Design for Informality

Design for
Informality
James Frankis

Design for
Informality
JamesFrankis
MFATransdisciplinaryDesign,2014

1
nformal systems are characterized as problematic,
undesigned and emergent. The upsides to their
existence are very rarely taken into account, yet,
informality often achieves things formal systems
never could. The value of informal systems comes
from the unique human ingenuity that drives their
development. Because of this natural ingenuity all
human systems contain a level of informality, even
those, which are traditionally defined as formal.
Designers often refer to this informality as the
‘unintended consequences’, ‘misuse’ or ‘hacks’ of
design. The idea of people informally re-appropriating
design for new uses is antithetical to most definitions
of good design and planning. Informal systems,
although often problematic, are actually the
workarounds individuals use in reaction to failing
formal systems. Design can, therefore, look to these
systems as a method for diagnosing and redesigning
broken formal systems. Furthermore, if we know that
it is the natural reaction for humans to re-appropriate,
hack and change designed systems, then we can begin
to design and predict this evolution. We can use these
theories to manufacture emergent and resilient human
behaviors and bring the value of informality to the
design of human systems.
Abstract
I
COMMUNITY
CENTERS
NGOS
GOVERNMENT
WORKERS
COMMUNITY
LEADERS
“CRIMINALS” YOUTH
YOUTH
GROUPS
GOVERNMENT
FAVELA

3
he red brick homes of the favelas of Brazil
have become a cultural icon across the
world. They represent the wealth inequalities across
the nation and stand as a monument to rebellion,
poverty, music, violence, dance and drugs.1
As
such, these homes have become iconic and now
through favelaexperience.com tourists coming to
Rio de Janeiro can stay in a favela.2
AirBNB.com has
listings for Rocinha, in “Rio’s safe, vibrant, centrally-
located favela”3
and NPR recently reported on the
rapid gentrification of favelas such as Babylon and
the new young professionals living there.4
While
it is questionable as to whether this is a positive
development for the inhabitants of favelas, this
incredible turn of events would have seemed
impossible only 20 years ago. The favelas of this
time are characterized by films like City of God, as
dystopian violent worlds of drug barons and running
gun battles through un-policed concrete jungles.5
The Brazilian government led multiple eviction
efforts and has destroyed favelas many times over.6, 7
Their reasoning was that they were unsafe, untenable
and illegal developments. Yet, the favelas achieved
something the government was fundamentally failing
to do: provide low-cost housing for the influx of rural
workers to the rapidly developing urban-centers.
Unfortunately, it seems that it wasn’t until middle
class people began visiting and staying in favelas,
through the pressures of gentrification, that they begin
to become ‘useful’. The reality is that favelas have
PARTONE
BazaaristanInformality, a valuable commodity.
T
Rua 25 da Março, São Paulo
©smartercitieschallenge.wordpress.com

PART ONE: BAZAARISTAN
4
fallen into the category of ‘informal’. A tag that carries a heavy load of
unwanted additional associations; illegal, unsafe, improper, undemocratic,
untaxed and undocumented. None of which are positive. Across the world
there are billions of people engaged in informal systems and informal
economies, just like favelas, many of which are highly valuable and
without which, our fragile societies would collapse. Yet, the informality
of them means they are often purposefully designed-out. Instead of the
rocky path favelas have trodden to viability and positive social status, they
could have been re-framed as a crowd-sourced, bottom-up alternatives to
low-cost housing. The purpose of this thesis is to attempt to define these
systems, identify their value for design and suggest how designers can
begin to design for informality, not against it.
WHAT IS INFORMALITY?
Informality is a difficult thing to define. It doesn’t quite mean illegal,
although informal workers often fall outside of the law, it also doesn’t
mean poor, as informal workers often earn more than their formal
counterparts. Informality is so difficult to define because it is an externally
imposed definition. The UK’s Small Business Council defines informal
work as follows:
“Informal work involves the paid production and sale of goods and
services that are unregistered by, or hidden from, the state for tax
and/or benefit purposes but which are legal in all other respects.”8
By this definition the only difference between a formal and informal
system is a governmental or social ruling, which is a very fine and
constantly shifting line. Waste pickers, or informal recyclers, during
the 17th century in the US were considered a necessary part of life, but
with the advent of formalized waste collection they drifted towards
informality.9
Today, across US urban centers it is easy to spot waste
pickers working to collect recyclable materials for deposit returns or re-
sale. Their function has stayed much the same, helping to reduce waste
and provide work for those who find other employment hard to find,
yet, they are now classed as informal. The definition of what is or isn’t
informal is constantly changing with social trends, legal precedents and
new policies.
Robert Neuwirth, in his book Stealth of Nations, reframes informality as
‘System-D’ or ‘System Débrouillard’, French for resilient, self-sufficient or
Informal waste picker, New York City.
Informal transaction, New York City.
Young children
playing in the favela
Paraisópolis, São Paulo

