How to design our future cities? Which methodologies should be used? Taking into consideration the remarks made above on the need for a participatory approach to the utopian thinking about cities, our methodologies for design these cities should of course be participatory. In the following, I will therefore present some thoughts on Participatory Design. Participatory design (PD) is here understood in its literary sense: as a design activity that takes place in a participatory context. In my vocabulary design includes planning.
Participatory Design and Community Development are two different strands in modern social movements, but they share some important concepts, as Clement & Mielniczuk (1995) point out:
"Group participation in decision making is the most obvious. Both fields stress the importance of individual and group empowerment. Participation is not only for the purposes of engineering agreement. It is also to engage people in meaningful and purposive adaptation and change to their daily environment. Community development and participatory design both start their work by attempting to gain an understanding of the situation as it exists. An understanding of the relationships of power, exchange and friendship which underpin decision making and action are essential to build cohesiveness among individuals and groups. Both fields attempt to move beyond shared learning into action oriented systems. In so doing, both deal with individual, organizational and cultural differences."
PD is by name a relatively new phenomenon. Although the title entitles to more, PD has mainly been concerned with the development and design of computer artifacts and information systems. PD could perhpas be seen as an umbrella of the various computerization movements that actively develops participatory methods and ideas; many CSCW-researchers and practioners would fit in here, and also some in HCI and related fields.
By participatory context is meant a design process in which not only designers, i.e., design professionals, but also the 'users-to-be' participate in the whole process. PD is based on an idea of a close relationship between design and use, where the professional designers are confronted with the participants' particular 'communities of practice' (Binder, forthcoming), and, on the other hand, where the participants are confronted with the designers' generalised design knowledge. PD is therefore a mutual learning process, which 'is not only a question of users participation in design, but also a question of designers participating in use' (Ehn, 1993).
Most contemporary PD activities have at their core "the involvement of workers in the design and development of new technologies and work practices that have the potential of improving their work lives" (PDC94, 1994). Internationally, PD is a growing research field, which has attracted many North American, Japanese and European researchers. Most experiences are found in the Scandinavian tradition of participation and skill in design and use of computer artefacts (Ehn 1989, 1993; Bjerknes et al 1987; Greenbaum & Kyng 1991; Rasmussen & Læssøe 1989). But PD is not a design methodology in the same sense as for example Soft Systems Methodology, SSM (Checkland, 1981); rather the notion covers a wide range of methodologies and techniques.
What is then the purpose of PD? In my view, the purpose should be to empower the participants. The participatory design process should be seen as a process of participant empowerment, enabling participants to participate in decisionmaking through an effective voice and vote. Empowerment has to do with expanding the range of decisions that are made through democratic processes (Young 1992). Central to the whole notion of participation is therefore the right of people to have a direct influence on matters that concern them in their work and lives, through an effective voice and vote. Participatory design should not, then, be confined to the design of 'systems', but inevitably brings in wider elements of working and everyday life.
The main challenge for participatory design is, according to van den Besselaar et al (1992), to deal effectively with the political aspects of the broader organisational contexts upon which participatory design initiatives depend for their long term survival. The dilemma remains that without wider societal changes in the direction of greater democratisation, the knowledge and commitment that participatory design can stimulate and promote, will ultimately reinforce the patterns that limit the growth of capabilities and thus undermine further initiative. Only by giving participation the meaning of full engagement in vital organisational affairs - the politics of design - is the process likely to flourish and liberate. 'Without democracy, we lose the general dimension and are left with just a number of local methods for designing systems' (Thoresen, in van den Besselaar et al, 1992). During the past decades PD-researchers and practioners around the world have experienced the politics of design at first hand, and the PD movement is today larger than ever. Whereas the early PD projects were:
"Participatory design is a leading-edge approach to creating software that has a high degree of usability and social responsibility."
Participatory practices are being used at several large U.S. software companies including AT&T, Bellcore, Digital Equipment Corporation, Microsoft, NYNEX, Pacific Bell, U S WEST, and Xerox.
