Chapter 9 – Conclusions and Recommendations
and he will avoid undertaking reforms of a complexity and scope which make it impossible for him to disentangle causes and effects, and to know what he is really doing.” (Popper, 1957, 61) The conclusion is that the influence of man as “designer” is limited, or should be, certainly at the level of societal developments. On the other hand it has also become clear that his influence reaches further than the development of a few individual products or artifacts. Although we cannot, and should not want to guide society “top-down” into a preferred direction, it is most certainly possible and necessary to work on a collective view of a desired future. And once agreement about this is reached, it then becomes important that this desired future is realized step by step. Each new product that can make a small but tangible contribution in this is yet one more step ahead.
9.5
Designer and actors
9.5.1 Response to subquestion 4: designer and actors Research subquestion 4 reads: “How can the (potential) role of the designer with regard to the product design process, as well as with regard to the way that socio-technical and societal change processes take place, be described in a systematic manner?” The assumption of this study is that the new multilevel design model can provide insight into the role of the designer, both in relationship to individual companies and in relationship to various societal actors. The role of the designer and other actors came up for discussion with P-05 in particular : (“…The nature of the system to be developed is different at each of these levels. A logical connection exists between the respective aggregation level, the system to be developed and the contribution from the designer during this process.”) The role of the designer is closely related to the “properties” of the design at the various system levels. At the level of the product-technology system and the product-service system, the nature of the system to be developed can be defined in a fairly straight-forward manner. Here the role of the designer is especially aimed at the actual development of one new product-technology system or one new product-service system, for instance by means of a drawing, a computer model or a scenario. At these levels, the most effective operating procedure appears to be when design activities are commissioned by one problem owner or client. In this situation, the designer is commissioned by this client, who ultimately decides about the course of action to be taken. At the socio-technical level, the nature of the design becomes more abstract and less tangible. Here it is about a combination of various products, services, organizational, infrastructural or policy elements. Many different actors are involved at this level, each with their own wishes and interests. During the synthesis process it is therefore necessary that contradictory demands are considered and combined into one integrated design. At this level, it is hard to predict which elements a certain new socio-technical system will consist of (with a car one knows fairly well which components are necessary, but with a “transportation system” this is already becoming a lot less obvious). Therefore it is not known in advance which organizations can realize the respective system, whereby the involvement of actors can change during the design process. The effect of this is that the relationship client-designer appears to be a lot less obvious at the higher aggregation levels. For instance in the case of the development of the assisted living complex Hubertus-Drieschoten, it is not a matter of one single problem owner or decision-maker. Although De Woonmensen carries final responsibility for the development of the new housing complex, they are not themselves responsible for many of the other developments. Consider the function of mobility in the neighborhood and the home care and medical care services. These are all aspects where De Woonmensen can at best act as facilitator, but not as principal decisionmaker. Also in the Youth in the Motion project and the development of the Sports Promotion Field Lab, it is much more a matter of a network of actors who jointly determine the direction of
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