The Principles of Design for Vulnerable Communities: A Research by Design Approach Overrunning the Disciplinary Boundaries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

The article corrects a natural tendency of the intervention processes in vulnerable communities that act with a lot of good will, but not rigorously. This work systematizes a work process and provides rigorous analysis and research tools. It is based on the appropriate literature and clarifies a work process that is usually considered without scientific professionalism. It is another step forward for good intentions to be transformed into real improvements for societies such as the one under study in this case. It is possible that, in order to have solid conclusions, it is necessary to repeat this process in other cases, as the article promises, but what this work does is to configure a systematization of the process, through the synthesis in the Krebs Circle, which is applicable to many other locations. It is necessary to do this work of abstraction and rationality that can guide future work of intervention.

The next step, in my opinion, will be to establish a tool for validating the results of possible design interventions, in the long run, based on the same Krebs circle as a synthetic view of complex problems, with the aim to be able to measure the results obtained with the intervention.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

The article corrects a natural tendency of the intervention processes in vulnerable communities that act with a lot of good will, but not rigorously. This work systematizes a work process and provides rigorous analysis and research tools. It is based on the appropriate literature and clarifies a work process that is usually considered without scientific professionalism. It is another step forward for good intentions to be transformed into real improvements for societies such as the one under study in this case. It is possible that, in order to have solid conclusions, it is necessary to repeat this process in other cases, as the article promises, but what this work does is to configure a systematization of the process, through the synthesis in the Krebs Circle, which is applicable to many other locations. It is necessary to do this work of abstraction and rationality that can guide future work of intervention.

The next step, in my opinion, will be to establish a tool for validating the results of possible design interventions, in the long run, based on the same Krebs circle as a synthetic view of complex problems, with the aim to be able to measure the results obtained with the intervention.

Dear reviewer 1, thank you very much for the time you spent in this review and for your comments. We really appreciate that you value the importance of finding a systematization of design processes when working in vulnerable communities. As stated in the article, we strongly believe that this systematization will assume an even greater importance in the next decades, when importance changes will affect the most vulnerable communities.

As you underlined - and as stated in the article - the next step is to consolidate the results obtained in this research project, through the application of the “Krebs Circle of Design for Vulnerables” in other contexts. Experiments, in this regard, are taking place in the historic center of the city of Chihuahua, in a very problematic neighborhood, in the same city as the presented case study (Paso del Norte) but inserted in a very different socio-cultural (and environmental) context.

In the new version of this manuscript, we added some details coming from your comments and from the observations of Reviewers 2. In particular, we specified that “some interventions are planned in both these communities and the authors are committed to measure the results obtained with these interventions”

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The manuscript analyses a design workshop of the vulnerable population in Mexican community of Paso del Norte in order to define methodologies suitable to reduce future urban vulnerabilities. The topic of the article is important and timely. The article is based on a well-documented participatory design project which increases its credibility. The material (together in the main text and supplements) is very extensive and from the point of view of an academic teacher, it gives the possibility of practical use - and makes you interested in how the proposed research by design works in practice.

However, I have the following comments:

1.     The introduction is very general. In large parts of the text, it does not sound scientific, because the authors made a lot of general statements, not supported by references. In my opinion, they require references or clarification. This applies, for example, to sentences in the lines: 33-35, 37-39, 76-78, 110-112, 186-187, 200-202.

2.     On line 20, the authors refer to other studies. What exactly is this research?

3.     The purpose of the study is not sufficiently emphasized. It is easier to find in an abstract than in the main text.

4.     I am not convinced by looking for the knowledge gap on the basis of one database (scopus) and on the basis of only 10 articles with the highest number of citations.

5.     Materials and Methods: The method of operation is quite well described, but I do not see the number of people attending the workshop and I do not know which universities and laboratories participated (line 335). More information in section 3.2 would be useful for someone who would like to apply a similar Research by Design. There is also no description of Krebs Cycle of Creativity in this section. Why did the authors use this particular tool?

