RSD13 Prototyping as a designerly practice to embrace divergent positions in participatory systemic design

Systemic design processes are inherently plural and diverse. The complexity of contemporary challenges requires collaborative efforts and the engagement of many stakeholders. The numerous actors encompass divergent positions and demands, which may sometimes be contradictory, mutually exclusive or seemingly opposing and degenerate into tensions or frictions. <br/>The capability of working with divergent positions is becoming imperative to systemic design processes. Instead of resolving the “pain points” that diversity generates, some authors advocate embracing divergent positions as valuable, necessary, and fruitful. Designers, therefore, need strategies to unfold, embrace, and engage with such positions and demands. <br/>Prototyping capabilities could be a promising practice for unfolding and engaging with divergent positions in systemic design. The interactions that prototyping facilitates hold great potential to undertake these essential endeavours. In fact, in recent years, some researchers have advocated for an alternative understanding of prototyping when applied to design processes targeting complexity. Instead of the traditional approach of prototyping for inquiry, the authors propose an exploratory approach to prototyping, leveraging some specific prototyping features that are more consonant with systemic design's characteristics and challenges. <br/>This paper investigates the effect of applying prototyping from both exploratory and experimental approaches to deliberatively unfold, embrace and engage with divergent positions in participatory design processes targeting systemic change. We describe the prototyping process implemented in Amsterdam Science Park, a pilot of the EU-funded research project T-Factor. Through this case study, we investigate the value of prototyping in 1) unfolding divergent positions from human and other-than-human stakeholders and 2) facilitating the embracement and productive engagement with such divergent positions. Our findings suggest methodological considerations for prototyping in systemic design, such as a conciliatory lens on exploratory and experimental prototyping logics, an application of prototyping since the early stages of the design process, and a special attendance to prototyping’s learnings at different system levels.