl (2018)

Forecasting

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^[1] 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^[2][3] among a large range of practices: code scenarios^[4], representation tools of imaginaries and projection to choose possible futures^[5][6][7][8]such as frescoes, foresight narratives co-created with AI, simulation design tools from weak emerence to strong emergence^[6], etc.

References

^[1]Sio et al. (2015),^[2]Tura et al. (2018), ^[3]Marcocchia (2019), ^[4]Bornes et al. (2022), ^[5]Young et al. (2001), ^[6]Gentes (2008), ^[7]Heinonen & Hiltunen (2012), ^[8]Gentes (2015), ^[9]Bedau & Humphrey (2008)

Backcasting

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^[1][2]. We identify the actors and resources needed^[3] to counter the obstacles to the desired future. We identify the stages of organizational transformation based on the dimensions of organization design^[4].

References

^[1]Sterman (2001), ^[2]Rodriguez et al. (2019), ^[3]Ostenwalder & Pigneur (2010), ^[4]Galbraith & Kates (2010)

The "Actors / Mediums / Cultures" Design model (AMC)

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:

the fundamental role of the "mediums" of conception, debate and decision;
the specificities of the actors’ cultures (aesthetics, social and political values, and modes of legitimization).

A design model based on media studies

Drawing on Dewey^[1] and Schön^[2], 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^[3], to engage in a "conversation" with materials^[4], to project imaginaries, to support embodied activity and to make sense of the history of their uses^[5].

We see design mediums as formative matrices^[6] that give rise to possibilities based on both material and symbolic properties, and the designers' gestures and imagination.

A design model based on a specific theory of "culture"

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.

Culture as a design environment: Every design activity takes place in a milieu^[7] that presents the elements of a problem and provides the resources for solutions. The design project is therefore considered as a situated cultural activity. We use anthropology of material cultures and media studies to focus on the mediums (tangible, symbolic) of design and what they make designers do.
Culture as mediation between self and the word: Culture is also an intermediary space between the inner self (the human capacity to project imaginary worlds), and the outside world^[8]. Within culture, we can attribute new meanings to things and follow these projections to design new artifacts, situations, relations. As a cultural activity, design is not only a rational practice that optimizes its means for certain ends, but also as an exercise in imagination and fiction^[9]. Fiction takes the form of a "concept", as in CK theory^[10], a narrative^[11]or any other form of exploration of values, materials and languages.

AMC Design model: a theory of actors and design activities

Design practices are analyzed as operations that organize a playful interaction^[8] between actors, malleable mediums^[9][12] and cultures :

We observe what operations help designers defix from cultural habits and representations. Culture here is considered as an anthropological background that is challenged by design activities.
We study how actors extract resources and how they mobilize and manipulate these resources through operations of framing, discretization, composition, addition and substraction. Culture here is considered as a projective, imaginary, cognitive and embodied activity of designers who “play” with the mediums at hand.
We are interested in how designers anticipate the ways in which alternative solutions are appropriated by the actors and we analyze operations of mediation, teaching, legitimization, influence. Culture is considered as the milieu that is re-organized by the solution.

AMC Design model thus emphasizes the media literaties of actors in both production and reception.

AMC: a methodology to understand and develop new design practices

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^[5]. 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

study the meaning of “things” and mediums through semio-pragmatic and technical analyses. We look at how things and mediums embed values, beliefs, rationalities that define certain cultures.
conduct ethnographic enquiries that address the interactions of things – living and non living- and people. We are mostly interested in the operations (framing, extraction, discretization, composition, etc.) supported by pliable mediums^[9].
look for design spaces that have not been explored and could solve issues. This stage uses interdisciplinarity as a means to find other situations, concepts, theories that underdetermine design beliefs and practices and bring new perspectives.
design, experiment and evaluate artefacts with the stakeholders.

References

[1]Dewey (1934), [2]Schön (1983), [3]Guillory (2010), [4]Schön (1992), [5]Gentes & Marcocchia (2023), [6]Gentes (2022), [7]Despret (2012), [8]Winnicott (1971), [9]Gentes (2024), [10]Hatchuel et al. (2003), [11]Gentes (2017), [12]Roussillon (2001)

Team

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