6.     Line 422: "research by design methodology" - requires reference and line 477 (similar)

7.     Section 4.3.2 has been shortened in the main text so that nothing is clear from figure 6. This chart is hard to interpret. It seems that it would be worth expanding this section or adding a summary of the text from Appendix E.

8.     Section 5 seems to be further research results – not the discussion. Journal rules allow for a combination of discussion and results, but there is no comparison with other studies (the statement in lines 806-808 is not enough).

 

 

The cited references are current. The most of them have been published within the last 5 years. The research conclusions are consistent with the evidence and arguments presented, although as the authors themselves indicate, “suitable solutions are not tested against the uncertain futures”, and communication from the community may have been limited. So the question is whether the manuscript's results would be reproducible in a different case?

Author Response

Reviewer 2

The manuscript analyses a design workshop of the vulnerable population in Mexican community of Paso del Norte in order to define methodologies suitable to reduce future urban vulnerabilities. The topic of the article is important and timely. The article is based on a well-documented participatory design project which increases its credibility. The material (together in the main text and supplements) is very extensive and from the point of view of an academic teacher, it gives the possibility of practical use - and makes you interested in how the proposed research by design works in practice.

Dear reviewer 2, thank you very much for the time you spent in this review and for your comments. We really appreciate your positive comments to our research and manuscript. We made some adjustments to our manuscript, according to your comments. In particular, we focused our attention to clearly present the results, as aspect that you highlighted in the Review Report Form.

 

However, I have the following comments:

1. The introduction is very general. In large parts of the text, it does not sound scientific, because the authors made a lot of general statements, not supported by references. In my opinion, they require references or clarification. This applies, for example, to sentences in the lines: 33-35, 37-39, 76-78, 110-112, 186-187, 200-202.

Thank you for this observation. We added the proper references, which we used in the first stages of the research, to these sentences that you highlighted:

33-35: “Cities must be again the place that allows the human flourishing and the enhancement of the communitarian environment” [Gutkind, The Expanding Environment]

37-39: “It is inappropriate to think that society can address the current challenges with the current processes and policies, which partially are the generators of many of the problems themselves” [Jackson, Prosperity without growth: economics for a finite planet]

76-78: “Furthermore, as also shown by the Covid-19 outbreak and the need for social distancing, the lack of social ties led to several serious situations, such as domestic violence or isolation” [Anurudran, Domestic violence amid COVID-19 + Giorgi, Co-housing response to social isolation of covid-19 outbreak]

110-112: “Recent approaches comprehend community participation as the main way to an appro-priate sustainable development design in vulnerable communities” [Santhanam, Community Participation for Sustainable Development + Warburton Community and Sustainable Development + Ugwu community participation as a tool for the promotion of sustainable community development]

186-187: “Although, the contemporary global condition is absolutely the best in the history of mankind (long life expectancy, smallest percentage of people living in extreme poverty, etc.) the contemporary world is literally altered by epochal changes that have a huge qualitative and quantitative impact on the planet and the humanity” [Merino, Poverty and Design, an Economics and Policy Perspective]

200-202: “The change in climatic phenomena can be observed, among other things, in the increase in temperatures, in a new distribution of extreme atmospheric phenomena (hurricanes, storms, etc.) or in changes in sea currents” [Lucatello, Climate Resilient Development Pathways in the US-Mexico Border Region: The Case of the El Paso del Norte Metropolitan Area]

2. On line 20, the authors refer to other studies. What exactly is this research?

We are sorry, but we can not understand exactly what you refer about with the “other studies” named on line 20. According to our document, line 20 belong to the abstract, where we anticipate the Design Workshop and the Research by Design methodology. If you refer to this part of the abstract, we would answer that toth the sentences refer to our Research Project “Design for Vulnerables”. If we are misunderstanding this point, please, let us know.

