Empowering change for future-making: Developing agency by framing wicked problems through design

Lehtonen, Miikka J.; Yeow, Pamela; Chew, JiaYing

doi:10.1016/j.futures.2022.102952

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…According to Schön (1992), designers “have a reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation” (p. 3). This ill-defined and complex situation (Rittel and Webber, 1973), which is often the case with design projects relating to sustainable development (Lehtonen et al. , 2022), also requires the contribution of cross-disciplinary professionals collaborating across practice boundaries to develop common knowledge (Edwards, 2011).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Envisioning sustainability through (un)shared professional visions of the “visual” materials of a design situation: a CCO approach

Reumont,

Cooren,

Déméné

2024

JCOM

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PurposeCommunicating a clear, precise, interpretable and unambiguous visual message usually relies on a cross-disciplinary team of professionals. Their complementary visions can uncover which information matter and how it could be visually displayed to inform, sensitize and encourage people to act toward sustainability. While design studies generally claim that this team has to come to a shared vision, the authors question this assumption, which seems to contradict the benefits of cross-disciplinarity. The purpose of this study is to reveal how simple visual representations displayed in a PowerPoint actively participate in the expression of various and sometimes divergent visions. Recognizing the agency of visuals also leads this study to propose the notion of (un)shared professional vision, which shows that the richness of visual representations can only reveal itself through the capacity of professional visions to maintain their differences while confronting each other.Design/methodology/approachOver a 20-month ethnography, this study documented its own cross-disciplinary reflective design process, which aimed to design collectively an experimental environmental label, focusing on interactions occurring between professionals and visuals displayed on five key PowerPoint slides.FindingsThis study first demonstrates how, in practice, a cross-disciplinary reflective design conversation with visuals concretely unfolds through boundary-objects. This study shows how these visuals manage to ex-press themselves through the multiple visions represented in the discussions, revealing their complexity. Second, this study introduces the notion of (un)shared professional vision which underlines that unsharing a vision nurtures the team’s collective capacity to express the complexity of a design situation, while sharing a vision is also necessary to confront these respective expressions to allow the professional uncovering of what should be visually communicated.Originality/valueThe Communication as Constitutive of Organization lens the authors chose to understand the reflective design conversation illustrates that, even though each collaborator’s vision was “(un)shared,” their many voices expand the understanding of the situation and lead them to develop an unexpected and creative environmental information ecosystem that can positively transform society through visuals.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Envisioning sustainability through (un)shared professional visions of the “visual” materials of a design situation: a CCO approach

Reumont,

Cooren,

Déméné

2024

JCOM

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“…In the 2019 conference paper by Dobrigkeit and De Paula, their case study suggests that exposure to design thinking changes the way employees think [31]. The 2022 article by Lehtonen et al provides an example of using design thinking in a large government agency to improve collaboration, define problems better, and design solutions [32]. There are also three literature sources from 2021 that consider the application of design thinking in the public sector.…”

Section: Businessmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Active Learning to Innovative Thinking: The Influence of Learning the Design Thinking Process among Students

Baričević

Luić

2023

Education Sciences

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Active learning is a set of activities that allow the student to actively participate in the learning process. Active learning can be implemented using various methods and strategies. design thinking is a creative human-centric approach used for innovation. In this article, the authors consider learning the design thinking process as a strategy for active learning. After performing a thorough literature review, the authors display the results of pilot research conducted with business economics graduate students enrolled in the Disruptive Innovations and Design Thinking elective course. The research consisted of a survey and an experiment, and it was executed as part of the project “a/AR-Learning: Active learning by applying augmented reality”. The goal was to study the effects of learning the design thinking process and whether it could be used as an active learning method in order to influence the development of innovative thinking among students. The research question was, “How does learning the design thinking process affect the development of students’ innovative way of thinking?” The results of the pilot study confirmed all three hypotheses (H1 = After learning the design thinking process, students recognize the main characteristics of innovation; H2 = Active learning of the design thinking process affects critical assessment; H3 = The innovative way of thinking developed through active learning of the design thinking process differs among students), as well as showing effectiveness and a change in critical assessment, but also the need for an even more active approach. The authors suggest that broader research be undertaken involving a bigger sample and a larger scale.

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“…A key factor in Cross' argumentation is to understand that the framing of the wicked problem is made to find solutions. Other design researchers have followed this line of reasoning, arguing for framing as a key factor to, for example, navigate complexity in the systemic context in which the wicked problems occur (Body & Terrey, 2019), to develop agency among design students (Lehtonen;Yeow & Chew, 2022) and to address design, not as a vision of a brave new world, but as a "redirected practice" which can be achieved by adding to and mobilising Vol.16 Nr. 5, 2023, 1-21 design intelligence (Fry, 2009).…”

Section: Design Literacy When Dealing With Sustainability Issues In E...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Education for sustainable clothing consumerism?

Hofverberg,

Franzén,

Maivorsdotter

2023

FormAkademisk

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This paper sheds light on how aesthetic judgments govern actions in education for design literacy and sustainability behaviours. Educational material is examined by asking: (1) What meanings regarding becoming a sustainable consumer are made available to students in the educational material? (2) How are these narratives communicated to change students’ behaviours? The material in question consists of 17 design projects intended to be used in the Swedish school subject, Educational Sloyd. Using a practical epistemological analysis, two ways of becoming a sustainable consumer are identified: to have fun and to feel clever. The paper also shows how social marketing is used as a strategy in communicating how to change student behaviours. In the discussion, we turn to design literacy research to discuss the results from an educational perspective.

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Empowering change for future-making: Developing agency by framing wicked problems through design

Cited by 12 publications

References 110 publications

Envisioning sustainability through (un)shared professional visions of the “visual” materials of a design situation: a CCO approach

Envisioning sustainability through (un)shared professional visions of the “visual” materials of a design situation: a CCO approach

From Active Learning to Innovative Thinking: The Influence of Learning the Design Thinking Process among Students

Education for sustainable clothing consumerism?

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