Proto-Policy
Lead Research Organisation:
Lancaster University
Department Name: Lancaster Inst for the Contemporary Arts
Abstract
Proto-policy is a three month pilot project running from June to August 2015, which aims to investigate how 'design fictions' -provocative visual texts (artefacts, images, films) that materialise scenarios about, or provide clues to, future ways of living-can be used to help politicians and community groups imagine the future implications of policy initiatives in creative ways.
Proto-policy is part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project ProtoPublics, which aims to support researchers and community partners to become active participants in 'crafting new services, experiences, projects and policies that address contemporary issues' (http://protopublics.org/). For the purposes of this pilot, Proto-policy will focus on issues of ageing in place (people remaining in their homes rather than move to institutional facilities) and isolation.
Imagining alternative ways of living in old age has become a cultural preoccupation, hence the extraordinary popular success of the 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel', yet talking to older people about the future (particularly the 'older old', those aged 80+) is virtually taboo. This project uses design fictions to address that taboo by inviting older people to imagine and, with the assistance of a designer, create visual texts (artefacts, images, films) that materialise scenarios, or provide clues to, future ways of living in compelling ways.
Proto-policy will run a series of creative workshops with residents in Miners Court, an assisted-care housing complex in Redruth Cornwall, and the second with elders living in their own homes in Lancaster (in conjunction with Age UK Lancaster), respond to the 'Ageing in Place' policy agenda by co-creating future design fictions that envisage what a future of 'flexible living' - a third space that has the benefits of independent living without the downsides of loneliness, fear and vulnerability - might look like. These would be shared with politicians in a 'design fiction provocation' event to be held in Westminster in order to help negotiate political questions.
Through its project partners, the All-Party Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group (APDIG) and Age UK, this project seeks to build a shared understanding of the constraints and opportunities of political issues around Ageing in Place and loneliness through design fictions. The APDIG is a cross-party coalition of parliamentarians and design sector organisations that works to develop new design policy ideas and critique existing government decision-making around design.
Proto-policy is part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project ProtoPublics, which aims to support researchers and community partners to become active participants in 'crafting new services, experiences, projects and policies that address contemporary issues' (http://protopublics.org/). For the purposes of this pilot, Proto-policy will focus on issues of ageing in place (people remaining in their homes rather than move to institutional facilities) and isolation.
Imagining alternative ways of living in old age has become a cultural preoccupation, hence the extraordinary popular success of the 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel', yet talking to older people about the future (particularly the 'older old', those aged 80+) is virtually taboo. This project uses design fictions to address that taboo by inviting older people to imagine and, with the assistance of a designer, create visual texts (artefacts, images, films) that materialise scenarios, or provide clues to, future ways of living in compelling ways.
Proto-policy will run a series of creative workshops with residents in Miners Court, an assisted-care housing complex in Redruth Cornwall, and the second with elders living in their own homes in Lancaster (in conjunction with Age UK Lancaster), respond to the 'Ageing in Place' policy agenda by co-creating future design fictions that envisage what a future of 'flexible living' - a third space that has the benefits of independent living without the downsides of loneliness, fear and vulnerability - might look like. These would be shared with politicians in a 'design fiction provocation' event to be held in Westminster in order to help negotiate political questions.
Through its project partners, the All-Party Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group (APDIG) and Age UK, this project seeks to build a shared understanding of the constraints and opportunities of political issues around Ageing in Place and loneliness through design fictions. The APDIG is a cross-party coalition of parliamentarians and design sector organisations that works to develop new design policy ideas and critique existing government decision-making around design.
Planned Impact
Impact is embedded throughout the project activities and the community/politician engagements themselves. Politicians may come to understand the implications of a policy idea differently; community and interest groups may feel that their voices have been heard in a different way - and they may also themselves have been brought to a different view about both the issue in question, and the political institutions they interact with through the process. In terms of learning beyond the immediate context of the engagements, with a new Parliament, it is hoped that politicians will be at this moment in time more receptive to new and different ideas about engaging with a wider public, and therefore findings delivered through the APDIG will find a political audience. An APDIG policy paper to outline the project will build on previous publications exploring how design can be better used in policymaking, the most substantial being Restarting Britain 2: Design and Public Services (2012). An articulation of the specific and potential contribution of design fictions in this context will also provide new knowledge and understandings for the academic community in design and also political science. Dissemination through Age UK's national network will raise awareness and interest on the potential of social design helping charities, organisations and community groups in promoting the ageing, as well as other agendas of policy interest to politicians and political audiences.
Publications
Tsekleves E
(2017)
Using design fictions as a tool for engaging citizens in debating future pervasive health systems and services
in EAI Endorsed Transactions on Pervasive Health and Technology
Darby A
(2018)
Speculative Requirements: Design Fiction and RE
Darby, A
(2015)
ProtoPolicy Design Report
Tsekleves E
(2016)
Participatory design fictions
Darby E
(2018)
Mentian: Developing design fiction for dementia policy
Tsekleves E
(2017)
eHealth 360°
Tsekleves E
(2017)
Co-designing Design Fictions: a New Approach for Debating and Priming Future Healthcare Technologies and Services
in Archives of Design Research
| Title | Euthanasia Wearable Design Fiction |
| Description | The Euthanasia Wearable Design Fiction comprises of two documents, namely a quick start guide, a anti-Euthanasia campaign flyer and a Euthanasia Wearable prototype. The Euthanasia WearableDesign Fiction is an direct response of our older people co-designer group to the needs for self-control and living with dignity. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | The Design Fictions aim in creating a visual and fictitious world of what the future may be like and can be downloaded for free. The aim is to explore whether co-designed Design Fictions could help older people to increase their engagement with policymakers developing a discussion on Ageing in Place, loneliness and isolation. These were presented to an event held at Westminster Palace. |
| URL | http://imagination.lancs.ac.uk/outcomes/Euthanasia_Wearable_Design_Fiction |
| Title | Medical Webcomic on the creation of a Malaysian national health database |
| Description | Following the outcomes of the workshop run with senior citizens on April 2018, the ImaginAging team have taken forward one of the proposals arising from it and developed a medical webcomic that presents the creation of a national health database accessible not only to healthcare practitioners but also to researchers. It includes and considers three possible scenarios when such a database exists/does not exist: Scenario A: The story of a patient who has been administered the wrong treatment or drug because of the mismanagement of the patient's medical files, since they are maintained as paper files, which are messed up during transfer of the records from hospital to hospital, and between departments. The patient dies, and the hospital involved is sued for malpractice. If the database existed, the hospital would not have had to shuffle the paper files around, and medical practitioners would have been able to verify the medical history of the patient at every point of the patient's treatment. Scenario B: The story of an orphaned patient who does not know his/her parentage who is then struck by a rare disease, with symptoms not commonly understood by most medical practitioners. This patient is found to being in a critical condition. The patient then dies. If the database existed, the medical practitioner would have been able to track case histories of similar symptoms represented by the disease and perhaps, even match the orphaned patient to family tree (based on past records of other patients). Scenario C: The story of an undocumented patient (who might be a citizen or not) that was admitted unconscious and with no family to be called upon to provide information on the patient. The scenario led to the doctor having to work with what is safest to revive the patient. The patient then dies. During post-mortem, it was a found that the patient has a treatable disease and could have been saved if the attending doctor has had the right information to work with. If the database had existed, the identity of the patient may have been discovered within limits -which include ascertaining the nationality and other vital personal details of this person. The patient may have been saved. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Impact | It is aimed at creating an impactful idea around the creation of a national healthcare database that contains not only comprehensive medical records of all residents of Malaysia (citizens or otherwise), but also records relating to disease patterns, genetic family trees (that could potentially match those with truncated or missing genealogical information), and types of treatments that had been given to each kind of ailment, among others. The webcomic does not aimed at tackling the issue, but rather, to develop openings for the discussions of these issues in the planning of such a database. |
