Ideas-Arrangements-Effects

Introduction to I-A-E

Ideas are embedded in social arrangements, which in turn produce effects.

This simple premise is at the core of the systems design framework Ideas-Arrangements-Effects, or IAE.

We believe that arrangements—especially everyday life arrangements—are rich and overlooked terrain for social justice and world building.

Activists, artists, philanthropists, young people, academics—all manners of folks—constantly battle injustices and negative effects in their lives and others’. We take to the streets, to the internet, to the voting booth and more to fight for better outcomes. To the same degree, we argue vehemently about the ideas that underlie these injustices—from notions of public and private, to all the -isms that say some categories and people matter more than others.

But the arena for intervention that we want to make a case for is a less obvious one: that of the multiple, overlapping social arrangements that shape our everyday lives. (What do we mean by ‘everyday life’?)

Three Approaches to Arrangements

Learning to see arrangements around us as re-arrangeable

Exposing and interfering with existing arrangements to create change

Collectively imagining alternative arrangements to the ones around us

Applying I-A-E

Take, for example, the classroom. Below are two classrooms with different arrangements.

What are the different arrangements in each drawing? What ideas are embedded in each classroom? What different effects might each produce?

Your turn: Try mapping an everyday situation

In this short clip (from Examined Life, directed by Astra Taylor), Sunaura Taylor and Judith Butler go for a walk in San Francisco and explore what it means to “go for a walk”.

  • What arrangements do you notice in this video?

  • What ideas are embedded in these arrangements?

  • What effects are produced by these arrangements?

Reading Options for Ideas-Arrangements-Effects

How to use I-A-E

Dig into hands-on techniques and examples for sensing arrangements, intervening in unjust ones, and imagining new, more sustainable and joyful ones with DS4SI and the University of Orange!

Dive Deeper into I-A-E

IAE Talk with Jason Reynolds

Rearranging the social is a practical and powerful way to create social change. Watch our discussion about Ideas, Arrangements and Effects with award-winning children’s book author Jason Reynolds.

IAE Panel with Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Don Chen, Marian Urquilla

Dive deeper into IAE in this discussion with social psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Center for Community Investment co-founder Marian Urquilla, Kresge Foundation’s Arts & Culture Managing Director Regina Smith, and Surdna Foundation president Don Chen.

We reflect and look forward at the urgent possibilities for creating large and small scale change through collectively re-arranging the social.

Feeling stuck in the creative process? Need some inspiration?

Practice: Connecting I-A-E with Design

We want those of us who care about social justice to see ourselves as designers of everyday life, rather than simply participants in a world we didn’t create or consent to. 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.