IN-PERSON: Applying Education
Abstract
Design is everywhere, providing conditions and establishing affordances for a wide variety of intentional and accidental social relations. Design educators and design practitioners therefore occupy a consequential role in shaping these lived experiences, cultivating skills, and developing processes that can produce novel, useful and creative outcomes for the benefit of participants. Many interactions in organizational, commercial, and civic contexts are characterized by competition and ‘zero-sum’ dynamics, in which assets are seen as scarce rather than abundant, and value is narrowly defined and presumed to be universal rather than pluralistic and positioned to satisfy broader needs. In some cases, however, the judicious use of design methods can convert these win/lose competitive social relations into more win-win collaborative interactions; these are described in Game Theory as positive sum, with design for such interactions termed Positive Sum Design. In this paper, we introduce the principles of Positive Sum Design, and use them to derive a series of design methods and teaching tools. We offer examples of these design methods in the context of prototyping and critiquing solutions to problems which at first pass appear to be zero sum, but which can be reframed to create or emphasize positive sum outcomes.
Will Rutter is a practicing designer and design scholar with a particular interest in the impact of human and technological systems on value creation and the lived experience of people. He received his MA in Design from the CMU School of Design in 2021 and is currently continuing his MDes+MPPA studies at IIT’s Institute of Design and Stuart School of Business.
Arthi teaches Design for Social Innovation at CMU School of Design. She is the founder of RyeCatcher and the non-profit Community Success Institute. She works at the intersection of public policy, design, and technology with a variety of public and private sector institutions on projects that enable informed decision-making for a wide range of audiences. Her work has been published by Oxford University Press, NOVA Science publishers, the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, among others.
Ian Gonsher is Assistant Professor of Practice in the School of Engineering and Department of Computer Science at Brown University. His teaching and research interests examine creative process as applied to interdisciplinary design practices.
Ruth Schmidt is an associate professor at the Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Tech, whose research sits at the intersection of behavioral science, humanity-centered design, and complex systems. Her work focuses on addressing private sector and public policy challenges more systematically through applied behavioral insights and conceptual models.
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Thursday 27th April, 2023