Donut Economics - meet the needs of all within the means of the planet, live as a developed society but we operate our businesses to a certain scale level that the Earth can sustain.

The EMF Butterfly, recycling practices are being developed around: 

Biological loop (wood, cotton, is generative) or technical loop (reprocessed technical processing)

In terms of group work, it is our first time working with other courses, being very new to this setting, there is little communication within our group as I believe we are quite shy. In order to improve this, our team need to set up concrete goals we all want to achieve, so we are able to have a clear direction for our project. For example, choose a specific day each week to video call and share our information and research together or come up with conditions and plans on how to make our group more successful, etc. 

In addition, we should also all challenge ourselves to not be afraid to share our ideas and thoughts resulting in a more productive working relationship.

Lecture reflection:
I was very interested when Becky Earley was talking about TED's Ten of sustainable design in her lecture as she lists out ways to create innovative designs sustainably. It is important as designers to constantly think of ways to design without causing harm to the environment. 

How do artists and designers ‘get to’ work with communities?

What is expected of artists and designers when working with communities?

Why is exploring community always assumed to involve working directly with people? (participation, engagement)

What are the edges of a community? Some people are inside or outside 

What are the degrees of intimacy involved when working with ‘a community’?

How big is a community?

What is the difference between ‘the community’ and ‘a group’?

To explore the relationship of individual and group, artist and community though making work, rather than seeking to represent or produce an ideal, explore what the relationship feels like. 

To explore what ‘us’ means

To come up with a structure to hold the encounter and to accept that it might fail or be battered down. 

As we have decided the previous week to focus on SDG 12 Responsible Production and Consumption, we all individually researched and came up with materials which we all shared together on the online platforms and through video calls.  

Important to ask who your work is for, look for requirements 

Definition - a particular group at which a product or otherwise is aimed 

Consumer - a person who purchases of uses goods and services for personal use 

Community - a group brought together through shared interest, action, practice, place or circumstance 

Industry - group of manufacturers or businesses that produce a particular kind of goods or services

Client - a person or organization using the services of a person or a company 

In what context will your project be seen?

The difficulty designing for large audiences 

Do we need to check our design work with a sample group so we can understand how people might perceive or understand our work?

Project where digital data was used to affect change in the physical realm by empowering local communities ( connecting to SDG 10. Sustainable Cities and Communities ) 

Non-profit organization, analyzing NYC’s open data on empty plots of lands where they discovered 596 acres of vacant public land in the borough of Brooklyn 

The non-profit organization recognized the difficulty for non experts to navigate open data platform or to make sense of these datas. The organization then created easier more readable platform for citizens to read data. 

Physical intervention and digital information, contained basic information of the land, etc. 

While the non-profit acts as a supporter and advocate for these projects, the spaces are managed autonomously by the local community. The team primarily provides legal advice and technical assistance to communities so they will be able to navigate. 

Also uses social media to grow the project, network with locals and different sites to share knowledge and build relationship between neighborhoods 

This project shows how open data can be put to use to activate and help empower marginalized urban communities. With the help of data driven methods it is possible to build communities, to enable change using off and online methods 

Biased algorithm and algorithmic models can have severe effects on human lives 

Algorithms that predict crime

This project showed the importance of awareness and transparency of subjectivity and personal biases in data driven exploration. Anytime we use data driven methods, we need to ask ourselves with what lens are we looking at the data .

Analysis of data produced through the use of civic apps, applications that aims to encourage citizens to participate In the development of public services and civic engagement 

Using citizens as sensors, to promote citizen participation 

Digital tools for public consultation 

Localism Act, 2011: 

They must justify how they have consulted the local community, what the received comments and how these were taken into account  

Commonplace - is an online community consultation, a social tech startup that has developed a digital app to engage citizens in local developments in their neighborhood. Allows citizens to engage with the consultation process without having to physically be present at a set time or location (more flexible) 

 

Analysis of data produced through the use of civic apps, employing this data democratize a decision making in the built environment. Civic apps are software application that aims to encourage citizens to participate in the development of public services and with that enhance civic engagement. 

Civic apps are a rich source of data on public engagement in neighborhood developments. These civic apps are  primarily used to collect and analyze data for the particular and often singular use that they are designed for. 

