Christopher Daniel, Gareth Owen Lloyd, Dulmini Perera, Sally Sutherland, Ben Sweeting, James Tooze, Jeffrey P. Turko, and Josina Vink
Systemic design at the product scale is a dialogue between facts and concerns
Products – artefacts made by humans for their own use or trade – require the considered negotiation between technical requirements (those that ensure the effective and safe functioning of the thing) and social, cultural, economic and political factors (those that shape the degree to which the thing is required and desired).
Products are created within increasingly complex contexts, shaped by macro forces such as geopolitics, technological acceleration, and climate change: “All objects are born things, all matters of fact (things) require, in order to exist, a bewildering variety of matters of concern” (Latour, 2004).
As Marshall McLuhan noted “we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us”, however they also shape the worlds we and all other known life inhabit. Creating products means creating consequences: direct and indirect; intended and unintended; infinitesimal and seismic; dramatic and accretive. Systemic design at the product scale is a dialogue between facts and concerns: a navigation of multiple overlapping and interconnected systems, most often undertaken with incomplete information, awareness, and understanding.
Design covers a spectrum of complexity from the stylistic to the systemic: symbols > objects > interactions > systems (Buchanan, 2001). This is not a hierarchy, but a stack. Even the most simple of objects, such as a pencil, have the potential to shape forests, fields and cities.
In this focus, RSD11 is interested in contributions exploring: circular design, regenerative design, distributed design, and, more broadly, ways that designers of things act to shape the nature and legibility of economic, bureaucratic, ecological and cultural systems. Contributions could include examples where co-creating and influencing a system’s norms and outcomes are at the root of a product’s specification and/or the designer’s agenda, as well as how-to guides and cautionary tales.
Indicative references
- Buchanan, R. (2001). Design research and the new learning, Design Issues, 17(4), 3–23.
- Latour, B. (2004). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(2), 225-48.
- Culkin, J. M. (1967, March 18). A schoolman’s guide to Marshall McLuhan. The Saturday Review, 51-53. http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1967mar18-00051
Products are systemic objects
Seeing RSD11’s Seven Foci Relationally
RSD11 Keynote. Dr Tony Fry is a Tasmanian-based award-winning designer, cultural theorist, educator and writer. For this talk, his context: seeing the event’s seven foci relationally.
Investigating new scenarios in food preservation
Part 1 online. Part 2 hybrid. Eleonora Fiore
Play Circular Families and Discover the Circular Citizens
In-person. Marianna Marchesi
Making Futures Present: A postcard from the future clears up your vision of the horizon
Maggie Greyson
Could Systemic Design Methods Support Sustainable Design of Interactive Systems? -79
Laetitia Bornes, Catherine Letondal, and Rob Vingerhoeds
Objects in the Familiar: Systemic contexts of production -55
Kavitha Ravikumar
Ontological Design for Robotics -102
Steve Battle
Self-Scaling Open Innovation Pathways: Accelerating integration of augmented reality into the maritime sector -31
Espen Strange and Kjetil Nordby
Systemic Design Principles Guiding Perinatal Mobile App for Ethnomedical Midwifery Unit in Bogota -45
Laura Nino, Daisy Yoo, Camila Nino Fernandez, and Caroline Hummels
Using Systemic Design to Drive the Transition of a Professional Kitchen towards the Circular Economy Scenario -133
Chiara Battistoni
14 Years of Experimenting with Design, Systems, and Stability -245
Victor Martinez
Envisioning the Metaverse -250
Ganesh Kumar, Krishnakant Saini, Nikhil Soman, Vagmita Parmar, Praveen Nahar, and Sahil Thappa
Made From Parts: Creating emotionally durable products to increase product longevity -226
Amrutha Prakash and Neha Mandlik
Obso-lessons : Dissecting Planned Obsolescence -264
Joseph Francis, Sanath Pailwan, Shubham Modgi, Praveen Nahar and Sahil Thappa
The Polyskooter[s] -221
O. Fred Preston
Visakhapatnam : A Clean Industrial Hub -207
Aakash Mangla, G. Shankar Gopi, Siddhartha Pandey, Vipul Vinzuda and Praveen Nahar
Why We Buy: A Systems View of Consumerism -262
Nicole Brkic, Martha Chomyn, Alejandra Farias, Razane Hanna and Amy Morrell
Xichong Holiday Resort Resource Flow Map: Towards a circular economy in Shenzhen, China -194
Guo Qiu, Hanxu Yu, Hongyi Hu, Yuanning Han and Christiane M. Herr