During a recent training I delivered for a group focused on supporting multi-stakeholder processes, I realized that there were a few missing steps needed to get them in the right headspace to explore some of the concepts we would be going through. Everything we were going to explore would be largely useless if they didn't first accept that a lot of the decisions they would have to make were part of a domain of design, and if they accepted that, that they needed some clarity on just what type of design we were talking about.

I think it's easy to accept that we can design a better car, a better app, or a better running shoe. When we can hold, touch and use something, we can imagine there was some care, some method to how someone designed all the elements that constitute the use and construction of that artifact.

But when it comes to the intangible, I have found that there is a leap of logic required for people to accept that there is the possibility of applying method to the design of an idea, an agreement, or a decision.

So, of late, I've found myself starting out any training by first making the case for design for those who find themselves in a situation where they work with other humans. The frame that I have found unleashes the most curious practitioners who follow down the most interesting paths of inquiry are those who imagine that their domain is not "design thinking," it is "designing thinking".

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In making the case for design, there is a kind of red pill/blue pill choice to be made for the practitioner. What it boils down to is this: given what we know about how humans behave, and what we have learned from psychology, economics, biology, sociology, history, anthropology and all of their many sub-domains and combinations, are there any factors that make outcomes in groups more or less likely, more often than not? Are there any patterns that can be identified among variables that might be isolated? Does one environment vs. another create a different outcome? One thought pattern vs. another? Could these patterns be abstracted, or modelled?

If you answered no to all of these things, and you believe that email is as conducive to deep dialogue as a mountain retreat, then you can take the blue pill.

If you believe that, in fact, different conditions can produce different outcomes within individuals and groups, then you take the red pill, and this starts quite an interesting journey in exploring just which conditions might facilitate which outcomes.

This inquiry might be guided purely by intuition. Indeed, I have met many who believe that while differences matter, method isn't possible - this is purely a matter of personal instinct and intuition.

I happen to believe that method is possible; that our decisions about time, place, sequence and focus can, more often than not, create conditions in which certain types of human experience are more likely to emerge.

In short, I believe that decisions, ideas, thoughts, communities, innovations can all be designed...but not directly. More specifically, I believe that the conditions for human outcomes can be designed, even if we do not know specifically what those outcomes will be.

To design this way, we need to think about design a little differently based on a few variables related to design: the object of design, influence on the end product, and agency in the process.

I'll illustrate the difference with three very crude examples, which I think are useful, because I've seen so many cases where they are used almost interchangeably.

Classic Design: in our classic conception of design, the designer perceives a need in the world, and uses their knowledge, experience, skill and intuition to devise something to meet that need. The object of that design process is the artifact itself. The designer, as the visionary and expert, has absolute influence over its creation, and all agency in this process lies with the designer - the end users, in fact, might not even appear in the process at all.

Human-Centred Design: Human-centred design disrupted this model by asking a radical question that now seems pretty basic: "before we make a thing for people, what if we, like, talked to them first?" In this model, the designers engage with the end users to understand their context and needs before they create the artifact. The object of the design process is still the artifact itself, and while users in this model now have some influence - largely as input, final influence still lies with the expert designers. A limited form of user agency enters this model, but only insofar as they are asked.

Increasingly, you see situations where the products we are talking about might be something less tangible. As design filters into the sphere of collaboration or human interaction, the artifacts we start designing for tend to be more conceptual than strictly functional; creativity, new ideas, innovations, partnerships, learning, agreements and strategies. You can't sit on or drive the products of these kinds of design processes, but the outputs are, nonetheless, very much something that groups or organizations want and need. Which brings us to...

Emergent Design: Emergent design focuses on methods to create novel outputs that are not present from any of the individual inputs in a group process; to create conditions in which the desired outcome can't, itself, be directly designed. Learning, innovation, creativity, decisions, agreement, alignment, excitement, understanding are all highly desirable outcomes, but can't be directly manipulated; they are emergent outcomes based on a series of inputs and conditions which either make their emergence more likely or less likely. The object of design, then, is focused on the conditions, as opposed to the outcomes or outputs themselves. The degree to which the outcomes represent the potential of the group depends on the level of influence the "users" have over their creation. The durability of the outcomes depends on how much agency the "users" have before, during and after the process.

This is not intended as a good, better, best model of design, but rather a lens for deciding what approach to design one should use. If you are in the business of producing software, and it is ultimately you who must code, test and ship your product, emergent design is probably not the approach for you.

In any of these situations, if the beliefs and behaviours of participants in a process as individuals or as a collective (or both) is instrumental to the success of the outcomes, that is a good sign you need an emergent design process. If their input is required, but not their actions, then a human-centered design processes might be a good fit. If neither their input, nor their actions are required...you can head to your basement and get to work. This is where agency comes in.

Considering agency can help expose where you are, in fact, designing for emergence. Many of our failed processes result from a focus on centralized agency in situations where the coordinated action of a great number of individuals is required, or where the one holding the pen is not the one responsible for delivering the outcomes. Education often focuses on how to teach, rather than the conditions in which learning occurs. A strategy might focus on an objective opportunity, rather than the appetite of those required to achieve it. We focus on what makes a great leader, and less on how groups work with shared intent.

Many of the groups I have been brought in to help over the years wrestle with very basic questions that, nonetheless, remain very difficult to answer, especially as organizations get larger and the context gets more complex. "Where do we go next as an organization?" "How can all of us work to solve this shared problem?" "How do we adapt our organization to changing circumstances?" "How do we have better ideas?"

This brings me back to my recent training. Nowhere is this more true that in "multi-stakeholder" groups, where individuals from various organizations, all with their own pressures and motives, need to coordinate around a collective issue. Success, at an aggregate level, comes from each individual reaching a personal decision point an impetus to act that matches with enough of the other individuals in the partnership to create a change that all of them contribute to, but none of them control. Emergent Design is the set of principles, models, practices and tools that creates the conditions for that to happen.

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