Clarifying NextD Geographies Framework
Welcome back NextD Journal readers. This week a post on clarification, miscrediting cascades and the shit that we sometimes encounter..:-). Years in the making at Humantific by Elizabeth Pastor and myself, we were happy to share the NextD Geographies Framework in our 2020 book: Rethinking Design Thinking; Making Sense of the Future that has Already Arrived.*
The framework itself was accompanied by numerous additional visualizations that made the case, that explained the need to move away from the long-held design as magic thinking (4 orders) model and towards skill-to-scale. Lets be honest: That in itself was a heavy-lift that you do not see being undertaken by the faculties of most graduate design academies. As practioners already operating in the complexity arenas of organizational and societal change by 2005, we saw the need early on and were happy to take that on in such detail. As we conducted community research related to design for complexity, graduate design education, teaching co-creation, design methods, etc. we published much of what we were finding via NextD Journal.
Since that book was published in 2020 numerous authors have written to us asking politely for permission to use, redraw and or adapt the NextD Geographies Framework and other models from the book related to the unfolding future of design. Others proceeded to redraw and redirect credit without contacting us. Some of the adaptations completly missed the point of NextD Geographies, some dumbed it down, some took it backwards. We soon saw that we did not always agree with some of the self-serving, often narrowing adaptations, but that is par for the course for authors and model creators. It is a competitive marketplace so we are well aware that shit does happen. It was, it is, the miscrediting that particularly concerned us.
It pains us to have to repost that there seems to be a runaway train of miscrediting and not well explained manipulation happening around the NextD Geographies Framework at this time.
[ Image: This miscredited highjack appeared on the "SI Design Hub" thread last week.]
Sometimes we see a couple of highjacks a month crediting with a straight face, in the wrong direction. Some credit the previous highjacking..:-) Once a highkjacking has been published it tends to cascade and cascade as subsequent unenlightened posters repeat the miscrediting. In June of 2023 we posted details on the NextD Journal site regarding the various hic-ups, how to properly credit and how to recognize miscrediting. Regardless the cascade continues so here we are.
Just last week we saw two miscredited highjacks appearing in design related threads on Linkedin.
[ Image: This miscredited highjack appeared last week in Emilia Saarelainen's new "Little Booklet on Systemic Design".]
The miscrediting cascade seems to be orginating in a popular book on systemic design that does an incredibly poor and rather manipulated, not scholarly job of miscrediting our NextD Geographies work. It was quite shocking when we first saw how it was done (See miscredit origin at the end of this post).
Clarification
In light of the cascade barrage we are here to reshare a few basic clarifications regarding origins and purpose of NextD Geographies Framework.
Peter Jones and Kristen Van Ael had nothing to do with the creation of the NextD Geographies Framework or any of the thinking logics within.
The Geographies Framework was not created to highlight the imagined asscention of Systemic Design.
Design Arena 4 is not and was never intended to be "Systemic Design". It was and is intended to be Societal ChangeMaking. Systemic Design is one of numerous approaches present in Arena 4.
Design Arena 3 is not and was never intended to be "Organizational and Societal Innovation". It was and is intended to be Organizatioal ChangeMaking. Systemic Design is one of numerous approaches present in Arena 3.
At the core of NextD Geographies is the disctinction between the assumption-boxed methods of Arena 2 (product, service, experience), commonly interpreted as "Design Thinking" and open frame methods that contain no baked-in upfront assumptions regarding challenge paths or evolution/solution paths. In the book we pointed out the need to operate without such assumptions when working upstream from briefs in organizational and societal changemaking contexts. This factor, this distinction, proved to be highly controversial in the context of graduate design education, still primarily focused on selling product, service, experience skill building, moving in slow-motion on the time change clock since 2005. In particular the clarification that service design is not meta directly contradicted a specific graduate design education marketing narrative. Without the Geographies Framework many of the problem finding points made in the book could not have been made. In the book all the existing challenges and the shifts underway were organized around the Geographies scaffold to ease the complexity for our readers.
The framework itself cannot explain all the aspects of change needed and the change underway in the emerging practice community.
MisCrediting Cascade Origin
[Image: Cover of the book, the apparent origin of the miscrediting cascade.]
[Image: The apparent origin of the miscrediting cascade.]
[Image: The apparent origin of the miscrediting cascade.]
[Image: The apparent origin of the miscrediting cascade.]
CLOSING
Yes friends, from time to time we are reminded of how competitive the marketplace is unfortunately. Having been around the block a few times in this business, for us we cannot allow a few manipulated highjacks of our work to destroy our sensemaking energy and sharing spirit. I'm sure our appreciative, long standing NextD Journal readers would agree.
We do continue to see many folks using the Geographies Framework to aid in the creation of more meaningful conversations regarding the current and future states of design. While some with entrenched interests in current state find that clarity threatening, most find it useful. So be it.
[Image: The original Humantific book in which the NextD Geographies Framework is explained in detail.]
[Image: One of the many visual sensemaking spreads in the Rethinking book.]
[Image: The visual sensemaking spread that explains the current cross-over condition.]
[Image: The visual sensemaking spread that explains the shift in sensemaking related to complexity ]
[Image: The visual sensemaking spread that presents Today/Tomorrow Schools view.]
"The Challenges HUGE!
The Hour: ALREADY LATE!
The Stakes: HIGH!
The Opportunity: GIGANTIC!"
In the new year we will likely publish a book 2 in that NextD Futures Series.
Hope this is helpful. Watch out for those highjacks out there!
End.
*Humantific presented NextD Geographies Framework as a work in progress along with various streams of related research at many future oriented conferences around the world prior to the 2020 publication of the final version in the Rethinking Design Thinking book.
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