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Playground Politics
Navigating information
How do we make decisions?
Politics, to me, is the process of interpreting information to devise a strategy, make decisions and to solve entangled problems. But, all decisions come with compromises and many problems are never truly solved. So, how can we navigate floods of information in an age of simplification, misinformation, algorithmic validation, and divisive language... Furthermore, can it be taught?
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Through workshopping political strategies in schools, with young adults on the cusp of voting, I noticed a very interesting phenomenon: Four distinct ways of thinking about political problems, that were either used independently or combined, leading to different outcomes.
How can we make politics
more engaging?
My theory is that by combining and teaching children to draw from each of these methods, we might; counteract extremism, engage those who feel disconnected or irrelevant in the political discussion, empower people with refined ideas, and grow appreciation for the diverse range of consequences of our actions.
My political playground is the physical manifestation of the four thinking structures, designed as play tools.
Clauses
Unfortunately due to the pandemic I was never able to complete this project physically with the youth centre "Haus der Jugend" butI made mock ups to demonstrate the playground and a short animation to show how it would work. These (now) speculative objects were displayed in a virtual exhibition for EMMA Jaeger.
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As the objects would not be used, I chose to only make 1 of the 14 blocks used in the first game ( below ) due to plastic waste from expanding foam.
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The Connector
Firstly choosing a topic you are already interested in, the connector validates its agenda by presenting its links with other topics. This demonstrates system thinking and can help to expand ones range of positive and negative outcomes for any given change at a wide scale.
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Each green block represents one of 14 policy area's.
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To use the play tool participants must physically connect their initial interest with as many other blocks as they can. To do this well, they must consider how any change in another policy area could affect their topic.
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For instance the user may be interested in climate change but may not have considered the impact that Housing has on the climate.
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Once completed, the player should choose just one connection to focus on and bring it forward to the next game.
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The Shooter
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Focused on problem solving, the Shooter continuously generates ideas for strategy or policy with the aim of achieving a particular outcome. Then by rationalising and critiquing each hypothetical scenario the shooters idea becomes more refined with each iteration.
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The shooter is granted ammo (a sand bag) for every idea he/she comes up with. To pitch a successful idea it should aim to land inside the opposite target.
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By going through this process before being allowed to proceed, the player is forced to think more deeply about the problem realising its multifaceted nature.
The idea that is successful is then brought forward to the next exercise.
AGENDA
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SHOOTER
Outcome
The Builder
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To build a stable strategy that supports its primary objective, the builder plans using a top down approach. This provides foresight to the risks associated to a range of stakeholders. This systematic investigation preempts the weak spots so that when the strategy is built, the foundations are in place to support its political assembly.
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The ball at the top of the pyramid is the users agenda, then there are 2 black rings: the risks associated with it. Then each ball bellow is a solution to the problem identified above and so on allowing users to delve deeper into various lines of enquiry simultaneously.
For instance if the players idea was to ban cars from city centres - 2 problems could be: congestion on public transport, and the disregard for people who already have cars and rely on cars for accessibility. The next three balls would then be used to address those issues and the process repeats.
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The Balancer
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Having a variety of concerns and agendas to address is like a balancing act. The balancer is able to weigh up the different aspects of its ideal scenario and find an equilibrium.
This exercise invites players to take a step back from the granularity and be diplomatic about their content in the context of the bigger picture.
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The player may have found that they touched on topics through this process that they didn’t originally connect to their starting point, in this case they should return to the first exercise and connect them now.
The seesaw is a scale of change from, no change in the middle, to radical change on either side. The players should try to balance their blocks chronologically, whilst keeping balance on the scale
These ways of thinking apply to everyone, not just children and continue to serve me as strategic workshopping tools for evaluating risk, idea generation and planning the path of least resistance. Ironically I have recently used these tools with Policy makers in the UK Government for risk mapping and to leverage their strategies lasting potential.
How did I get here?
During Brexit and the December snap election I noticed a large proportion of people that I was in contact with did not feel represented, jokingly saying they were choosing the better between two evils at first glance this was easy to dismiss but in reflection I remembered what Steve Hilton said in his book “more human”: Binary politics can be off putting, what is a choice of two maybe 3 parties? And Todd Ross, explaining that we cannot average people into binary categories. Good design should consider everyone’s ‘jagged profiles’ .This led me to ask “are we happy with our democracy and could it be more democratic?”
However this project took place in Germany not England (as part of a residency) so I couldn't assume the context would be the same. With a lack of knowledge about German political structures/systems and no preconceptions about public perceptions, I started off my project by talking to locals and then I coordinated a number of different interview tools to refine these conversations into a structure for evidence discovery that I iterated with 18 more volunteers.
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I chose to focus on these findings
because I saw the most area for opportunity here.
The complexity of political discourse made many people feel powerless and irrelevant to the discussion
Everyone made compromises when voting but doesn’t see that as a problem
Distrust and contrary messages created by rival parties and disseminated by media sources create an environment where people disengage because they don't know what to believe.
Worries about polarisation and a desire for education in system thinking (the cause and effect of decision making) for different stakeholders and scales of impact that denote empathy and wholistic understanding.
Back to school
The most important and most interesting thing that happened during this project was that my first workshop didn't go as planned. I'd made playing cards with QR codes on the back, this QR code lead them to a website that I'd made specifically for them to quickly and easily locate challenges that they might want to address and to find references of how other countries are addressing each of those challenges with pro's and cons that could get them thinking about different topics being interrelated.
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But no one used it, in fact my anonymous feedback said it was pointless. However I had been watching each group work quite closely and seen a few different ways that they built upon their manifesto's to expand out their policies. In order to try and understand these ways of tackling the task, I decided to map out there methods for how one idea lead to another and essentially, how they individually navigated a problem area.
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Through the mapping process I noticed that each person and group used one or more of four ways of thinking and my next workshop utilised a combination of these methodologies that they were already using. This experiment worked remarkably well! Everyone seemed to find this approach natural and engaging, my feedback was that they had unlocked a far deeper understanding of the context of the problem and that they were all now growing an interest for subjects that they had not thought about before, or understanding the importance of subjects that they'd previously disregarded. However some activities were overly complex and not understood until I gave one to one explanations. I iterated this with another school and then went back and forth between the two schools with different activities/games until the process was refined and the students were interacting with the tools (mostly) independently. It was important for me that the process was fun because the final playground intervention would take place at Haus der Jugend, a community centre that supported children who had fallen out of the traditional eduction system. The staff there told me that the kids wouldn't take part unless it seemed fun but also mentioned that the children who go there would normally never engage with politics in their life. This made it clear to me that these were the people my work was for. Given more time I would have liked to build a mock up playground in the green area outside their social area and keep testing and iterating this model but due to Covid and the length of my residency I was not able to finalise this outcome and see how these methods would work in practice.
