UC Berkeley PhD candidate Pierce Gordon discusses his research on the evaluation of innovation for global development issues, from improved sanitation to energy access. Working within design theory, Pierce has partnered with IDEO, IDDS and other development groups to argue for more inclusive, rigorous and less technologically-focused approaches to innovation.
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1:Method to the madness.
Speaker 2:It's next,
Speaker 3:you're listening to metro to the madness, a biweekly public affairs show on k, Alex Berkeley, celebrating Bay area intubated. I'm your host, Nicholas Nala. And this week we'll be interviewing Pierce Gordon, a phd student in the energy and resources group at UC Berkeley studying design for development. And we'll be discussing the innovation of innovation [00:00:30] in the developing context. Hey, welcome to the show. Here's what's going on. So you describe yourself as a design researcher. I do. Very
Speaker 1:much. So. What does it mean to research design? It means people try their best to, um, turn our world from its current state to its preferred state. Um, and while they do so, they, uh, create [00:01:00] interventions or technologies. They engage in activities, they connect with each other, they connect with others that they try to help. And all of these, um, realities that are created, uh, about, um, that process and about what comes out of that process is, is interesting. Um, and because people are trying to do it every single day. Um, understanding how to think about it, how people apply the work and how to um, [00:01:30] do it better. So let's shrink the problem space a little bit more. Because your focus specifically on development issues, can you take us through some of these development issues where people are applying design theory? Sure, definitely. Man. Many, many, many people are trying to do design, uh, design for development even if they say they're not.
Speaker 1:Um, so that does not shrink the problem space, uh, that much, but it does a little bit. So, um, I come from [00:02:00] the, um, philosophy that we are all designers. Whether or not we acknowledge it, we create something. Uh, we create some people, they actively create technologies. Some people, they create clothes, they create businesses. Um, for international development. The range of interest is just as wide. Um, people work on gender issues. People work on, um, health. They work on, uh, energy and economics. Behavioral Economics [00:02:30] and design for development are people that try to address development issues by creating something new. Um, there are many people that have very less constricted, more constricted definitions. Um, but for me, anyone who creates, especially for, uh, addressing global poverty issues in all of their forms, [inaudible] is a designer in this field. Okay. And these groups have [00:03:00] Nobel ambitions in some ways to apply design thinking to innovation in development.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What are the problems associated with them? Why did you, why is this your focus? It's not, there are a few problems. Um, one big problem that is outside the realm of design is people have been designing a, not using design thinking for a long time and they've been failing for a long time. Um, did you explain design thinking then? Sure. Uh, when I say [00:03:30] design work, I usually say things very broadly. And when I sometimes say design thinking, it is most of the time used as a, um, umbrella term for the methods that have been adopted by, uh, communities like having adopted or pushed by Ideo or the d school or, uh, MIT's d lab, a d school at Stanford. Um, to understand the context in which people live. [00:04:00] Um, they might go into, uh, West Oakland and try to address the problem of, uh, food deserts.
Speaker 1:And they say, what are the issues around them? Who are the people, uh, where, what is the environment like, uh, what are their perceptions and work and they shop and just as much ethnographic information as possible. Um, they take that in and then with that information, they try and create, um, understand problems that they can solve themselves [00:04:30] and then create solutions to address them. Um, that process of iterative, um, understanding, brainstorming, creation, and testing out those interventions. I call that design thinking. The, the thing that makes it interesting, uh, that is new from other folks is that it's, um, relatively systematic, uh, that it's spaces of thought that people usually know how to use, uh, but that they don't usually try and think [00:05:00] of in these either sequentially or together. Um, they do parts of it. They might not do others. Number one, a lot of people have been designing and they've been failing to specific examples are the, um, play pump, uh, in international development.
Speaker 1:Um, they got a whole bunch of money from Jay z and from, uh, I believe Bano and they, they did a whole bunch of investment and then a couple of years later, a whole like about a quarter of them were broken down and there are reports [00:05:30] of people. The main point of the play pump is to try and use children, um, in the fact that they want to play around a carousel to pump water out of the ground. Um, it just, it wasn't working and it didn't have the context of the people's, um, environments that they put them in, in mind. Number one. Uh, number two is that people realize across different disciplines, either in business or in all of these fields I have established, um, that design helps [00:06:00] them think in ways that they didn't think before. It helps them think about themselves as creators. People usually don't think of themselves that way.