3. The purpose of the study is not sufficiently emphasized. It is easier to find in an abstract than in the main text.

Thank you for the observation. We made it clearer and more visible, adding, at the beginning of “2. Knowledge gap and Emergencies that the research aims to fill”, the following sentence:

This section explains why the "Design for Vulnerables" research project aims to define which design methodologies should be adopted to reduce urban vulnerabilities in the coming decades, generating a set of principles of Design for Vulnerables, graphically represented by a re-interpretation of the “Krebs Cycle”.

4. I am not convinced by looking for the knowledge gap on the basis of one database (Scopus) and on the basis of only 10 articles with the highest number of citations.

The analysis to define the knowledge gap has been performed on a wider number of scientific resources. For clarity and readability, the authors decided to present just the 10 most cited resources, which represent the most significant resources for the academic knowledge. As you well state, anyway, these observations about the knowledge gap can be also extended to general Science outreach (and actually is what we did). Nevertheless, the manuscript has already more than 80 references. So, we considered that presenting all the documents we used to define the research gap, the article would become a literature review product, which is not the goal of this article.

Anyhow, following this comment we better clarified these aspects in the 2.1 paragraph adding the following sentences:

“The authors performed a deep review of the academic literature, looking for the existing knowledge in the field of design for vulnerable communities. Scientific publi-cations and outreaches have been analyzed to understand the relevance of the research project. The lack of holistic and multidisciplinary approach is particularly relevant in the most cited articles on this topic, in the areas of Social Sciences, Environmental Sciences and Arts and Humanities. Among all the studied material, for clarity and readability, the authors decided to present here just the 10 most cited articles, which represent the most significant resources for the academic knowledge. In fact, if we consider the most cited Scopus…”

Moreover, since the whole literature material we collected is very wide, we consider writing a following literature review article about the existing of this important scientific gap in the academic literature.

5. Materials and Methods: The method of operation is quite well described, but I do not see the number of people attending the workshop and I do not know which universities and laboratories participated (line 335). More information in section 3.2 would be useful for someone who would like to apply a similar Research by Design. There is also no description of Krebs Cycle of Creativity in this section. Why did the authors use this particular tool?

Thank you for asking to clarify. For the “Interdisciplinary Round Tables”, in appendix B the names of the participating experts are presented (with their respective affiliations). We did not modify anything in the text.

For the “Design groups” we added in “3.2.4. Design groups” what you asked:

“In the activities of the design groups, 28 people attended the workshop as members and 8 persons as mentors. They participated from:

• Professional practice (as professional designers or studios): 10 Mexican professionals (Chihuahua and León) and 1 Spanish professional (Barcelona).
• Universities: from Italy (University of Pavia) and Mexico (Tecnológico de Monterrey in Chihuahua, Tecnológico de Monterrey in León, ISAD, Universidad de La Salle)
• Laboratories and Schools: Sustainable Territorial Development (Tecnológico de Monterrey) and UPLAB (University of Pavia).”

6. Line 422: "research by design methodology" - requires reference and line 477 (similar)

Thank you for this comment. We added the proper references to these sentences.

422: “According to the Research by Design methodology, being able to use very clear and defined design instruments is key to having an objective and reliable research process” [Verbeke, This Is Research by Design]

477: “Although participation, as a design methodology, is researched and applied on many occasions of theoretical and practical exercises, this is still a methodology that requires constant development and attention, in order to be effective” [Aish, Human Computer Interaction Systems and Educational Strategies to Support Design Participation]

7. Section 4.3.2 has been shortened in the main text so that nothing is clear from figure 6. This chart is hard to interpret. It seems that it would be worth expanding this section or adding a summary of the text from Appendix E.

Before the first submission we discussed a lot about the way to explain this part of the manuscript. Thank you for giving these advices. We removed all those aspects which could make the reading difficult, and we also expanded this section adding a summary of the Appendix E. Moreover, we also changed the Figure 6, making explicit some details of the table, in order to make it more readable. Also considering the following comment (8^th about results and discussion), we considered important to add some text discussing the table’s results.

