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Stitching A Broken Future: How resilience can shape the future of an 'unheard' community
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally disrupted the way we perceive our future. It has disproportionately hit hard economically challenged and socially marginalized communities worldwide. One such community is the informal subcontractors of the ready-made garment industry in Bangladesh. Inadequate coverage by scholarly research has made this sector one of the least explored areas where responses to the current pandemic may potentially impact millions of lives. This study investigates rarely known business strategies of this sector under a unique circumstance when disruptions are tackled to protect its existence.
The primary purpose of undertaking this research is to evaluate the role of resilient business planning in the context of an unprecedented public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, this paper examines how informal subcontractors of the ready-made garment industry in Dhaka are innovating business practices in the wake of an unprecedented crisis and applying new strategies to adapt to the new normalcy. Subsequently, this project undertakes a potential intervention plan which could reveal the industry’s barriers, opportunities, and surprises when explored through the lenses of strategic foresight.
The outcome of this project is a navigational tool that analyzes the intersecting spaces between organizational resilience and foresight in terms of the logical progression of innovation drivers. A deep investigation of underlying litanies of the complex sub-systems has developed multiple scenario pathways that stakeholders of the concerned industry can use to navigate into the future
The Metrics of Monstrosity & the Visuality of Crime Detection; from the Victorian era’s Photographic Archive to Artificial Intelligence
No full textIn my thesis I seek to address the visual history of mapping criminality, or aberrance more broadly, onto the social and material body as well as the environment. I argue that - from the photographic and cartographic practices of the Victorian era to the contemporary development of
biometric facial recognition and AI which seek to predict crime and track COVID-19 - exists a genealogy of visual- spatial rendering of identity and nation and oppressive systems of
classification. I would like to reframe Victorian era scientific practices such as phrenology and
physiognomy as well as anthropometric photography as producing a visual archive of aberrant cartography. I draw parallels between the visual archive produced from these practices with
Enlightenment era social mapping of poverty and pathology. In our present context, I argue that these visual practices which configure and trap identity in their visual-spatial matrix - persist as a spectral presence haunting contemporary visual-spatial technologies. I situate maps as visual evidence of a system of classification that also provide powerful narratives of monstrosity/
aberration vs the social norm which have historically, and continue to be, powerful political tools in
the constructing of realities. Ultimately, this thesis will take a critical, multi-disciplinary, and
historical approach in questioning AI algorithmic objectivity by situating it in a longer genealogy of
visualising and classifying aberrant bodies
How Virtual Work Environments Convey Perceptual Cues to Foster Shared Intentionality During Covid-19 for Blind and Partially Sighted Employees
Get PDFThe Covid-19 pandemic altered workplaces. For those with ‘office jobs,’ this meant working ‘virtually,’ or remotely, from home. This transition forced organizations and workplaces to exercise flexibility, adapt workflows and rely on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to work remotely. However, Blind and Partially Sighted Individuals (BPSI) face challenges accessing work digitally, setting up their home offices, financing assistive devices, equipment and software, remote communications and employer support (Ginley, 2020). In response, with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), this Major Research Project (MRP) reports on the results of a longitudinal participatory design study investigating the impact of working and training over a distance for BPSI. This study found evidence of assumptions about BPSI, stigma, how effectively ICTs transmit perceptual cues and a physical environment bias where accessibility practices defaulted to the brick-and-mortar workspace. What emerged is a model to assist in understanding how ICTs synchronize experiences for the construction of shared intentionality in virtual work environments. Shared intentionality, the capacity to engage with others in cooperative activities with joint goals and intentions (Tomasello, 2005; Schweikard and Schmid, 2020), was a powerful way to interpret the disparities that BPSI faced as a result of the physical-to-virtual work environment transition. The model is composed of three dimensions: Spatial-topological synchrony is the degree to which spatial perceptual cues, such as through video, spatial audio, or haptics, offer implicit cues, such as gestures, body location, or visual-spatial representations (e.g. diagrams); temporal synchrony is the degree to which real-time interactions clarify intentions; mutual knowledge is the degree to which diverse perspectives facilitate the joint construction of new knowledge and practices. The implications of this model could be significant, as it aids understanding what is lost and gained when transitioning to virtual work environments; this could inform the design of ICTs, organizational policies, training and education, and culture shifts in the workplace in regards to accessibility
Chosen Family Values: Examining the Creative Practices of Kiera Boult, Madelyne Beckles, Kalale Dalton-Lutale and Cason Sharpe
Get PDFThis major research paper presents an autoethnographic account of the cultural production: performances, plays, video, poetry, short stories, Instagram takeovers and lived experiences of Black biracial Canadian artists Madelyne Beckles, Kalale Dalton-Lutale, Kiera Boult, and Cason Sharpe. Putting these artists in conversation with one another serves to connect and archive a creative community and moment by way of shared identities, and shared stylistic, generational, and critical vocabularies. The thread that runs throughout their works is a critical framework informed by Black thinkers and perspectives encompassing Black art and artists, feminism, queerness, pop culture, class consciousness, and intersectionality stemming from a distinctly Canadian context. As a commemoration of kinship and as a contribution to the current discourse of contemporary Canadian art, this paper makes a case for how their creative practices speak from and about a unique, intersectional perspective and make a significant contribution to the Canadian art landscape
Case Study: Mapping productivity, energy and well-being
No full textThe case study describes Powering Productivity, a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) that mapped links between energy and productivity, and then wellbeing and productivity. The relationships between productivity, energy and wellbeing are complex and span a variety of disciplines.
