IAE framework: creating change by rearranging of current arrangements

Ideas-Arrangements-Effects 

First week (Friday, 31 January, 2025) 

💭It is important that everyone who is obsessed with changing and improving society consider the IAE framework, as it can deepen our understanding of social contexts and expand our capacity to create change.

Before attending the first session of the second semester, I had to read an easy-read book named Ideas-Arrangements-Effects by Design Studio for Social Intervention. As a spatial practices student, reading this book has broadened my perspective and deepened my understanding of what greatly matters, from the very beginning, in designing a successful intervention which addresses issues within a society. 

💣What dose Ideas-Arrangements-Effects mean?

To explain the exact notion of Ideas-Arrangements-Effects this book exemplifies two different arrangements of some chairs in the classroom (linear and circular). From IAE point of view, rows of some chairs in the classroom conveys different ideas than circular arrangements of the same chairs do, so different effects will be produced in each arrangement. For example passive student and active students are two different effects which arise from two different arrangements. In essence, arrangements are expressions of ideas, also they produce effects. 

💥In fact, arrangements tell us how something happens. 

We can find the principle of Ideas-Arrangements-Effects in society, but much more complicated than leaner or circular arrangements of chairs in a classroom. For instance, ideas about value, labor, capitalism, and so on shape work arrangements which will have different effects like unemployment, poverty, etc.

 

💣How to create change and improve our society by applying IAE?

In a society some, named activists, deal with the effects. For example, they fight for an increased minimum wage to decrease poverty. Moreover, others, named social justice practitioners, mostly consider ideas, like  racism or sexism, led to negative effects. So arrangements are often taken for granted. 

💥IAE highly recommend that to improve social conditions and create change, rearranging of current social arrangements is much easier to do than rearranging of effects.

Ideas: 

IAE suggests inspecting both small and big ideas, since to create change we often consider big ideas without inspecting smaller ones, which might offer new opportunities for transformation. From IAE perspective big ideas remain sturdy, for example racist ideas which has been evident in social arrangements for a long time.

💥Understanding of why an arrangement has been formed contributes greatly to coming up with ideas to create change.

 

Arrangements: 

Examples of arrangements are the highway with its cars, speed limits, exits, the grocery store with its rows and stacks, prices, etc. In fact arrangements are our shared social container in which we participate and gain shared experiences. 

There are two kinds of arrangements; hard or physical arrangements like how the chairs are arranged in the classroom, and soft arrangements like how students are supposed to raise their hands before speaking. We are constantly and simultaneously experiencing soft and hard arrangements within society. For example When hanging out with friends, we are in  hard arrangements of being in the street and soft arrangements of being friends. There for effects are created by these integrated soft and hard arrangements. If we want to deal with an effect like youth violence, it would be better to inspect overlapping soft and hard arrangements like overcrowded bus and school hallway or the lack of youth jobs and affordable transit. Hard and soft arrangements constantly are intersecting and interacting in the society context.

💥When it comes to creating change, Arrangements are mostly neglected. In fact arrangements are the best option for us to consider when creating change and improving society.

💥So questioning, changing, and re-imagining multiple arrangements will lead to creating new effects which will make our lives more just and enjoyable.

 

Effects: 

They range from big things ( climate changes, food scarcity, low literacy rates, …) to little things ( the lack of jobs, fights at school between kids, the bus always running late, …). IAE framework asserts that a deeper awareness of small effects will give us new ideas for interventions or even whole new arrangements.

In my designs, I will try to see the society through the lens of IAE.😎