Speaker 1:Um, and it's new and a lot of people are adopting it, but a lot of people are adopting it in the wrong ways. Um, which people are adopting it or these organizations or is this, okay? So an example of an organization that just started adopting it was um, Unh cr who's at high council for Refugees. So they deal with individuals that are trying to in conflict areas and [00:06:30] um, trying to deal with the human rights of communities that have issues. Um, design thinking was adopted to the u s army and there are a few reports on the effectiveness of thinking, trying to chart out the problems that they aim to solve and then trying to work towards solving them. Um, who else? The Gates Foundation. Uh, the World Bank is trying to do design thinking work. Um, many, many folks. Okay. So design thinking is an innovation on previous methods of engineering [00:07:00] solutions, but you have found even there, there are problems within that, especially within the development context.
Speaker 1:Yes. What's the, what are those? Um, the one of the biggest ones is the idea that what people say isn't necessarily what they do. Um, a lot of people say they are designers or they're engaging in design thinking work, but, um, their practices are a difficult to record and document. And B, a lot of the times they're, even [00:07:30] if they were, um, there are certain activities that they say they're doing that they're not. Um, so this is actually one of the papers that I wrote. Um, ideo, um, very well known and that's one of the main entities. Uh, they are designed consultancy firm that got started in about the eighties, and they do fantastic work, um, towards trying to push design thinking particularly, um, out to the world. And um, they have a platform that they created [00:08:00] about five, six years ago called open ideo, um, where anybody can be online.
Speaker 1:They can think of different social issues from educating refugees to, uh, figuring out how to pay for college better. So there's a disconnect between the people that are on the website and the communities that they try to assist. Um, barely anybody that did design work and suggested ideas [00:08:30] that we, that either won the project or, um, were related to, um, the running of the design solutions actually consulted end users. And since then, ideo has been doing a lot of work to try and connect, um, with the end communities. But the reality is, um, for a lot of these projects, people are usually sitting at their computers doing open idea work and these ideas and they are really disconnected from [00:09:00] the communities that they say they're trying to address. And so you tried to take some of these ideas and apply them to a project in Botswana, kind of kindness.
Speaker 1:Um, it's these ideas of how to engage in design. Um, I admit that my work is better. It's hard to grasp for the first few times because it took a while for me to understand it myself. Um, but that's not exactly [00:09:30] what I was trying to do in Botswana. Um, so I just came back from research, uh, ethnographic research and I'm trying to go back as well. But, um, what I noticed is, um, what, what I call it is the, it's an ethnographic study of the innovation ecosystem in Botswana, particularly around evaluation thought, um, evaluation practices. Okay. So who are the players in the ecosystem innovation? Oh, there's, [00:10:00] there's a lot that I don't know. Um, and I'm still trying to learn more. Uh, that's one of the great things about, uh, ethnographic work. You can always go deeper. Um, but there are particular ones that, um, coalesced around.
Speaker 1:One of the activities I was a part of called the international development design summit. Um, it's been run out of, uh, the d lab at MIT for the past 10 years. Um, and there were a whole bunch of people that were interested [00:10:30] in helping with this work, um, in different ways. So one of the main actors is the local community of iden international development innovation network. The, the main entity that run these large design summit, our was four, four, four weeks long. ADM, 10:00 PM designing contextual technologies for development issues for my issue was the deep sand wheelchair. Um, what does the deten deep sand wheelchair, deep sand wheelchair. Um, so it's a wheelchair that works in deep sand, [00:11:00] it trying to make one, so most wheelchairs the way that they are created, especially that hospital wheelchair that most people don't, um, take notice of. Um, it works very horribly in deep sand.
Speaker 1:Sand gets everywhere, especially in the Kalahari desert where we were working. Um, there is, uh, the opportunity that it could get punctured by some of the, um, foliage that's out there. Some of the plants. Um, it's, it, it's very hard to get it repaired. Um, the communities that, [00:11:30] uh, have them, they probably don't have the right seating. It probably, um, the ergonomics of the seating is probably, uh, not the way that it should be and people can't get around. Okay. So before we get into the details of that, of all the projects that you could potentially have worked on there, why the deep sand wheelchair? We were, we were put on that project I was at, that actually wasn't first, uh, choice. There were six projects and my first choice I believe was the, um, easy washing [00:12:00] machine. So a lot of they washed my hands.
