1. Year 1 research
Serena Pollastri
20/09/2014

2. research context
Cities, complexity, sustainability.
Design approach:
- map the system to find emerging
opportunities, rather than solving single
problems
- design tools for collaboration.

3. Theoretical
framework
Metadesign approach.
Metadesign:
John Wood (2008, p. 4) identifies Metadesign
as an approach able to “transform the world
by reimagining new ways to live”. This
profound rethinking of the system is needed
because working within the limits of the
current system to make it “sustainable” is not
enough (Wood, 2009).
Metadesign is the collaborative design of
the design tools, processes that are able to
produce a systemic change

4. research context
Cities, complexity, sustainability.

5. Research Question
“How can visualisation processes
contribute to the design of future scenarios
of sustainable liveable cities?”

6. liveable
cities
August 2013
Activity of mapping
relationships between
research topics

7. Research structure

8. Research structure
visualisations future scenarios
why why
what type? what type?
diagrams design
why
what types?
orienting
scenarios
literature
review

9. Research structure
visualisations future scenarios
why why
what type? what type?
why
what types?
diagrams
design
orienting
scenarios
methods, processes, and tools
literature
review
research
question

10. Research structure
visualisations future scenarios
why why
what type? what type?
why
what types?
diagrams
design
orienting
scenarios
methods, processes, and tools
literature
review
research
question
design
experiments

11. Research structure
visualisations future scenarios
why why
what type? what type?
why
what types?
diagrams
design
orienting
scenarios
methods, processes, and tools
literature
review
research
question
design
experiments
context
cities&liveability interdisciplinarity
complexity

12. Visualisation
Definition for Bloomsbury New Design
Encyclopedia
A visualisation is an artefact (or sometimes just a mental image)
that translates information, which by itself is not directly
observable, into a visual representation that facilitates the
understanding of such information.
This is done through the use of visual language, a type of language
that is able to describe data or ideas that are complex and/or have a
non-linear structure. Unlike written text, visual language allows the
reader to “see content and form simultaneously” (Dondis 1973, 106).
(...)
{
Vi•su•al•i•sa•tion
noun
cognitive tool (Latour, Cross)
communication device (Ashwin, Cairo,
Kress)

13. Functions
Broadly speaking...
cognitive tools communication devices

14. Functions
Design Visualisations
cognitive tools communication devices
Buckminster Fuller - Geodesic Dome and Dome over Manhattan

15. Functions
Design Visualisations
cognitive tools communication devices
are visualisation of an
intentional (designed)
future
explain how to build/
make/realize/pruduce
it
support:
• thinking
• discussing

16. Chora
Scenario Game
Case study
Urban Gallery
methodology:
Database
input from residents
to researchers
Prototypes
specialists provide
solutions
Scenario games
discussion, test of prototypes -
all partners to one table
Actionplans
planners and
politicians making
decisions
Chora.org

17. Chora
Scenario Game
Case study
Scenarios +
Diagrams
(Complex)
Information
visualisation
about the
future
Chora.org

18. A visual history
of the future
(foresight)
Evidence based report on how future
cities have been visualised in the past
100 years.

19. Diagrams for design
As a method for representing the
complexity of urban life
The key role of diagrams as negotiation and decision-making tools is to
enable common and shared understanding in multi-actors
context (Ciuccarelli, Ricci and Valsecchi, 2008). Diagrams have
always been integral part of different disciplines, from architecture and
engineering to mathematics and natural sciences. In design research,
diagrams are “operating devices able to reveal weak links among
the elements of the system and to show the driving forces that can
facilitate (or hinder) a design intervention” (Scagnetti et al., 2007)

20. Diagrams for design
A preliminary map of the process.
DIK
Diagrams
(process)
Data
Information Knowledge Understanding Wisdom
Acquire data Analyse Represent
Relations
Manage Design
Interventions
Scenarios
Scale
Pinpoint
Clusters
Framing
Graining
past-present /analysis future/design
Scagnetti, Gaia, Donato Ricci, Giovanni Baule, and Paolo Ciuccarelli. 2007. “Reshaping
Communication Design Tools. Complex Systems Structural Features for Design Tools.” In . The
Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Ciuccarelli, Paolo, Donato Ricci, and Francesca Valsecchi. 2008. “Handling Changes through
Diagrams: Scale and Grain in the Visual Representation of Complex Systems.” In Changing the
Change Proceedings. Turin, Italy.

21. Diagrams for design
Information visualisation
past-present /analysis future/design

22. Diagrams for design
Information visualisation
past-present /analysis future/design
Change by Us NYC
a project by Code for America
and Local Projects (2011)
“A social network for civic
activity”
http://nyc.changeby.us/

23. Diagrams for design
Draft of a taxonomy organized along
the design process.
(This part
needs to be reviewed)

24. visions of future
• To speculate*
- Sci-fi
• For strategy
- policy orienting
scenario
• As design tool
- design orienting
scenarios
*very different aims

25. visions of future
• To speculate*
- Sci-fi
• For strategy
- policy orienting
scenario
• As design tool
- design orienting
scenarios
*very different aims

26. visions of future
Scenarios
scenarios
Policy-Orienting
Scenarios
Future Studies
S1
S2
S3
P1
P2
P3
Strategic Planning
S1
S2
S3
P1
P
P2
P3
Design-Orienting
Scenarios
Design
S1
S2
S3
P
Decision Making
in the scenario(s)
Design
of the scenario(s)
key
S
P P
scenario
project / potential project

27. design ORIENTING
SCENARIOS
1. Macro Trends (context)
2. Meta Scenario
3. Layers
4. Glimpses
internal external independent
5. Variables
Reference:
Jegou, F. and Manzini, E.
(2004) ‘Design degli scenari’,
in Bertola, P. and Manzini,
E. (eds) Design multiverso,
appunti di fenomenologia del
design. Milan: Polidesign, pp.
177–195.
Moy, D. and Ryan, C. (2011)
‘Using Scenarios to Explore
System Change: VEIL, Local
Food Depot’, in Design for
Services. Gower.

28. design ORIENTING
SCENARIOS
Techniques from existing case studies
Written narrative Designer as mediator

29. design ORIENTING
SCENARIOS
Techniques from existing case studies
collaboration as brainstorming (very beginning of the process) or consultation (discuss
solutions).

30. Research design
What am I trying to achieve and how
Aim:
Map models,
tools,
techniques and
processes {

31. Future visioning
workshop
Design experiment

32. “Living in the city”
foresight report
Design experiment

33. 2013
Research plan
Timeline
2014
future visioning breakfasts
future visioning breakfasts
lit rev: visualisations lit rev: visualisations lit rev: cities
2015
lit rev: cities
2016
J J A S O N D
lit rev: visualisations
J F M A M J J A S O N D
foresight a visual history of the future
design encyclopaedia
lit rev: future scenarios
J F M A M J J A S O N D
rsd3 review and publication
other design experiments
definition of methods and tools
J F M A M J J A S O N D
definition of methods and tools
planning
foresight
living in
the city
ServDes
RSD3
literature review and theory
design experiments
research on methods and tools
other projects
conferences and presentations