Design / Baltimore

Environmental Design Thesis Fall 2012 / Cindy Jian

ThEsis ? ...

WHO / Cindy
21 years of life 4 years in Baltimore (MICA) ambitious free What do i like to do?

Sao Tome, Africa

Collaborative Act

Copenhagen, Denmark

spatial Curation

PROCESS

Design Form and Action

INTERNAL
INVESTIGATION /DISCOVERY

EXTERNAL
INFLUENCES / STIMULI

WHAT / ThE DrEAm

come up with a working process and methodology i can use wherever i go. art and design inspired by local communities.

WHy / ThE DrEAm

to use the transformative qualities of art and design to help make a better world

Writing
What makes good, socially impactful design?

What is Design? What Have I Learned?

Elements of good design:

Innovative useful aesthetic understandable unobstrusive honest long-lasting detailed environmentally friendly less, but better

On the flip side, Types of design that are not-sogood (self-defined)

Design that is ignorant of context. That only serves to solve one problem with blindness to its consequences. Design that is a wasteful use of resources. Design that is excessive. Design that is only seen from one point of view. Design that is Temporary, that has short-term benefits but does not have long-term impact.

Theres nothing wrong with pure aesthetic design. But I find that design is more meaningful when it can form connections and can engage the wider world.
A New Design Philosophy II
Design that engages human communication individuals coming together around a design idea We are no longer living in distinctly separate parts of the world. We should take advantage of our shared knowledge and use our combined skills to come up with ideas to better serve humanity. Our progress and innovation can only be driven by these collaborative processes, stimulating ways of thinking, and diverse stream of ideas. Traditionally, clients who have the funds are the recipients of well-designed solutions. Today, we want to make design more accessible, not just to a small percentile.

My growing list of Design Values:

Design as having the power to transform. Design is well-considered and forward-thinking. It fills a need before the need is even identified. Design as moving beyond satisfying a small group of individuals. Design should be shared for the public good. Democratic Design.

Democratic and Social Design:

Design has large social potential. All Good Design should be inherently Social. How can we make design more available and use Design as a means for positive change?

A New Design Philosophy I

Social Design takes Design Principles and applies them to the social sphere. Its taking responsible Design beyond the sphere of consumer-driven needs, and re-evaluating it in terms of humanistic needs of a larger ecological system. The Role of the designer is changing in todays world. We cannot design in independence and be the sole auteurs of our work. We should invite others to the conversation, seek to engage and allow for the stream of real feedback from communities in our work.

What is social design?

a design process that contributes to improving human well-being and livelihood Taking Good design further: designers and creative professionals are part of the global ecosystem. We have a responsibility to share our knowledge and use our skills to cause real change in the world through good design. In pursuit of a change for the better.

Design as a Collaboration:
Involve Community partners from the beginning and Keep them involved allow for variables and Unexpected responses it may not be finished or pretty. you may not have total control over the outcome

Design as an Enterprise, an industry.

What if you could use the luxury well-designed items as impetus for public education or activism for a cause? Keeping with the traditional view of Designed Objects for a small target audience. Keep making well-designed things, but use profits to benefit social programming. Is this a model for the best of both worlds? Social Design with traditional values?

Case Studies

research
Identifying the Problem:
Context within the system

Ways of Gathering Data:

Observation, Play, On Site, Artifacts, Interviews, Surveys, Focus Groups

Phases:
Research and Immersion Ideation and Rapid Prototyping Sharing with the Community Measuring Success through Response, making edits -Empower the community, Give them the Ownership Keep in Touch Afterwards

Research and Immersion:

awareness and Info-Gathering:

Identifying the Solution:

Convergent or Divergent Solutions? Solving for Pattern

Identifying the Context:

Needs, Grievances, Assets, Deviances

Effective measures: Attention & Shock, Efficient Interaction, Food, Give-Aways//Take-Aways

How do you measure Impact? Amount of Community Ownership Paradigm shift after project?