76
ingenious.10
The wonderful thing about this expression
is that it begins to define some of the benefits of
informality, rather than the presumed negatives. In
fact our ingenuity is often heralded as what makes us
uniquely human. It was our ability to repurpose rocks
and sticks into tools that led to our evolution from
‘cavemen’ to the high-functioning complex societies
we live in today.11
Now, we see this continuing drive,
ingenuity and determination most clearly in the
informal sector.
Across informal systems workers generate income,
deliver services, clear waste, create jobs, build
business, distribute goods and provide shelters; many
of the same aims that governments purport to provide.
The pervasive nature and huge successes that informal
economies display; clearly shows that informal
systems have value and, although often illegal, should
not be overlooked.
INFORMAL VALUE
Through our design-led research process and
creation of Mandou Bem, we uncovered the existing
informal system of youth activism, most notably in
the favelas of Brazil and Colonias of Texas. Informal
systems, however, exist across cities, cultures and
demographics from market sellers and grey market
importers in China, to waste pickers and under-
the-table delivery boys in New York city, to public
transport and water delivery in Lagos; informal
systems exist across all societies. We, formal society,
see them surrounding us and often shrug them off as
poverty, desperation or inferiority. In reality, these
informal systems and economies are highly valuable
from a cultural, business and ethical standpoint.
Markets, street sellers, panhandlers and hawkers
inhabit every city across the globe. It is the visibility of
informal street sellers that give so many places their
A hand made bicycle souvenir from favela artist, Barbella.
cultural vibrancy and booming tourist trade, from the heaving crowds
of Brick Lane market in London, to the knick-knacks sold under MASP
in São Paulo, to the caricaturists and informal artists filling Central
Park every summer. When tourists go abroad they often seek out local
culture and strive for cultural ‘realness’. The lack of authenticity and
global availability of big name brands makes their ‘souvenir-worthiness’
very low; we look for uniqueness, so we can attach meaning to an object,
treasure it and physically remember a special journey we took. What could
be more unique than a hand-crafted trinket sold by a local street seller? In
this culturally significant moment, we seek out people like informal sellers
so that we can get something ‘real’ and truly connect with another culture.
It is a common association when framed one way to view informality
as the ‘real’ culture of a place. In São Paulo, every middle class house is
fortified against street crime with walls and security guards.12
This made,
Megan’s and my, visit to the favelas a refreshing change. We saw little
moments like people laughing and talking on the streets, drinking coffee
at bars, sitting on benches and children playing with toys—all things that
are largely invisible in the rest of the city. It is unusual that in one moment
we enjoy an entire country’s culture through its informal systems, yet,
in the next, we write them off as unimportant, illegal and inferior.
Furthermore, these informal systems often prop up society. Across
New York, it is easy to spot a hunched figure rifling through a trash
can, pulling out recyclables and shoving them into a bulging plastic
bag. We find ourselves looking at these people with a sense of pity
and shame. The dirtiness of their informal work paints a negative
picture of them and their business. It has been estimated, however,
that informal waste pickers collect and recycle between 50% to 100%
of waste in many of the worlds cities.13
These informal waste pickers
provide cities like New York with a relatively low-cost service that
tends to be overlooked and even outlawed. Without their existence
many cities would be in a potential garbage crisis. Waste pickers are just
one example of an informal system that supports society and provides
services that, without which, cities would be greatly impoverished.
Not only do these systems support society, provide services and
stability, their economic value cannot be understated. For example,
the single street market, Rua 25 da Março,in São Paulo, pulls in four
hundred thousand people on weekdays, which adds up to $10 billion of
business a year in sales.14
This puts this one street market in the top 20
biggest businesses in Brazil.15
Neuwirth, in Stealth of Nations, imagines
Forbes list
11. $14.2 B.
$14.1 B.
$13.2 B.
$10 B.
$8 B.
$7.2 B.
$6.8 B.
$6.3 B.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
Cosan
Food Processing
BRF
Food Processing
Oi
Telecoms
Rua 25 Da Março
Street Market
CSN
Iron & Steel
CPFL Energia
Electric Utilities
Cemig
Electric Utilities
Embracer
Aero & Defense
11—18 of Brazil’s largest companies by
revenue compared to the São Paulo
street market, Rua 25 Da Março.
Source: The Forbes List
and Stealth of Nations.

