Project Design

Logical Frameworks
1. Log-frame
  1. (Logical Framework Matrix)
    1. a comprehensive project cycle management tool
2. ADDIE
3. Assumes it is possible pre-define goals of the design project ahead of time
  1. Becomes less and less possible as situations become more complex
  2. The client may not know what is possible and be commissioning you to find out
4. Transitioning from log-frames to agile systems
  1. cultivate an attitude of being up for learning new things
  2. be an early adaptor!
Agile Systems
1. Back and forth conversation between the designer and the client over time
2. In complex systems, it is likely that the outcomes will not be possible to define
3. Deliberately iterative process
4. Outcome mapping
5. SAM
  1. Social Enterprise Outcome Mapping Framework - 3 stages, 12 steps
    1. Design phase - consensus on macro-level changes desired
      1. Step 1 - Why? - Vision
      2. the large scale development changes
      3. Step 2 - How? - Mission
      4. how the project will facilitate the changes
      5. Step 3 - With whom? - Identifying Boundary Partners
      6. the direct connections & influences
      7. Step 4 - What? - Prepare Outcome Challenges
      8. what qualities of change are sought in each boundary partner?
      9. Step 5 - What? - Defining Progress Markers
      10. a ladder for each output challenge
      11. expect to see
      12. like to see
      13. love to see
      14. Step 6 - How? - Develop Strategy Maps
      15. a map for each outcome challenge
      16. causal
      17. persuasive
      18. supportive
      19. Step 7 - How? - Describe Organization Practices (10)
      20. 7.1. Prospecting for new ideas, opportunities & resources
      21. 7.2. Taking care of the business
      22. Attending to sweat equity resolution issues
      23. Ensuring sustainable and just remunerations across the earning partners
      24. Maintaining positive cash flow and sourcing adequate working capital?
      25. Attending to product and services costings to ensure value for money and a viable business
      26. 7.3. Seeking feedback from key partners
      27. 7.4. Establishing policies and boundaries with Policy Governance system
      28. 7.5. Obtaining support of next highest power
      29. 7.6. Assessing & (re)designing products, services, systems & procedures
      30. 7.7 Checking up on those already served to add value
      31. 7.8. Sharing best wisdom with the world
      32. 7.9. Experimenting to stay innovative
      33. 7.10. Engaging in organization reflection
    2. Outcome and performance monitoring
      1. Step 8 - Choose Monitoring Priorities
      2. Step 9 - Develop an Outcome Journal
      3. Step 10 - Customize a Strategy Journal
      4. Step 11 - Customize a Performance Journal
    3. Evaluation plan
      1. Step 12 - Develop an Evaluation Plan
  2. Design phase - consensus on macro-level changes desired
    1. Step 1 - Why? - Vision
      1. the large scale development changes
    2. Step 2 - How? - Mission
      1. how the project will facilitate the changes
    3. Step 3 - With whom? - Identifying Boundary Partners
      1. the direct connections & influences
    4. Step 4 - What? - Prepare Outcome Challenges
      1. what qualities of change are sought in each boundary partner?
    5. Step 5 - What? - Defining Progress Markers
      1. a ladder for each output challenge
      2. expect to see
      3. like to see
      4. love to see
    6. Step 6 - How? - Develop Strategy Maps
      1. a map for each outcome challenge
      2. causal
      3. persuasive
      4. supportive
    7. Step 7 - How? - Describe Organization Practices (10)
      1. 7.1. Prospecting for new ideas, opportunities & resources
      2. 7.2. Taking care of the business
      3. Attending to sweat equity resolution issues
      4. Ensuring sustainable and just remunerations across the earning partners
      5. Maintaining positive cash flow and sourcing adequate working capital?
      6. Attending to product and services costings to ensure value for money and a viable business
      7. 7.3. Seeking feedback from key partners
      8. 7.4. Establishing policies and boundaries with Policy Governance system
      9. 7.5. Obtaining support of next highest power
      10. 7.6. Assessing & (re)designing products, services, systems & procedures
      11. 7.7 Checking up on those already served to add value
      12. 7.8. Sharing best wisdom with the world
      13. 7.9. Experimenting to stay innovative
      14. 7.10. Engaging in organization reflection
  3. Outcome and performance monitoring
    1. Step 8 - Choose Monitoring Priorities
    2. Step 9 - Develop an Outcome Journal
    3. Step 10 - Customize a Strategy Journal
    4. Step 11 - Customize a Performance Journal
  4. Evaluation plan
    1. Step 12 - Develop an Evaluation Plan
6. Iterative Process
  1. Repeated small steps, rather than perfectly executed large steps
What is a project?
