Introduction Figuring Things Out Together

Figuring Things Out Together: On the Relationship between Design and Collective Practice

Introduction

Context

I make websites. I teach. I design platforms. I host workshops. I write. I organize events. I build tools. I make books. I am involved in an array of activities at various organizations, institutions, and in the context of self-organized groups. It can be disorienting and difficult to speak about my work in a way that is easily packageable. All of the activities that constitute what I do and the contexts I do them in, come with their own specific vocabularies, manners and expectations.

There are many of us who work this way --- people who blend practices rather than choosing one specialization or one fixed definition of their practice. Sometimes we form collectives; conglomerates of ambiguous practitioners who come from domains that may seem ostensibly separate. By coming together in this manner, we diffuse disciplinary boundaries. We challenge the divisions between user and maker, product and process, friendships and work relations, student and teacher.

For nine years, I have been working closely with the collective Hackers & Designers (H&D). Due to my close involvement with this collective, it has become central to my practice-based inquiry into the relationship between design and collective practice. H&D started as a workshop-based meetup series in Amsterdam in 2013. Since then, we have been organizing workshops, sometimes self-organized, sometimes by invitation. H&D workshops are informal get-togethers and usually follow a hands-on practical approach. Attendees mostly work at the intersection of technology, design, art, and education. Along with organizing workshops people involved with H&D produce on and offline publications and build open source tools and platforms.

Collective practices, as I understand and discuss them in this thesis, lean into the complexity of issues while resisting the impulse to solve anything. Moving through a variety of contexts (from institutional to grassroots informal) collective practices are responsive to changing conditions. They are mutable and at times fragile structures that, notwithstanding, manage to hold together fragmented practices, multiple places, schedules and economies. Collectives are constantly in-the-making, and along the way, they develop "terms of transition" -- socio-material conducts that help them navigate, and 'stay in touch' in uncertain times.

Open source spreadsheets and notepads become administrative tools for decentralized collective organization, subject or site for a workshop, and design and publishing tools. Shared anecdotes, distributed documentation practices, asynchronous writing of workshop scripts, unstable technical infrastructure are all part of what holds collectives together. Such relational utterances cannot be considered products or examples of collectivity in the sense that an example could be a blueprint. Collective practices are site, context, and time specific, and so are their expressions.

Research Question

This research investigates the relationship between design and collectivity. I argue that this relationship is one of mutual entanglement and therefore requires perspectives on working and designing together that resist linearity, and a progress-based understanding of the design process. The central question that I will return to throughout this dissertation is: How to design for and with collectivity? I propose the notion of 'designing with' (rather than through or by means of) to open up design approaches and perspectives towards processes of designing with others (other people, other things, other environments) that are non-successive and contingent as they are constantly emerging.

Problem

Collective practices are difficult to align with conceptual, material and organizational confinements currently upheld in the field of design and formal design education. I found that conventional design vocabularies are not capable of expressing and accounting for collectivities\' resistance to fixation and stabilization. In existing design discourses much attention has been paid to modes of designing together. Yet, in my view, these accounts fall short of addressing the nature and meaning of collective practice. For instance, there is a difference between collectivity and collaboration or teamwork. Collectivity is not a design method, or an antidote to an individualistic design approach. I argue that collectivity should be considered a condition that is intertwined with certain issues and their material consequences such as fragmentation and flexibilization of cultural work, in addition to the economization of art and design education.

Contribution to design discourse

Design approaches such as 'participatory design', 'cooperative design', and 'co-creation', have been discussed at length, in urban planning, industrial design, and human-computer interaction design. Participatory Design (PD) derived from the 1970s Scandinavian labor movement, and shifted attention from top-down design approaches to the "politics and ethics of 'workplace democracy'". PD introduced methods of joint decision-making regarding the implementation of new tools, technologies and organization models in the workplace. These decision-making processes involved those most affected; the workers in a factory for instance. The workers were to use the newly introduced technologies in their daily work routines. The PD approach brought into focus how collaborative processes, across different positions, organizational hierarchies, and diverging skills, can be considered an essential part of the design process. It also introduced social questions into the design process, actively involving different perspectives in order to improve design objects and their implementation.