So, we added these sentences:

The comparison was made by means of a matrix defined by the Emerging Topics, grouped in the 4 main categories (columns) of Challenges, Understanding, Focusing and Strategies and the 5 design projects. After the workshops, these projects have been analyzed, by the designers itself, through the categorizes of “goals” (G), “interventions” (I) and “elements” (E) (lines) to facilitate the association between design solutions and emerging topics.

Relating to the summary of the Appendix E, we added the following resume:

Project 1 “Networks and nodes”

The project proposes some clear objectives, reducing environmental contamination, moving the attention of the local government toward the community, and integrating the community (to the formal city and within itself). Sustainable and regenerative approaches guide the interventions to reach these goals, while the river and the landscape become the two most relevant elements to work with. For this first team, some considerations deserve to be highlighted. No references have been done to: (1) Climate change and its consequences; (2) Technological development; (3) Human Development Index; (4) Resilience of the Urban Food System. While, differently from other groups, they pay attention to Digitalization and Remote Sensing as way to focus on the design for vulnerable communities.

Project 2 “Sense of belonging”

This team focuses its attention on challenges of Human Impact on the Environment, Health Environment and Political Responsibilities. According to their proposal, Kids, participation in the communitarian life and public gardens have a principal role in the design for vulnerable communities. Anyway, no attention is given to the issues of: (1) Climate change and its consequences; (2) Technological development; (3) Digitalization and Remote Sensing; (4) Resilience of the Urban Food System and (5) Technology for Citizens’ participation.

Project 3 “Community management”

This third group defines four priorities related to global challenges: (1) control of the garbage management; (2) renovation of hygienic infrastructures; (3) technology as means of training the community and (4) strong partnership with local government. To reach these goals, particular relevance is given to temporary relief (at least, design, financing, and construction) and lasting solutions (hub for workshops and teaching). Anyway, as most of the other groups, no attention is given to the issues of: (1) Climate change and its consequences; (2) Digitalization and Remote Sensing; (3) Resilience of the Urban Food System. Moreover, differently to the other projects, this group don’t consider the issues of (4) Energy Poverty; (5) Social Inclusion and Health; and (6) Integration with the formal environment.

Project 4 “Ecological corridor”

The fourth group centers on the challenge related to the “Human Impact on the Environment”, focusing on “Business Awareness” and “Social Inclusion and Health”, while proposing strategies mainly related to “Heritage and Residual Spaces”. In particular, the environmental issues are related to the design of an ecological corridor which can connect the community with the formal environment, enhancing the existing the cultural and natural landscape heritage. As the other groups, no attention is paid to (1) Climate change and its consequences; and (2) Resilience of the Urban Food System. Moreover, no attention is given to (3) Technological development; (4) Human Development Index; (5) Technology for Citizens’ participation.

Project 5 “Tourist route”

This fifth project refers mainly to the development of a route for tourism connecting the community to the natural resources in the natural landscape surrounding the community. The main goals refer to creatin awareness about caring for the ecosystem and to improve the social environment, as well as enhancing technological capacities and political responsibilities. As in almost all the other groups, references are missing to the (1) Climate change and its consequences; (2) Digitalization and Remote Sensing and (3) Resilience of the Urban Food System.

8. Section 5 seems to be further research results – not the discussion. Journal rules allow for a combination of discussion and results, but there is no comparison with other studies (the statement in lines 806-808 is not enough).

Thank you for this observation. To be aligned with the Journal rules we enriched the discussion in this section, by adding several considerations. Here they are:

As shown in the literature review, there are no prior researches discussing this holistic view of the problem and an overall design method. The results of this research project highlight how this vision is appropriate and allows the development of a coherent and global discussion on emerging issues for design in vulnerable communities.

