Rationalizing Inquiry Paths for Responsible Design in the Context of a Global Pandemic

The systemic disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic amplified the effects of some social inequalities and revealed positive environmental effects associated with slowing the economy. In order to explore the repercussions of contagion prevention and community engagement initiatives such as deploying face masks and visualizing Covid-19 statistics, we resorted to an ethical model of Design for Responsible innovation (DRI). This interactive model is useful for identifying, exploring, and describing analytical and generative paths of inquiry departing from, or arriving at, diverse matters of concern such as the impact of commodification and manufacturing in society and nature, the relativism of truth, the segregation of identities, and the reduction of agency. In this paper we argue that the humancentered perspective on design relies on a biased value system that either disfavors some social groups or disregards nonhuman living agencies, and we emphasize the analytical capacity of the model to chart and rationalize alternative inquiry paths. In consequence, future responsible design interventions would benefit from positioning life at center stage and embracing the relational and dependent nature of human beings from a posthuman perspective. To achieve this, research methods capable of handling human-nonhuman units of analysis and allowing the examination of systemic impact in complex systems are needed.


INTRODUCTION
In the months after the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were reported in Wuhan, China, two major objectives emerged to drive global and local pandemic responses: maintain infected population numbers below local healthcare provider capacity, and achieve safe and sustainable therapeutics and mechanisms for immunity. In the light of these challenges, we reflect on the impact and relevance of design actions for mobilizing opportunities to envision renewed futures.
As the virus continues to spread around the world, actors at all scales are responding to systemic impacts by taking design action. The World Health Organization (WHO) designed strategic preparedness and response plans on the basis of early findings from outbreaks in China, Iran, and Europe (World Health Organization, 2020). Governors have implemented experts' advice by designing ordinances that reduce the frequency of face-to-face interaction.
Virologists and biologists are urgently designing rapid Covid-19 diagnosis techniques and mechanisms to train our immune systems to recognize and combat SARS-CoV-2 antigens.
Epidemiologists design contagion models based on mobility restrictions and contact-tracing . Rationalizing Inquiry Paths for Responsible Design in the Context of a Global Pandemic. Strategic Design Research Journal. Volume 14, number 01, January -April 2021. 50-65. DOI: 10.4013/sdrj.2021.141.05 to predict, contain, and monitor the virus's spread. Bioengineers collaborate with doctors to design new ventilators and other medical devices.In describing the cases above, we have highlighted design actions emerging as non-design disciplines and organizations devise solutions to the massive and multifaceted problems presented by the global  pandemic. By contrast, in this paper we explore the impact and relevance of design actions emerging from design communities. Rather than describe cause-effect relations, our objective is to trace epistemological connections among design methods and the issues engaged by designed artifacts, overtly and covertly.
In this task, we resort to the Design for Responsible Innovation (DRI) model, a framework for critical engagement with the ethical stakes and impacts of design endeavors. As we have shown elsewhere, the DRI model is a pedagogical tool that helps scholars and educators engage with the opportunities and challenges of designing with consequences in mind (Salamanca, Briggs, Mercer, 2019) 1 . In our previous publication we discuss how the DRI model organizes ethical, epistemological and politico-philosophical concerns throughout a design research process. In the present paper we deploy the DRI model as a scaffold for describing and explaining-that is, rationalizing-inquiry paths concerning two ready-made global examples of design interventions: face masks, and visualizations of Covid-19 related data.
In this paper we introduce the methodological framework used in our analysis, demonstrate the use of the DRI model explore design inquiry paths for reviewing, critiquing, and building on existing designed artifacts. First we consider how face masks perform symbolic functions beyond the physiological control of infection. Then we describe and analyze visual accounts of correlations between structural social problems and abated economies, and discuss opportunities for design practitioners and scholars to address central "matters of concern." Finally, we comment on the relevance of the DRI model as an analytical tool for thinking critically and creatively about the consequences of design and offer some conclusions on the role of flat ontologies for designing responses in the current crisis.

METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK
The Design for Responsible Innovation (DRI) model is an interactive network of interconnected concepts clustered by domains in order to structure the activity of design researchers and practitioners seeking to envision improved futures and reflect on their making. We regard design for responsible innovation as intentional action to design, reify, and maintain positive, equitable, and meaningful futures desired by sustainable networks of human and non-human actors (Salamanca, Briggs, Mercer, 2019). In the context of the DRI model, "responsible" refers to tracing analytical and generative connections among design methods, research approaches, ethical stakes, and impacts. DRI is concerned with objective, fair, nonpartisan and sustainable design actions, especially with regard to issues of contemporary debate such as environmental conservation, ethics, justice, equity, culture, and identity (Stilgoe, Owen, & Macnaghten, 2013).
The DRI model consists of four conceptual domains, which we refer to as "components," that allow users to associate design actions with ethical stakes and concomitant impacts with help from research traditions in the humanities and social sciences. Each component contains multiple domains of knowledge and/or practice, which we call "nodes." Directional connections between source-target pairs of nodes are called "links" (see Figure 1). the reader, in the sections below we italicize upon first mention those terms that name the DRI model's components and nodes. The nodes in the leftmost component describe socio-environmental Matters of Concern. In so-naming this component we echo Latour's (2005) distinction between "matters of fact" and "matters of concern" in order to engage design's capacity for effecting change in both society and the environment. That is, rather than choose between advocating either for "design for social change" or "sustainable design," we avoid reproducing a false dichotomy 2 . The DRI when one or many links originating in source nodes coincide in a target node. Divergencies are observed when a single source node is linked to several target nodes.
The model allows users to explore multiple paths for design research in the course of building robust methodological frameworks. The model does not, in itself, constitute a design research method. Rather, it serves as a conceptual tool for rationalizing courses of design research for responsible innovation. As users of the model draw associations and generalizations among nodes, they problematize, theorize, or otherwise inform either the direction of their own design process or the impact of existing design interventions.

USING THE MODEL TO ANALYZE DESIGN INTERVENTIONS
In order to explore the impact and relevance of design in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have selected two exemplary design cases that respond to the WHO's technical guidance topics "Infection Prevention and Risk Communication" and "Community Engagement." Specifically, we use the DRI model to examine the use of face masks and the appearance of pandemic-related data visualizations published in major United States (U.S.) newspapers.

Design Inquiry Perspectives on Face Masks
The face mask is an artifact whose many distinct varieties have been designed for specific purposes and contexts (Belting, 2017). Facial coverings have been used to mitigate the spread of disease for centuries (Strasser & Schlich, 2020). Mask wearing is emerging as a critical factor in mitigating the spread of disease in the current pandemic ). However, current advice varies widely from region to region and within regions, preventing policy from being adopted at a systematic scale comparable to the speed and range with which the virus is spreading. Whereas citizens throughout South Korea are advised to carry two different kinds of face mask for use in different settings (Arin, 2020;Jeong, 2020), the U.S. has issued no national policy on mask use. Rather, policy is set at state and municipal levels and contested at every scale. Some governors have issued statewide mask orders while others have left it to local authorities to issue masks orders, and some have issued edicts that actively contravene municipal and county orders (Flynn & Iati, 2020).
The piecemeal manner in which mask use has been indicated by U.S. authorities is complicated by the lack of specificity as to what type and the unpredictable availability of various types. This allows for a wide variety of individual choice, a point which dovetails with the fact that masks are worn not only to protect, but also to make a statement (Silver, 2020). In this dynamic situation, the possibilities for addressing this suddenly-ubiquitous artifact as an object of design research are myriad.
In order to discern the design dimensions of heterogenous artifacts, systems, and processes, it is helpful to conceive of design as a mode of solving problems where the solution has a communicative capacity (Briggs, 2020)  Ideas about mask-wearing are tied to perspectives about the truth of science. People hold varying beliefs about what wearing a mask will accomplish. They may want to keep themselves safe, or they may believe it can help to keep others safe. If one believes the mask is meant to protect the wearer, the decision to wear it may be based on how much risk one perceives in the community, how much risk one is willing to bear, or the extent to which one believes the mask is effective at mitigating that risk. Such questions assume the wearer has not already been exposed to . Conversely, if one believes the mask is meant to protect others, then the decision to wear it may be based on the perception of how much risk the community faces, understanding that people who do not have symptoms may have been exposed to the virus and be asymptomatic carriers, and the extent to which one feels invested in protecting others' health. All of these questions are affected by whether the wearer believes he or she may have already been exposed to Covid-19 or is experiencing symptoms.
