Design for collective action: A digital tool for network governance and collaboration

Abstract

The 2018 IPCC special report highlights the threat of global warming of 1.5 ° C as early as 2030 with a global reduction of anthropogenic CO 2 by 45% needed to avoid overshoot. It calls for far-reaching, transformational social and ecological adaptation to meet that reduction. In response, this thesis undergoes a design thinking process to create a more equitable and ecologically sustainable world with a design outcome or “intervention” as a goal. Additionally, the design intervention needs to address the limited timespan for action with a far-reaching or radical outcome. Based on these premises, context development identifies the global pervasiveness of capitalism and neoliberalism with resulting inequality, social isolation and a fundamental misconceptions of what it means to be human in society as particular leverage points for radical change. Collective action of some kind will be needed to address these leverage points. A literature review studies three concepts in competition to capitalism and neoliberalism with transformative potential for collective action: the commons, peer production and social innovation. These concepts are synthesized into common characteristics and are used to inform the design outcome which are: distributed networks, scale / context, self-organization, autonomy, transparency and democratization with inclusive participation. Further, a user-centered survey of registered associations in Finland is done to understand the governance and collaboration among potential non-market users and how they might align with the dynamics of the commons, peer production and social innovation. The survey reveals that associations with the purpose to “build community” are most aligned with the concepts, with “to provide useful services” in second and “to change society” least aligned. Further, it reveals that associations already “team up” with upwards of ten other organizations, and most strikingly that heightened satisfaction correlates to heightened levels of inclusivity, democratization, and autonomy. This information gathering from the inspiration phase leads to the ideation phase with the beginnings of a platform concept. A digital collaboration tool for network-based collective action is proposed as a means to address the issues of capitalism and neoliberalism thereby creating a more equitable and ecologically sustainable world. This thesis contributes to knowledge of novel social organizing principles and proposes a design intervention to implement them. However, the process ends at ideation and the true impact as well as the limitations cannot be adequately addressed. The concept should be developed further and prototyped to assess its basic viability to create equality and ecological sustainability.