SOCIETY & IMAGINATION

Week 14

An IDEO CoLab prototyping sprint is a 5 day design process that

builds a functional prototype to addresses a key question,
leveraging an emergent capability.
Week 14

SOCIAL
IMAGINATION
Recap
Recap

Today we’re going to learn one way of

going deeper, using our imagination to
learn about what is happening under the
surface when we do design
 Last week:
How do we work
with imagination?
Recap

When in your life did you feel most

creative and imaginative?
Recap
 PROCESSWORK

Recap Consensus reality

Dreaming

Intentional field
Essence
Recap

One issue in
your life or your
work that you
feel stuck with
Recap

WHY DID WE DO
THAT?
Recap

So often our projects

get stuck or stale.
Recap

When that happens, one way of

understanding it is that we are not in
tune with the wider field.
Recap

Imagination helps us tune in to that

wider and deeper field.
PROCESSWORK

User centred design mostly

Consensus reality trapped at this layer of reality

Dreaming

Intentional field
Essence
Recap

DESIGN FICTION
A 19th-Century Vision of the Year 2000
by Jean-Marc Côté
1899
Recap HOW MIGHT
YOU USE
THESE IDEAS
IN YOUR
WORK?
We have choices about how we create reality
using our collective power of imagination
Week 14

Why do we work
with imagination?
Why work with imagination?
What’s wrong with the design
industry as it is?
Design for
connection makes
us more isolated
Design “The publicity image steals
deceives her love of herself as she is,
and offers it back to her for
the price of the product.”

John Berger
Design fuels over-consumption
 Donut economics
Design pushes Kate Raworth

us beyond the
limits the
planet can
support
Design makes While others’
some people’s just get harder
lives more
delightful
Design makes it easier to tell who
is in, and who is out
 Design can
silence
‘epistemic violence’ is to actively
obstruct and undermine non-
Western methods or approaches to
knowledge.
Gayatri Spivak
‘Humanising gloss on the
established regimes’
Roberto Unger
 Question
Why does design do
all of these things?
 Answer
Because of the imaginary
design usually operates from
 Social
construction and
collective
imagination
Social (or institutional) objective worlds created when
institutions are passed on to a new generation.
The underlying reasoning is fully transparent to the creators of
an institution, as they can reconstruct the circumstances
under which they made agreements;
while the second generation inherits it as something “given”,
“unalterable” and “self-evident” and they might not
understand the underlying logic.
“Institutionalization” of social
processes grows out of the
habitualization and customs,
gained through mutual
observation with subsequent
mutual agreement on the “way
of doing things”.
 This reduces uncertainty and
danger and allows our limited
attention span to focus on more
things at the same time, while
institutionalized routines can be
expected to continue “as
previously agreed”
Week 14

Social imagination is happening all the time.

It’s how we construct the world around us.
Design and wider society attempts to solve problems
And we participate in imagining the solutions as real
Money is socially constructed to solve
which problems?
Monarchy is socially constructed to solve
which problems?
And in turn, those solutions make the world
(remember affordances?)
The solutions that are produced contain assumptions
 “Everything
“You’ve earned it” has its price”

“Scroungers don’t
deserve it”

“Time is money”
 “Next in line for
the throne”

“My loyal subjects”

“Pledge allegiance” “Head of state”

Often backed up by power and violence
Examples of social constructs include social
norms, sense of self, gender, currency, language,
beauty standards and beauty ideals, age, the
modern calendar, race, ethnicity, social class and
social hierarchy, nationality, family, marriage,
religion, education, the measurement of time,
citizenship, stereotypes, femininity and
masculinity, social institutions, and disability.
These social constructs are not inherent or
universal but are shaped and maintained
through collective human interactions,
cultural practices, and shared beliefs.
Week 14