In order to grasp the mask's epidemiological function, seemingly contradictory ideas must be held in concert: I don't feel sick. It is possible that I have been exposed to Covid-19. I could be an asymptomatic carrier. Wearing a mask protects others in the community from exposure to any virus I may be carrying. This will reduce the viral load at the community level. As a member of the community, I gain protection when others do the same.  where infections are spiking. Such conflicting directives are both reflective and causative of controversy about the truth of the science on Covid-19's spread.
In order to consider the ethical stakes of this controversy we might select Honesty and trust and Wellbeing, nodes that together describe relative confidence in epidemiological data and discourse. In the Research Traditions component we can select Complexity and emergence.
Emergence is a phenomenon wherein entities take on properties their parts do not possess individually, as for example when a population gains herd immunity or begins wearing face masks or otherwise changes its behavior at a significant scale. Emergent properties and behaviors occur when parts interact with other parts of a wider whole. They appear when discrete entities or agents interact in a manner that forms complex behaviors, as in the case of the patterns of disease observed in the science of epidemiology. In order to deploy complexity and emergence as a design research methodology, as opposed to as an epidemiological research methodology, we have also selected Ethnomethodology, the examination of social behaviors and practices that produce and maintain the social order. Ideas about mask-wearing are tied to perspectives about individual agency. Given that our objective is to demonstrate the DRI model's capacity for generating research questions and agendas, and that answering such questions would fall beyond the scope of our paper, let us turn to another major factor in mask-wearing. Whereas it has long been common in Asian societies for citizens who are not feeling well to wear a mask in order to protect others from illness, mask-wearing has been much less common in Western societies (Chan, 2020). Prior to the emergence of Covid-19 there was little to no discussion of using masks to protect individuals outside of healthcare settings. Consequently, recent public health directives to wear masks are frequently misunderstood to be aimed at protecting the wearer (Tufekci, Howard, & Greenhalgh, 2020). This has raised debates about what kind of mask one should wear in order to accomplish this task.
Mask directives have caused a significant change in public behavior, but there is a correspondingly significant debate about what wearing a mask means. For example, some read mask-wearing as an indication of awareness of public health policy and epidemiological function or solidarity with fellow citizens, while others have framed mask-wearing as a purposeful assault on individual freedom, and the U.S. President has argued that citizens who wear masks are doing so for the express purpose of demonstrating political opposition to his administration (Bender, 2020;North, 2020    In order to gain traction on the complex and dynamic phenomenon wherein which a global change of public awareness and political will has emerged in the context of the pandemic,

Design Inquiry Perspectives on Dynamic Visualizations and Interactive Maps
It is exceptional in democracies to see national and regional authorities implement mass home confinement, restriction of geographic mobility, and prohibitions on public gatherings. Using an agent-based model simulation (ABM), Stevens (2020) illustrated the relevance of individual decisions and collective compliance with top-down governmental decisions ( Figure 7). This dynamic chart presents the curve behavior of a hypothetical virus in four different scenarios: in normal life, in forced quarantine, in moderate social distancing, and in extensive social distancing including closed public gatherings. Figure 8 shows how the DRI model can be used to analyze Stevens's ABM simulation. The design modes and methods Stevens used include Modeling and simulation, Visual narratives, and Information visualization. Although highly simplified, Stevens' visualization emerges from the interactions of individual agents with scripted rules. That is, each time the simulation is ran it yields a somewhat different output. This dynamic visualization is nondeterministic, a property of research traditions that account for Complexity and emergence in social systems (Sawyer, 2005). ABMs of restricted mobility and social distance policies yield scenarios that challenge the accepted moral norms associated with some of the nodes in the ethical stakes component such as regular Urban social practices (Wolfram, 2020) and medical Infrastructure accessibility (Kerr et al., 2020). For example, quarantines and social distancing constitute As to the ethical stakes of Infrastructure management, other complementary ABMs that account for some demographics and real transmission networks (Currie et al., 2020) bring to the fore the moral issues associated with how protective and medical equipment, pharmaceutical products, and tests are