Speaker 1:So trying to figure out a way that you can, um, create a quicker, more economical way to wash clothes, um, without using electricity. Uh, but you asked me also about the actors, I don't know if you wanted me to go deeper into the people that were at idds. Sure. Okay. Yeah, appreciate that. Um, so the, I, I mentioned that because they would want me to say something. They all do great work. I'm one of the first main actors with the University [00:12:30] of Botswana. I'm with great people like, um, OJC Alexa, um, shout out to o j. Uh, he's a cool dude. He's a professor at the University of Botswana in industrial engineering. Um, and Nani, uh, shout out to Nani. Uh, they do great work. Um, and there's the bolts swan to innovation hub, which got started in 2008, I believe. Um, and they, uh, they're doing good work to, um, fund resources [00:13:00] for understanding innovation. They're creating right now the first, uh, innovation, uh, and science park in Botswana. First of its kind, there's another organization called [inaudible] tree. Oh Lord. What does this stand for? The Botswana?
Speaker 4:Yeah,
Speaker 1:innovation and technical research institute. They got started in 2012 and they're a parastatal that's run partially by the government. Um, these are some of the large entities that try to work towards innovation in Botswana currently. [00:13:30] Um, so they are doing it, uh, and they came together at this idds summit. Okay. So why do all these groups have innovation in their names? Man, that the short answer, the long answer is with the fetishism of innovation or what does it mean? That's a great, it's a good point. Um, I don't want to say what they were trying to do, but I can say why a lot of people love the phrase innovation. It's a buzz word. It's, it's nice. It's interesting, it's sexy. [00:14:00] It's, and that's part of the reason why a lot of people in development are interested in it as well. Um, it's personally, I have the feeling that a lot of people are interested in it because, um,
Speaker 1:because other people are interested in it. Well, it sounds nice. Um, and because our people are interested in the creation of the novel somehow, um, partially, but that's also the reason why it's, um, nice to have the word because it's undefinable. [00:14:30] Um, it's, it doesn't mean read. It doesn't mean close. It doesn't mean cloth. It doesn't mean shirt, which has a definable, um, solid definition. Uh, for some people, innovation just means something new. For some people it means, uh, something scalable, something of value. Potentially, uh, for some it means all of those. For some it means the context in which you create it. Um, if something is an innovation there, then, um, it's worth it. And, um, [00:15:00] this non define ability and there are many other reasons why, um, and the sexiness gets people really interested in putting it, um, on their brochures, in their pamphlets.
Speaker 1:Um, and honestly that's part of the reason why I got interested in this in the first place because most people do not define the words that they use, especially with innovation. Uh, they say it, they spout it, they potentially get [00:15:30] money off of it. Um, but are they doing it the way they should be? So, okay. So to go back a little bit, um, to ask a better question about the potential projects that were laid out, why were those six projects that you could choose from at your work? Um, why were those six projects selected? Did they take into account end users or was it in a panel of experts? That's what they did [00:16:00] is they went into the community. Um, this was run twice. The idds was run twice. One in 2015, one in 2016 they went in beforehand. Uh, they had a workshop and they asked the communities what type of projects should we engage in?
Speaker 1:Um, and people suggested ideas, uh, many different things. And then they went through a process to try and, uh, cut down the ones that, um, seemed worthy to turn into some type of scalable intervention. But over time, [00:16:30] um, that was contextual to the problems of decode. That was the town that we were in and doable in four weeks for our innovation. Um, for the deep sand wheelchair project. One of the only reasons why we could do that is because three research wheelchair experts were working as designed facilitators while we were there over certain periods of time. Um, cause that project, what we were basically working with is folks [00:17:00] who were disabled in some form. Um, and that's a very, working with the sun, which is the community that lives out there is already, um, it's very difficult to do. You have to go jump through a lot of hoops to do it.
Speaker 1:But working with Sohn that are disabled, that's, that's another level of vulnerability. It's hard. It's a hard activity to choose design work and it takes people that are, that have been doing design work for [00:17:30] a long period of time. Um, okay. And I want to go back a little bit in your history. Sure. And how did you come around to design work as your backgrounds in, in my program, I went to Morehouse college in the University of Michigan, um, and you get two different degrees from two different schools. Um, got the applied physics work done and started with aerospace. And about halfway through I was like, this, this isn't, I was in propulsion class. Um, I remember, I think, I can't remember [00:18:00] what part, um, but it was, I was there and I was like, this sucks. I don't want to do this anymore. It's not that it wasn't necessary.