98
the entire world’s informal economies altogether as
though they were a single country. In his work, he
nicknames this hypothetical country ‘Bazaaristan’.
Neuwirth, estimates ‘Bazaaristan’ would have a
$10 trillion economy placing it in the same GDP
league as the United States and China. To be clear,
this does not include highly criminal activities such
as gun-running, drug dealing and other organized
crime, and is considered to be a very conservative
estimate of the value of informal economies.16, 17
It is easy to imagine that informal economies are
mainly in developing countries, yet, In the United
States many small businesses begin as informal
systems. Either due to high taxes, expensive licensing
or ignorance of formal systems, small businesses
often operate informally until they reach a scale
where formality is viable. The Women Entrepreneurs
of Baltimore say this is as high as 25% of all the
entrepreneurs that come to their meetings.18
Frederick
T. Stanley, of Stanley tools, started his career as a
peddler selling tools from the back of a Mule and
Dick Sears began Sears Roebuck by selling watches
on trains.19
The British Small Business Council
estimates that even in developed countries, like
France, the informal economy is as large as 23.2%
of the total economy. The same report also points
out that the informal economy is heavily engaged
in and consumed by wealthy sectors of society
and there is no evidence to show that informality
is correlated to race, wealth, social status or
unemployment.20
The global value of informal systems
is only just being realized in what was previously
thought to be a damaging economic practice.
Informality is also not a way of life, nor is it a
permanent state. Rather, it is often adopted for a
short period of time or as a partial state. Informality
is not just practiced by the habitually unemployed
or migrant workers. The majority of people engaged
in informal work are ‘income patching’ or getting by
on a combination of formal and informal incomes.21
Often, the lure of bar or restaurant work, in a city
like New York provides the opportunity to work
for cash and therefore work outside of the formal
taxation and wage systems. This provides a living
$16.72Trillion
$10Trillion
$13.37Trillion
$4T
$5T
Comparing the world’s largest economies (USA, China, India
and Japan) with the total GDP of all informal activity.
Source: CIA World Fact Book.
Categories of informal work in the UK.
Source: Small Businesses in the Informal Economy, SBC UK.
��
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47%
23%
5%
25%
of Informal work is
conducted by formal
small businesses.
In the UK
Micro
Entrepreneurs
Paid Favors
Pre-Organized
make up the remaining 53%
Ireland
Min.
Percentage of GDP
Minimum estimate Maximum estimateAverage Estimate
Max.Av.
Greece
Key
Italy
Portugal
France
USA
Spain
Belgium
Canada
Sweden
Denmark
Netherlands
Germany
Australia
Great Britain
Norway
Austria
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Minimum, average and maximum estimates of informal economies as a percentage of total GDP in developed countries.
Source: Small Businesses in the Informal Economy, SBC UK.
for people ranging from illegal immigrants to
college graduates. In the UK, 47% of all informal
work is created by formal small business.22
So often informality skirts, subverts or breaks
laws and, is therefore considered to be immoral.
Yet, at the same time without informality, New
York City’s heavily informal restaurant industry
would collapse. Informal family businesses like
Sears would never exist and over a quarter of
France’s economy would disappear. The idea that
informality should be associated with marginalized
communities and poverty-stricken areas is therefore
clearly outdated and incorrect. A wider and deeper
understanding of informality is needed to appreciate
its features, functions, values and shortcomings.

