Wicked maintenance
At first glance history seems the antithesis of design. The study of the past versus the creation of the future. However, as someone who has worked across these fields for years now there are similarities. Design and history are both study of humans and their actions. Design uses this information to create things from products to systems and history tells stories in the format of essays and books. In a sense both fields are about meaning making – their aim to find a new way for others to understand the world. However, there are differences within their methods and philosophy that became a point of tension and learning within the project. I acknowledge history and design are large fields and it seems clumsy to paint every historian or design with the same brush, nevertheless there are dominant cultures within these fields which cause some friction between design and history. I wish to frame these differences as a learning opportunity for both fields as my experience of working between these fields although difficult was rewarding. In the following section I will dissect what design offers history as a reflective method of working creatively across disciplines and history offers design, especially oral history in combination with as a form of working which is centralised around humans. This is then followed by how the combination of both create a method of managing societies issues – wicked maintenance.
Becoming human
A crucial element of my practice was me recording oral histories. The recording of an oral history is an emotional event. BY recording my own oral histories I was able to feel to capture something so precious. While there are design methods that are focussed on observing and extract invisible habits, oral history takes this to a new level. If we look at Star’s idea of infrastructures and Rittel and Webber’s Wicked Problem you can see a recurring theme of embedded systems [ref.]. one system is never isolated. Oral history aims to view the whole of someone’s life, hence life stories. This is a big picture out look which is especially important in oral history does something which design aims to do to but sometimes fails at due to preconceptions. Oral history in its line of question is distinctly free and then what people discuss is what people find important and what people do not discuss is equally if not more fascinating.
[buchanan]
In addition because it works with living people it is important for an oral historian to communicate ideas on varying levels of familiarity with oral history as a field.
An additional factor of interpretation is designer ability to drop the professional facade and embrace creative tensions in a safe way. Design is playful. My portfolio is full of colours and the use of design futures and scenarios was essentail in helping other understand and map out the various processes. Friendly outsider. Dropping the professional facade.[Similarly my placement allow me to understand the day-to-day running of these organisations and general how chaotic they are. BY working at these places I can see how difficult the day to day is and those who are working with me appreciate the effort I put in and are in turn more forth coming.] Wondering about whether writhes I design or history because I think both do this to some extent… maybe move it to the wicked maintenance section. This is important in the management of data as you have to be approachable. The issue with data protection is the lack of transparency. I would ike to note this is incredibly difficult to do on your own. Which is why we made an oral history team, with the volunteer officer included.
In addition oral history brings the dimension of time. This in combination with design’s ability to reflect is central to wicked maintenance because it understand that things will and should change even if what they are keeping is essentially the same. How have things changed and how have things stayed the same. History accepts you cannot control everything and things will evolve and people will react strangely. It understands the need to study edge cases, which has been picked up by other design theorists.
Mapping it all
gn. Design problems are “indeterminate” and “wicked” because design has no special subject matter of its own apart from what a designer conceives it to be. [buchanan
Designers are often labelled as interpreters [papanek] because they are good at talking across groups and then using this information to create a bigger picture which can also be viewing across these different groups. They are facilitators. Oral history as is proving by my findings is a multi-dimensional process and product which floats between fields. Its reuse and recording does not work in isolation, therefore being able to communicate across fields and see the bigger picture is essential. An oral history project will work with people who have differing understandings of oral history as well as people who understand the process in different ways. Designers are good at viewing the bigger picture in terms of the systems. You can see this in my findings where I investigate all these different parts of oral histories. My portfolio consists of many maps.
Overarching all this is design as a reflective practice. What design gives oral history is a barrage of questions and a form of reflective practice which allows the historian to questioned their actions. If they are recording new oral histories or reusing them in some format such as an exhibition. This opens historians up to reflection and viewing the larger picture they do not get bogged down in their own ideas and are open and flexible to change.
WICKED MAINTENANCE
Overall design gives history better tools for working and history grounds design in the realities of the world. This combination makes it easier to understand the embedded maintenance of it all – the dimensions and factors of the wicked problem. This embedded complexity is a significant part of wicked problems and the key challenge for wicked maintenance.
While history adds a human perspective and the dimension of time, design helps to map this information and make it understandable to others. These two elements significantly helped the process of understanding the situation. Uncovering the invisible bits. You need both design and history to do this because history, especially oral history can find these invisible elements and design can fit them in the wider context of the situation.
The uncovering of the invisible bits is essential in the developing opportunities through wicked maintenance, design helps out of teh box thinking, the DIY element, and history as always grounds it in the realities of the world. Action research helps ground everything including history when things. The combination of the two allows for opportunities for change and improvement to be identified in the specific situations.
Wicked maintenance is innovation with preservation. It wishes to understand what is going on and to embedded this understanding in others who will. Wicked maintenance does as maintenance does it is giving people the ability to maintain, at all points in the timeline. Is it giving the skills that many already possess in the short term and then expand it across larger and longer spaces.
Conclusion
Well they first need to understand maintenance and innovation and how they work together. Maintenance considers stability while innovation considers change and the future. Arguably they can be two sides of the same coin
This is image goes beyond the idea that designers need to consider maintenance of their own design but instead expands this further to see how their innovation can also do some maintenance
Maintenance is everything. Seeing the world through the frame of maintenance gives you a different perspective on time, work and value, When you consider maintenance your aim changes. Maintenance allows room for inevitable mistakes but ensures there are tools fix these mistakes should they happen.
The divide between development and maintenance ce is not as binary as it is made out to be.
Maintenance is not just about keeping this the same, neither does it stand in opposition to development like Ukeles says. The best forms of maintenance and innovation come from these two areas working together. Innovation needs to recognise maintenance and maintenance will need updating as the system being maintained will change. Work and development occurs on the understanding that things will decay and things will change.
Innovation is about creating change and maintenance is about keeping things stable. But as own system become increasingly complicated and less localised any top change which occurs requires the ones at the bottom to be innovative in the manner in which they keep the material stable therefore fulfilling the aims of maintenance
Maintenance and innovation have to happen together. Simultaneous opportunity and situation development. Also are jobs are not monolithic. Maintenance and innovation is part of any job.