Disadvantage and Design

In an earlier posting I pointed out that as of today we live on an urban planet. In 2008, for the first time in history, a majority of the world’s 6.6 billion population were recorded as living in towns and cities.

The implications really are incredible:

1. The pace of acceleration. As recently as 1841, England was a rural country as a majority of its people lived in villages or hamlets. In 1851, it became the first urban country as the census taken in that year finally showed a majority of its citizens living in cities. At that time, with around 1.2 billion people on the planet, around 90% of the global population would have been classified as living in rural environments.Now, as Vietnam enters the industrial era (in 2007 industrial output overtook agricultural for the first time) we hear that just over half of the 6.6 billion people alive right now live in towns and cities. When England became the first urban country, London became cloaked in smog; as planet Earth becomes urbanised I wonder whether Ozone holes and climate change are the price that we will pay.   
    
2. How to provide for ever-greater numbers of people in ill-health (particularly the elderly). When the welfare state was established (1949) there were around nine people of working age for every person who was retired, and the latter had a life expectency of around three years from retirement. Today, there are around four people of working age for every person who is retired, and (thanks to expensive medication, amongst other things) the average life expectency of a senior citizen upon retirement is at least ten years. By 2060, the ratio of working age to retired will by 2060 have fallen as as low as two to one. A third of the population will be over 65 and nearly half of retired people will be over 80. Source: William Reville writing about a Eurostat news release.

   We see politicians wrestling with the implications every day. What should they do? Reduce state pensions? Raise taxes? Open the borders to immigrants? Raise the retirement age? As ever, the answer seems to be “Do all of them, but don’t admit to doing any of them”.In Russia, they have opted for another scenario: they are presently paying young mothers around £6500 every time they have another child. This scenario is likely to be copied by many countries (for instance, the European Union, which is heading for a 40 million shortfall in people of working age). While this may produce a workforce able to support the elderly, it also places an even greater burden on natural resouces and distribution systems linked to urbanisation.
    

3. How to ensure equitable distribution of natural resources. Forget food, oil and gas. Over the next 100 years, access to water is predicted to become the chief cause of conflict. In anticipation of this, Singapore, second only to Rotterdam in the global oil-refining stakes, is presently attempting to become water self-sufficient. It is doing so for military as well as social and economic reasons.The reason is that as governments expand their populations and seek to protect the welfare of their citizens, they will come under pressure from their own people to annexe natural resources such as water. Rivers which flow across two countries might, for instance, be dammed to keep the water upstream. As countries seek to protect their own citizens, staking claim to water, gas, oil and food, the most likely outcome for all is war.
    
4. Moore versus Malthus. Previously, we have relied on a form of Moore’s Law to get us out of situations like this.  While demand for state support increased, so did productivity. By using machinery and technology we were able to create more goods for sale, which increased state revenue. It is possible that similar technological innovations will spare us this time (or at least delay the inevitable). However, there comes a point at which everyone who wants one has one, or where they have run out of money. For the moment, the latter is true. Urbanisation is an attempt to bring more people into the market, but it will bring its own price.

   Two quick examples come to mind. Firstly, as fast as the population is expanding, the size of cities is expanding faster. In other words, every time we build a city we destroy more arable land than is required to sustain the people within it. Secondly, cities are remarkably good at spreading disease and trapping people during disasters. Should a man-made pandemic like HN51 reach any urban environment, Malthus (who predicted that when populations expand too fast they inevitably encounter massive loss) will succeed Moore as most significant predictor of our times.So what does this mean for disadvantage? The desire to look after an increasingly elderly population is already leading governments to amplify the problem by encouraging a rise in the birth rate. The subsequent rise in demand for natural resources will almost certainly lead to war. The natural consequence of that will be hunger, disease, and millions of refugees. 

Welcome to the 21st century.

December 24th, 2008 | Category: Discrimination, Elderly, Health, Isolation, Poverty, Purpose, Rural, Urban | Leave a comment

Thanks to everyone for making 2008 such a fantastic year for us.

As my wife and I embark on a much-overdue break, I have just one question for readers of Disadvantage and Design: how will you remember 2008?

For many Westerners, the defining memories may be of the Beijing Olympics, or of Barack Obama becoming the first black President-elect, the credit crunch or the truly awful prospect of a global pandemic. 

For me, it comes down to one simple but truly extraordinary revelation. In 2008, for the first time in history, a majority of the world’s people were recorded as living in towns and cities.

