The impossible equation and participatory design
What can we learn from the way a Chilean architect solved an impossible equation?
The 2010 earthquake and tsunami in my home country of Chile caused massive flooding. One of the most damaged areas in the country was a city called Constitucion. Restoring the ravaged city required not only a rebuild programme but also a fundamental rethink and redesign. The government called on Alejandro Aravena and his company Elemental for this job, primarily because of his participatory design methods.
Aravena had already solved an urban challenge common in 3rd world countries like Chile. In 2004, his company won a government tender to create a housing project in the city of Iquique in the north of the country. A one-acre plot of land in the centre of the city had been illegally occupied by 100 families who had built temporary dwellings and were fighting any attempts by the government to relocate them to the periphery. The government tender was ultimately an impossible challenge as it required the winning bidder to resolve the following equation:
X = 100 families x 430 square feet x US$10,0001 acre of land
The government funding was capped at US$10K for each family which must include the cost of buying the land, providing the infrastructure and building the homes which must be of at least 430 square feet. Since the land was in the centre of the city, the cost of it was three times what social housing project in Chile could afford. Under any normal evaluation process, this tender could have only been resolved by moving the families to the periphery or building a tower block.
Aravena’s winning bid did not propose a specific solution but a process of participatory design with the families which would involve them directly in solving the seemingly impossible equation. The process involved looking at the constraints and compromises needed. The only ‘viable’ option of building a tower block was quickly discarded when the families threatened to go on hunger strike. The reason was that the 430 square feet property size was not big enough for any growing family. What was the solution they designed together?
Build half of a good house!
The solution used the government money for buying the land and building the components of the home which the residents couldn’t build, such as infrastructure, sewage, plumbing, etc. The design met the needs of the families by offering an expandable house in a high land value location. Because the families were able to stay in the centre, they were able to participate in the wealth creation which happens in cities, maintain their natural networks and thus to start building ‘the other half’ of the house very soon after completion.
This example may seem literally miles away from the social housing issues in the UK but learning how participatory design is being used to solve third-world housing problems is even more valuable than learning from ‘best in class’ global enterprises.
Participatory design is equally applicable to our sector. It can, for example, be applied when engaging in service co-creation with residents and empowering them to use their own resources to solve common problems.
Applying the lessons of participatory design to digital transformation is about ensuring residents are co-creators of the services they will use online. This is not how most of the social housing sector goes about designing and developing digital services. As a result of current ‘top down’ digital design, online services are not always used by residents and sometimes have unintended consequences like an increase in the volume of calls or duplication of issues reported.
HouseMark has been working over the last three years to support our sector in digital transformation. We have observed that something about the culture and operations of housing providers is preventing them from adopting the user-centred design approaches which are second nature to ‘best in class’ digital organisations. This approach goes against a trend in the sector of finding innovative technology to drive digital transformation which follows the logic that a solution from a different business context can also solve housing problems. This may work sometimes,
And it seems that the sector is also beginning to recognise the issue.
At the closing session of the 2019/2020 programme, we asked participants to share with us what they had learned from taking part. Most organisations said the same things:
working through user-centred design methods had forced them to take a long look at their culture and question some deeply rooted beliefs about digital transformation and how it should be done
the critical change they needed to make was spending more time doing research with users to understand the problem and not jumping into solutions was the main insight
It’s all about learning to fall in love with the problem and not the solution. Following this principle will lead to closer working with residents and ultimately better digital solutions.
Probably the only way to ensure success going forward is to co-create solutions with users. The involvement of residents in the design of the solution weaves in the intention of all stakeholders into the service, building a shared narrative around it. Being able to design services with the right mix of human and machine elements will be a critical set of skills for transformation leaders going forward and the way to get this balance right is to get closer to the people using the service.
The lesson from the 100 families in the north of Chile who solved their impossible equation is that complex problems need radical solutions which can only be designed together with users.
This article was published in the fifth issue of the DIN Bulletin