The Intergalactic Design Guide

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. The Answer to Everything

   Cheryl Heller

   Abstract

   A BICYCLE SALESMAN ON TENTH AVENUE AND FIFTY-EIGHTH STREET in Manhattan offers practical wisdom to customers who walk into the store to buy their first serious bike. His body speaks with road-tested authority before he does, with quadriceps the size of footballs and calves that look as if they were blown up with a bicycle pump. Tutorials include demos on changing flats, adjusting seats, working gears on tricky hills, and getting out of toe clips in time to avoid toppling sideways toward the pavement, bike in hand.

3. Chapter 2. Seeing Edges and Patterns, Scoping and Framing

   Cheryl Heller

   Abstract

   SOCIAL DESIGN IS THE DESIGN OF RELATIONSHIPS, the creation of new social conditions intended to increase agency, health, creativity, equity, social justice, resilience, and connection to nature.

4. Chapter 3. Past as Prologue

   Cheryl Heller

   Abstract

   UNLIKE ART, which by definition is free of commercial agenda, design has served as a powerful tool for business since the dawn of the industrial age. It has built global brands, disrupted industries, and changed our lives with technologies. As ours became a civilization fueled by selling “stuff,” design was the means by which that stuff was created. And just as the nature of business has changed radically since Henry Ford invented the assembly line, transformations of the purpose and function of design have been extreme. These metamorphoses can be tracked along multiple dimensions: in the role and influence of the designer, in what is designed, and in design’s intention and impact.

5. Chapter 4. Mastering the System

   Cheryl Heller

   Abstract

   AS IN THE PARABLE OF A GROUP OF BLIND MEN, each of whom touches one small part of an elephant and then extrapolates that detail to be the nature of the whole magnificent beast, social design is easier to grasp in parts than as a whole. As with any complex system, it’s tempting to make assumptions based on the parts, but learning to see the entire system is a prerequisite for mastering it.

6. Chapter 14. Getting from There to Here

   Cheryl Heller

   Abstract

   IT’S ABUNDANTLY CLEAR THAT IN THEIR CURRENT STATE, our society and our relationships with each other need a redesign. Social design offers a process for leading that change. It contradicts the prevalent assumption that the burden of reimagining and reinventing our future is on someone else’s shoulders, that the conditions that affect us all can be entrusted only to those who call themselves experts.

7. Some Things Worth Reading

   Cheryl Heller

   Abstract

   Baldwin, James, Richard Wright, and Norman Mailer. Nobody Knows My Name. Reissue ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

8. Nine Stories of Leadership by Design

   1. Frontmatter

   2. Chapter 5. Brown’s Super Stores

      Solutions Inspired by the People Who Need Them Cheryl Heller

      Abstract

      THREE DAYS A WEEK, JEFFREY BROWN WANDERS THE AISLES of grocery stores, through the dairy department and frozen food, the cereals and snacks, the produce. He watches what people choose to eat, whether and how they read ingredient labels, whether they find what they want. He lunches at simple tables near salad bars and prepared-food stalls, making himself available for whatever conversations people want to start. Brown is a one-man customer service center, but instead of doling out rote responses meant to end interactions as efficiently as possible, Brown makes sure his encounters are real dialogs, always in person, sometimes personal, and often begun or ended with a big hug. This is how Jeffrey Brown leads, by working with the people he serves.

   3. Chapter 6. Ruth Gates

      Mixing Science and Social Design to Address Climate Change Cheryl Heller

      Abstract

      WITH MORE SPECIES PER SQUARE YARD than the most robust tropical rain forests, coral reefs take up less than 1 percent of ocean floor but support more than 25 percent of marine life. They are the nurseries of the ocean, and without them, the entire marine ecosystem would collapse. In addition to their importance to the environment, the global financial value of coral reefs is $9.9 trillion. They provide services through tourism and recreation, coastal protection, fisheries, and biodiversity valued at $29.8 billion. Coral reefs are essential to the economies and livelihoods of ninety-four countries. In particular, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, when healthy, is responsible for an estimated 53,800 full-time jobs.