1. 3 conceptions
  1. Designed intervention in a system
    1. 12 Leverage Points for Intervention
      1. 12. Numbers: Constants and parameters such as subsidies, taxes, and standards
      2. 11. Buffers:The sizes of stabilizing stocks relative to their flows
      3. 10. Stock-and-Flow Structures: Physical systems and their nodes of intersection
      4. 9. Delays: The lengths of time relative to the rates of system changes
      5. 8. Balancing Feedback Loops: The strength of the feedbacks relative to the impacts they are trying to correct
      6. 7. Reinforcing Feedback Loops: The strength of the gain of driving loops
      7. 6. Information Flows:The structure of who does and does not have access to information
      8. 5. Rules: Incentives, punishments, constraints
      9. 4. Self-Organization: The power to add, change, or evolve system structure
      10. 3. Goals:The purpose or function of the system
      11. 2. Paradigms: The mindset out of which the system—its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters—arises.
      12. 1. Transcending Paradigms
  2. Anything that takes more than two actions
    1. 'small qualitative changes can make large quantitative differences'
      1. An example is a small increase in hopefulness empowers oppressed people to take significant steps towards social justice.
    2. If we were to adequately observe the functioning's of the system in question, we might discover that we can create profound changes in the system by making small tweaks at strategic locations
      1. Maximum Effect, minimal effort
      2. implies careful observation
      3. "Minimax"
  3. Planned undertaking designed to achieve a goal of specified results within a given time
    1. Dragon Dreaming
      1. 1. Dreaming
      2. 90% of dreams to not leave dreamers mind
      3. 2. Planning
      4. GoSadie...
      5. 3. Doing
      6. Feedback Loops
      7. 4. Celebrating
      8. Acknowledgment of progress, gratitude
      9. Song Lines vs. Critical Path Analysis
2. Becoming a Designer, Why and How?
  1. Why become a designer?
    1. Benefits to becoming a designer
      1. For you, for your usefulness, for your liberation
      2. become an adept and skilled designer of your own situation/context
      3. Develop needs-based resilience
      4. less dependent upon eco destructive system
      5. passive acceptor of the status quo towards a pro-activist, ecosocial designer and world-changer,
    2. For your allies
      1. assisting others in becoming pro-active
      2. by demonstrating un/learning
    3. Expanding your spheres of influence
      1. product of being more pro-active
    4. For life on the planet
      1. ecological restoration is in need
      2. creating systems for communities before big shifts
    5. For making a living
      1. skill flex demonstrated through eportfolio will help make a living!
      2. making a living through eco regeneration
  2. Learning to become a designer
    1. Why?
      1. Permaculture is based off of observation of nature and communities living in synergy with the natural world.
      2. humans who have learned to improve rather than destroy eco systems
    2. Principles and Ethics
      1. Ethical framework
      2. Care of the Earth, Care of people, limits to consumption and population
      3. these maxims are easy to understand (yet a deep understanding may take a lifetime)
    3. The 10 cycle rule
      1. it takes 10 designs to feel competent as a designer
      2. this means we all need to practice
    4. Permaculture +++
      1. Integral Permaculture
      2. EcoSocial Design
      3. Focuses on the non material changes of a permaculture system
      4. human thinking, organization, systems planning etc.
    5. If you ever want a job!
Some Permaculture and EcoSocial Design Processes
1. Introduction
  1. in every situation there is a design opportunity
    1. 1. We need accept nothing in the way of social reality as fixed and,
    2. 2. There is no shortage of opportunity to practice ecosocial design.
