Learning with the Fang

Somewhere near the intersection of technology and human desire lies great opportunity for a better way of doing things. As we begin to break free from the irons clapped on us by the industrial revolution, we need to learn how to ask better questions, how to co-operate and play more productively so that we can (rapidly) iterate toward new solutions to increasingly complex and more urgent questions.

UPDATE: (some definitions)

Transdisciplinary – What sets transdisciplinary studies apart is a particular emphasis on engagement, investigation, and participation in addressing present-day issues and problems in a manner that explicitly destabilizes disciplinary boundaries while respecting disciplinary expertise.

Design Thinking – is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result. See also “thoughts by Tim Brown“.

While travelling to the city on the tram today, this TED talk video offered the framework of ‘Design Thinking’ as a way to co about innovating solutions to big questions. Having spent much of last night producing and publishing this podcast on ‘Transdisciplinarity’ (and the past five years immersed in the world of ‘social media’ or ‘Web2.0’) I saw some important connections between, and opportunites for blending, the philosophies of ‘Design Thinking’ and ‘Trans-disciplinary Scientific Research).

Let me being by listing some of the connection points and recurring themes:

• Prototypes – playing around with possibilities by constructing quick, cheap prototypes of things. Central to my work in Proof of Concept (PoC) projects which seek to promote innovation through iteration.
• Play – a key ingredient in emergent behaviour, playing around with stuff leads to interesting possibilities and great questions.
• Build in order to think – closely connected with play and curiosity driven research.
• Diverge to create choices over Converge to make choices
• Expand – pure reductionist thinking and methods have served us well in the scientific method and will continute to do so. While we are busy learning more and more about less and less, we should take time out to expand our horizons from time to time.
• Design is too important to leave in the hands of a ‘priesthood of designers’ working on an ever shrinking canvas and smaller questions.
• Embrace complexity – we will need to do this as we get together to look at big questions. (it has been suggested elsewhere that we would do well to educate future generations more about statistics than calculus).
• Work at the boundaries – one of the key tenets of Transdisciplinarity is to step outside the comfort zone of a single discipline, go beyond collaboration with other disciplines by working at the boundaries. Warning: will expose one to risk and possibly the need to develop new language. (worth it).
• Embrace Risk – learn to fail cheaply and often.
• Open Co-operation – pass it forward, share.
• Culture of active participation – over passive consumption.
• The renaissance scholar and modern science.
• Swim up-stream and be counter-cultural.
• Trans-disciplinary does not replace traditional research – is an added component.
• Embrace ambiguity, human complexity, exploratory, interpretive, participatory culture.
• Immersive and experiential, community based, lifelong learning, perspective broadening.
• Tension between agility and rigour.
• Speed the Process of Innovation through prototypes, enabling more breakthrough.
• Exploit opposing ideas and constraints.
• Balance desirability with technical feasibility and economic viability.

These are the elements Dave (LifeKludger) Wallace and I have been trying to combine in our vision for LifeKludger – ‘an ecosystem for enriching human life’. It might be easier to suggest how some of the elements of ‘Design Thinking’ and ‘Transdisciplinary Science’ may be combined in the context of a research institute at a University (since I am currently involved with several at the University of Adelaide).

Before I attempt to articulate this lofty concoction, give me some time to go back and re-listen to the inspiring material, update my list of elements and get back to you in a new blog post. Meanwhile, as always, I value (nay covet) your comments to help me as I think out loud.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:seyfang, mikeseyfang

Note to self: Keep an eye on the #CDBQ twitter hastag mentioned by Tim Brown in his TED Talk. Also possibly related: abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor