The Parliament of Species
Role: Research, concept development, prototyping
8 weeks (2020)
Team
→ 5 designers
Tools
→ Figma
→ Miro
The Parliament of Species is a digital platform which serves as a tool for citizen collaborative future policymaking through a multi-species lens.
This project aims to give a voice to non-human stakeholders and is a proposal to an alternative democratic structure of policymaking.
Stakeholders
→ Department of Social Work, Malmö University
→ The Research Institute of Sweden (RISE)
→ The Public Healthy Agency of Sweden
Project goal and outcome
The goal of this project is to aid citizens to imagine futures that deal specifically with the issues of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through collaborative policy-making. As AMR is a complex issue that affects not only humans, the citizens participate through the different perspectives of Aqua, Fauna, Flora and Homo Sapiens to give a voice to non-human stakeholders of the Earth.
The citizens build upon the scientific projections and previous participants’ policy proposals allowing ideas to evolve through different perspectives. The polices are archived in the platform and display the citizens’ perspectives, values and knowledge on the issue of AMR.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global issue that threatens the effective prevention and treatment of infections cause by bacteria, parasites, viruses and fungi. (World Health Organisation)
AMR is an increasingly serious threat that impacts humans, animals and the environment and requires collective global action.
Design outcome
The outcome of the project is a live website that allows for citizens to co-create policies about the future of AMR through different perspectives. The website contains: an introduction to AMR and The Parliament of Species, the history of the future, the policy-making tool and the archive of futures that contains all of the polices and scientific projections.
The website also contains coloured bar at the top of the screen that represents the well-being of the entities based on the participants' assessments of the polices. The coloured bar changes in real time when a participant assesses a policy as either having a positive or negative impact on their chosen entity.
Design process
01 Research
Research into AMR, speculative design methods and social innovation. Interviews with stakeholders and researchers.
02 Ideation
Sketching and prototyping ideas and concepts for collaborative platforms.
03 Workshop
Online workshop with stakeholders to create scientific projections for the platform.
04 Prototyping
Developing lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes of ideas and concepts.
05 Testing
Testing lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes with citizens and stakeholders.
06 Outcome
Designing and creating the online platform.
Ideation
This project was initially inspired by the collaborative game exquisite corpse in which participants take turns to collectively draw a picture. We combined this technique with the future of AMR and developed concepts for games that allowed participants to build upon each other’s ideas to create an imaginary future.
Throughout the ideation process we considered different mechanisms such as collaboration, temporalities, characters, narrative and ‘playing boards’. In order to encourage participants to imagine futures, we iterated and prototyped different forms of timeline narratives that guide the participant through the narrative future of AMR step by step.
As AMR is a global issue that impacts humans, animals and the environment and requires collective global action, we experimented with role playing as different entities (Aqua, Fauna, Flora and Homo Sapiens) while prototyping the ideas.
Stakeholder workshop
The aim of the projections are to create a catalyst for citizens to imagine possible futures that are grounded in science. In order to create scientific projections for The Parliament of Species platform, we created and facilitated online workshops with scientists and researchers specialising in AMR.
The workshop was conducted using an Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard, allowing multiple stakeholders to collaborate including researchers from: The Research Institute of Sweden (RISE), Strama, The Swedish Health Agency and Malmö University.
The task for the participants was to fill in a timeline from 2021 - 2040 with predictions based on their existing knowledge about the impacts of AMR relating to the themes: water, plants, animals, economy, public health, food industry and policies.
Prototyping
We combined the exquisite corpse method from the ideation process with the projections from the stakeholder workshop to develop a series of prototypes for participants to build upon each other's ideas in response to the scientific projection.
In lo-fi prototypes 1 were tested with citizens in order to test the concept of policies building upon each other. In lo-fi prototype 2 an additional stage was added which asked participants to evaluate how the policy created by the previous participant affected their chosen entity (Aqua, Fauna, Flora or Homo Sapiens). The hi-fi prototype was created in Figma and was tested with both citizens and the stakeholders to evaluate the overall experience and usability of the policy-making.
Exquisite corpse
Lo-fi prototype 1
Lo-fi prototype 2
Hi-fi prototype
The concept
Throughout the ideation process we considered different mechanisms such as collaboration, temporalities, characters, narrative and ‘playing boards’. In order to encourage participants to imagine futures, we iterated and prototyped different forms of timeline narratives that guide the participant through the narrative future of AMR step by step.
As AMR is a global issue that impacts humans, animals and the environment and requires collective global action, we experimented with role playing as different entities (Aqua, Fauna, Flora and Homo Sapiens) while prototyping the ideas.
How to create a policy
01 Welcome to the Parliament
The landing page sets the context of the future in 2030 in which the entities (Aqua, Fauna, Flora and Homo Sapiens) are collaboratively tackling the global impacts of AMR.
02 The History of the Future
The History of the Future guides the participant through the key events of the near speculative future up until the present context (2030).
03 Choose your Entity
The participants then chose which entity (Aqua, Fauna, Flora or Homo Sapiens) to participate as in the Parliament of Species. The entities are presented as characters with key facts about what they represent and how AMR can impact them.
04 Assess Policy
The participant is provided a scientific projection and a policy created by the previous participant and assesses how the policy impacts their chosen entity.
05 Policy Proposal
The participant either modifies the previous policy or creates a new policy that positively impacts their chosen entity in response to the scientific projection.
06 Archive of Futures
The policies and the policy assessments are archived in the Archive of the Future and are categorised by the theme of the scientific projection - Births, Covid-19, Environment, Fish, Food Industry, Surgical Procedures. After creating a policy the participant can explore the polices and how they evolve over time.