1110
EMERGENT INFORMALITY
If we look at informal settlements on the systemic level and without
the lens of formality or informality, then we can move away from value
judgements like legitimate or illegitimate, legal or illegal and, instead,
discuss purpose and function. As Donella Meadows says in Thinking in
Systems “purposes are deduced from behavior not from rhetoric or stated
goals.”23
It is often the case that designers of everything from policies
to products, tell the world what their new design ‘does’. However, this
is just the rhetoric not the actual purpose. In reality designed objects
and systems have many unintended purposes. Informal systems have
no rhetoric only purpose, there is no formal or top-down design lead
to claim what the outcome is, or should be. This makes them highly
functional, without the deceptive or inaccurate design claims of pre-
supposed purpose informal systems are left to their own devices. This
means that because there is no enforcement of a specific usage, people
revert to what, we can perhaps call, ‘natural’ models of existence.
The famous computer scientist, Alan Turing’s, only biology paper
discusses morphology, or the interaction of microscopic particles to
make macroscopic patterns. He theorized that the same basic chemistry
guides everything from the creation of patterns on the scales of a fish to
the whirling arms of a spiral galaxy. Turing’s seminal paper introduced
this topic, which is now widely referred to as ‘emergence’. Emergent
phenomenon are defined as many independent, unaware and unthinking
particles interacting to create higher-order systems and patterns.24, 25
Humans are far from exempt from this emergent behavior. We see the
results of this commonly in traffic jams, which are often caused by one
individual slowing on the highway, causing a cascade of ever harder
braking behind them. This complex system happens as a combination of
technology and human interaction but is dependant on separate humans
(particles) making individual decisions (braking hard to avoid crashing).
The ungoverned and emergent interactions of human systems created
our modern society. The natural benefit of resource exchange encouraged
trade and created links between different communities. This created
cultural and economic exchange between these places and brought a
multitude of benefits. No-one designed this system—it just emerged from
a natural human desire to increase personal wealth and standing. This is
essentially the theme of the seminal economic text The Wealth of Nations.
Adam Smith, refers to this as the ‘invisible hand’ guiding the market.26
In human systems, value exchanges are essential to creating large
+
DESIGNER
DRIVER
MECHANIC
REGULATOR BUS PROVIDER
INFORMAL BUS
NETWORK
PASSENGER
MIDDLE MAN
MANUFACTURE END USER SECONDARY USER
CHAIN EXTENDER
DESIGN USER
PURPOSERHETORIC
$
$
$
$ Bus
Travel
Repairs
%$
“
Purposes are
deduced from
behavior not from
rhetoric or stated
goals.
”
Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems
scale emergent systems. As independent, and often
self-serving creatures we want to gain something
out of every interaction we make. This does not
have to be necessarily monetary gain. Humans
are highly susceptible to many other forms of
currency including; social standing, reputation,
feeling good, services, resources or time.
The collective human production and exchange
of value is most raw in informal systems. Without
governance or intervention, massive systems of value
chains are free to grow and morph into any number
of shapes, which create a range of purposes. In Lagos
an otherwise unconnected group of individuals and
vehicles, becomes an informal bus network through
a series of individual value exchanges. In this system,
drivers, for example, know that if they get in a bus
and drive it they can pick up passengers, and that
these passengers will pay the driver for the service.
If bus routes become more regular then they also
become more predictable, which forms higher density
clusters of passengers along known routes. Drivers
pick up the most passengers when they avoid other
drivers’ routes and driving times, which creates an
evenly distributed service. This system is a real and
functioning bus network in Lagos. The individual
informal transactions create a system that transforms
people and value exchanges into drivers, bus routes,
fare regulators and passengers.27
It quickly becomes
apparent that without the help of design, policy
or planning, individuals acting independently can
naturally create balanced, highly-functional systems.
The science of complexity gives us an existing
framework to understand, diagnose and even model
these systems. In viewing human systems as a series
+
DESIGNER
DRIVER
MECHANIC
REGULATOR BUS PROVIDER
INFORMAL BUS
NETWORK
PASSENGER
DESIGN USER
$
$
$
$ Bus
Travel
Repairs
%$
A simplified system map and value chain of the Lagos informal bus system.
Rhetoric or purpose