| URL | http://148.88.47.13/html/imagination/outcomes/Medical_Webcomic_creation_Malaysian_national_health_da... |
| Title | ProtoPolicy Video Journey |
| Description | This video provides a video journey of the ProtoPolicy project. It shows the path the research team followed, which included a number of co-design workshops with older people imagining the future implications of policy initiatives in creative ways. This lead to the co-creation of two design fiction provocations, which were presented at an event in Westminster Palace. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | It led to external research collaborators contacting the lead researcher about potential future research collaboration. |
| URL | http://imagination.lancs.ac.uk/outcomes/ProtoPolicy_Video_Journey |
| Title | Smart Object Therapist Design Fiction |
| Description | The Smart Home Therapist Design Fiction is an indirect response of our older people co-designer group to the government nascent policies of integrated care and ageing in place included in the Conservative Party Manifesto. The Smart Object Therapist Design Fiction comprises of three documents, namely a Smart Object Therapist job application, the Smart Object Therapist intervention report and prescription and a short video interview between the Smart Object Therapist and an smart object home user. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | The Design Fictions aim in creating a visual and fictitious world of what the future may be like and can be downloaded for free. The aim is to explore whether co-designed Design Fictions could help older people to increase their engagement with policymakers developing a discussion on Ageing in Place, loneliness and isolation. These were presented to an event held at Westminster Palace. |
| URL | http://imagination.lancs.ac.uk/outcomes/Smart_Object_Therapist_Design_Fiction |
| Title | Speculative Newspaper and Product Catalogue for Sugar-free Malaysia 2050 |
| Description | During the ImaginAging workshops food and nutrition was identified as a critical issue to be tackled by policy. Several ideas were discussed and developed. Reducing the amount of sugar consumption in all foods was highlighted as a key area of focus of future policy. This led one of the workshop groups to develop the 'Sugar-free Malaysia 2050" speculative design concept. The 'Sugar-free Malaysia 2050" speculative design concept comprises of two speculative design prototypes. A speculative design newspaper with two front headline covers. Set in 2050 one of theses presents the benefits this policy initiative have brought to Malaysia in terms of health, economic and social development. An alternative version of the newspaper, also set in 2050, presents what will happen if nothing is done and high sugar consumption continues in Malaysia. A speculative design product catalogue was also developed. This presents a future product, which removes any processed sugar content from drinks and food, showing that a new market may emerge in this area. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2018 |
| Impact | These speculative design prototypes are aimed to generate public debate about the effects of sugar in food in Malaysia and ways that this can be tacked at policy level. |
| URL | http://148.88.47.13/html/imagination/outcomes/Speculative_Newspaper_and_Product_Catalogue_Sugarfree_... |
| Description | Policy challenges are increasingly interconnected and there is increasing recognition that citizens need to be at the centre of policy and public service development processes. A generic design approach advocates: 1) rapid problem definition; 2) jointly developing solutions with stakeholders; 3) prototyping; and 4) analysing user feedback prior to full scale deployment. While it was initially perceived by the research team that design methods, and in particular speculative design or design fictions, may not be considered rigorous enough by civil servants or politicians, in fact, there was a perception that design may not be rapid enough for the time constraints of policy and political decision-making. In addition to the issue of timescales, further barriers to using design fictions for the first time as perceived by the politician included cost, ensuring productive debate and the pressures of public opinion and party lines. However, among the civil servants who had already used design fictions for policy-making, the challenges focused on translating the outcomes into evidence including drawing conclusions from small sample sizes, ensuring a connection to the research question, collecting meaningful data, adopting abductive inference and the subsequent implications for validity and reliability. Creating the design fictions with citizens is only one step in the process; the key step is the facilitation between the design researchers and the participants. Nevertheless, conducted appropriately, design fictions should respond to the growing trends of open policy-making in government. With additional advocacy efforts design methods could be positioned as a tool for politicians to generate greater participation by constituents in political decision-making. Although design methods in general, let alone more specialised design methods such as design fictions and speculative design, may not be well-known by politicians, with a growing capacity for design-driven innovation in the UK civil service a future trend could be for design to permeate through to the political scene. |