As of today, we live on an urban planet.

In the words of Yeats, “All is changed, and changed utterly.”

May I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy, peaceful and prosperous new year.

Sean

Source: Independent

December 24th, 2008 | Category: Discrimination, Isolation, Issues, Locations, Nutrition, People, Poverty, Rural, Urban | Comments (1)

There was an interesting interview with Malcolm Gladwell in a recent Irish Examiner (not available on web at time of writing). Gladwell is best known for his seminal work “The Tipping Point” and is now counted as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential thinkers. However, Gladwell himself would acknowledge that there is a difference between influential thinking and accurate thinking.

One of the most interesting arguments put forward in the interview is that, in the same way as pilots generate confidence by amassing flying hours, we can generate change simply by doing it for long enough. In a world which is biased towards particular types of achievement, for instance academic qualifications, he argues that working class children fall behind simply because they are more likely to spend their summer holidays playing rather than attending summer camps or just reading and talking about issues with their parents. He backs this up with five year studies of children’s performance in literature and mathematics.

The argument, as presented in the interview, seems to contradict his other point – that people who labour in unfashionable industries and in support of unpopular causes can suddenly amass great influence due to a change in fashion or perspective. Children who spend all day talking with their parents or developing skills at summer school may go on to have a very successful career – but it is likely to be one built in imitation of someone else. Children who sit at home playing online games rather than talking with their parents may end up suffering in the long term – but equally, they could be amassing experience that will serve them well in the future – perhaps as surgeons operating battlefield robot medics from afar. We need to guard against the absolutism that is inherent in short, punchy, provocative books such as this.

There are other points put forward in the interview, including the merits of positive discrimination (which, in the end, is the reason why Barack Obama reached the White House). However, Gladwell’s argument ultimately amounts to a call for working class children to spend more of the year at school, for discriminated minorities to spend more of their time accessing areas that are traditionally closed to them, and for all of us to rack up more flying time in areas that are largely unknown to us as a way of acquiring confidence.

All of this casts an interesting light on questions I was asked recently while giving a talk on design for disability at the National University of Ireland in Galway. One of the big questions was “How can we get the public services to commission work of the type you have highlighted?”

Maybe a better way of looking at it would have been to ask “How can we provide more flying time for the public services to build confidence in design?” Answers on a postcard to…

December 14th, 2008 | Category: Design tools, Disability, Other design methods | Leave a comment

Thanks to everyone for the incredibly positive feedback following my talk at the NCSL conference in London today; it’s flattering, and energising, to know that the ideas put forward made sense and have had an impact. Although many of the images used in the presentation are covered by licensing restrictions, I’ll do my best to put a version up here at some point this week.

[Photo used with permission]

My own thoughts about the two days include the following:

• We perhaps do children a dis-service when we focus on change without considering continuity. Yes, there has been a lot of change since the internet took off in 1991 and children are now using it in ways that adults find almost unfathomable. But on the other hand, children are largely the same as they were 50,000 years ago, and will continue to be so for the unforeseeable future. Throughout that time, they have always needed to bend and stretch, to test themselves against others and seek out new stimuli. When we focus on the internet and online gaming we miss the fact that children are sitting in positions that are inherently bad for them, exercising only their finger-tips. We need to think about physical agility every time we consider learning.
• Encouraging adults to set up accounts on Bebo reflects a colonial attitude in that it robs children of their own uniqueness. One of the most important aspects of a child’s identity is their difference to adults. When adults wore trousers, children adopted jeans. When adults adopted jeans, children adopted flares. We should respect their right to cultural distinctiveness. Bebo, txt and glottal talk reflect an on-going desire by children to have a ‘members-only’ club for that excludes adults. We should cherish them as proof that children are still exactly as different as they have always been.
• It’s great to see the National College showing such commitment to supporting schools as they go through the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity that BSF is described as. Quite why we have to build all these schools in one burst rather than spreading it out remains a mystery to me. My own role, as it turned out, was to provide some balance to the idea that BSF (and design) is about buildings. I emphasised (and will continue to say) that schools are both a place of learning and a way of learning. Both the building and the educational systems used within can be re-designed to great effect. But which should come first? Is the building really a catalyst (ie a prerequisite) for change? According to CABE, 90% of school buildings completed in the last two years have been judged ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ by users. Knocking down and rebuilding Grange Hill delivers no educational benefit unless it is accompanied by widespread and emphatic systemic change. By contrast, Hellerup was built around an entirely new approach to learning. The message is very clear: the education service on offer needs to be redesigned before the new building is created.
• One of the most interesting questions of the conference (for me) was “What do you do?” In part, that is a statement about the educational community’s exposure to design – but it also reflects the slightly unusual nature of our work. Most people think that designers create products like chairs and iPods. However, there is more to it than that. What we do is called “service design.” In effect, we help people to rescue failing public services. We do this by using a technique called ‘user led design’. This means working with people who are on the receiving end of a flawed service helping them to fix it, or even visualise and build replacement models. We’ve helped disaffected children to visualise more interesting education systems, we’ve helped marginalised communities to plan for the future, and later this week I’ll be working with some PhD students in Galway to help them understand how disability issues could be addressed more effectively. Hope that makes sense!

