design for complexity - talking social innovation at massey university

Sam Rye

A story about journeying toward Design for Complexity

@samrye_enspiralMassey University 2015

I grew up in the UK.

My father was an entrepreneur, my mother was an academic who studied french literature. Worryingly, I think I’m becoming a mix of them both.

I lived in the leafy green suburbs of south-west London, but travelled a lot as a kid to France, and left London at 25.



From an early age I was a generalist; I played all sports, was average at most things, excelled at little.

I studied business management & marketing as I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

I don’t know what happened, but somehow my parents instilled a curiosity in me which I haven’t been able to shake to this day.


I was incredibly lucky to have an excellent first graduate job - I found myself on the agency side of the Design world.

It was a great little agency called The Design Fulcrum. The world was rosey - I was reasonably well paid, driving a nice little VW Golf, I was working on international design projects, travelling to Switzerland, working with Gillette launching packaging projects like the M3 Power line into international markets.

But when they put a battery inside a razor and called it corporate innovation, I was soon asking “IS THIS IT?”

Eventually I decided I had had enough, fuck this - I need to get out of this culture of materialism and a race toward wealth for the sake of wealth.


So I did what any London kid should do when they feel like that. I booked a ticket to get on a plane to go to the furthest opposite place I could think of to get some perspective.

I swapped the concrete jungles of London for the verdant rainforest of Borneo.

For the next 3 months I was immersed in the forest, building this bridge with a British Youth Development charity, young people from all over the UK and some awesome rangers who lived there full time.

I learnt about environmental conservation, and loved working with my hands. I soon realised I had found a more purposeful life, and quickly my identity was entwined with protecting, conserving and regenerating wild places.


I began to follow this new purpose. I travelled to Australia and did more environmental conservation work there, and then it led me to the West Coast of the South Island of Aotearoa.

I lived blissfully in a village of 26 - even further from the UK - in Punakaiki, and led teams of volunteers planting over 40’000 trees.

But I was realising that as fast as I could plant those trees, people could cut them down.

I needed to understand scale to change problems I saw with how we treated our land, water and climate. But I also realised most environmental challenges were really social challenges - and these were harder and more complex than I imagined.


WHY?

WHAT ARE YOU PASSIONATE ABOUT? WHAT LIGHTS YOU UP?

WHAT DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE IS IMPORTANT IN LIFE?

WHAT MAKES YOU EXCITED AND/OR ANGRY IN THE WORLD?

WHAT WERE THE IMAGES YOU BROUGHT IN FOR YOUR PROJECT ABOUT?


Turn to the person next to you, discuss one of these questions for a minute each.

Cut through the fluff get straight to the heart of your values..


So you just began to touch on some of the things you care about - your purpose if you will.

With purpose you can’t always rush finding it, but I do believe you can intentionally explore it.

For example: if you don’t know what you care about yet, get someone to ask you ‘Why’ 5 Times.

Likewise I’ve found that doing things that you lose yourself in - the kind of things you forget to have dinner for, is a great way to explore things. But key with this one, is then to reflect on what it is about those things that you find important and engaging.

If you’re after an extra incentive, there are very strong scientific links between living with purpose, and improved mental & physical health and wellbeing.


I currently work on a project called Lifehack - we’re working to enable a generation to flourish. By flourishing we mean ‘feeling good and functioning well’.

People whose wellbeing is elevated experience better physical & mental health, improved productivity and resilience to shocks in life.

We believe young people should be at the centre of decisions that affect them, services which they rely on, and interventions which they can use day to day to improve their wellbeing.

Sounds sensible? Look at the institutions which you interact with - Schools, Governments, Mental Health Services. Do you think they were created with young people at the centre of the design process?


Lifehack is using Design as a container in which we mash up technology, entrepreneurship, wellbeing research, and social innovation.

We’re working on a design process which puts young people at the centre of creating and developing wellbeing interventions (sometimes we call them “hacks”), and is heavily inspired by the unique-ness of Aotearoa culture.

We’re excited to be running a design challenge with the 3rd year students this year, and to see what comes of some of your 4th year projects.


Wellbeing is complex problem. Messy humans who don’t do what you want them to do.

Economies, Nature, Climate. Things respond and change when you intervene. It is a dynamic system.

When we design for complexity, we need different kinds of design approaches to when you have known quantities and predictable reactions (also known as “complicated” problems.


Here at Massey, you’re already treading down the path of collaborative, cross-disciplinary design which is vital for social innovation.

For Design for Complexity we draw heavily on Social Innovation thinking. This thinking demands discipline driving toward insight.