Productivity is primarily constructed and used by economists as a measure of the productive capacity of an economy (how much can we produce for a given set of inputs). It deals with market activity measured in monetary terms. Wellbeing is a more interdisciplinary term that is constructed and used from economic, sociological, or psychological viewpoints. Unlike both labour productivity and wellbeing, energy is primarily a physical concept constructed and used by engineers and natural scientists. Communicating across all these different domains with distinct disciplinary vocabularies, assumptions, ontologies and priorities is difficult.
The research design enabled an expansive overview of the drivers of productivity (see figure 1).
We designed a research process around two workshops that facilitated interdisciplinary investigations. Participants were principally academic energy specialists, economists and psychologists. We employed a variety of systemic design mapping methods including participatory gigamapping. Visual strategies were used to bridge disciplinary silos mapping relationships, dynamics and tensions across knowledge traditions. The participatory system mapping facilitated knowledge exchange across disciplines.
Powering Productivity research process
Two parallel research projects were conducted, each with its own mapping workshop: 1) Energy and Productivity and 2) Wellbeing and Productivity. The research design consisted of a combination of two thematic literature reviews with two participatory systems mapping workshops with subject experts.
The information gathering and co-production activities were followed by the development of two topic reports/literature reviews and the design of interactive knowledge maps (all three reports are available at cusp.ac.uk/projects/powering-productivity)
Energy and Productivity
Wellbeing and Productivity
Powering Productivity – Mapping Method Report
The participatory processes began with questionnaires sent to subject experts to identify key themes, literature and research groups.
This process informed the development of two knowledge maps published online as interactive digital visualisations linked to a database of the literature review.
This project combined a participatory system mapping elicitation phase (with the workshops) and a knowledge mapping representation phase (post-workshops). Gigamapping was used within two workshops as a basis for the development of two static knowledge maps and the design of two online interactive knowledge maps with links to the literature database (Figures 2 and 3). With this method, new knowledge generated at the workshops was captured for the development of interactive maps online linking to the text referenced in the literature reviews. This work can be accessed on the project website including 1) an Energy-Productivity Map and 2) a Wellbeing Productivity Map.
Research process
The research process integrated the thematic literature reviews and mapping workshops in two ways. First, preliminary literature searches (partially based on the surveys) were used to produce briefing notes which framed initial discussions. Both briefing notes followed the same structure: identifying a number of core themes (12 in the energy project and 9 in the wellbeing project), summarising key arguments, providing indicative references and raising questions for discussion.
Secondly, the maps and discussions at the workshops were used to guide subsequent stages of literature search and report development. Workshops were facilitated by design facilitators, leaving the literature review research group free to take notes and participate in map construction. At each workshop, the two literature review authors participated in the mapping process. Each was in a different mapping group to ensure coverage of all discussions. There were two groups of 4-6 people working on two different maps in each workshop. This provided a level of immersion in the mapping process which contributed to the co-production and helped to ensure the mapping process influenced the literature reviews.
Workshops
The energy workshop was characterised by debate emerging from divergent perspectives of different workshop participants, which led to broad philosophical discussions. As a starting point, the energy workshop’s focal questions were technical. For example, how is energy used in the production process? Are capital and energy complements or substitutes? However, these discussions were undercut by philosophical debates, such as ‘how do subjective factors influence technical relationships?’ Ultimately, many issues resulted in the same question: ‘what is value?’ and ‘how does the construction of value change relationships in energy – productivity nexus?’
The well-being workshop had more of a shared understanding of the subject matter amongst participants (Figures 4 and 5). The discussions were more focused on identifying the well-being implications and relationships to low to high productivity growth. Nonetheless, the well-being workshop also facilitated fairly fundamental discussions. Here participants focussed on problematising the potential relationship between wellbeing and productivity. Figures 11 and 12 show that participants highlighted that both a positive and negative relationship between wellbeing and productivity was possible. Participants then proposed alternative normative visions for future pathways. Discussions were narrower. This focus gave the wellbeing-productivity mapping process greater depth – and enabled the mapping processes to feed more easily into a review process because the story the Productivity-Wellbeing Map told was more evident.