1312
of particles that have a variety of behaviors one can accurately predict
the outcome of a variety of systems. In a sense, the tendency of informal
systems to be, individualistic makes them prime candidates for this type
of analysis.28
The abstraction of informal systems through a scientific lens
serves to humanize them. In looking at these systems from a scientific
perspective one can abstain from creating value judgements and look past
rhetoric to purpose. From this vantage point it is possible to identify and
maybe even prove some potentially powerful benefits of informal systems.
COMPLEX EFFICIENCY
The tendency seems to be that these ‘natural’ human systems are highly
resource efficient. They are competitive and encourage a constant drive to
squeeze out a little bit more space for profit or value, creating a multitude
of middlemen and chain extenders. These middlemen find value in spaces
between existing links and extenders find value in previously discarded
resources. This creates chains of constant resource manipulation and
value creation, while at the same time, ensuring that everyone along the
chain is receiving a viable wage. The constant search for new value along a
chain means that resources are perpetually repurposed and re-configured
to then be injected back into a profitable market, which creates looping
product cycles of manufacture, use, disposal, repurpose, use, disposal etc.
In natural food chains we see the same type of efficiency and highly
complex patterning. Humans have removed themselves from these
food chains through the division of labour and industrialization. It
is unsurprising, however, that across all societies’ informal systems
closely resemble the dynamics of food chains. Instead of demeaning
informality as something animalistic, this analogy aims exemplify
the power, efficiency and potential exhibited by informal systems.
MIDDLE MAN
MANUFACTURE END USER SECONDARY USER
CHAIN EXTENDER
“
The abstraction
of informal systems
through a scientific
lens serves to
humanize them.
”
Value chains in informal systems. Informal bus system, Lagos
RESILIENT NETWORKS
The links created by systems are important to the
relationship between particles and how they interact
overall. The name given to the mathematics of this
study is network theory, or universal behaviors of
networks, which are based on their structure not
their contents. The highly convoluted and long
value chains in informal systems create a large
number of links between the different members of
the system. This creates a multitude of social links
across vast numbers of people, removing separation
of individuals and creating decentralized networks.
This creates another benefit to informality: resilience.
Decentralized networks, as described by Albert-László
Barabási in his book Linked, are much more resilient
than other structures. In spreading links widely
across a network without one centralized node, the
likelihood of network collapse rapidly diminishes.29
This perhaps explains some of the pervasiveness of
informal systems that are constantly under attack.
Pirate DVD sellers are found across the world in most
informal markets. They are under constant threat
of being arrested or having their wares seized. Even
if a police crack-down occurs, however, and large
numbers of sellers are caught, it has very little effect.
The distributed nature of the delivery network means
supply can be up and running within a few days. This
network resilience is essential to many informal
systems, as participants regularly drop in and out of
the system.
Decentralized network
©imguol.com 2012

17
here is something deeply unsettling about
imagining humans as just interacting,
unthinking particles. We pride ourselves on our free
will and our ability to make decisions independent of
our basic biological needs. Something about the idea of
informal systems being as valuable as formal systems
challenges this notion. If unplanned human systems
can function, then why should we plan or design at
all? Perhaps it is this deep sub-conscious self-doubt
that encourages and perpetuates the demonization of
informal systems.
While the assumptions that informality is always
bad is incorrect, the assumption that formal planning
is therefore useless is also wrong. Informal systems,
unsurprisingly, do not always grow into an optimal
solution. In Ghana, following the same stigma and
stereotypes imposed on most informal systems
the practice of night-soil collecting is so socially
shunned that almost no one will do it. Being a night-
soil collector involves collecting weekly sewage from
peoples houses around the town. They pull the sewage
out of the back of houses through a small door, which
is accessible from the outside. Night-soil collectors,
take money from each household at the end of the
month and earn around 3 times more than the average
unskilled labourer in Ghana. In a country without
formal sewage systems, the alternative to night-soil
collecting means leaving the house to pay for public
toilets, defecating in a bag and dropping it in a ditch
or walking to an open defecation field. Despite the
incomparable service night-soil collectors offer and
the high potential pay, social stigma towards night soil-
collectors is so high that people force them to work at
night and are unwilling to do this dirty job themselves.
In the case of Mr. Atia, a night-soil collector in Kwahu-
Tafo, Ghana, even his own children will not take up his
PARTTWO
The Death of
the DesignerDesign’s battle against the informal sector.
T
Activist youth from the
Colonias, Texas, USA

