You are a Cultural Agent

Lee-Sean Huang | @leesean | leesean@purpose.com

Lee

Sean

Secret Agent

Secret Agent

Cultural Agent

80%
of cultural understanding is subconscious
Geert Hofstede

Linking beauty and purpose can create a sense of communal agreement that helps diminish the sense of disorder and incoherence that life creates. Milton Glaser

What?

Culture: the sum of all of our experiences

Design=
applied

Art

Design=
applied Art liberal

Own what you can always carry with you; know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your bag. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Culture is a toolkit for action.

Where?

What are the boundaries of design?

Charles ! Ray Eames

What are the boundaries of design? What are the boundaries of problems?

Charles ! Ray Eames

How do you redesign the user interface of civic participation in Rio de Janeiro?

Feedback

#FAIL

How do we create a culture of youth civic and political participation in Rio?

Design

Charles ! Ray Eames

a plan for arranging elements to best accomplish a particular purpose.

Dont Lose The Beat How can we re-arrange the elements of the New Orleans music economy to produce more resources for artists in need?

Dont Lose The Beat How do we create a culture of care for musicians in New Orleans?

Storytelling Protocols Artifacts

Our Values

We believe that increased participation by youth and members of the emerging middle class in the political process will help bring about greater accountability and transparency. We are non-partisan and independent. We dont accept money from government or political parties. We believe that the internet can serve as a school for a more robust democracy. We are committed to open source sharing. We value remix and reuse.

Evaluation Principles for Campaign Themes

RIPE ! SALIENT
Is the issue in the news/being talked about? Is it something that has strong public support and a groundswell of concern among our target audience?

ACTIONABLE

Can Meu Rio or its members do something about the issue? Is there a concrete and plausible political, social, or cultural action that can be taken to aect change?

POLITICAL/CULTURAL IMPACT

Meu Rios goal is to build a more participatory and open political culture in Rio. While not every campaign needs to directly inuence the political process, each campaign should have some short, medium, or long term political objective or impact on behavioral/cultural change among the citizens of Rio.

COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

Is this an issue or campaign where Meu Rio can take a leadership role while working with other partner organizations working in the same space? Does Meu Rio have a comparative advantage because of our member base, brand equity, and/or innovative use of technology?

EARNED MEDIA/LIST GROWTH

Will running the campaign generate free earned media and/or promote Meu Rio membership growth?

Evaluation Principles for Campaign Tools

CONNECTIVE

Tactics

Does it relate to existing user behaviors and social dynamics? Does it bring the community tighter together or connect people closer with their decision makers?

PARTICIPATORY USER SERVICE SCALABLE REUSABLE HACKABLE

Is it open-ended enough to invite participation but guided and usable enough to actually use?

Does it have a clear theory of change? Does the experience inspire, delight, or motivate users?

Does it work (both technologically and compelling for users) for 5 users as well as it does for 5 million)?

Can it be reused/repurposed by Meu Rio for future campaigns and not just a one-o novelty?

Is it open source/open API? Can it be reappropriated by users/hackers in new, exciting, unexpected ways or used by other cities/movements?

AWESOME/INTANGIBLES

Is it magical? Compelling in an intuitive/emotional way? Does it have that certain je ne sais quoi?

1
What is the problem? How do we work towards a solution?

2
What do you believe in? What are the rules of engagement?

3
Make social objects that invite participation.

Storytelling Protocols Artifacts

You are a Cultural Agent

Lee-Sean Huang | @leesean | leesean@purpose.com