Transdisciplinary Design

What the Hell is Transdisciplinary Design, and Why am I Doing it?

Posted on October 22, 2021

Over the past few months, I’ve tried to explain my graduate program, Parsons’ MFA in Transdisciplinary Design to family members, friends, my partner, colleagues and mentors — with mixed results.

I explain that it’s not graphic or interior design, but a combination of social research and community engagement. It’s designing services and programs for communities. Usually the person offers a confused shrug or an “Oh, interesting!” if one of my buzzwords caught their attention.

It’s fun to speak about a program so niche and different from what my peers are doing. I feel proud, for instance, telling friends that I’ve partnered with the Brooklyn Public Library or worked on a project to understand how USPS can foster greater equity. However, I’ve noticed that I avoid providing specific information on my program beyond sound bytes that portray transdisciplinary design as the work of empathic, yet omniscient problem solvers.

It’s easy to romanticize my program and to speak about it with vague language. Doing so preserves an idealized self-image of a compassionate problem solver helping underserved communities. And while I believe that the drive to help is meritorious, when I depict my work as fixing things and finding solutions I miss the point of what it means to practice responsible design. Based on the writings of Teju Cole and Donella Meadows, I have extrapolated two principles that I hope will guide me to be a more responsible transdisciplinary designer.

 

In his essay, The White Savior Industrial Complex, Teju Cole illuminates a common pitfall among white progressives such as myself. Eager to combat social injustice, people with social privileges offer aid based on their own perceptions of what the communities need, rather than input from community members themselves. In doing so, these well-intending individuals impose an outsider’s perspective that isn’t rooted in the lived experiences of comm

unity members. As a result, these activists may silence the voices of those who they intend to support and perhaps undermine existing community-led initiatives attempting to address the same issues.

In Cole’s words, “…there is much more to doing good work than ‘making a difference.’ There is the principle of first do no harm, and the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them” (Cole, 343). Addressing white progressives bent on helping underserved groups, Cole implores them to listen first to people’s lived experiences and to recognize that effective interventions stem from those most impacted. This is the first principle of responsible transdisciplinary design.

As my understanding of design evolves, the need to embody this principle becomes increasingly imperative. In order to avoid the White Industrial Savior Complex, I must channel the desire to make a difference to create space for those most impacted by systemic inequities. During my time as a first semester master’s student at Parsons, I’ve seen how my privilege and positionality influence the ways that I engage with communities, interpret data and design interventions; and I want to ensure that my deliverables (qualitative research insights, service blueprints, program designs, etc.) are jointly created with participants in order to center their perspectives. It’s easier said than done, but that’s a conversation for another time.

The second principle of responsible transdisciplinary design is that Complex problems don’t have solutions because they are systemic (Rittel and Webber,1973; Meadows, 2008). Nearly four decades ago, Rittel and Webber (1973) laid the groundwork for the concept of “wicked problems” (155) – highly complicated situations that can’t be reduced to a single issue. They write, “…in a pluralistic society there is nothing like the undisputed public good; there is no objective definition of equity; policies that respond to social problems cannot be meaningfully correct or false; and it makes no sense to talk about ‘optimal solutions’ to social problems unless severe qualifications are imposed first. Even worse, there are no ‘solutions’ in the sense of definitive and objective answers” (Rittel and Webber, 1973, 155). Because of the ubiquity, complexity and multifaceted nature of problems such as racism, sexism and homelessness, it is impossible to account for all contributing factors. Moreover, since these issues are endemic to modern society, they can’t simply be solved or removed.

In her 2008 book, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, Donella Meadows expands our understanding of wicked problems by identifying the internal processes that drive them: feedback loops within systems.

As she explains, complex problems always exist as parts of a system. In a system, nothing occurs in isolation. Every action – whether from a person or non-human actor, such as the environment – triggers a chain reaction, prompting either a positive reinforcement loop to increase the behavior, or a balancing loop to decrease it (see Figures 1 and 2 for examples). When we view wicked problems as systems, a dauntingly chaotic web of feedback loops emerges.

 

Given the sheer complexity of systems, it is impossible to understand them in their entirety or to design a targeted intervention that accomplishes exactly what it’s intended to accomplish. Toward the end of the book, Meadows underscores this point:

“Self-organizing, nonlinear, feedback systems are inherently unpredictable. They are not controllable. They are understandable only in the most general way. The goal of foreseeing the future exactly and preparing for it perfectly is unrealizable…We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionist science has led us to expect…We can’t keep track of everything. We can’t find a proper, sustainable relationship to nature, each other, or the institutions we create, if we try to do it from the role of omniscient conqueror” (Meadows, 167-8).

If we approach systemic change as an “omniscient conqueror,” our decisions will inevitably cause harm down the line. In order to engage responsibly as a transdisciplinary designer and minimize that harm, it is critical to maintain a sense of humility, knowing that we will never uncover the full complexity of an issue. Doing this requires a willingness to listen and the realization that we can’t impose our will on a given system. The best we can do is to put power into the hands of those who lack it by listening to their experiences and involving them in decision making throughout the design process.

With these principles in mind, I have crafted an evolving personal manifesto to keep myself on the path of responsible transdisciplinary design:

I strive to listen to, amplify and connect dots between people’s experiences, and to co-design just interventions that meet their needs on their terms.

It’s a mouthful, but now you know what you’re getting into when you ask what I study.

 

By MH, Transdisciplinary Design MFA ’23

 

References

Cole, T. (2016). Known and Strange Things : Essays. Random House.

Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. chelsea green publishing. 

Rittell, H. W., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences, 4(2), 155-16