It also says “Don’t Wait”. Don’t wait till you have the perfect skills, the mana or the money to do something. The world is crying out for people working on stuff that matters, not putting batteries inside razors.

Social Innovation says “Start from where I am and who I am, I’ll learn the rest along the way”.

Ask yourself “Who Am I? What Skills Do I Have? What Do I Care About?”

Then: “Who Are We? What Skills Do We Have? What Is The Highest Possibility For This Group Of People?”


Then, it’s time to dive deeper - driving toward insights.

Complex problems have multiple starting points - working on anything is working on everything.

But you need to go broader and deeper, aiming to work on the systemic causes, not just the symptoms.

The most interesting parts are the overlaps and the cracks in between.

We encourage our Lifehackers to start with a Problem, a Possibility, a Trend, some Research. Investigate. Listen. Observe. Experiment.

Then ask Who is this for? In what Context? What are the Cultural Norms in this situation?

The quality of how you listen & observe defines the quality of your insight - and thus the quality of your intervention..


To avoid getting too abstract, here’s an example:

Beast came from Lifehack Labs - 3 awesome wahine who have backgrounds in sport & psychology.

They started with the Cultural Norm of “don’t talk about it, toughen up” in young men, and the Research that they were an at-risk group for mental health problems.

They identified there was a Problem for them developing EQ.

We introduced them to Research that indicates Positive Psychology is great for building resilience, life skills & EQ.

They asked ‘Where?’ & ‘In What Context?’ and came up with a programme delivered inside standard Rugby coaching.

They just won an innovation award at the Toi Tangata hui for this mahi.


Let me give you another example.

What happens when a Hip Hop artist, an App Developer and a media-savvy graphic designer get together?

You get new and exciting projects - such as GoFlo.

The GoFlo team discovered some research about how good creative self expression is for mental health, and developed an app to bridge from freestyling to hip hop songwriting to enable more people to get started and continue expressing themselves creatively.

It’s now in the App Store and is delivered to young people in rural schools through workshops, and hopefully will be touring the country later in the year.


GoFlo came from the passion for Hip Hop of the founder, Aaron, but the research, and the design process which he went through created something unique. Something he wouldn’t have seen or understood before the Lifehack Labs experience.

Personally I’m passionate about Good Design as it’s a container for making good decisions which improve:

● Quality● Safety● Usability● Outcomes for Multiple Stakeholders

It bridges worlds and disciplines.


Design for Complexity is at the forefront of Social Innovation, and it’s going mainstream.

Even the Government is starting to see the possibilities - they’re hiring service designers left, right and centre, and experimenting a little with Social Innovation Labs such as Lifehack and Auckland Codesign Lab.

We’re excited by the potential of design, but we recognise there’s a missing piece when you’re picking up American or UK design processes such as IDEO or d.School.

We’re part of an enquiry into how design processes can be flavoured, influenced and entirely shaped with Te Ao Maori (and other indigenous wisdom from our Pacific cousins) at the core of the process.

Massey has begun to ask some of the same questions - we’re excited to be in this waka together.


So, it’s worth me dropping in a provocation.

The answers to the problems you seek to solve, the change you wish to see, and the inspiration for what you wish to design is not inside these walls. It’s not even on the interwebs.

Get outside of Massey, talk to people; see, smell, taste and experience.

There is huge support right here in Wellington for people wanting to work on good stuff - whilst they’re at Uni, and after.

There’s also programs like “Spring” inside Massey to help you turn your ideas into a reality - such as Fraser and the Refold guys, or Meg Howie with Ask Away in the Design & Democracy Lab.


Here’s another provocation:

There’s no shortage of things to spend our lives working on, to make things better.

So...

Who are You?

What Are You Good At?

What Do You Care About?

...

@samrye_enspiralMassey University 2015LIFEHACKHQ.CO


I mentioned support outside the walls over the coming months and years.

Check out Lifehack, which supports Wellbeing-centric projects.

Founded right here in Wellington, but increasingly globally-renowned and now over 200 strong in the network, Enspiral is a collective which is a home for changemakers and social innovation initiatives.

If you think your idea needs to become sustainable and grow over time, you might want to take a look at Akina Foundation which is a social enterprise support organisation.

Likewise you can tweet me and meet for a chat - I recognise not all this language will be familiar - I’d love to help you find your purpose and navigate this exciting opportunity of a 4th year project being focused on something which needs to change in the world.

http://lifehackhq.co

http://enspiral.com

@samrye_enspiralMassey University 2015LIFEHACKHQ.CO

THANK YOU

ANY QUESTIONS?