2. Analytical or Intuitive Processes?
  1. For Intuitive
    1. Wholistic and Creative approach
      1. Tendency to dismiss analytical methods
    2. Artists
  2. For Analysis
    1. Landscape Architects, Enginneers
      1. Detail design methodologies
  3. Both/And?
    1. conscious integration benefits from both and avoids pitfalls of each
  4. Ways of integrating Analytical and Intuitive
3. The Challenge of the Too Difficult Box?
  1. Key to have template, cycle or framework keep steady progress
    1. Survey for:
      1. 1. Slope, Sectors, and aspect
      2. 2. Soils and Water
      3. 3. Micro-Climates
      4. 4. Existing Vegetation
      5. 5. Current patterns of use in relation to zone and sector analysis.
      6. Avoid Type 1 Errors!
  2. Vija De
    1. Opposite of Deja Vu
      1. the convincing sensation that he had never been in this situation ever before and thus he never felt like he knew what he was doing!
    2. Bill Mollison quote/term
4. Frameworks, Cycles and Templates
  1. Tendencies to Silo Thinking
    1. each field is ignorant of the models used by others and may even propose that any other model than their own is a travesty.
      1. Such is absolutism!
    2. Break down the silo's!
      1. Integrate and eclecticize!
      2. Caution the Patrix tendency of separation!
  2. Mash-ups and Repurposing
    1. pull them apart,
    2. add bits
    3. leave bits out
    4. do them in different orders,
    5. run them fast with rapid prototyping
    6. run them slow with painstaking thoroughnes
  3. manipulate them creatively!
    1. Be Conscious of what you are doing, be able to document!
      1. What went well?
      2. What was challenging?
      3. What would you do differently next time?
5. A Family of Processes
  1. GADIE
    1. Dave Jacke - author of Edible Forest Gardens
      1. G
      2. Goals Articulation
      3. A process designed to help all the people in the client group speak out their goals and visions for the design site.
      4. Speaking Goals and Visions
      5. 4 Gaia U Questions
      6. 1. What is going well in your life? (3 minutes)
      7. 2. What is challenging? (3 minutes)
      8. 3. What are your long term goals and visions? (6 minutes) and
      9. 4. What are your next achievable steps towards these goals? (3 minutes)
      10. It's not always easy to have people speak their goals - oppressed relationship with dreaming. It may be the role of a designer to help liberate this process!
      11. A
      12. Analyze and Assess
      13. Methods in use during this phase are chosen to reveal useful data.
      14. "Analysis of these inputs and outputs is crucial to (generating) self-governing designs. A deficit in inputs creates work whereas a deficit in output use creates pollution".
      15. D
      16. Design
      17. Preparation is 9/10's of the job
      18. Beauty and Order
      19. Form should follow function --> and relflect beauty in simplicity
      20. Re-evalutating our values of beauty (consumer america's lawn fetish)
      21. Making Design thinking visible
      22. Testing, prototyping on paper
      23. Taking Walks in the woods, allowing inspirations to come
      24. Inspired Cosmic Man!
      25. Inner Rhytms of Mind!
      26. Visualization
      27. Drawing
      28. involves the whole person and so all of our intelligences are able to integrate whilst we are putting pencil to paper
      29. Mind Mapping
      30. Drawing
      31. forces us to pay attention to scale - from this we can see where we are making unreasonable assumptions about space
      32. Diagramming
      33. Drawing
      34. use simple drawings to communicate ideas to clients
      35. and more Drawing
      36. Relative Permanence
      37. I
      38. Implement
      39. Unfold in succession
      40. From thinking to doing
      41. a big step
      42. People who are good at both planning and implementation are valuable!
      43. Especially in a position of team leads!
      44. E
      45. Evaluate
      46. we come to a place of reflection
      47. embedded evaluation systems
      48. feedback loops and indicators
    2. GADIE in a Graphic
      1. Note that the stages are arranged in a cycle or spiral so that the process never ends - what is implemented is evaluated which then leads to the emergence of fresh goals ...
  2. O'Bredimet
    1. Popular in the UK
      1. Similar to Gadie, yet shines a different light on design
  3. GoSADIMET
    1. combines elements of GADIE, O'Bredimet and SADI (SADI is one from the UK school of landscaping)
  4. GoSADIE
6. Pattern Languages
  1. Environments designed to nurture human existence during interaction
  2. The Nature of Order Essays
    1. Loved These!
  3. Democratizing the design process