How to understand the notion of participation from a Japanese information science (joho kagaku) point of view? What is a participatory approach to regional planning? How to design information systems for supporting decision processes? These are some of the questions I have been working on under supervision of, or collaboration with, Masao Hijikata, who has been working with these questions in a Japanese context for many years. In the following, I will present some reflections and a discussion on these questions, written by me, but under heavy influence by Hijikata.(1)
The notion of participation is closely related, in Japanese terms, to the notion of joho, which often is translated into English to 'information'. The joho shakai is thus the idea of Information Society. But joho is a 'very Japanese' concept, and is therefore difficult to translate. I thus think that joho and (the 'Western' concept of) information are different concepts. Also, joho shakai and Information Society are different concepts. In the concept of joho shakai participation should be a fundamental issue, Hijikata argues. joho is the 'stuff' that makes jin, people, and, in an anthropological sense (2), culture. But joho is also the result of jin:
This central position of joho in cultural development is illustrated in this figure:
The participatory process is complex, and embedded with uncertainties. This is where GDPSS comes in. Hijikata's concept of GDPSS, Group Decision Process Support System, is a human centred approach to participatory design. The suggested participatory system puts emphasis on the three keywords: information, decisions, and organisation. The 'support system' is both a 'soft' and 'hard' system. It is a computer-supported, project-oriented problem finding and solving methodology.
Based on the assumptions that: 1. Information in a complex environment cannot be complete, and 2. No human can know everything, a issue is how to share information, and thus how to organise decision process in complex situations. In dealing with these problems, Hijikata draws on what I would call classical organisation theory, i.e. a reformulation of the classical idea that organisation means 'differentiation' as well as 'integration', as distinction many before him have made (e.g., Mintzberg, ??).
The specialist: give ideas, provide theoretical experiences
The participants: listen and judge, provide real experiences
All: decisions means taking responsibility for the plan.
The aim - for a participatory approach - is to:
- share information
- close gaps of info
- deal with conflicts
- deal with cultural issues, recognise characteristics of regions
Hijikata's methodology is based on the idea that complex processes, such as the regional planning process or a community development process, should not, so to speak, be left to the concrete actors in the process alone. They are all important participants, but there is a need for an independent, "neutral" mediator and facilitator function, in other words, a third party. This could be a person or an institution. An experienced facilitator who understands and acknowledges the essence of this approach is crucial. It means that success or failure of applying this approach depends on the talent, characteristics and deep knowledge of managing information by the facilitator, who should stay in neutral position, he or she should never try to guide the conclusion. His main role is to offer a creative communication environment, bringing together different parties and interest groups.
In such a process, there would not be a fixed starting point for the participatory process. The starting point would be open questions, such as "how to solve traffic problems?". Groups of citizens, organisational representatives, corporate interests, and various institutions and authorities would get together, possibly form sub-groups etc, and start the long process of finding and solving problems in the region.
Many activities and actors would be involved in this process. The urban/regional planners in the municipality, perhaps also in the national planning authorities would actively engage in debates and various planning commissions and competitions. Researchers from universities would be involved in the process to, some with specialists studies and reports, others as consultants and advisors for various interests groups and in public fora. Citizens groups would be formed, and existing citizens organisations would take part in not only formal hearings, but also in various surveys and projects. Corporate interests, i.e., business organisations and corporations from the region, would also be involved.
GDPSS comes from Kawakita, a Japanese anthropologist, whose basic developmental concept can be summed up to this:
The problem solving stages goes from raising consciousness of the problem over problem finding to problem sharing, problem prioritising (the "itself"), and ends with action, evaluation, in a cyclic rather than linear process.
This model of the problem solving process is somewhat rational, but the process itself is far from rational. A basic question is: how does the prioritising actually work? Hijikata, and I, find it very difficult to answer this question. A parallel to Jungk's "future workshop" might be useful to illustrate the problem: exactly the same issue, prioritising, is the "weak spot" in that methodology, and the proposed method of voting is not an ideal solution. In practice, the decisions made through the voting can easily become misleading. The strict rule-following principle inherent in the method are most often broken, and the real decisions are made in the complex group decision process. Kawakita, with his systemic approach to the prioritising, gives us some guidelines for the choice of method. His argument, which is adopted and developed further by Hijikata is to point out the importance of keeping some kind of harmony, satisfaction, in the situation. Avoiding explicitation into destructive, antagonistic, conflicts.
Objectives of participants are, for all but the struggle stage, to get to a stable situation.
In the struggle stage, however, the objective itself is to "destroy" the others. To manage conflicts thus basically means starting from a stable situation and getting back into a new stable one.
Citizen participation in urban planning is becoming more and more popular in Japan. Partly because of a renewed legal basis herefor (a new planning law in 1992 emphasises participation), but also because of better experiences from practices with participation.