PD has been critiqued by design theorists for only inviting some to participate in the process while excluding others. Furthermore, it is argued that PD builds upon consensus models for decision-making, which can be implemented in ways that affirm established power relations, while maintaining the appearance of an inclusive process. Design theorists such as Ramia Mazé, Mahmoud Keshavarz, Carl DiSalvo and Tad Hirsch, have problematized PD, building upon the work of political philosophers such as Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière, and have advocated for design approaches that privilege difference over consensus. Like PD, their propositions for adversarial,dissenting and contestational design pays attention to design processes rather than products, and the politics inherent in such processes. Yet they emphasize the importance of sustaining the possibility for different positions, including potential friction and conflict as part or even an aim of the design process.

Furthermore, Mazé and Keshavarz offered useful tactics for resisting generalization around tropes of collaboration in design by challenging the presupposition that positions, identities and preferences are pre-constituted and well-defined. Drawing on Rancière's concept of 'dissensus', as "a process concerned with the potential emergence of new political formations," Mazé and Keshavarz argue "for increased criticality -- and dissensus -- in contemporary practices of design and design research." Other design theorists have put forward design philosophies such as Ontological Design or Xeno Design, which displaces the human/designer as the apex of the design process in an attempt to fundamentally question the complexity of designed worlds and design's implications for social, economic, and ecological issues. Design theorists such as Anne-Marie Willis, Johanna Schmeer, Danah Abdullah, and Tony Fry further complicate the pluralistic design approach of being and working together 'in difference', by appealing to a multilayered design perspective that transgresses boundaries between disciplines, timelines, geographies, scales, human and non-human entities. Such theories call for "new imaginaries and design approaches that question human-centrism, and open up paths towards alternatives."

All these critical design accounts have contributed to greater self-reflexivity in design perspectives and articulations, and as such, have also been important orientation guides for my research trajectory. Yet, these design theories -- perhaps because they evolve within and respond to the established design discourse -- are in my view still too attached to, and therefore insufficiently question, the notion of a 'purposeful' relation between design and collectivity.

As I will discuss in my first chapter 'Design and Collectivity', it is often during moments of crisis, for example increasingly porous disciplinary boundaries and specialization in design, that collectivity becomes an alternative proposition, or a potential resolution to the issue at stake. The tropes of design and collectivity, in their various interpretations and meanings, tend to uphold each other.

Approach

Throughout the different chapters I will make the thresholds of collective practice legible. I will do this by discussing the ways collectivity weaves together a range of places, legacies, objects and people across practices and disciplines, and timelines. Drawing from personal experiences and my involvement in collectivity-in-action, I will analyze different formats, utterances and social-technical conduct, in order to critically question how collective practices negotiate their relationships with the material conditions of everyday life.

Chapter 1: 'Design & Collectivity'

> The chapter 'Design & Collectivity' sets the scene by locating my > personal affinities with collective practice. I trace the ways in > which my understanding of collectivity has changed over time, and is > intertwined with personal experiences and frustrations with the > established design field. I will contextualize the main research > question of this thesis (How to design *for* and *with* collectivity?) > by approaching collective practice not as a result of successive or > comprehensible processes, but as resulting from and implied in > particular socio-economic, socio-technical conditions that pervade and > shape collectives, often in unforeseen ways. Collective practices > therefore require articulation that does not presume collectivity to > be a resolution to a problem.

In the following chapters, I will discuss three concepts: "Workshop", "Tool" and "Platform", dedicating a chapter to each. They are all ubiquitous and hazy terms that travel through a manifold of contexts with ease. They are also implied in the ways the H&D collective has been (mis)understood and actualized. All these terms -- workshop/tool/platform -- have been overused and so these chapters seek to clarify their meaning specifically in the context of collectivity.

