Participation, Reconnection, and Design: presentation by Marc Rettig and Hannah du Plessis of Fit Associates, as part of the Interaction 17 conference redux for IxDA Pittsburgh. Argues that participation in a vast and growing movement toward a sustainable and equitable future is a fertile frontier for design, and an invitation to adopt new approaches to work.

1. Participation,
reconnection,
and design
Marc Rettig and Hannah du Plessis
13 April 2017

2. Participation, reconnection, and design
Marc Rettig & Hannah du Plessis | Fit Associates, LLC
www.fitassociates.com
marc@fitassociates.com | @mrettig
hannah@fitassociates.com | @hannahdup
This workshop was presented on April 13, 2017, at a meeting of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Interaction Design Association. For more information, see
ixda.org and www.facebook.com/IxdaPittsburgh.
© 2017, Fit Associates LLC
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike 4.0 License. You can copy and redistribute it, and you can remix, transform, and build
upon this material, so long as you attribute credit to its authors, and share under the same license. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
sa/4.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

3. Marc Rettig
marc@fitassociates.com
@mrettig
Hannah du Plessis
hannah@fitassociates.com
@hannahdup
fitassociates.com dsi.sva.edu design.cmu.edu

4. Three parts
Interaction 17 Reflection sessions report
A version of our keynote talk
Group reflection and discussion

5. We believe in reflection
fitassociates.com/getting-still

6. Morning reflection sessions at Interaction 17
An invitation to step back and notice what you we are learning

7. Reflect by yourself

8. Reflect in pairs  small groups

9. Listen to the room

10. Day 1: You
Why is it important for you to be here?
What do you plan to get at this conference? What do you hope to give at this conference?
What really matters to you at this conference, what stands in the way of having an experience that matters?
Day 2: The conference conversation
“I’m tired of …”
“I’m grateful for ...“
“I’m missing ...”
Day 3: Our industry and future

11. We stand in a difficult moment in history. We have
inherited a world that works for some at the
expense of others. We are disconnected from the
consequences of our actions. It is alluring to participate
unconsciously and believe that “everything is ok.”
It is therefore important to step outside the comfort of
our industry and our time, and ask critical questions.

12. What might future generations ask of us?
What might those outside of, but affected
by our industry, ask of us?
So we asked…

13. Do we consider the unintended consequences of designing only for ourselves?
Why don’t we take the opportunity to change consumption habits rather than
feed technological addiction?
Why don’t we take leadership to shift the moral and ethical compass of
our design community?
Why don’t we refuse to do work that is against our moral commitments?
Why aren’t we talking about designing jobs away?
Why so many fucking photo apps?
Some of the answers we heard

14. “Business as usual” ain’t working,
it’s hurting.

15. “Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen
and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you
recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence
the outcomes–you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several
million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and knowable, a
alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists
think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the
opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief
that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who
and what is may impact, are not things we can know….”
Rebecca Solnit
Possibilities everywhere

16. Two points about that…
“Business as usual” ain’t working, it’s hurting.
1. At the same time, a lot of good things are happening,
and they add up to something big.
2. We’re finding methods, strategies and approaches that
help us all participate in those things.

17. 1. At the same time, a lot of good things are happening,
and they add up to something big.
(My job for the next four minutes is to overwhelm you with
just how many good things are going on.)

18. www.desis-network.org

19. Look at one lab: the South Africa Lab

20. One (of three) summary presentations lists eight projects

21. Forty-one labs

22. John Thackara
Reconnecting…
Communities with forests
Cities with the rain
Air and soil
Fragmented landscapes
Communities with streams
Cities with rivers
Cities with nature
Economies with capacity to repair
Local makers with factories
Farmers with hackers
Energy and place
Local parallel internets
thackara.com

23. Pollinator pathways
www.pollinatorpathway.com

24. Reforestation
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforestation

25. ASA Project, Brazil: one million cisterns
www.aguariosypueblos.org/en/the-asa-project-one-million-cisterns-–-brazil

26. Paul Hawken
www.blessedunrest.com

27. Hawken has been cataloging grassroots
environmental groups around the world.
He has identified a minimum of
130,000such groups.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW8BytViI54

