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Why Design should learn how to relate to Complexity?

Because the communities and the territories where they live are so complex that a design process dedicated to them must understand their complexity, to have greater probabilities of success.

Understanding Complexity, for a designer, means to design in and for Complexity¹. Therefore, in and for the complexity of a community and of its territory.

The rconnection between Design and Complexity represents a an interesting field of research, now in its first steps: the Complexity Theories are relatively recent and still there is, in the society (and therefore also in the design community), a mentality nearer the reduction of the complexity, than to its valorisation. I started this blog with the desire to study this connection.

We could spend so much time before we understand how to face the complexity of a community, but fortunately there is a very important consideration that can help us and comes from the phenomenon of the Free Software/Open Source. According to Ko Kuwabara² the Linux community has succeeded because it can face the complexity without reducing it, through its own intrinsic complexity. The Open P2P organizational forms therefore are potentially suitable to manage complexity.

I will return later on this topic, as it is very important; meanwhile, I suggest you to read Kuwabara’s text. We can learn so many things from the Free Software / Open Source phenomenon, but for me this has been maybe the most important. On one side, it is an ulterior proof of the validity of the Open P2P organizational forms and principles, as they can lead to a promising complexity management. From an other side, they show that the connection between Design and complexity is not so distant, if Design will learn to relate to complexity from the Open P2P communities.

How could I get together Design and Open P2P Communities, remembering their complexity? Well, in a few words, the Open P2P Communities are characterized by one main activity. Luckily, an activity can be considered with a systemic view through the Activity Theory, that has been connected to Service Design by Daniela Sangiorgi. Here you can find an article: (link to the file, 744 Kb, in Italian). I will explain better this connection later on, for the moment you can find everything inside my thesis (direct link to the file, 20 Mb, in Italian).

The need for a complexity approach in design, is not necessary only for communities or territories, but it is favorable for every project. Every product has connections with the social dimension (who designs it, produces it, sells it, distributes it, uses it) and the local dimension (where these persons act and from where they get the resources needed) throughout its life cycle. Understanding these hidden connections can lead to design (products, communication artifacts, services, strategies) with greater probabilities of sustainability and commercial success.

For this reason I think that the connection between Design and Complexity is so important!

The realization of the Complexity dimension is not only useful for the Design process, but also in the understanding of the Sustainability issues…

(to be continued)

Notes:

1. Silvia Pizzocaro, Design e complessità, in AA.VV., Design multiverso, Poli.design, Milano 2004 [↩]
2. Ko Kuwabara, Linux: A Bazaar at the Edge of Chaos, First Monday, volume 5, number 3 (March 2000),
   http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_3/kuwabara/index.html [↩]