Ideation and Rapid Prototyping

Use Gathered Data from Immersion Phase to inform creative makings. Communicate, and Build

Invisible but crucial parts of Any Design Process:

Systems Thinking Creative Problem Solving Designing within the budget Evaluating Results for sucess

Social Design Skillsets:

Empathy: Active Listening and Observation Implement Good Design, but dont overtake community with Outsider design. Best to engage Community from beginnging and design together, in sync with the tone of the community Community Outreach Event Planning and Organizing Building Human Relationships Creative Problem Solving with room for Collaboration

Authentic Feedback: A Progressive and continuous cycle:

Encouraging interactions and taking into account community responses Constant check-ins with community partners to evaluate Design

Assets: Use your Local Resources

Design that starts from the community, self initiated, from Within Design inspired by local vernacular styles or resources are even more connected to the local culture and economy

Key to Longevity: Getting a community partner as a liason and as a long-term follow-up person.

events great for creating awareness, and for gathering information. However, they are not a long-term solution.

Understand
Empathy is the foundation of all human-centered design. You have to understand the people for whom you are designing! Watching, listening, interpreting intagible meaning in order to uncover insights. Insights --> innovative solutions. The best solutions come out of the best insights into human behavior. Important: human-centered mindset and seeing with a fresh set of eyes, engaging with people directly to reveal what they themselves dont know! Engage to ind: needs, the right users, emotions driving behaviors So important to experience the design space yourself! Find or replicate the experiences to immerse yourself to better understand the context of what youre designing

Assume a beginners mindset and dont bring assumptions Extreme users: Great studies of ampli ied behavior and needs. Determining what kind of extreme users depends on what facet of your design problem you want to solve! Ask What? How? Why? (Observation, understanding, interpretation) Makes you look deeper User Empathy Map: 4 quadrants: What they Say, What they Do, What they Think, What they Feel? (Feelings and emotions must be inferred) Use this map to help you identify needs and insights.

Experiment
The next step: stop discussing, start building Taking a stab at a concrete implementation, doesnt nec have anything to do with inal solutions! In early stages, keep your prototypes rough and rapid Move quickly, learn and investigate Tip: Helps to focus- what do you hope to test with the user? What sorts of behavior do you expect? Even better: User-driven prototypes A balance between how much info you provide and how much you ask your user to create. Testing with Users: re ine solution and your understanding Observe and capture the feedback! Test in a situation with the best chance for meaningful feedback!

The next step: stop discussing, start building Taking a stab at a concrete implementation, doesnt nec have anything to do with inal solutions! In early stages, keep your prototypes rough and rapid Move quickly, learn and investigate Tip: Helps to focus- what do you hope to test with the user? What sorts of behavior do you expect? Even better: User-driven prototypes A balance between how much info you provide and how much you ask your user to create. Testing with Users: re ine solution and your understanding Observe and capture the feedback! Test in a situation with the best chance for meaningful feedback! Feedback Capture grid: +ves, changes, qs, ideas

Ideate
Asking the right question are key How might we...? Begin with POV insights. Small actionable questions that retain your unique perspective. Use creative brainstorming techniques

community art sarah Doherty from: http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/baltimore/art-thepublic-space/Content?oid=1472391

Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts Open Walls Baltimore, discussed as a community revitalization effort

reative Community: The Art of Cultural Development Urban Interventions: Personal Projects in Public Spaces The Rise of the Creative Class And How Its Transforming Work, Leisure and Everyday Life creatives science and tech, artists and designerscan encourage economic development that drives urban revitalization. community art and the intersections of art and social justice Arts organizations, such as the Creative Alliance at the Patterson, have community building as part of their mission. Contemporary Museum

like if certain things were a certain way. And thats intriguing and very powerful. Bret McCabe, wrote this article!

Key quote from article: However, MICA remains the local institution with the most recognizable history of student and faculty community engagement as well as a pedagogical investment in the expanding role of community arts as a discipline, yet it still wrestles with how to define, discuss, implement, and evaluate these strategies. Thats not a criticism, more the recognition of the situations complexity: People come into this art/urban intersection from many directions. Social justice organizations, urban planners, and funding organizations are used to thinking in measurable statistics while artists look at their work through aestheticstwo different languages. -I do come from a very idealistic slice. Gotta keep that in mind! Oh, and I care too much. Hm.