Speaker 1:And everybody that was doing it, they're, they're working on the wrong things, but it didn't fit for me. I wanted my, uh, career work to be, um, have a moral direction as well. Um, like a direct one that I could see. So I got involved. I actually got interested in this by watching the daily show with Jon Stewart. [00:18:30] It was the episode. I, I everyone that's in development, usually they have something like this, some like thing that ignited their fire. Um, it was the episode where they said one point $2 billion of the money of the $2 billion that was supposed to go to Haiti for the earthquake was nowhere to be found after nine months. And I was like, ah, what was, what is this? Um, and I did my own research in it, understanding, uh, the issues around all of the, um, the [00:19:00] NGOs that were working there and where the money was going and how cholera was becoming an issue and, um, how the entire system of how Haiti was a huge issue.
Speaker 1:And it was advertised that people were trying to give as much as they could because it was such a big problem. But all of our efforts went to not in a lot of the efforts were actually work. They actually, um, made the environment worse. [00:19:30] Um, got me really interested in trying to understand how to help those who had the least, um, which is a certain amount of privilege that, that, that privilege that I could say, hey, let me help those that are far away with abject poverty issues. Um, it's, I'm, I'm cognizant of that and I try and grapple with that every day. Um, but I got interested in that. I looked and I was on the path towards phd work. I tried to look for phd programs. Um, [00:20:00] that gave me the freedom to understand how to get involved in international development work, but to find a project that fit, I found urgh the energy and resources group. Um, and they gave me, they gave me that freedom. So, and here I am doing something completely different. So from your origin story or from the daily show? Yeah, I'm John Stewart. And your background in aerospace engineering. Yeah. Got An aerospace [00:20:30] engineering, aerospace engineering, LDL fun courses. It seems like you might shout out to doc just not out to dean. Gallimore thank you. Dean gala more. You did a lot of work to put me on this path, my man. Okay. So it seemed like, you know, you can take your in
Speaker 5:development and your intro and your interest in engineering yeah. And melded into engineering for development. Yeah. Designing a better cookstove. Creating a water purifier. Yeah. But you didn't exactly take it that way. I didn't. [00:21:00] What, what inspired you to look at design theory for social innovation and kind of relinquish your engineering background? Guys, this guy asks us good
Speaker 1:questions. He does. I like it. Um, so I knew that I was coming into development work with a certain amount of um, handicaps. Um, there were a whole bunch of folks and this is pushed in development. They love people with a specific type of experience [00:21:30] and the experiments usually is set in this narrative. It is, I did x work in y place for z amount of time and now I have this experiment experience and I'm interested in doing this work. Um, for the future. I'm interested in learning about the research and x, Y,Z , and most of the people that are in development engineering, they had some type of experience like that. One of my colleagues, um, who does, who did work in cervical cancer screening systems [00:22:00] in, Oh, I'm sorry, Julie. I think as Uganda. I'm sorry. Um, so what got her interested in understanding of design theory work is that specific experience.
Speaker 1:I didn't have that. Um, and I knew people would look at me sideways and development to say, well, what can you really say about this? Um, but with that I did deep thinking to figure out what I could contribute to the field because everybody, this is the point here was contextual. Every time I say I did X and y places at z time, a [00:22:30] four is the amount of time that puts me in a field that puts me in a time-space that puts me in a place. Right? I knew because I didn't have that experience, that the work I could adopt, I wanted it to be adaptable. I wanted the design, I wanted the collection of, um, the way of thinking. And the methods that people could engage in to be adaptable depending on the context that you address. And then I found design thinking and it made sense for all the things that I critique [00:23:00] about design thinking work.
Speaker 1:It's, it's a great that in its best theory, anybody can do it in any context to address many, many different types of problems. Um, a lot of people don't try to push that though. They feel like specific people should do it. Um, w when I say that, I mean like engineers, I mean like business folk. A lot of the times there is a sentiment towards the idea that there should be, um, professional designers, [00:23:30] uh, just like the same way they are professional engineers, uh, who are the experts who know how to engage in ethnography, um, who know how to create a scalable, um, rigid, rigorous object like a water purifier or those types of things. Um, and they have a specific type of knowledge, but people that are from different context, from different communities, they have in knowledge that can help them, um, create something that works [00:24:00] for their community and there's not enough crosstalk. Um, there needs to be more crosstalk. So that's why I focus on participation as one of my main, um, questions of design work.