The idea of developing and designing information systems that support participatory processes is challenging. What kinds of systems could support such processes? And how do we design such systems?
Theory of information technology exists, necessarily, at a general level, so deciding what is appropriate in a particular cultural context is not easy. If we want to apply IT in any real context, we need to understand the cultural context of where ever the IT systems are to be implemented. But what is the cultural context? And what is the relationship between the notions of the metadiscipline of IT and of culture? The IT discipline is as an abstract discipline, whereas culture arises from a concrete perspective - that is in terms of objects, artifacts, and patterns of behaviour existing within a 'cultural unit'. People often use the term "culture" to characterise social situations or processes in broad terms, but often at too general a level to allow us to understand real problems of society. For Hijikata, "culture" refers to primitive knowledge patterns which generate the behaviour which constitutes human daily life. While political and institutional systems vary, there is a stable knowledge pattern which we may call the "cultural pattern". Basically, the "cultural pattern" has to change in order to adapt to environmental change, but in a time scale of hundreds of years, which is what it takes to fundamentally change the "cultural pattern".
The science of modern information technology has developed as a meta-science because information and knowledge are essential general factors that shape culture everywhere and in every era. Universality is thus the central characteristic of information science and technology as it develops increasingly general or abstract theories to allow it to encompass an ever bigger diversity of IT artifacts. This increasing generality means that information theory alone is insufficient to deal with any practical problems, because of the remoteness of the meta-science of IT from the practical problems that it helps to solve. The theory of information technology can never suggest anything about social value by itself because it is a meta-science.
The design of information systems (in real social situations), and the design of the social affairs themselves are totally independent issues. This is because the design of information systems is an activity that converges to a specific functionality, whereas the design of social affairs employs the functionality to serve divergent human values, and resulting in divergent, different, human activity systems. We therefore have to develop a conception of design which allows mediation between the two kinds of design. Design of social affairs belongs to the domain of cultural problems. When we think about cultural problems related to human values in general, especially in the concrete situation, we have to identify the cultural unit because cultural issues may be viewed in terms of a set of conditions, including historical background and physical circumstances. Divergence in cultural affairs based on individualism will be coalesced in the cultural unit. Then how may we identify the unit? There is no universal answer to this. The answer will depend on the problem situation itself. Each "unit" has its own cultural infrastructures which represent the adaptation that has taken place over time of each unit to its corresponding environment. But the particular character of a unit can vary in form and content.
The main areas tackled by Decision Support Systems (DSS) are not well defined problems but ill-structured, fuzzy, problems (Kim et al, 1990; Wyatt, 1989). This focus is relevant to management principles because the main role of a manager is to deal with exceptional problems which are not clearly defined in the formal functional standards. In Japanese regional planning, DSS ideas were introduced to the local government in the mid-seventies (Local Authorities Systems Development Centre, 1977). There were two main aims. The first aim was to clarify the logic of the planning process by developing mathematical or simulation models using computers. The main logic of planning was only to refer to the results of previous years and extend the past trajectory. We can observe this attitude in the budgeting system. The planners in each department of local government wanted to have tools which could support the development of their new ideas. The second aim came from organisational problems. Each department of the local government was strongly related to the corresponding department in the central government because the central government controlled the allocation of local government budget. In this sense, the planning process was very complex because of the vertical feedback loops from the central government to citizens, and the horizontal feedback loops among the other departments in the local government. And sometimes this complexity was an obstacle to the construction of a consistent regional plan. DSS ideas were expected to support the whole planning process.
Once DSS attempts to deal with ill-structured problems, the perspective of DSS has to be broadened beyond decision making to the decision making process as more of a human activity. This means that DSS should support the whole process of problem solving. One way forward is to develop a general methodology to examine the decision process itself from a human centredness perspective. The focus of DSS should start from the human decision making process, and should pay great attention to information and communication problems. Then the appropriate computer technology should be developed. So the concept of Decision Support System (DSS) can be expanded to Group Decision Process Support System (GDPSS). This requires new perspectives and new methodologies for regional planning.
In the past, the main objective of DSS was to support the individual manager, especially the top management in a hierarchical organisation. However in general, DSS was implicitly expected to support group decision making rather than individual decision making. Thus the concept of DSS is expected to support the group decision situation, and at the same time to help individual decision maker.