Report
The methods are described in detail in the Mapping Methods Report. See: Boehnert J., Mair, S., & Landa-Avila, C. (2020). Mapping Method Report – Exploring the Links between Energy, Wellbeing and Productivity. Guildford, UK: University of Surrey, 2020. Available at cusp.ac.uk/projects/powering-productivity
After Work: Questions concerning transition imaginaries towards a post-work society and the use of cautionary tales as frames that resist consensus
Get PDFThe consensus among various stakeholders of society that automation will influence the future of work has risen considerably in the post-Corona context. Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, who are critical of how a minority uses consensus about facts to maintain an existing common sense (a fiction) around the concepts of work and labour, suggest that a counter-hegemonic project is possible only by embracing the potential of automation and a Universal Basic Income. This requires a new common sense collectively established via the workers whose very work lives are at stake within these post-work futures. In their call for a ‘new common sense,’ they undermine the problems related to ‘difference’ in sense-making processes when working with systemic issues (wicked problems), particularly the struggles of the stakeholders with conflicting value systems and problematic mental models trying to make sense of the transformation process in which they are entangled. The project “After work” addresses the need to look at sense-making and difference not by appealing to common sense but rather by addressing the elements that do not make sense and cause tensions within the system. Cautionary tales, with their ability to frame ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ in a complex manner, are introduced as a methodological tool where the stakeholders can frame and reframe the differences as it appears as tensions within the transformation
Field Notes: Tensions between systemic design and systems engineering
Get PDFAs an emerging interdiscipline, systemic design remains in tension with existing disciplines that share its theories and methods. Articulating these tensions is an important step in differentiating systemic design from what has come before. Systems engineering is one such established discipline; one whose unit of analysis (the system) and purpose (designing) are similar to those of systemic design. Yet, these disciplines differ considerably in their work practices, goals, and domains. By analyzing both differences and similarities, this work aims to generate a better relational understanding between the two. Initially, I discuss some epistemological points of distinction that demonstrate how the two disciplines emphasize different aspects of systems and design to define very different types of problems and solutions. Then I will contrast how differing methods employed by these disciplines arise out of their different philosophical positions. Finally, I suggest some ways that methods from systems engineering might be adapted for use in systemic design with specific benefits for stakeholder engagement and modelling that can help advance the adoption of systemic design approaches in areas that are traditionally the purview of systems engineering and vice versa
The Other Side of Design: Tension manifolds and collective action
Get PDFSystemic issues feature dynamic complexity that challenges cognitive, contextual, spatial, and temporal perceptions within ‘social messes’ (Ackoff, 1974) and ‘super-wicked problem’ (Levin et al., 2012) environments. Systemic designers thus find themselves working with tensions endemic to paradoxes, breaks in scale, value (or goal) conflicts and heterogeneous contexts. These differences may yield opportunities for design exploration when considered as spaces of praxis. Tensions within such spaces often make collaboration and collective action challenging – yet can also be considered as a type of design medium. This paper proposes the concept of ‘tension manifolds’ – and explores the potential for enabling design within systemic issues, with the goal of reframing tensions as a type of design affordance that enables collaboration and collective action in multi-stakeholder environments
To Slow Down or Speed Up? Uncovering the pace tensions in systemic design for social innovation
Get PDFDesignerly approaches have long been appropriated for systems thinking and design. This appropriation brings with it tensions regarding the pace at which design is conducted. It is crucial to unveil and reflect on these tensions, particularly within a social innovation context. This is due to social innovation’s unique complexities regarding stakeholder networks, sociopolitical influences and change management. This position paper discusses how these tensions become apparent at the two ends of the pace spectrum of doing systemic design. It examines the translation of these pace tensions to tradeoffs; both at the principles level (e.g. stakeholder engagement, project scoping and long-term commitment) and at the practices level (e.g. network building, prototyping’s role and room for reframing). By doing so, this paper takes an initial, exploratory step towards explicating tensions regarding the pace of conducting systemic design for social innovation. It aims to spark critical discourse around such implicit and explicit pace tensions, with the intention to enable better resolution of these tensions in practice
On shaping expectations of “new normals” for living in a post-COVID-19 world
Get PDFI begin with my impressions of a narrative of redemption that is caught up in the formation of new environmental, social, and political aspirations for the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. I then reflect on, first, pre-pandemic scholarship on “biosecurity” and, second, taking up a variation of the syndemic approach to understanding the COVID-19 pandemic. I end by arguing that we should not expect to live with “new normals” for living in a post-COVID-19 world that leaves intact “old normals” that have historically contributed to the rise of anthropogenic environmental harms and inegalitarian social arrangements in the world today