This is a CTP of initiative: DESIS - DESIS Lab Florianópolis (Brazil)
The Cooperative of the women food producers from Governador Celso Ramos (Santa Catarina, Brazil) or COLIMAR is a cooperative of women who produce seafood based products. In 2010, NAS DESIGN engaged in a partnership with the cooperative and for four years, they developed specific projects for the cooperative in graphic design and branding (visual identity and packaging for their products) and in ergonomics/human factors ( visual aid designs in their factories to orient the workflow).
This was an important partnership because it was a full-process experience. Before this partnership, it was hard for the lab to engage in long and complex projects. This partnership involved multiple research projects and different approaches. Many alternatives had been ruled out; it was a very intense process.
This was the first time in which the interviewee experienced a beginning, a middle and an end in a project, passing through all the process steps:
“It was interesting to have many students involved with the lab and working on different projects and perspectives within the same subject (COLIMAR). Ergonomic research was carried out, we studied corporate activity, worked with products, developed graphic design pieces. It was a very complete project”.
Before this partnership, the lab worked with the Cooperative of Women Producers of Taboa, in Guarda do Embau city (Santa Catarina, Brazil), which produces products based on Taboa fibers, a typical aquatic plant that comes from swamps. Furthermore, NAS DESIGN also worked with the Public Prosecutors Office of Santa Catarina (governmental organization that aims to monitor compliance with the law, defending the rights of the society of Santa Catarina) and the University Hospital (both in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil), developing projects in graphic design and in ergonomics/human factors (signalization design) for these organizations.
Because of those experiences, the lab became known by cooperatives and social organizations. Because of that publicity, COLIMAR contacted the lab and the partnership began in 2010. It became a different kind of partnership mostly because of the length of the relationship which promoted lots of different research projects and developments. During four years lots of students and teachers were involved in projector with COLIMAR. They considered this partnership as an achievement for the group as they developed the lab struture from working only within isolated projects with communities, into participating in a whole system of initiatives and working with the community systemically and through a longer period than before.
2007-2009 - NAS DESIGN participated in the project LOLA - From 2007 until 2009, the laboratory participated in the project LOLA (Looking for Likely Alternatives), which is a didactic tool used to approach sustainability by investigating social innovation. It aimed to foster interest and involvement in education for sustainability and responsible living in the national school curricula.
2010-2012 - Partnership with Cooperative of Women Producers of Taboa - The lab engaged in a partenership with an external actor, a community cooperative. The lab´s team developed a project based on the creation of a visual identity for cooperative products.
2010 - Partnership with AMPE Alto Vale (Association of the Micro and Small Entrepreneurs from the Alto Vale). The experience with AMPE was very important to lab´s development as they faced a huge challenge in (1) attending the Association´s demands (lots of families to work with) and (2) the distance between the lab´s headquarter and AMPE, which are located in different cities.
2010 – Began to use the territorial development approach. The contact with local communities made the laboratory change its approach in order to respond to current challenges in a better way. Thia approach impacts the lab´s projects until now.
At first, COLIMAR has a huge expectation towards the Lab´s work. As the interviwee recognizes: "There was an expectation that design would solve everything. But often the problem was not design".
Other times there was an expectation that the project group would take a ready-to-go solution to the problems, but the lab does not work that way. The NAS DESIGN lab promotes a collective approach to finding solutions, its projects have as a main characteristic the involvement of those who are receiving the results of the projects, as said by the interviwee:
"We do not want an advisory client, we want a active customers who understand their problems. We try to guide the process to find a collective solution".
There was also a lack of maturity from the group of researchers as well as the community. Both of the groups did not have previous experience working with each other. The relationship between university (lab) and community (COLIMAR) also needed to be establised as a solid base in order to develop a collective process and generate good outcomes. There is an example that the interviewee recalled and illustrates the difficulties they faced in this phase:
"There was this case of badly packaged products and we needed to solve it. At some point I needed to explain to the producer that the product was shown badly in the package or that she was not being careful enough with the product. This conversation caused embarrassment for both parties. The person making the criticism (in this case, myself) had to be sensitive, and the person receiving it could take it in different ways: he/she could understand and recognize the need to be more careful, he/she could ignore the conversation and pretend it did not happen, or he/she could get angry with the group of researchers and hinder the development of actions because he/she would not not take the criticism well. There were some relational problems and the group had a lack of maturity to deal with them”.
This partnetship was not seem as a CTP while it happened. It started like any other project for the lab. As the interviwee said: "It had a very small delimitation; it was a small project in the beginning. We do not predict any of it".
At first, the lab had little involvement with this specific project because it was related to a master’s student’s project and only this project was linked to COLIMAR at the beginning of the partnership:
"From this projet we evolved to have greater involvement with the community".
Because of the project conducted by the master´s student, the researchers understood that COLIMAR had many demands, therefore it could be a very interesting object of study for the laboratory. At the same time, women of COLIMAR were gaining confidence in the work that was being developed by the lab, which provided the laboratory the opportunity to carry out other projects that were not planned at the beginning.
The women were getting involved in the process. There was a change in behavior in relation to what was being done, they no longer recognized themselves as recipients of solutions, but wanted to be part of the process.
When all the projects were finalized, after the lab systematized the case, they realized the greatness and complexity that the project had achieved. Over the years they explored many directions and produced knowledge about different areas of design in a a very organic process.
Only afterwards it was understood that the partnership with COLIMAR had yielded many results and it was an unique experience unlike all other experienced before it in the lab.
An important point was that the finalization of the project was not due to the ending of a master’s or a doctorate: it finished because COLIMAR ran out of work at that time.
Research needs to be done jointly and collaboratively. The magnitude that the project reached would not have been possible if each one had thought individually about their research and did not have a collaborative posture, both among researchers, peers and with COLIMAR women:
“We developed knowledge from different design areas and in different levels, considering theory and practice. So in terms of research at the university, it was a great opportunity”.
There is also recognition of the importance of having a facilitator who is aware of the whole process and indicates how the teamwork should be done. They also think it would be usefull if they had periodic reports in order to keep up with the information and process of ongoing projects:
“At some point we had five different research projects going on in COLIMAR. Sometimes it was hard to keep track of what everybody was doing and who to ask for specific information. We did not have many reports and maybe we should have had those, because all the information was held in the coordinator’s head".
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