-can this develop into a research project about the positive impact that art and design can have on a community? Art is one tool, design is one tool. cDP is the perfect gateway for this as well. Paradigm of what I know Do speak to the key players! EA was one great start, now do others! :D And get involved!

Figures: Karen Stults, MICA Office of Community Engagement: Were about creating support, visibility for, and increasing the impact of arts/design-based community engagement. Art is one tool. Design is one tool. MACA CAP Kalima Young, Baltimore Art + Justice Rebecca Nagle, Boundary Block Project What are viable ways for artists who care about their work and care about the world to have some kind of an influence and to make a living? theres many, many ways to recast art in the service of democracy Data Capture: 10/19 Jen Goold: Get outside of your desk, your classroom! The info you find will not be there, looking at a map. Talk about Comm. Interaction-go out and hang out in the places you want to design for! Its true. A Neighborhood toolkit? Hm Whats effective already in Baltimore? Signage and wayfinding? Look into policed areas

somehow that arent following the conventional path as laid out as artistic success. art is this really powerful tool to change the way that people see the world and the way that people interact with the world. Marion von Osten, German artist, e-flux journal, In Search of the Postcapitalist Self, the Commons Fletcher Mackey, [Artists] really want their work to find meaning with other people. Baltimore Love Project, Michael Owen and Scott Burkholder three biggest issues facing Baltimore: a flawed education system, drugs and crime, corruption. art is what were listening to, what were observing, what were allowing to influence us in our entertainment and our environment. Art, in all its forms, can show the world for what it is, its good and its bad. But more significantly, art is the place where we have the opportunity to demonstrate our hope, of what the world could be Sections of the city? East-West connections? Long skinny parks as dividers and dead zones, instead of knitting two disparate neighborhoods together? A city of layers. Being in Bmore can be magical. Its too much ambiguity and nuance? To an outsider. Explore the discomfort. Recommendations for implementation History of old trolley tracksBecame unified and changed. But not good accessibility. Major transportation always divides peoplethe flow from rich areas to rich areas, rather than going in between the nbhs.

A project thats locally sourced but can have national acclaimlike Open Walls? How to get people involved. Hm.

Katrina Keane: Work with local vernacular, ie elephant goddess water sanitation?

New Methodology
IDEATE

ANALYZE/ DISCOVER

PROTOTYPE

EVALUATE

IMPLEMENT

Test Often, Fail Early

IDEATE

ANALYZE/ DISCOVER

PROTOTYPE

EVALUATE EVALUAT

IMPLEMENT

WHERE/ PlACE China / Canada / California / Baltimore

Design Intervention

Internal nternal Creative

Curious / Cultural / Critical thinking

ME

External Stimuli timuli

Localism / Racial relations hotspot / Rich history / City of Landmarks

BALTIMORE

Case Study

EUTAW PLACE

Greater Impact
S

TH

OT HER PLACES

ER

BA

LT IM ITY ORE C

NEIGHBORH

OD O

MONUMENTS

BALTIMORE VISUAL AUDIT

HISTORY EXPOSED STRUCTURES LAYERED SKYLINES

URBAN NATURE

PERSONALIZED ROOFS, WROUGHT IRON WORK

mindmaps

HOW / FrAmEWork
land

history

BAlTimorE

People

Artifacts

Eutaw Place

MAP ANALYSIS

Reservoir Hill

Station North

STARTING POINT: BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

Neighborhoods and areas that jump directly from stable housing areas to critically neglected areas.

EUTAW PLACE

PARK SPACES AND VEHICULAR TRAFFIC

NEIGHBORHOOD DIVISONS AND INVISIBLE FORCES

PARK SPACES AND PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC

PUBLIC PARK AS UNIFIER, NOT DIVIDER?