Designing Controversies and Their Publics

This is an article in the journal Design Issues which discusses controversy mapping, a method derived from Science and Technology Studies used to explore and represent sociotechnical issues. The article draws on the authors' practical and conceptual work together in a European-funded project which aimed to make the intricacy of scientific debate readable to a larger public. The paper argues that controversy mapping is trapped in a classic simplicity/complexity trade-off: how to respect the richness of controversies without designing maps too complicated to be useful? Having worked on the question for almost two years in a project bringing together social scientists, designers and activists, the authors propose a way out of this contradiction and suggest three ways of moving through the simplicity/complexity continuum. The first movement - by multiplying the number of maps and by taking into account users before the beginning and after the end of the design process - makes it possible to bypass the simplicity/complexity trade-off. The second movement binds together narration and exploration and allows publics to venture into the maze of controversies, unraveling the story that will guide them out. The third movement makes it possible to involve publics through all the phases of a cartographic campaign and to engage with controversy maps again and again.

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