| Exploitation Route | Recommendations for employing design fictions in generating debate around policy initiatives amongst diverse community groups via imagining the future implications of policy initiatives in creative ways. Exploring the use of co-designed design fictions in other fields. A new area for research and a new methodology for participatory design. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| URL | http://imagination.lancs.ac.uk/sites/default/files/outcome_downloads/protopolicy_design_report_print.pdf |
| Description | These have been mentioned in the GovUK PolicyLab in an article entitled: Imagining the future: lessons from the Jetsons - https://openpolicy.blog.gov.uk/2017/04/21/imagining-the-future-lessons-from-the-jetsons/ |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
| Description | GCRF Follow-on Funding Impact & Engagement |
| Amount | £100,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | AH/S005684/1 |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 02/2019 |
| End | 01/2020 |
| Description | ImaginAging: Imagining a City with our Senior Citizens using speculative design |
| Amount | £5,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Lancaster University |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2018 |
| End | 07/2018 |
| Description | Lancaster University's Impact and Knowledge Exchange Grants |
| Amount | £5,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Lancaster University |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2016 |
| End | 07/2016 |
| Description | Article in The Guardian |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The article presents how sci-fi films have influenced the development of several modern day technologies and how the value of science-fiction has been also recognised in the rise of a new method for designing technology, called 'design fiction' It provided a mention to the ProtoPolicy research project and its funders. Guardian article about the value of design fiction in creating debate by asking what if received a lot of attention and comments from readers. It led to external research collaborators contacting the lead researcher about potential future research collaboration. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/aug/13/science-fiction-reality-predicts-future-technol... |
| Description | Developing speculative concepts with experts and policy makers |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | A total of 15 experts (researchers, NGOs, policy makers) participated in the "Speculative design of healthy ageing" workshop, using novel creative research methods to create future scenarios for health ageing in Malaysia The workshop was facilitated by the ImaginAging research team and included several activities, which introduced workshop participants to new ways of thinking about challenges around healthy ageing and working with speculative design tools. Working in groups research experts, NGOs and policy makers with a background and interest in healthy aging in Malaysia identified the key challenges. Based on these they developed a number of speculative scenarios, asking 'what if' questions. The speculative design concepts revolved around the healthy ageing theme and responded to some of the challenges in social care and inclusion, independent living, food and nutrition, transport and mobility. Several of these themes complemented the ones identified in the previous workshop with senior citizens. Both workshops have strongly indicated that there is an untapped opportunity for exploring the use of speculative design methods for policy agenda setting and making in Malaysia. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://148.88.47.13/html/imagination/news/Developing_speculative_concepts_experts_and_policy_makers |
| Description | Lancaster Co-design Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | A number of older people and staff from Age UK Lancashire participated in the half-day co-design workshop run at Lancaster. Working in groups, workshop participants looked at policy document extracts on the themes of ageing, ageing in place and loneliness/isolation and responded to these. A number of themes emerged from grouping our co-designers responses to policy. These themes were then used to co-create design micro-fictions looking at 5 years, 10 years into the future and beyond, which were shared within the workshop. Further grouping of the design micro-fictions were grouped revealed a number of interesting themes (i.e. communication, transport, independent living and health economy) and technologies (i.e. Skyping and holograms, self-drive cars, pop-up community buildings, escalators at home/garden and several more) relating to ageing in place and social isolation. This informed the development and coo-creation of the design fictions that were presented at an event in Westminster Palace. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://imagination.lancs.ac.uk/news/Interesting_design_microfictions_emerge_our_1st_codesign_worksho... |
