Scale helps with framing.
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Bill Nye Science Guy
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Narrative association
tell stories
build socio-cultural backdrop
Design rhetoric helps to steer choices and delay who we are—sometimes good. Sometimes not good.
Marketing stimulates both.
Desire + individualism + narrative = identity (of product and consumer)
We are the stories we tell about the world.
“There are two distinguishing features of consumer culture. Theses are ‘desire’ (a mix of emotion and imagination_ and fierce ‘individualism’.
To this we might add ‘narrative’, in that storytelling is the vehicle that connects both ‘desire’ and ‘individualism’ to make them meaningful.
Narrative as the natural mode of thought.
Human identity is a narrative construct.
“…design under globalised conditions of market dictatorship and Western political hegemony, has become an efficient world-wide instrument of the colonisation of being…” Jan Van Toom 2003
consumption becomes us and is reinforced through us.
All exchange in the world is communication whether chemical, physical or symbolic and as such, this network of interdependencies constitutes an ecology.
‘The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works andante way people think.”
“What is designed by the designing that we design?” — what unintentional chains of cause and effect are created by our development. For example, consumption is beginning to change the world in which we live. This applies to professional designers in addition to anyone else who might live here.
How do we engage concern?
Fear appeal — destruction presents confrontation to people in order to try and force them to change. How are we directed to move? How do you make change? An immediate response but which might dissipate quickly. A psychology defence operates in resistance to self. By provoking anxiety, we might close people off and have them avoid the imagery or instead try to avoid the anxiety by engaging in consumptions.
Information Campaigns — lean on the idea that right behaviour follows right thinking but this is not proof. More knowledge doesn’t necessarily assist in altering behaviour. Not all graphs and information have good stories and cannot be connected with. For example, infographics.
Green Consumption — growing range of eco friendly and the subtext implies purchase choice. But this narrows action to convenience. Insulates from real world consequences, requires commercial decisions, and that small action can assist. Green consumerism misleads us to believing that we are being green by purchasing this stuff which is only a proxy in itself.
“Hedonism & hair-shirts… we have seen growing number of consumers are voting with their wallets but they don’t always find it easy. The young find there is a dichotomy between wanting to help the planet and the hedonistic desire to buy red latest “must have” brands”.
Young people unsure how to make good change—providing knowledge of solutions then a pathway to buy their way there.
“…it is quite possible to have a rapidly expanding marketplace for ‘sustainable’ products, produced by increasingly efficient production processes, and yet for resource consumption and the associated environmental impacts to grow.”
The designing we design may still develop issues.
Develop some system which encourages a sense of caring and naturalism within people that comes naturally as caring for ourselves. 10 basic values—two groups prove significant. Cultural values—power, achievement and hedonism. These appear to ego. However, universalism and benevolence appear in opposition as they are concerned with others rather than personal ego. Circumflex of cultural values. Push and pull, see-saw effect, between activating the values that we’re trying to target.
Cognitive bias and the framing effect.
Humans think in terms of unconscious mental structure called ‘frames’. Frames refer to semantic roles, relations between roles, and relations between frames. These conceptual structures are physically realised as neural circuits in the brain.
All of our knowledge, thinking and talking makes use of frames and since frames form systems of relations, a single word an activate not only its defining frame but much of the system in its defining frame.
For example—hospital might trigger doctor, nurse, scalpel, visiting room, surgery, waiting room, room. These are neurally activated things because they help us to associate thoughts and feelings to a particular concept.
Prime thinking before we hear choice and understand. Particularly language will strengthen ideology. This helps to normalise ideas even if unconsciously.
We cannot avoid using conceptual framing in all communications we exchange. So the key question to ask is whose frames are being activated and hence strengthened in the mind of the public?
Engage people for intrinsic value framing as opposed to personally driven narrative helps people focus on the pleasure of others and the environment which might help long term appreciation of the environment.
Earth rise. Most important environmental image ever taken. We are presented as the object faraway in the heavens, hovering within a space which is impartial to us. The uniqueness of our home. This picture reframes human importance in a way which cannot be ignored.
Our values are expressed through cultural interactions. Do we remain self-interested or are we self-transcendent?
“If we do what morals say is right because of positive inclination, then we perform a beautiful act… we should, in environmental affairs, primarily try to influence people towards beautiful acts. Work on their inclinations rather than morals… if reality is like it is experienced by the ecological self, our behaviour naturally and beautifully follows norms of strict environmental ethics.”
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George Lakoff
Framing is the most ordinary thing you do. Every institution is structured by a frame. 1. Rolls. Hospital, doctors, patients, orderlies, scalpels, operating rooms. Frame elements. 2. Then Scenarios. What happened? Doctors operate on patients with scalpels in operating room. You know the boundaries. You’re handed a scalpel and say you’re operating on this doctor. You understand this is not correct and its outside the frame. What’s the neural computation needed to thinking these frames? Every word is defined relative to a frame. We understand it in terms of a structure like that. Frames are thoroughly political.
Metaphor. More is up. Less is down. Warm or cold person. We think in terms of metaphor. Prices are going through the roof. More is up. This is true in many cultures. There are hundreds of metaphors which are true globally. You don’t know you’ve learned them. Quantity and verticality are activated when something is poured into a glass. Or you’re held by a mother and you activate warmth and affection. Both are activated until a circuit has formed and it develops a physical path. Warmth and closeness and affection.
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Given Lakoff's explanation of what frames are, and how they work, consider how designers use frames in the development of their work?
— what might a frame be within a designers work?
— what devices (perhaps its things as simple as colour and composition, or as complicated as setting up expectations within which to work?) might designers use to help guide a viewer through the reading of a work?
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Is it only words that can be used to activate mental frames, what about images, materials, environments and experiences?
— think about sustainability. What frames do sustainable products use to get their point across? What are other ways to look at sustainable products?
If you want to do the additional reading, too, consider what relationship exists between the way framing is used and the way cultural values are engaged in communicate in design?
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Hypocognition is the lack of ideas we need.