Speaker 5:So within, within the context of participation in design work. Yeah. Have you found any accomplishments to date? I realize this may be a bit precocious for you, but at the same time, do you mean have high obtained of counselor's accomplishments? Have you influenced the design process maybe with open ideo [00:24:30] or with idds or started the process of them iterating on, on their systems? Nah. Have I influenced, I might have possibly. Um, I feel like influence is a thing that happens depends
Speaker 1:day by day. Um, it's, the situation I ran into was I ran the paper that I did and it was on their early stuff that they worked on and I realized that a lot of the stuff I suggested they were doing after I did it. Uh, they started doing, after I published the paper. [00:25:00] And as part of the problem, uh, research moves slower than a lot of the design work. That's a problem with it. Um, but, uh, for my work in, um, Botswana, uh, I'm also doing a literature review of trying to figure out what designers in development are engaging in and how they're doing it. Um, and that work the main way. I'm, the main reason I'm doing it is to get published. Um, and it would be in a journal and I would try and push the journal as [00:25:30] much as possible, but the average individual wouldn't, they wouldn't be exposed to it.
Speaker 1:Um, so, and for the Botswana work, it'll take some time and you've got to work with the community to make something that's of value, um, with my, a bit of evaluation expertise in their expertise of what works in the context. Um, so it's gonna take some time with the research, but there are other activities I'm engaging in that are meant to be a more impactful. [00:26:00] Um, so shout out to, uh, Lord Lauren, uh, Valdez, uh, Brooke Stanton and Julia Kramer, the colleague. We are working towards creating a design thinking for social justice, um, workshop group. Um, we're taught, we're in the talks right now to try and, um, develop and run our workshops in many different communities, um, in Oakland and the bay area. Uh, so the, the ideas is, [00:26:30] um, people can use design thinking not just to create products or projects, but to address social justice issues, we actually, uh, wrote a paper on it.
Speaker 1:We're trying to push that and apply it so that people can use for their own good. Um, so does this get at the idea, um, cause you mentioned in one of your papers, and I don't know if this is perhaps the one where too much of design thinking is focused on technical, technological innovation, whereas what might need to be effected is [00:27:00] political dynamics. Exactly. Yes. That was the paper. Um, and my colleagues did fantastic work explaining a lot of pieces to that. Um, that is the case. It is. And I would go as far to say, so technological advancement, it depends on your definition of technology. It's another vague term that people use, but usually when people say technology, they mean objects. They mean I created a, like I said, an infant warmer, a deep sand wheelchair. I created something tangible. Um, and [00:27:30] this is in America, but other people focus on service design.
Speaker 1:So how to make sure that the communication between a, someone who was giving a service and the person who's receiving it, um, is designed in the best manner business design. Um, sometimes it's participatory design or public design or urban planning design. That's a very large field that I know not as much in, um, the designing of space. Uh, but even in all of those issues, I, that's why I love to use [00:28:00] the word intervention instead of using the word as technology because, uh, it, it could be an object. It could be a interaction, it could be a business, it could be an experience. Um, even with those issues, a lot of the times designers cannot do not think about the larger politics, the larger history or even their position inside those systems that exist. Um, but that doesn't mean that you still can't use [00:28:30] design thinking methods.
Speaker 1:If you were to consider those things, the politics, the history, and it should be considered if we're trying to make lasting, um, and ingenious change like designers say they are, how could people contact you or maybe get involved in these social justice workshops? Sure. Especially if they're in the bay area. Absolutely. Um, so we are very interested in people. Um, if you are a part of a organization as [00:29:00] a social justice organization or somebody that's trying to help the public good in any way. Um, we are, we're interested in, uh, partnering with you to figure out ways to uh, work through using design thinking. Um, so I have all of my handles either on Facebook, on Twitter, on linkedin. They all say Pierce Gordon. 1:00 AM I email if you're really interested in working on this, it's peer scored [00:29:30] in1@gmail.com. So hit me up, I'm interested. Let's, let's talk and this is how people get in contact for the social justice workshops as well.
Speaker 1:Yes. For now, absolutely. And for not just for the social justice design thinking for social justice work, but for design consultancy work. Um, for if you want to have a design workshop, um, outside of that for whatever context that you want to talk about research, if you just want to talk about innovation [00:30:00] over coffee, then I'm here, I'm available. Let's talk about things. Great. Well, thanks for coming on, Pierce. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you, uh, educating us on design theory and innovating on innovation. Man, if we had more time, I taught over and over and over about it. Uh, but I'm just glad to be here, man. Uh, let's talk. Let's talk about this stuff. This conversation cannot end here, so thank you.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