…

In contemporary scientific literature, there are several different approaches that introduces reflections like those presented here in the previous points. Nevertheless, a methodology merging all these approaches is missing, since this research presents a new focus (vulnerable communities in the next decades) which has not been taken in consideration before. Moreover, in some cases, based on an old way to analyse design methodologies, these emerging approaches could seem even antithetic. For example, philosophies related to the abandonment of anthropocentrism arrive even to reject integration of technological devices in sustainable solutions, as highlighted by Cole [REF] and Zhang [REF]. On the contrary, this research shows how integrating technology to “no-anthropocentric” solutions rep-resents a valid method to design for vulnerables.

…

These results and concerns are in line with the results presented internationally [REF, REF, REF, REF].

Moreover, we added several mentions along the whole section to give scientific references to the discussion.

Moreover, referring to lines 806-808 that you mentioned, in order to clarify the statement, in the “7. Conclusions and Recommendation”, instead of “Of course”, we wrote “As shown in the Existing knowledge gap… ”.

The cited references are current. The most of them have been published within the last 5 years. The research conclusions are consistent with the evidence and arguments presented, although as the authors themselves indicate, “suitable solutions are not tested against the uncertain futures”, and communication from the community may have been limited. So, the question is whether the manuscript's results would be reproducible in a different case?

Thank you for this observation. We are currently working on two other contexts (Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua city centre) – while starting a third one in Chiapas in the next months – in order to validate the conclusions and the instrument. We are going to present these results in a following article. Moreover, we added also a sentence referring to measuring the results obtained with interventions: “some interventions are planned in both these communities and the authors are committed to measure the results obtained with these interventions”.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear authors, thank you for all your answers and corrections. I have no other remarks. I think that the paper is very interesting and your research and all the actions were very valuable. Kind regards.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please find the comments in the attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Hello Authors,

your research represents a very important challenge to doing things the same old way.

The paper is a difficult read for a number of reasons that I now set out:

You appear confused as to whether you are reporting your project OR reporting the validation of a way of closing a gap i.e. Your adaption of the Krebs model. There are two papers there. I suggest that you go with the gap in theory/practice/Krebs model. Cut your reporting of the project down to a minimum. say 25% of what you have.

Your Introduction has all the wrong stuff in it. Do you realize that it is line 187 when you finally say what your reseaerch question is. So, a much shorter Introduction with much of the content put into a section 2.

The current passages in the Introduction are often assertions. They require support by citing credible sources.

Some sentences are not coherent.

Literature. That section must have sub-sections. One for each major topic that comprises your resewarch sectio. Perhaps one for settling your own definition of vulnerabilities in the modern context. That may be popular, cited by many. Then the last sub-section that talks about where the gap is an the important of filling that gap.

Research approach:

Use of sub-sections - good.

As already stated, don't report the project in such detail. Its more about the research by design elements, the different methods, the comparison, and analysis mrthods.

Results:

The detail of results reported is too deep. See if you can categorise, or use examples. remember you are not reporting the detailed outcome of the project, you are reporting the evidence that answers the research question which I recall is about design methods for vunerables.

Discussion:

Good that you have used sub-sections and titles. Very clear.

Have an introductory paragraph that reminds the reader of the research question. Then make the link to topics that you set out in each of the sub-sections.

I personally would make your Section 5 where you dfevelop your Krebs -based model as sub-section of the Discussion but can see that the size made you have a separate level one section. I do suggest that you prune 30% off your current section 5. It too adds to a paper that is fatiguing to read. Just make the points that are most important.

Conclusion and Recommendation:

This is one of the best I have reviewed this year. Don't change much. Just adjust for changes that you make to the papaer elsewhere.

Englisg language:

There areregularly sentences which are not clear to the reader. Have you manuscriot reviewed by a person ex[pert in your areas of research and English language.

warm regards

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Warm regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Please find the comments in the attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I have advised the Editor that the paper in its present form should not be published.

You have not paid respect to many of my suggestions and your paper remains confused.