   4. Chapter 7. The Salvage Supperclub

      Navigating with Feedback Loops Cheryl Heller

      Abstract

      IT STARTED WITH A STORY, told by a buddy.

   5. Chapter 8. Interface Net-Works

      Creating New Models and Solving Problems along the Way Cheryl Heller

      Abstract

      SUCCESS, IN THE CORPORATE WORLD AND ON WALL STREET, hides many sins. It’s an unspoken, and even accepted, norm that the price for growth and profitability in manufacturing is environmental destruction. The manufacture of cars, smartphones, and clothes, for example, has dirty secrets that are known but rarely mentioned. That’s just the way it goes. If you want to make an omelet, it is said, you have to break some eggs.

   6. Chapter 9. Erik Hersman

      Tapping the Power of Limits Cheryl Heller

      Abstract

      TO TEST THE RUGGEDNESS OF THE RUGGED ROUTER HE WAS INTRODUCING to the frontier markets of the world, Erik Hersman traveled to the edge of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya—the world’s largest permanent desert lake and one of the most remote and unforgiving places on the African continent. To test his conviction that despite the challenges of climate, infrastructure, and inexperience, Africa will be the next global source of technological innovation, he traveled to California’s Silicon Valley.

   7. Chapter 10. Paul Polak

      The Story Is in the Context Cheryl Heller

      Abstract

      EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE IN INDIA LIVE IN RURAL VILLAGES. Two hundred sixty million people in East India lack access to safe drinking water. The water readily available to them is contaminated by fecal pathogens and is the single largest cause of illness and death among children, lost income and productivity for adults, and high costs of medical treatment. Most people live in hamlets of fewer than three hundred households, too small to be viable for current water companies to deliver to them.

   8. Chapter 11. The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus

      Using Networks to Create a New Future for a City Cheryl Heller

      Abstract

      MIRACLES, BIG AND SMALL, ARE MUNDANE on a medical campus. Hearts are mended, brains rewired, rashes soothed, wounds healed, and diseases cured. Miracles are harder to come by in the forgotten neighborhoods of America, where lives and days are made of the stuff that breaks hearts and opens wounds.

   9. Chapter 12. Sisi ni Amani

      Communicating the Way to Nonviolence Cheryl Heller

      Abstract

      IN 2008 AND 2009, the sudden eruption of tribal violence during the elections in Kenya rocked the country, pitting neighbors against each other, killing more than 1,000 people, and displacing as many as 500,000 more. One year later, in 2010, Rachel Brown graduated from Tufts University with a bachelor of arts degree in international relations and founded an organization called Sisi ni Amani in Nairobi. She had been to Kenya the year before as part of a studies abroad program. She went back because she thought there was a chance she could help prevent a repetition of that election violence in the next national election, scheduled for 2013. She hoped to increase Kenyan citizens’ engagement with the way their country is run and help them understand it better. “Sisi ni amani” means “we are peace” in Kiswahili. Like Josh Treuhaft, Rachel Brown was compelled by a passion she could not ignore to fix a problem far beyond the scope of anything she had ever contemplated. And Brown, like Treuhaft, carved her own path without a formal plan in place, by using real-time learning from communities in Kenya. By enlisting their participation and scaling up one step at a time, she was able to create a calibrated, relevant, and ultimately successful program. With help from thousands of new collaborators, through a ripple effect that spread like a peace virus from friend to friend and village to village, she succeeded, despite her youth and relative inexperience, relying on insights from people on the ground and large-scale community organizing.

   10. Chapter 13. MASS Design Group

       Process Is Strategy Cheryl Heller

       Abstract

       MICHAEL MURPHY LOOKS THE PART of a successful, Harvard-trained architect. He is tall and carefully groomed, thoughtful and articulate. He runs a bustling design office with lots of architectural character in Boston’s Back Bay, a stone’s throw from the city’s iconic Public Garden. He doesn’t have a Boston accent, but his speech is careful and somewhat formally structured, almost like a building in which he carefully orchestrates which door, to which room, he will open next.

9. Backmatter