December 10th, 2008 | Category: Co-design, Design methods, Education, Learning environments, Posture, Purpose, School Technology, User-led design, Young people | Comments (1)

In case you missed it (and it was competing with news of Barack Obama’s election), live 3D holograms are now a reality.

On US election night, CNN broadcast a live interview between two cities using real time 3D holograms. Instead of appearing on a TV screen ‘from our other studio’, the guest seemed to be in the same room as the presenter. The effect really is stunning. Guest artist Will.I.Am also took part, hinting that the next step will be bands playing live in your studio from wherever they happen to be.

Here’s an excerpt from the event:

What’s this got to do with disadvantage? Well, if present pricing trends continue, this technology will have become relatively mainstream by 2013 - thus you could conceivably have something like it in your new school if you are due to enter a rebuild programme any time after 2011. The applications are endless - but one that particularly appeals to me is the idea of having teachers from other countries running lessons in conjunction with a ‘real’ one. 

Outside of the school sector, we could potentially put these into hospitals so that consultants in London could do real time 3D assessment of patients in Manchester. Firemen and prison officers could potentially use a blend of virtual and physical environments to rehearse scenarios.

Just yesterday I was making a point about the importance of technology forecasting to a client. If you think that ICT means more and faster laptops for students then you are making a big mistake… I’ll come back to this point in another posting.

November 7th, 2008 | Category: Academies, BSF, Health, Learning environments, School Technology, Technology | Leave a comment

With so many blogs out there it is hard to find time even to check whether your favourite ones have been updated. So here are two ways of having the blog delivered to you automatically.

 

1. RSS. This will check for updates every day and deposit a copy in the folder called RSS Feeds (in the same panel as the Inbox, Sent Mail and Deleted Items). To add an RSS, just right-click on the RSS Feeds folder and select “Add a new RSS feed”. Outlook will open a box asking you for the name of the RSS feed. Enter the following: http://www.stakeholderdesign.com/thoughts/?feed=rss2 

   The only problem with RSS feeds is remembering to read them as they don’t go into your Inbox. If you’d prefer to have them arrive by email, then read on…
    

2. Simply Headlines is our preferred email distributor. If you visit their site (www.simplyheadlines.com) you can sign up for a free account and they will then deliver a customised email to you every day. The important thing to remember is that your daily email will contains only the subject matter that you choose; I’ve deleted everything apart from my favourite blogs, a daily photo and “On this day in history”.

   To receive nothing other than this blog, just follow the new subscriber instructions as far as the “Choose the news and features you want” section. Then delete everything. Click on the “Add RSS” feed and enter http://www.stakeholderdesign.com/thoughts/?feed=rss2

   Other sections of the new subscriber option allow you to decide on frequency and time of delivery so you can even have it arrive in time for your morning cup of tea. The picture below shows what it might look like. What could be better? 

Get this blog as a daily email

November 2nd, 2008 | Category: Purpose, School Technology, Technology, Technology on the cheap | Leave a comment

Here’s another great bit of free kit for schools that are trying to play a premiership game with championship budgets… Iterasi is a free download that allows you to make a free, online archive of any web page - yours included. So, no need ever to worry about web resources disappearing overnight. 

I frequently make the point that companies that use design effectively have outperformed the FTSE 100 by 250% over the last ten years (in good times and bad). My source for this is a page on the Design Council website, but I have previously been beholden to them not to move, delete or update it. Iterasi takes away that worry. 