In a group decision making situation, if an individual participant defines the problem by partial information and knowledge and there is no room to refine the problem, the group decision process may involve only a negotiation process in order to find an equilibrium solution among the participants. We encounter group decision situations in our daily life, how to overcome the contradictions between the individual and the group decisions. From a theoretical perspective, we can say that we can avoid these difficulties by introducing the ideas of organisations to a group decision situation in terms of hierarchies and formal functions.
If the formal functions can be defined well and the organisation can adequately adapt to the changes of its circumstances, conflicts among the decision makers can be minimised. The formal functions are generally set in the initial stages of an organisation, but when an organisation becomes established, it is not sufficient just to apply the formal functions to deal with the dynamic changes and circumstances. To overcome the functional limitation, we introduce the concept of participation.
In general, there are two main principles regarding organisational design. One is the principle of integration. This means that organisational goals should be transformed into well-defined, mutually independent functions. Then the tasks are allocated to each function in terms of standardisation. If this principle is ignored, the organisation will lose its meaning for existence, namely that cooperative work produces more than the sum of individual tasks. The other is the principle of specialisation. This principle says that an organisation should create specialisation or introduce new ideas in order to adapt to new environments. The principle gives an organisation an advantage in competitive situations. If it is ignored, the tasks which were defined in terms of standardised functions will merely be repeated, and there will be no improvement nor innovation. In general, however, when the environment of the organisation seems stable, the principle of integration will be dominant and when it seems unstable, the principle of specialisation will dominate. Though there are many varieties of organisational structures depending on how they take account of these two principles, we should refine this problem as a communication and information problem because decision making is directly related to information.
It should be noted that conflict issues which relate to the two organisational design principles are the rule rather than the exception. Conflict issues are essential in the organisation because the two principles are not always consistent. In other words, we cannot avoid the conflict issues when we introduce the idea of participation. These issues should be evaluated not only from negative aspects, but indeed also from fresh positive aspects of the organisation within the context of its dynamic adaptability to changing circumstances. The most important perspective of GDPSS is its place in managing conflicts within the organisational decision making processes.
Decision making is an action which reduces uncertainty and creates the future environment. In regional planning, a decision making process is a group problem solving process. Usually a problem solving process starts from the iden-tification of the problems. But how to identify the problem? What is the problem? Who identifies it? These questions are indeed worth raising. The perspective of human centredness will provide an answer to those questions.
The idea of human centredness accepts the concept of 'unity through diversity', and rejects the concept of 'one-best-way' (Gill, 1990). It also adopts the concept of human as both producer and consumer. Another important concept about human centredness is the focus on the relationship between the subject and the object, rather than on the subject as an object (Cooley, 1987). In Hijikata's research, an attempt is made to extend these human centred ideas to group problem solving processes.
How can we know the real world? Though the physical environment exists by itself, environment has meaning only when we perceive it. So we perceive the real world only as a model by getting data from the environment through out organs and senses. This process is a subjective process. Then we can extend and clarify our perceptional models by learning from the others' models. When we can create a common base of discourse, its content becomes objective. But when we try to find the problems and give priority to problems which should be solved, we face problems of diversified ideas because of different value systems and different estimations to the future. It means that potential conflict starts from a problem finding process in the group. In general, participation is a methodology to make a consensus to keep balance and harmony in the region.
There are eight stages in the participatory problem solving process of regional planning, and these are shown in figure 2.
Figur 2. Hijikata. Slide
1 General awareness of the circumstances (b)
At this stage, participants are asked to present their own awareness of the problems through a brain-storming session. It means that participants should present what they feel is wrong or strange about the problem situation. Of course awareness comes from general knowledge, local knowledge or personal knowledge. Though this awareness may include conflicting and diverse ideas, this diversity of ideas is crucial because the main aim of this stage is to widen participants' perceptions rather than to draw a conclusion. The card collecting method is very powerful in this stage because this method allow participants to make plural contexts even if they are opposing ones (Kawakita, 1973). Some computer software systems using multimedia network have been developed to support this stage as well (Sugiyama, 1989). The main aim is to release participants from nonessential operations of card collecting method.
Sometimes people get confused in distinguishing between general awareness and problems. Perhaps an example will help clarify the difference between general awareness and problems. Example: 'Young people want to go to a big city.' It presents only a phenomenon about the behaviour of the young people. This behaviour may expresses only an awareness of the situation. The real problem may be that there are no jobs for young people in the rural area or that young people may want to be free from the traditional life style. In finding the real problems of this example, the real relation between young people and the social situation should be analysed.
2 Identification of the real problems (c-f)
On the basis of participants' general awareness of the problems, participants should create several hypotheses about the problems. Then they should collect as much data related to the hypotheses as they can. Data on physical characteristics of the region show the natural and artificial infrastructural patterns of the region (c). And data on human perceptions show evaluation of the regional characteristics and the nature of organisations in the region (d). The process of collecting data and its evaluation which includes data on forecasting the future (e), enable participants to identify the real problems and get a deeper perception of these problems. The participants can use this knowledge to debate the issues of regional planning which concern them, identify common objectives, and affect the selection of models for problem solving (f).
3 Evaluation of the problems (g)
Once participants can perceive the relation between their real problems and the common objectives, they can then give priorities to the problems by taking account of these relations. Simulation techniques are useful at this stage.
4 Creating ideas (h)
This stage is totally dominated by human activities. Though this stage follows the problem finding stage in the scheme from (b) to (f), it is discrete from former stages. Because in the framework of creating solutions, some sort of idealistic ideas do work. We have no reason to restrict the participants from creating or presenting ideas. Every idea is acceptable at this stage because we can evaluate all the ideas at the next stage.
5 Evaluation of the ideas (i)
Problems and ideas come together at this stage. So do restricting conditions about resources, for example budget, time, cultural structure and so on. In regional planning, the question of how to take account of the relationships between the regional plan and the central government plan should also be discussed at this stage. A sort of system simulation models or mathematical models using computers are useful support tools in this stage to test the sequential influences on regional structure.
6 Action plan design (j)
Ideas evaluated in the fifth stage are transformed to an action plan. Many actions are needed to realise the new ideas. A series of actions are defined at this stage. The sequence of actions should be designed carefully because different sequences of actions lead to different effects. The roles of taking actions are assigned to each participant in order to realise an integrated plan.
7 Taking actions (k)
At this stage, the time schedule control to realise the plan is essential. Main measurement of taking action is efficiency because the goal which each participant has to attain should be well defined at stage six. Mathematical network models like CPM (Critical Path Method) or PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) are useful tools to support this stage.
8 Evaluation of actions (L)
Actions change the regional circumstances. The result of actions are evaluated in relation to stage five by the general public as well as the specific participants. Evaluation of actions causes next general awareness of the situations. So this stage is the last stage in the problem solving process, and at the same time, it leads to the first stage of the next problem solving process. The problem solving process is a cyclic process on the time scale.
From the human centred perspective of the problem solving process, stage one is very important, because participants can share the ideas under the concept of 'unity from diversity' and shape a common communication base through dialogue. At this stage, information about what participants feel intuitively about regional problems has a high value because it might help in picking up symptoms of emerging problems in the region. This information becomes the seed of a new framework of a regional plan. We have to pay attention to local knowledge instead of central knowledge base at this stage.
The concept of conflict is popular in social sciences. Here, conflict issues will be examined in relation to group problem solving processes. Hijikata names eight causes of conflict issues in a problem solving process:-
In general, when we meet conflict situations, there are four methodologies of resolution. The first one is persuasion. If there are more than two opinions that cannot reach a common solution, each opinion is referred to a group objective structure. A group has a formal purpose and this gives a group the basis of existence. And a purpose (or purposes) breaks down to goals corresponding to a hierarchical structure. Persuasion takes the role of an action when used within a formal objective structure of the group. When there are more than two opinions, judgements are made as to which option is most likely to realise a group objective. The second methodology is the problem solving approach as explained above. This approach defines an objective structure and some goals, and finds a solution by exchanging ideas through continuous feedback to participants by communication and dialogue. These two methodologies can be called analytical approaches in the sense that they are used to find "the real problems", the actual problems which cause conflicts. But the main difference is that the problem solving approach provides more opportunity of information sharing within the group than the process of persuasion. The third methodology is social judgement which introduces a sort of new social criteria for problem solving, for example, social justice, social chance, and societal responsibility. The fourth methodology is political judgement, which is for example used in cases where conflicts cannot be resolved. Here, the parties abandon the process, and agree on a third party to find a solution; when the third party proposes a solution, the competing parties have to accept it. Some parties, in such situation, will always choose not to accept the solution, and might choose to start a protest movement, or in other ways try to influence the further process. These last two methodologies belong to a political approach. It means, Hijikata argues, that they attempt to find a compromise solution rather than a real solution within a participatory approach.
