Broadly construed, redirective practice aims to subvert the unfolding condition of unsustainability by (i) identifying that which needs to be sustained (and that which needs to be designed out of existence) and (ii) impacting particular structures and situations through redirective design interventions. In this context, the design process, outcome, and subsequent effects are mutually constituted as an indivisible whole. Nonetheless, the transformation from ontologically designed unsustainability to ontologically designing sustainment is unequivocally complex.
As a interaction designer and design researcher, I’m left contemplating my own practice–and, to me, a key problem lies in the disparity between how we talk about design and the complexity of the designed world we inhabit.1 Typically (in IxD) the notion of what design is all about is discussed on a micro-level and thus its often enduring, systemic effects of design are neglected to be mentioned. Moreover, the most effective means through which to communicate design knowledge remains a complex (and at times controversial) endeavor. In light of these issues, I’m drawn towards developing design methods targeted at the broader [interaction] design community that might help bridge this breakdown and simultaneously introduce designers to notions of redirective practice.
One approach to sustainment is envisioning and designing new social organizations that are, in some sense, alternative structures exemplifying redirection. Nonetheless, might another strategy be facilitating structural change via community exposure to and interaction with redirective methods or techniques? For instance, rather than introducing a design intervention to address current practices/ways of being, perhaps focusing on altering public perception with respect to issues like urban sustainability is a path toward fostering systemic change.
1My colleagues from Indiana wrote a paper discussing notions of design (among other things). I always found this passage helpful when conceptualizing the varying levels of how we talk about design from simply being about aesthetics or decoration, to a systemic perspective, eventually arriving at design essentially being about choosing among potential futures.
From this point, we may move through a progression of ever more thoughtful notions of design being in (i) the features of objects—an engineering and technology centered view, (ii) the affordances of objects—visual cues of form that reveal the underlying operational semantics of objects, and elements of visibility of form that predict usability or affect, (iii) the interactions between people and objects—the pervasive utterance in design circles that the design is in “verbs”, (iv) whole environments—the notion of design as intervention in an environment, (v) whole ecologies—the notion of design as a balanced, systemic organization, and finally (vi) futures—issues of sustainability and the idea that design is a choice among future ways of being (p. 7).