Chapter 2: 'Workshop production'

> The chapter 'Workshop production' interrogates the pervasiveness of > the 'workshop' as a concept and format within a vast range of fields > and raises the question: "Why and how are workshops valued and > practiced?" > As a format for time-boxed collaboration, as well as temporary and > dynamic learning environments, 'workshops' cross many boundaries, > for instance between art and activism, between different disciplines > and institutions, between commercial and educational contexts. > Supposedly, workshops can be applied to any context. In this chapter I > will discuss the different perspectives on workshops including the > workshop as a site for specialized material production, in addition to > its meaning as a format for bringing together groups of like-minded > people; to meet, spend time together, work on a specific topic, or > explore new techniques or tools. Furthermore, I will address the > tension between, on the one hand understanding and practicing > workshops as egalitarian learning formats, and on the other hand > workshops' role in reinforcing neoliberal conditions. I will argue > that the workshop is a format that is implied in the economization of > education and the learning economy, and perpetuates a culture in which > self-employment, self-improvement, and self-reliance is normalized. > Drawing on different workshop situations I will exemplify how > possibilities and pitfalls of the workshop as a format for cultural > production are being dealt with within collective practice. Central to > this chapter's inquiry is the question; can workshops can be > organized responsibly? Can they resist this neoliberal impulse?

Chapter 3: 'Tool building'

> In this chapter I will discuss the question: Are > other-than-utilitarian relationships to tools possible? If they are, > how can such relationships be articulated? H&D hands-on workshops feed > off and nurture communities of tool users and makers who consider it > relevant to 'open up' tools and tool-building processes, to learn > about the ways tools are constructed in hands-on practical and often > playful ways. The practical and experimental approach to > conceptualizing and building tools *differently* allows for imagining > and testing out other scenarios for tool-designer relationships and > interaction. The chapter 'Tool building' analyzes different > understandings and functionings of 'tools'. More specifically, I > will discuss an ongoing / non-conclusive process of collectively > imagining, building, and modifying a set of digital tools entitled > 'Feminist Search Tools', that yields a growing repository of > prototypes, workshops, documentation, and recordings of conversations. > In this chapter I argue that the articulation and actualization of > 'tools' within the context of the Feminist Search Tools project, is > driven by a certain resistance towards tools as merely practical and > discrete objects.

Chapter 4: 'Platform-design issues'

> The starting point for the chapter 'Platform-design issues' is the > question "Do you want to design our platform?". This request, as it > has been recurrently posed to the H&D collective, extrapolates the > complicated relationship between design and collectivity. That is, the > way platforms are discussed in this chapter, puts into focus the > manner in which technical objects and context-specific social conducts > are composed together and are therefore deeply intertwined with a > collective's characteristics and functioning. These self-made > platforms involve and converge content management systems, chat > applications, collaborative writing tools, online spreadsheets and > file sharing systems. They are actualized on-the-go and in a manner > that caters to the particular needs, curiosities, and abilities of the > collective, which makes it difficult to separate them as technical > objects from that context. The question that will be discussed is: If > such platforms-in-the-making are inseparable from a collective's > functioning, including their characteristic of constant emergence, > spontaneity, and unreliability---can such platforms be designed at > all?

The title of the dissertation "Figuring things out together" evokes the collective effort of working through the complexities of our times, as well the effort required in disentangling and disambiguating certain metaphors and tropes that occur in the context of collective practices. Living and working conditions are increasingly complex, fragmented, and precarious. Can collective practices like H&D develop, uphold and support critical, ethical, and sustainable ways of working and being together?

Each chapter will take a different approach in order to ascertain what binds us together in collective practices. While these chapters appear in a linear order, they are also intertwined with each other. For instance, I will discuss workshops that took place on experimental platforms and I will discuss platforms and tools that took shape in and through workshop situations. The structure of the thesis resists a linear narrative of collectivity (forward-moving, progressing, improving, innovating) and invites the reader to remain alert, and on the look-out for *other,* multiple, and parallel collective utterances.

Bibliography

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