28. “These aren’t the last guttering candles before we
slip into total darkness. These are the symptoms,
flowers, and seedlings of the future. This is
exactly what you would expect for the early stage
of an ecological transformation.”
John Thackara

29. The Berkana Model of system change
berkana.org/about/our-theory-of-change Sketch by Chris Corrigan, chriscorrigan.com

30. We affect the grand shift by shifting the
way we participate in our own contexts,
and by creating contexts that afford
shifts in others’ participation.
Mechanisms:
participation and (re)connection
medium.com/@EskoKilpi/networks-and-leadership-d8400046eae6 | www.peterblock.com/_assets/downloads/Civic.pdf

31. 2. We’re finding methods, strategies and approaches
that help us all participate in those things.
Methods: room-of-people scale
Strategies: wisely connecting room-scale activities in sequence
1. A lot of good things are happening,
and they add up to something big.

32. We see an exciting
blossoming of methods
for doing this work at
roomful-of-people scale.

33. www.artofhosting.org

34. appliedimprovisation.network

35. www.liberatingstructures.com

36. Methods in practice:
The “treat-animals-well society”

37. Gather from many departments (“gather diversity and power”

38. Shift: from think-by-talking to think-by-making

39. Assumption Dump

40. The key activity: Collective Story Harvest
amandafenton.com/core-methods/what-is-the-collective-story-harvest | www.uie.com/brainsparks/2016/02/23/a-story-told-about-story-listening-ux-immersion-podcast

41. Suspend judgment and listen

42. Update assumptions

43. Reflect (take a walk), Reframe

44. We can connect these methods in series to
make STRATEGIES for participatory,
systemic, emergent acts of co-creation.
Here’s another story…
Methods: room-of-people scale
Strategies: wisely connecting room-scale activities in sequence
Approaches: engaging with bigger scales and longer horizons

45. Sam Kaner
www.communityatwork.com | Source of this story (recommended!): vimeo.com/32178909

46. A visual language for participation strategies
Sam Kaner

47. Sam Kaner
Convene diversity and power, engage authority

48. Sam Kaner
Support participation with process expertise

49. Sam Kaner
Create good conditions, then give emergence its time

50. Sam Kaner
Stabilize, amplify, and perhaps spread what takes root

51. The people who curated this process are
fluent in the work of social emergence:
convening and hosting conversations,
participatory decision-making, the dance
between acting or intervening and
stepping back to trust the creative forces of
community. We can also gain that fluency.

52. 1. At the same time as all the bad things, a lot of good
things are happening, and they add up to something big.
2. We’re finding methods, strategies and approaches that
help us all participate in those things. We can know
how to do this stuff!
And that’s my two points.

53. Shifting the way we participate in our
own contexts (and working with the
conditions for others’ participation)
requires awareness, courage, support
and practice.
A third point

54. Practicing open dialogue during a meeting

55. Practicing acceptance and conversations
Photographs: Stephanie Sun

56. Practicing difficult conversations
Photographs: Stephanie Sun

57. Thomas Lommee

58. Never before have the possibilities for action been so abundant.
Never before has the potential to interconnect all these actions been so great.
Therefore the time for putting the blame to those in power lies behind us
and the time for kick-starting small but massive action lies in front.
In a networked society the transition to a more sustainable living environment
will not only be realized by a handful of large-scale projects that are orchestrated by a few.
It will mostly be shaped by a billion tiny interrelated actions that are initiated by all of us.
In a networked society we, as citizens, have power.
We can influence decision making by posting, forwarding, grouping, choosing and approving.
We can reshape our living environment by initiating, exchanging, sharing, improving
and building upon what was developed by those who came before us.
It’s now simply up to us to be aware of these new opportunities in order to exploit them to the fullest.
Thomas Lommee
www.intrastructures.net/Intrastructures/Actions_-_The_next_big_thing_2.html

59. Reflection and discussion
It’s a method!
1-2-4-All
www.liberatingstructures.com/1-1-2-4-all/

60. Thank you.
Marc Rettig
marc@fitassociates.com
@mrettig
Hannah du Plessis
hannah@fitassociates.com
@hannahdup