| Description | Presenting speculative design at Future Earth Early Career Researchers Futures Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | I was fortunate to be invited at an event convened by Future Earth, early career researchers across a wide range of fields discussed how sustainability science can advance in the years ahead. Following my keytoke talk on speculative design I had the pleasure to co-facilitate workshop participants to produce future visions and scenarios laying out new and innovative ideas on how to advance action and research in the Knowledge-Action Networks, such as Natural Assets, Transformations, Urban and Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production. The proposals will be further developed with the Knowledge-Action Network Development Teams and other partners, and participants envision developing a synergistic publication on early career perspectives in Knowledge-Action Networks. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://futureearth.org/news/early-career-researcher-networks-meet-london |
| Description | ProtoPolicy Design Fictions presented at Westminster |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | In a launch event held on Monday the 7th of July at the Palace of Westminster organised by the All-Party Parliamentary Design Innovation Group, the AHRC-funded Protopolicy project, presented the Design Fictions that emerged through the co-design workshops at Lancaster and Falmouth. The Design Fictions were well received and generated discussions on the benefits and challenges of using Design Fictions for policymaking. The research team engaged in discussions with civil servants, politician and other design professionals on the use of Design Fictions for as co-design tool with community groups (interested in ageing, loneliness and social exclusion) to increase their engagement with policymakers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://imagination.lancs.ac.uk/news/ProtoPolicy_Design_Fictions_presented_Westminster |
| Description | Redruth co-design workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | Participants were drawn from across the Miners' Court Sheltered Accommodation'. The 2 co-design workshops run there explored ideas together using arts materials and crafts techniques and engaged workshop participants in co-creating design fictions. Design Fictions that emerged through the co-design workshop were presented at an event at Westminster Palace. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Speculative Design Workshops identify themes for future research on health ageing and speculative design concepts in this area |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A total of 13 senior citizens between their 60s and 80s attended the "Better City with Senior Citizens" workshop where they learned to deploy methods of participatory design for speculating about possible and plausible futures for issues of interest to them. Some of the participants had been involvedin the pilot workshop back in April 22. The facilitators for this workshop included researchers from Sunway University and Lancaster University.The workshop began with a welcome remark by Dr.Clarissa Leeas lead facilitator, which wasthen followed by a snappy introduction by both participants and facilitatorsas a quick ice-breaker. Dr Lee also gave a brief on the findings from the April 22 workshop that suggested how senior citizen stakeholders in the previous workshop were interested in issues relating to accessibility and sustainability across the board, be it on issues relating to education or healthcare. With that in mind, the workshop started as the participants were divided into fourgroupswith Dr Yong Min Hooi, Dr Hwang Jung Shan, Dr Emmanuel Tsekleves and Dr Sabir Giga as facilitators. The participants were given the option of pursuing the lines of considerations provided from the findings before, or to take a freshpath, but they would have to work collectively. The participants were introduced tothe process of design development underlying any idea, object,and programme. The process began with the presentation of pictures of relevant objects that each group is asked to evaluate and discuss collectively. From there, they went on to identify problems they consider as policy priorities that would remain a problem in the future if not dealt with in the present. They then worked iteratively to identify the best solution which involved a consideration of both challenges and benefits, as well as mechanisms for overcoming them. What the workshop intended to impress on the participants was the complexity of design, whereby many considerations enter into the design of an idea that could either be successful or not. The facilitators worked at getting the participants in their groups go from thinking about a problem to the beginnings of prototyping solutions to their problems. Each group was then required to do a 3-minute pitch of their design-oriented solutions to the other groups. The pitching process was meant to clarify for the participants, the solution they were proposing. The proposals ranged from the creation of a national health database accessible not only to healthcare practitioners but also researchers, to the possibility of a sugar-free Malaysia by 2050, to the development of an inter-generational living ecosystem, and finally, affordable food and healthcare. Although more work would be required to encourage more speculative and blue-sky thinking among the participants, the researchers hope that the introduction of the process of co-design would provide the starting point towards that end, going forward. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | http://148.88.47.13/html/imagination/news/Better_Cities_Through_Participatory_Design |