allocated. At the city or state level, rural areas or lessdense neighborhoods might receive them later than their urban or more populous counterparts. At the global level, nations funding Covid-19 research might receive them before less-invested countries. ABMs are partial abstractions of reality. Therefore, the Opacity of accessibility to Infrastructures associated with structural racial disparities cannot be derived from general models with homogeneous populations. For this reason, Williams and Blanco (2020)   Covid-19 cases by White, Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American ethnic groups based on data of 55% of U.S. population (Oppel, Gebeloff, Lai, Wright, & Smith, 2020). Using a series of six sequential color scales, each hue represents the ethnic group with the highest number of cases, while saturation indicates the size of infected population. Areas with higher saturation reflect Black and Latino cases, except in the case of Native Americans in Arizona. Oppel et al. conclude that Latinos and African-Americans are three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors. Some structural factors could explain these statistics: Black and Latino workers are more likely to hold jobs that require their physical presence, such as in factories, manufacturing facilities or infrastructures that supply essential services, and more likely to commute by public transportation. In some counties, the density of residents per housing unit is higher for Latino populations, a factor which hinders social distancing.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The DRI networks outlined in sections 2.1 and 2.2 critique the value systems underpinning the fabrication and maintenance of design interventions. Such value systems predate pandemic-related ordinances that restrict agency or exacerbate social imbalances.
Consequently, many current design interventions reinforce, intendedly or unintendedly, existing inequities in public realms like health policy and urban planning. To be clear, designers should not be held solely responsible for these ethical issues; after all, design experts and nonexperts conjointly make the artificial world (Manzini, 2015 Not in vain does the DRI model qualify matters of concern as reasons that justify the design of improved futures. This ethos differs from the Western logic of faster, better, cheaper, stronger. Instead, it invites designers and citizens to care for diverse, undermined, neglected and vulnerable agencies, including non-human agencies. Improved futures are possible when design solutions account for the relational nature of life and embrace all the agencies that constitute us as humans. To that end, there is a need for an alternative worldview to Protagoras' homo-mensura dictum (man is the measure of all things) with which to structure next-decade design research programs. Life-centered (Escobar, 2018), posthuman (Forlano, 2017), and relational perspectives (Gergen, 2009) on design, together with research methods capable of embracing ethics, complexities, participation and hybridizations, are foundational to the project of designing fair, heterogenous and sustainable futures.
In this paper we illustrated how the proposed DRI model serves to critically examine face masks and data visualizations published in mass media. As many other solutions implemented by public policy specialists around the globe, these ones carry controversies about the truth of science, the trade-offs of self vs. community health risks, and the neglected inequalities due to race and ethnicity that, in the case of the United States, render communities of color more vulnerable than others. The pandemic brought to light spaces of design inquiry on the consequences of political and public health decisions of conveniently loading designed artifacts with populist symbolism, and on the critical role of communication designers in translating the complexity of diverse and collective action into graspable visual messages for individual decision making. Future visions of good design should embrace sustainable, fair, and desirable ways of coexisting.
The analysis presented herein shows the critical and provocative potential of the DRI model.
It allows design researchers to formulate descriptive, analytical or generative design research questions and invites them to explore methodological approaches to address them.
Using it foments knowledge of and expertise with research traditions and directs attention to ethical stakes in a manner that young scholars and design practitioners will find useful to their academic training. As stated earlier, the given array of nodes is not exhaustive; rather, design researchers can add nodes to better represent their research programs or, as illustrated herein by the introduction of the Structural racism node, encapsulate node associations in generalizable concepts. 2 Just as twentieth-century particle physicists displaced the concept of an imperceptible physical "ether" in which entities were disposed, so Latour argues that the notion of "society" as context, an extra variable that complicates or confounds activity taking place in other "nonsocial" domains set within it-another kind of "ether"-should be discarded.