In regional planning, local governments must take the role and responsibility of making a regional plan. However, increasing volume and variety of information in the modern world of mass communication systems makes it is very difficult for local governments to make an integrated plan which satisfy the diversity of public opinion and often conflicting regional needs. Moreover, people have the opportunity to make counter plans to local governments. The local government should make clear what it can do and what it cannot do. The local government needs a new methodology for collecting information on people's needs which are often diverse and contain potential conflicts.
Managing conflicts is the central problem in a regional planning process. In traditional approaches, conflict issues are anticipated by local authorities who are very keen to avoid conflicts issues even if they are positive. But recently some local authorities have made attempts to identify and resolve conflicts in the planning process through the use of participatory problem solving approach.
In the local government, participation can have two meanings. One is how to control conflicts among different departments and decision makers, and arrive at a consistent plan. The other is how to learn from public or pressure groups that may propose creative and often conflicting ideas. The former is directly related to decision making in a planning processes. The latter is related to the absorption of information to a planning process.
GDPSS has the role of controlling conflicts indirectly by facilitating an information flow in a participatory planning process. GDPSS cannot provide direct solutions to conflict situations, but can support the management of conflicts by facilitating an adequate information flow system.
Participatory planning process by problem solving approach will be one of the key methodologies in regional planning because people who live in a region should define their own objectives and shape culture on their value systems. In regional planning process, knowledge and information deeply relates to shaping common perception of reality. Creativity in this phase should be examined in order to qualify the participatory planning system.
In the age of information society, modern information technology, including AI, should be used to support regional planning processes not only as a tool of accumulating or presenting knowledge but also as a tool for stimulating creative ideas. The main aim of introducing modern information technology should be to support a participatory decision making process efficiently, but not to reduce its effectiveness (Guariso & Werthner, 1989).
Regional planning may have the role of making a bridge between the past and the future. Though the current regional problems are seemed to come from the regional socio-economical and cultural structures from the outside view, generally their roots depend on succession of region, and the people's perceptions of and strategies for the future. In this sense, regional planning is deeply related to shaping culture in widest sense. The contents of planning should be evaluated by the concept of adaptability to the national or global socio-economical society and of sustainability to regional culture reflecting the regional characteristics.
In the last twenty years, many information systems for supporting regional planning have been developed. Computer simulation systems, regional index systems, ordinal data base systems and computer information network systems were the central components of them. These systems are developed and applied in order to provide support for regional planning in local authorities, but they have some problems. The first problem is that these systems are too mechanical to be facilitated in the (organic) human decision process; they are not flexible and cannot absorb diversity of human perceptions and opinions of a society which is characterised by an accelerating development of mass communication systems and information technology. The second problem is that they cannot be facilitated in appropriate position in the organisations. But information systems which can support mutual learning and stimulating creativity reciprocally are not well defined in the planning field. In addition, the range of issues and participants becomes wider and wider. A new information system model which can qualify the participatory regional planning is needed.
A regional planning information system should take into account these dimensions of planning process: analysis of the region, design, and participation:
These dimensions should be related to each other. We have to give attention to the question of how to make bridges between each of the dimensions. The interaction between the dimensions (i.e., the overlapping areas of the figure) are context-dependent information processes. As an informa-tion system model the centre area (where all dimensions meet) should be conceived of as a database, where all information is "stored", where the real communicative process takes places. Therefore, the database is context-dependent.
Database systems are, however, generally developed based on the idea that the decision maker or the planner has a clear context about a problem. But often he or she cannot identify the problem, not merely because of shortage or overflow of data, but in general because he or she cannot make sure what the context itself is. In this case the decision maker or the planner cannot use the database system appropriately because its data structure is context free. Only if he or she can refer to data with context, will it be helpful to get information from the database.
What does data refer to? What is data actually? What is a 'context', and how do you observe it? And how do you relate the concept of data to the concept of context? Is 'data with context' better than 'data without context'? First of all, data is not always quantifiable, nor are they necessarily universally qualifiable, often not even locally. Data are meaningless without any context because it doesn't give much sense to inform you that, for example, x=42, if you are not told what x means. Data are not just data; data are representations. These representations are of referring to something, a context. But as in the example, the context cannot be 'read' in the data themselves (x could refer to many things).
