• Design experiments within a sustainable development goal (SDG), and speculatively test them in sociotechnical systems in order to reveal insights that inform new models for thought and practice.

• The experiments should demonstrate a scientific approach (Collaborative Inquiry, Action Research, Design Research, Speculative Design) and reveal data deriving from the realities and opportunities in complex environments:
• The models should demonstrate a strong understanding and capability with multiple design practices and making capabilities in accelerating design research projects [Vision & Change Research Portfolio];

Overview of the Course

As society faces significant challenges, the need for transformative innovation has never been more vital. Anyone who seeks a transition to more sustainable practices needs a meaningful vision of a preferred future. However, merely envisioning and visualizing a future is not sufficient to stimulate change in sociotechnical systems in the context of todays wicked problems. Given their complexity, new meaningful visions must trigger neurological changes in perception, aspiration and motivation. In addition, personal awareness, reflection and resilience are becoming the essential traits to steward change. 

Vision & Change offers innovation management students and practitioners, and designers interested in facilitating transitions, an opportunity to explore and learn from recent research in transformation, IDeaLs. Students will articulate visions of more sustainable practices that simultaneously trigger reflections for personal change. Rather than pursue actual business challenges and predetermined taxonomies, students will design and speculate new techniques and tools that reveal more meaningful insights into the sociotechnical systems at play. This pedagogy will encourage speculation and experimentation necessary for personal, organizational and societal change. 

Vision & Change will primarily use Strategic Foresight and Design Inquiry to inspire personal transformation (towards presence, purpose, and resilience) by developing new meaningful visions (that reflect a change in perception, aspiration and motivation). To this aim, we will explore and prototype approaches to engage people to make transformative innovation happen, first by imagining visions of more meaningful futures, then designing tools for embodied experiences that ideally will inform how to bring people together to collectively change the existing situation into a preferred one.

More specifically, Vision & Change will begin by circumscribing spaces for design speculation and research within the UN`s Sustainable Development Goals. From within this sociotechnical context, recent insights from neuroscience, anthropology and social sciences will ground the design theory guiding student`s designs of speculative experiments. The final part of the course will expect students to create their own taxonomies to developing visions and accelerating change. The course will intentionally avoid a linear methodology in favor of developing a diverse set of perspectives and approaches, similar to the spirit of the experiments conducted within the IDeaLs platform.

 To map the students journey through the course, a research “portfolio” will document meaningful observations, insights, sketches and other speculations, which will be submitted for final grading. The portfolio should be a creative visual exercise, and as such should also reflect the personal transition towards presence, purpose, and resilience, in the most appropriate format.

Students should be prepared to explore the 3 primary course themes:

1. Vision as Meaning: In light of the plethora of wicked problems of our era, the United Nations’ (UN’s) created 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Responding to these goals requires a shared vision of a preferred future, and even a better world. As futurist Fred Polak wrote in 1973, The rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society’s image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive.” Meaningful visions are much deeper than the surface representations of imagery, storytelling and even data-based projections. They actually have information encoded in the neuronal, regional, and social neurological networks. Becoming aware of these networks, and engaging them activity, will open new vistas on creating visions with meaning
2. Design as Inquiry: Ezio Manzini writes, “…in the transition toward a networked and sustainable society, all design is (or should be) a design research activity and should promote sociotechnical experiments” (Manzini 2015). Design is a powerful tool for collective inquiry because of its explicit making and implicit materiality. Anthropologist Lambros Malafouris refers to the personal meaning embedded within objects aligns with the concept of Material Engagement Theory (MET). Resonating in the notion of “type” in architecture, when objects contain both personal and shared meaning. By reinforcing the neurological realities of boundary objects, design is not only essential to communicate meaning, but also as collective inquiry. Students will collaboratively design experiments to encourage practitioners and stakeholders toward collective making of shared meaning.
3. Change as Transition: Transitioning to preferred states requires not only systemic understanding and action, but a rebalancing of how we think about leadership and organizations in terms of design, infrastructure, and culture. Terry Irwin and Gideon Kossoff of the Transition Design Institute at Carnegie-Mellon visualize the challenges faced by stakeholders in adaptive situations in order to inform coherent responses to crises. This stage of the course will explore the variety of emerging frameworks for cultivating change in sociotechnical environments. Students will explore how to cultivate a collective consciousness that encourages stakeholders to transition toward a more viable world. Ideally the outcome of course will also reveal insights on the desired transitions for personal transformation.

 Preparation is primarily an interest in exploring these 3 themes, in addition to familarity or desire to learn the topic content.

Course evaluation will be based on the following elements:

• Team Research Projects: teams project will forecast a preferred future of an SDG, design tools to research that future, and tools to engage people in the transition. Presentations of the research projects will be on the 16^th and 23^rd of December, therefore final submissions are due by 15^th of December
• Individual Portfolio: A Vision & Change Lab portfolio*, documenting the models, methods and experimental output exploring an SDG vision and its change pathway. 

The specific elements in the grading system and the points assigned to them are depicted in the following table. 

*Each student will define the format of their portfolio, including media (video, audio …) and platform (Miro, Mural, …).

Part I is required reading for course section Vision as Meaning

Required reading for Part II Design as Inquiry

Part III is required reading for course section Change as Transition

optional reading for Part II Design as Inquiry

optional reading for Part II Design as Inquiry

optional reading for Part II Design as Inquiry

reading for Part III Change as Transition