Data is not just valuable for the direct purpose that it is used for (facebook comments, photos on instagram), often its the metadata that is produced through user engagement with the platform that has proven to be useful to businesses (timestamps, geographic locations). Civic apps produce data on how people use the tool 

These metadata generated through user interaction could potentially be useful for us and provide new insights that we can use to enable more inclusive decision-making processes in the built environment 

Focuses on low-tech data analysis, specializes in public ground projects that address both the physical and the social fabric of the urban environment. Aims to deliver qualitative and durable designs inspiring a sense of ownership through occupation 

Introducing more green in Whitechapel area, MUF defines public realm as a kew place where a different members of the community can visibly take part in activities alongside each other  

A data driven approach does not necessarily require expansive knowledge of computing programming 

Double diamond - a framework for Innovation  

What is design?

AI is important to improve how we design services, business and places 

Design is important to improve how we use AI 

What is AI? Artificial Intelligence, the use of digital technology to create systems capable of performing tasks commonly thought to require intelligence. Machines using statistics to find patterns in large amounts of data. Ability to perform repetitive tasks with data without need for human guidance. 

What type of AI have you encountered?

 Examples of where it has gone wrong:

Automation based on these decisions, these reinforce systemic inequalities 

But data and AI has the potential to hugely improve the design of our products, places and services 

Benefits: 

Bad design that simply harnesses the technology without thinking through the ethics makes it worse 

Good design can maximize its potential at the same time as making sure things are equitable, by encouraging collaboration and bringing a conscious and visible approach to the design of data and AI, so that all factors in the design of the systems that are built on these technologies can be considered at the conception stage, and later on iterated and tested before implementation. 

Good design means working with technologists, professionals and citizens. To maximize the use of technology, think through impact of design from different perspectives. Design can play a role as translator. 

Aims of the workshop for the Service Design Days conference 

Case studies of AI & sustainable consumerism 

AI & Design workshop takeaways for the design sector 

Faireness 

Accountability 

Sustainability 

Transparency 

Positively influence the data that’s being mined by your interactions 

Think of storytelling as communicating, how are you communicating your response to your audience. Your group and individual response are connected but separate, they’re discreet and different, but they’re somehow bound together. What they’re joined by is your lived experience of the unit, you’re relying on the practice of storytelling to communicate your experience to someone else. 

Storytelling is a sense making process, a process through which we can make sense, a process where we communicate.

Process of reflection is where Peter Brooks refers to as necessary retrospectively, that’s the idea where “only the end can finally determine the meaning”, all that has gone before has constituted to the outcome.  

Narrative shapes our understanding of the world but also shapes who we are as individuals.

How might we imagine beyond imagining in advance or prefiguration?

In order to better understand story, we might start by looking at the distinction that Russian formalists made between Fabula and Sjuzet.  

Through narrative, we have control over time. The Russian formalists gave us a structure to explain how narrative is formed and constructed. 

According to Peter Brooks, “Plot as I conceive it is the design and intention of narrative, what shapes a story and gives it a certain direction or intent of meaning” …”a line of intention and a portent of design that hold the promise of progress.” 

Think of narrative as something as spatial. How do we tell the story of unit 6?

Without these questions, there is no story. How the project moves through time, your experience of the project is represented by the dots on the diagram.  

Using this record of those key moments, you will be able to produce and overview of what happened and the order that it happened.   

Narrative offers as a space in which we control time, in which we can shape the elements of experience in order to communicate the meaning that  we desire. That requires you to decide which moments of that experience were most significant. How those moments are connected. You shape the narrative in order to tell your audience what you think they need to know. 

Increased audience engagement > gain more followers = wider reach > promote our  message of responsible consumption to even more people.
I found the storytelling lecture very beneficial in creating the process portfolio for this unit. Clear and concise communication is key when presenting and pitching an idea to someone. It is therefore important to pull out the most important parts of the process and journey into the portfolio. Which is why I have made the decision to separate my document into different stages of the unit (discover, define, etc), for the reader to understand the steps taken and the process in chronological order.

Group work reflection: 
During week 10, everyone in our group presented their individual response, which is helpful to see where and how everyone is going forward with their work, how they're interpreting the brief differently. 
We got very useful feedback from our group tutor, Lucy, who has seen how collectively, all our individual ideas are and could somehow be connected to the group's concept idea. This personally gave me more confidence in what I was doing and how our collaboration as a group is very in synch.