Realities are multiple

 Imaginaries are powerful,
robust and self-sustaining
Imaginaries are:
● propped up by language conventions
● given ongoing legitimacy by mythology, religion and
philosophy,
● maintained by therapies and socialization
● subjectively internalized by upbringing and education to
become part of the identity of social citizens
We have choices about how we create reality
using our collective power of imagination
 EXAMPLE
Problem = shelter
 EXAMPLE
Problem = connection
Spoke and Hub Circular Grid Web
 EXAMPLE
Problem = cosmos
…But paradigm debates are not really about
relative problem-solving ability, though for good
reasons they are usually couched in those terms.
Instead, the issue is which paradigm should in
future guide research on problems many of
which neither competitor can yet claim to resolve
completely. A decision between alternate ways of
practicing science is called for, and in the
circumstances that decision must be based less
on past achievement than on future promise. ... A
decision of that kind can only be made on faith.

— Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific

Revolutions, pp 157-8
If reality is somewhat
constructed, we can
make it differently
Somethings feel like
they can’t change
but they can
and they will
Week 13
IMAGINARIES
=
WORLDVIEWS
PARADIGMS
“NORMAL”
THE RULES
HOW THINGS WORK ROUND HERE
Who’s imaginary
are you designing
inside?
 What are
imaginaries made
of?
Week 14

BARRIERS
BARRIERS

THE LIMIT TO WHAT CAN

BE IMAGINED WITHIN
THAT SPACE
WHAT ARE
IMAGINARIES
MADE OF?

BARRIERS
- FRAMES
CHANNELS
CATALYSTS
Week 14

FRAMING
FRAMING

CONCEPTUALIZED BY They shape our beliefs, and

understanding of the world around us.
GEORGE LAKOFF, A WAY It helps us recognize that the words
TO UNDERSTAND HOW we use and the way we present
LANGUAGE AND information can influence how people
think about and interpret an issue or
COMMUNICATION SHAPE topic
OUR PERCEPTIONS.
FRAMING

WHEN WE FRAME SOMETHING, WE

HIGHLIGHT CERTAIN ASPECTS WHILE
DOWNPLAYING OR IGNORING
OTHERS.
FRAMING

The frame guides our attention and

shapes how we perceive the image
THINK OF IT LIKE
within it. Similarly, in communication
PUTTING A FRAME and discourse, framing influences how
AROUND A PICTURE. we interpret and understand
information.
WHAT ARE
IMAGINARIES
MADE OF?

BARRIERS
- BELIEFS
CHANNELS
CATALYSTS
 BARRIERS

What is outside the

limits of this imaginary?

What are those barriers

made of?
WHAT ARE
IMAGINARIES
MADE OF?

FRAMES
BARRIERS
CHANNELS
CATALYSTS
Week 14

CHANNEL
S
BARRIERS

THE FLOWS OF ENERGY

AND COMMUNICATION
WITHIN THE IMAGINARY
CHANNELS

What are the typical

conversations and
interactions within this
imaginary?
LUNCH
ACVITY

Let’s think about what imaginaries

we can see in this community
consider what frames are present,
the barriers and channels
 Changing
imaginaries
Week 13

CATALYSTS
Objects, projects, interventions that
“change the rules of game” and shift the
barriers and channels of the imaginary
What makes a good
CATALYST?
- Changes the rules
- New framing
- Strange attractors
- Co-created
What makes a
good
CATALYST?
- Changes the rules
What makes a
good
CATALYST?
- New framing
What makes a
good
CATALYST?
- Strange attractors

Hefin Jones. 2013

Welsh Space Campaign
 “I’m certain if I went into space I would
bring everything I needed to start a wool
mill up there”
Welsh Weaver
“Wooden clogs are perfect for zero
gravity. They aren’t conductive would
help spacewalks”
Welsh Clog Maker
“People are invited into the construction of
cosmic objects, and their experience during
this process allows them to speculate about
the different possibilities of their skill and
Hefin Jones. 2013 its future.”
Welsh Space Campaign Hefin Jones
What makes a
good
CATALYST?
- Co-created
AMSTERDAM SMART
CITY
WIKI HOUSE
Create a catalyst
Week 13

HOW MIGHT
THESE IDEAS
INFLUENCE
YOUR WORK?