Introduction
In conventional approaches to design, an outside design expert might come into a community and “discover” things about that community. This is not what we mean at all. Here discovery means making one’s familiar understanding of the problem strange.
In this phase, you question how you are seeing and understanding the problem you’re interested in addressing. You invite “divergent thinkers” to make sense with you. This process should jostle your initial assumptions about the problem.
CHeck out the discovery phase in our case studies!
Social Emergency Response Center (SERC)
Public Kitchen
Let’s Flip It
Lighting the Bridge
Tools for the discovery design phase
Description Rinse
How would you describe the social problem you want to solve or the situation you want to intervene in?
Our descriptions of a problem are grounded in our habits. “Description embeds prescription,” as family systems therapist Douglas Flemons says.
Playing with other ways of describing a problem isn’t necessarily about getting a “better” description. Even absurd and evidently wrong descriptions may help us to see more.
And importantly, it helps us to practice framing the problem large enough to include ourselves.
Ready to practice re-describing your problem? We recommend practicing regular description hygiene with the Description Rinse kit.
Want to dive deeper into the theory behind Description Rinse? Here’s an essay (with audio narration) on the difference between habitual descriptions vs. counter descriptions.
Gather divergent thinkers
Who’s on the team? To invite further re-description and expand our sense of the problem, gather divergent thinkers.
We need to be able to think and research with different kinds of thinkers—and allow people to bring their many selves—to develop a rigorous design practice.
Hack-a-diagram
Sometimes how we diagram out a problem can reveal different ways to see and describe a problem. What if we switched up the diagram? What changes if our diagram is simple or complex? Familiar or strange?
What might we see if our problem were diagrammed as a one-way chemical process? Or as a continuous water cycle? Or as a bicycle or as a woven basket?
The challenge of repurposing a strange diagram to explain a system that you think you are familiar with can help you see new aspects of power, flow, and relationship.
The activity can be done individually, in pairs or in small groups. We recommend doing this with divergent thinkers.
Ready to practice re-mapping your problem? Our Hack-A-Diagram kit has written + audio instructions and blank diagrams for you.
Terrain Research
Terrain research is a way to observe the space where you want to intervene. Physically go to the space and practice close observation. This activity offers some questions for you and your team as you spend time in your chosen space.
Bend A Question
How does the shape of our questions organize our action?
We invite you to jot down some questions that are active for you right now—your working questions. These could be small or large, individual or collective, practical or spiritual. It’s best if they are questions that have something at stake or carry a charge.
What happens when we treat questions the way we treat art materials? Cut, fold, weave, stitch, weld them? Split, soak, or soften them?
Want to try bending your questions? Our Bend-A-Question kit has written + audio instructions and examples for you.
Feeling stuck in the creative process? Need some inspiration?
When do I start ideating?
Move onto the next design phase, Ideation, when you:
Have described the problem large enough to include yourself in it,
Have at least three divergent ways of describing the problem,
Have a description that points to arrangements instead of to effects or to people, and
Are a little uncomfortable with how much of what you thought you know is now open to question…
If that sounds like where you’re at, then:
Connecting Design with I-A-E
How do we know where to start designing for social change? We created a framework to help you read social situations through the lens of ideas, arrangements, and effects (I-A-E).
When we intervene at the scale of arrangements, we can create a more transformative change than if we just intervene in effects. By using design to intervene in existing arrangements and imagine new ones, we can produce new effects—ones that make a society more just and vibrant.