When, as we do, working with large-scale human activity systems and their design processes, the qualitative issues are not necessarily more important than the quantative issues, rather they are equally important, and the real challenge is perhaps to work with both at the same time. The context to which we want to assign ('orient') our systems design process can be identified in many ways. Is it the 'place' (e.g., 'the urban region' or 'the city neighbourhood') itself that is our context? At first glance it is, but the context is more than the place in itself; the context is always also in some ways referring to the 'things' that makes the place. These 'things' are many different processes where many different actors participate, and in some ways or others makes - creates and recreates - the place, and thus the context per se.
What is a 'context'? According to Galtung (1988), it can be described as something in between a real situation and a text. Thus, the concept of 'context' bears relation to both language and to the real world. As defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary:
"1. The parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning.
2. The circumstances relevant to something under consideration."
Designing is a contextual activity. There is of course always the context of the designer, and his or her own design world, but "characteristically, designing is a social process" (Schön 1988), so the context is also social. Furthermore, designing is not an activity that exists in a social vacuum, in its own design world, undisturbed by other design worlds, not to mention the context of the real world. Contextuality is inseparable from practice, as we would say if we read Bourdieu (Simonsen 1993). This fundamental inseparability is important in general, but especially in this context, because it suggests that an urban environment consists of different contexts associated with different social groups' organisation of different practices. To put it more plainly: the urban context I am talking about is something in between a real situation in the city/region/community and a text about the city/region/community. The "text about the city/region/community" could be a concrete regional/-municipal/local plan, a local history book, a TV-documen-tary, a song, a poem, grafitti on the walls,.... anything that shapes or influences the real situation, the urban context.
'Designing is a communicative activity in which individuals are called upon to decipher one another's design worlds' (Schön 1992). Design worlds are 'environments entered into and inhabited by designers when designing. They contain particular configurations of things, relations and qualities, and they act as holding environments for design knowledge' (Schön 1988). What is then the relationship between the design world and the real world? Designing in the real world is done under conditions of complexity (ibid.), not only in the design task itself, but also in the social and cultural circumstances under which the designing takes place. Peter van den Besselaar (1992) suggests that design means 'making an informed plan/image' of something that might be a useful artifact, and that might be 'build' and 'implemented', e.g. a plan for a city, a plan for an information system or a plan for an organisation. Informed means that we need knowledge about cultural, social, organisational and technical determinants and consequences of (designed) artifacts/systems.
Designing is fundamentally based on a web of normative values, i.e., a 'value system' or framework which is brought into the design process by its participants (designers and 'co-designers') and their experiences, tacit knowledges, beliefs, and, deep values. Normative values are thus always present in design. There is no such thing as normless or objective design. Design always has a purpose, it has intentionality - it is normative.
Acknowledging this, our design approach has two components: A normative/Utopian and a methodological/-experimental. The former should explicitly define the design criteria, i.e. the normative values, the ideals. The latter should provide the practical and methodological means enabling the design process to take place. These components should not be separated, rather they should form an integrated whole.
The key problem is how to do so.
The problem solving approach emphasise that people can shape a common future through deliberative, communicative processes. These processes are learning processes, where participants learn from each other's experiences and ideas. Since people continuously make new experiences, the learning processes are also continuous, or cyclic, processes. Accordingly, the systems we design to support these processes should also be open-ended and continuously be redesigned. In order to ensure that the problem solving approach becomes truly participatory, it is necessary to be innovative with regard to not only the technical design of the systems, but perhaps in particular with regard to the social organisation of the systems. In my (and Hijikata's) view, it is of great importance that the core body of the organisation should be independent from existing institutions such as the governmental offices, corporations or citizens' groups, while at the same time having strong relationships with all of these. In other words, some kind of third party organisation is needed. Taking into account the recent development of networking technologies and virtual communities (chapter 3), the organisational structure of this third party could actually become a very virtual one, in the sense of it existing only on the computer network, for example as a World Wide Web site.
Notes
1. Parts of this chapter has been published in Hijikata & Gotze: "Skill and Technological Change-Society and Institutions in International Perspective". Publisher HAR-ANARD publications PVT LTD, 1997. ISBN81-241-0504-9 Rs 39
2. Nihon-jin-ron :'theories (ron) of Japanese (Nihon) cultural identity (jin)'. Anthropology = jinruigaku.