Teachers will find it especially useful. Let’s say that you’ve found a web page that display’s the share price today for each FTSE 100 company as a graph. Over three days you could show one particular company soaring, diving and recovering - but only if you can archive each page. Using Iterasi you can view each archived page separately. Given the recent performance of HBOS shares in the UK this could serve as the basis of an excellent lesson on share valuations and recapitalisation.

Remember, archiving a page does not confer ownership! If you have placed someone’s page in an archive, remember to credit them as you use the information in the future.

My good friend John Connell first alerted me to it via his own blog. You can download the tool from the Iterasi website.

November 2nd, 2008 | Category: School Technology, Technology on the cheap | Comments (1)

All of us, regardless of our social status, personal talents and location, are victims as well as beneficiaries of design. In this personal blog, I’ll be exploring how systems and services, places and products, can be designed for good or ill effect. But the main focus will be on how to rescue solutions that are in danger of becoming a cause of disadvantage rather than a cure. I invite you to join in by posting comments and making suggestions that identify and address disadvantage in all its forms.

Let’s take a few examples:

• The care system. Many years ago, when I worked for a foster care charity, I was shocked to discover what going into care does to your life chances. Presently, 80% of all Big Issue sellers and half of all prostitutes were in care as children. Half of all prisoners under the age of 25 also have childhood experience of the care system. Source. Today, it appears that a system set up to save children from disaster has become the UK’s main source of homelessness, prostitution and youth crime.
• Health. A white male growing up on a council estate in Calton, Glasgow, has an average life expectancy of 54 years. His counterparts in Lenzie, Glasgow (just a few miles away), can expect to live 28 years longer and die at the age of 82. Source. In this blog, I’ll take the example of Robin Hood Gardens in London as an almost perfect encapsulation of issues resulting in lower life expectancy amongst the poor. I’d love to hear your own suggestions.
• Education. In Bradford, the number of children on one estate obtaining 5 good GCSE passes including English and Maths is 3.3%; just a few miles away the pass rate is 86.3%. Source. This disparity cannot be explained by genetics; studies have proved that intelligence is not inheritable. So what can we do to help a system that is intended to give all our children the best possible start in life? Notschool provides a good example of how children who do badly in the present system can be transformed just by a change in learning context. Expect to read about it, and many other examples, here.
• Race, class and gender equality. Many people remember being told to “look at me when I’m talking to you!” But what if your own culture sees looking an elder in the eyes as a sign of disrespect? There are, of course, many reasons why over 80% of black boys leave school at 16. Yet by 2012, half of all jobs advertised in London will require a university degree. If you’ve ever wondered why so many companies do so badly at recognising talent in different cultures, then this is the place to start.

At this early stage (November 2008), I will be posting comments based on my own work and memories. But I want this blog to become a focal point for a new community of thinkers who care passionately about social disadvantage and what we can do to reduce it. This is not about what we can do for people; it is about what (with the best of intentions) we have done to them.

November 2nd, 2008 | Category: Black and minority ethnic communities, Discrimination, Health, Poverty, Purpose, Secondary, Young people | Comments (1)

As part of my on-going quest to build the perfect school for nothing, I’d like to draw attention to a wonderful new website called authorSTREAM.

What is it? It’s a free site that allows people to upload Powerpoint presentations, which are then converted into video format for streaming over the web or embedding in websites/ blogs. You can see an example posting on this blog by clicking here. The voice-overs were done by the local community using a laptop’s in-built microphone.

If you’re uploading it without timings, people can simply click through the entire presentation seeing exactly what you would see. They can even view full screen if you want.

Perhaps the best way to use it is to select “Record Narration” within Powerpoint. As the author, you then work your way through the presentation, talking as you would if giving a lecture on the subject. Powerpoint automatically adjusts slide timings as you click your way through the presentation. When you upload this, authorSTREAM will convert it into a video in which voice and slides are in perfect harmony. I’ll put a few examples up on the site when I get time to record them!

Quite apart from helping children who might be in hospital or whatever, this provides a quick and secure method for teachers to make their learning resources available 24/7 to anyone who can get web access. Students can also use this as a method for demonstrating their own understanding of issues. Best of all, it’s free so there’s no need to worry about supplying video cameras or buying screen capture software.

October 15th, 2008 | Category: Design on the cheap, Education, Primary, School Technology, Secondary, Technology, Technology on the cheap | Comments (1)