Designing Systems Interventions – Transition Design Seminar CMU

Designing interventions within a large, Transition Design project will require transdisciplinary teams working over long periods of time in a co-design process with stakeholders themselves. How can continuity be maintained over long periods of time when actors are continually changing?

How can you imagine balancing the implementation of multiple ‘interventions’ with periods of observation and waiting? Should this process be staggered, so that transition designers are observing the results of some interventions, while implementing others? How can this process be choreographed and adjusted quickly when necessary?

How might design problems be framed differently if the primary context was everyday life? Discuss how the same problem, framed first using traditional design approaches and secondly using everyday life as the primary context, lead to different solutions?

Satisfiers that are centrally created and therefore decontextualized are often designed to satisfy a single need in a simplistic way. Max-Neef argues that such satisfiers are often inadequate or even damaging, and categorizes these along a spectrum of ‘singular’ ‘inhibiting’ ‘pseudo’, or ‘destroyer’ satisfiers. By contrast, place based satisfiers, ... See more

“We live in a world shaped by stories. Stories are the threads of our lives and the fabric of human cultures. A story can unite or divide people(s), obscure issues, or spotlight new perspectives. A story can inform or deceive, enlighten or entertain, or even do all of the above. Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives,... See more

Transition design focuses on everyday life in place as the primary context for intervening in wicked problems. Everyday life can be understood as an emergent property of people going about the activity of satisfying their needs. Understanding how people define their needs, and go about satisfying them (or failing to do so) is a key strategy for dev... See more

systems interventions are likely to be more effective when material solutions are scaffolded by non-materials ones.

Try to think of both material and non-material interventions; some interventions might involve new technologies, new narratives/communications, new policies etc., while other interventions might involve changing behaviors, practices, assumptions, cultural norms or even worldviews (non-material). For non-material interventions, how can Transition De... See more

the most powerful ‘leverage points for change’ within in a system are non-material (changing the rules and goals of the system, changing mindsets, or changing the entire paradigm)