by Max Munnecke, founder of ma3x.com

The purpose of ma3x.com is to develop a practice-oriented framework to understand the dynamics of everyday life and how to envision alternative ways of living.

Typically, new ways of living are envisioned in relation to radical innovation or as part of future studies, but often such visions are developed to attract attention and not to profoundly enrich peoples lives.

An Important Challenge

At ma3x.com we acknowledge the potential of visions to guide the development of society - and even be self-fulfilling - so we believe that the work with visions should be taken serious. After all it is the fundamental living conditions that are at stake.

It implies that we must invest energy in analyzing the change and continuity of everyday life over time, so that we can learn from the past and understand under which circumstances things may change. These insights can then act as support for envisioning radically different ways of living that explore what is possible and desirable.

Making Sense with Practices

The complexity and fuzziness of the task at hand is truly overwhelming, so the success of this approach is highly dependent on the ability to make sense of everyday life. Inspired by recent ground-breaking research by Elizabeth Shove at Lancaster University, we will assume that the solution is to use a “practice-oriented” approach to understand the dynamics of everyday life. It has been shown that the approach can get to the essence of everyday life, how everyday life makes meaning to people as well as enlighten fundamental issues such as co-design and empowerment.

In addition we use “practices” as the unit of analysis to create a extended framework that connect peoples everyday life with businesses and society, so we can profoundly deal with large scale challenges such as sustainability, social innovation and responsibility.

A Designerly Approach

Even with this potent practice-oriented approach in place it is a very demanding process. Multi-disciplinary team must collect, generate and process information, new insights will continuously re-define the assignment and there will always be a need for more investigation. We therefore assume that the process will be driven by designerly methods that can efficiently master the challenging nature of the process.

In particular visualization techniques are excellent vehicles for making sense of multi-faceted information and may facilitate communication between various stakeholders so that a wider selection of people, businesses and society can be drawn into the process.

Democratize the Future

In the end - if we succeed developing an inclusive and operational framework - it is the hope that it will encourage a process in which people, businesses and society can express their views, negotiate their desires and empower them to make their preferred visions come alive for the benefit of everyone.