Design With Others

During the seminar, we gained insights into engaging with communities employing diverse strategies and methods tailored to the unique characteristics of the community in question. These approaches include gaining an understanding of the community from a first-person perspective, assessing the system in which the community exists, establishing relationships with the community through effective communication, and fostering collaboration.

The initial two days of the course provided an introduction to Sants and El Clot, two neighborhoods in Barcelona characterized by strong communities. We conducted a field exercise to examine various conflicts within the neighborhood that relate to the use of land. Many conflicts or tensions were found, for example the rival use of land where both the production of fruits and vegetables in an urban garden (public space) and the construction of buildings were taking place (private space), or the friction of communities that are inclusive but exclusive of the "other" at the same time.

On the second day, we visited La Borda, a fascinating self-organised housing cooperative to access decent, non-speculative housing through a collective structure. The idea of a housing cooperative was born in 2012 as a project of Can Batlló located on a public land of social housing, with a leasehold of 75 years. This visit, coupled with Adrià's insightful explanation, shed light on the organisation structures of strong communities and their potential for significant impact.

Community Builder

Team: Jorge, Jorge and Sophie

After hearing the issues faced by La Borda's community when trying to make collective decisions, Jorge, Jorge and myself decided to develop an intervention that would help communities organise themselves in efficient and democratic ways, ensuring that all voices are heard. We created Community Builder, a tool that can help communities set an efficient governing structure, feedback and conflict resolution mechanisms, as well as an implementation timeline, based on the community building principles of sociocracy. Our AI-powered tool worked as a bot integrated with sociocracy's principles, which would first ask you a few questions about your community to then create a community building strategy and provide tailored recommendations.

How would we implement Community Builder in La Borda?

Relationship building

Before introducing our tool to La Borda community, we would need build a trusting relationship with the community through frequent informal visits and conversations with a maximum of members, to understand the day-to-day life of the community and their real needs. Such conversations would help us have a first understanding of the aspects of the community that would need improvement, according to its members.

Guided collective reflection on current organisational structure

Once the trust with the community is built, we would guide an interactive and collective workshop on La Borda's organisational structure, asking members to reflect and discuss how the community is currently structured, the strenghts and shortcomings of the current organisational structure as well as goals that the community would like to achieve. We would ensure that a maximum of voices are heard to ensure an equal representation of members in this debate.

Tool introduction

Organise session with community representatives to introduce Community Builder. Guide them through the bot's questions, inputting the findings discussed during the collective reflection.

Trial phase

Give a few weeks for the community to try the tool and reiterate their interaction with it, to make adjustments to the organisation strategy proposed by Community Builder.

Implementation of suggestions

Roll out the suggested changes in phases, starting with the most critical areas. Test new structures or roles in smaller, controlled settings before a community-wide implementation.

Monitoring and evaluation

Schedule frequent meetings to monitor the progress of the implementation. Use the established feedback mechanisms to gather ongoing input from community members about the changes.

Final Reflections

This seminar taught me about the value of systemic thinking, especially when engaging with communities. As a holistic approach to understanding and solving complex problems, systemic analyses take into account the interconnectedness of various elements within a system and recognise that changes in one part can have cascading effects throughout the entire system. Designing a product without understanding the system in which this product is situated will lead to poor design. This made me think of how these methodologies should be applied to policymaking as well. Thorough systemic analyses should be conducted before intervening with regulation, to ensure sound regulatory interventions.