PART TWO: THE DEATH OF THE DESIGNER
1918
work. As this informal system begins to fade out, the already unsanitary
conditions in Ghana will only worsen. This is due to not only a lack of
money but a stigma against a dirty and informal profession. 30, 31, 32
Informal settlements also suffer from a multitude of negative side
effects of informality, such as poor sanitation systems, low life expectancy,
little garbage collection and unsafe living conditions.33
Alongside the
wonderful successes of informal systems, the undesigned nature of them
is not always positive or helpful. Becoming a proponent of an entirely
informal world is unrealistic, damaging, irresponsible and unethical.
To some degree, formality and design is required to provide major
infrastructure, legitimacy, services and incentives that informality cannot
always realize.
This thesis calls for a greater balance between respecting both informal
and formal systems for their unique capacities to provide specific benefits.
What is required is a recognition of the benefits of individual informal
systems on a case-by-case basis. As has been demonstrated, informality is
not limited to just informal settlements and developing nations. Rather,
it exists across all human systems, rich and poor. As such recognizing
the values of informality has wide reaching consequences but also varies
drastically by context and culture.
Design Against Informality
In the design and creation of Mandou Bem we have regularly reported
on the value of informal settlements, systems and economies to some
agreement and much resistance. We have encountered every attitude from
disbelief to anger. We have been called ‘Los Gringos’ and been personally
insulted in blog post comment sections, but we have also been directly
emailed by a number of like minded individuals.34
One of these people was Stefan, a young architecture student in the
University of North Carolina. He told us of how he presented his plan
to empower informal recyclers in Trinidad and Tobago. A core part of
his design work involved a bridge over a six lane highway that would
connect recyclers with a nearby landfill site. This would help to save
lives and increase a recycler’s haul. An expert panel of designers told
Stefan that he was institutionalizing waste-picking and should instead
be extracting the ‘slum dwellers’ from the situation. This is designing
with bias—not extracting your own personal value judgements from an
external situation. Unfortunately, this is a much more common practice
than searching for value in informal systems. Waste-pickers earn
FORMAL INFORMAL
CRIME POVERTY
SECURITYINFRASTRUCTURE CULTURERESILIENCE
RIGID WEALTH INEQUITY
$
+ + + +
--- -
FORMAL INFORMAL
CRIME POVERTY
SECURITYINFRASTRUCTURE CULTURERESILIENCE
RIGID WEALTH INEQUITY
$
+ + + +
--- -
Night-soil worker, Ghana.
There are positive and negative sides
to both formal and informal systems.
Ruy Ohtake’s Heliópolis tower project.
relatively good wages in most countries and provide
an invaluable service. The bigger problem is the jobs
dangers and unsanitary conditions. To combat this,
design and formalization can provide the legitimacy
and infrastructure required to ensure that waste-
picking is a safe career.
We see this ignorance surrounding informality
come out in many ‘slum’ development projects, which
focus on building alternative structures. In Heliópolis,
a favela in São Paulo, Ruy Ohtake worked with the
community to build circular tower blocks to house
residents of the favela. The project was intended to
improve housing for the favela residents. However, this
aim is problematic, because it is unclear what needed
to be improved or what the risks of not improving
were. Favelas are dense and twisting informal
settlements. In a number of cases they are built on
especially unstable or dangerous terrain. This is not
the case in Heliópolis—it is a flat piece of centrally
located land. Ohtake’s previous project focused on
re-painting the favelas to “unite an irregular street
facade of characteristic red brick structures”. This
project seems to be more about aesthetics than public
need.35
And it appears his tower project followed the
same formula. Ohtake’s towers are currently being
populated by a number of residents who told us that
they actually dislike living there and find it to be
quite lonely. The greatest shame in this project is its
failure to recognize that the favelas own informal
system of creating houses is not the real problem. A
designer saw ‘informality’ and automatically assumed
it was negative. Heliópolis is faced with the challenge
of being recognized as a legitimate community.
These tower blocks further undermine the existing
community housing and make favela recognition in
formal government even less likely. It is probable
©arcowebarquivos

2120
that this design intervention in the long-term will be
damaging to the people it is trying to help. Instead of
first identifying the functioning components of the
favela, the architect used an aesthetic value judgement
to define the problem and then took a discipline-based
role in response; architects build buildings. This lack
of understanding of informal systems is the antithesis
of good design. It ignores context and culture to impose
outside ideals onto a people helpless to respond. Our
argument for Mandou Bem defines this as designing
with bias. In the case of informal settlements and
systems, designers are not seeing the value of these
spaces and letting their own subjectivity block
meaningful solutions.
Informality vs. Design
Historically, design has mainly ignored informality
as the unintended outcomes of poor urban planning,
policy or design. Across all design disciplines and in
design rhetoric, unintended outcomes are viewed
as bad, it is presumed to be the designers job, by
definition, to design all the required features of a
product or service. If users have to repurpose, fix
or adjust a designed piece then, in someway, design
has failed. This puts design directly at odds with
informality but it is not the opposite of informality.
Informality is just the re-design of the design—there is
just a difference of scale and timing. If a professional,
or perhaps a formal designer, designs for a scale of
1010
—with many types of individual in mind—then
informality is design at the scale of 101
—on the
individual scale.
These unintended consequences or reappropriations
of designs are assumed to be negative but often the
opposite is true. The cellphone towers we use everyday
to communicate via mobile phones were designed to
use small signals that bounce between the towers and
your phone in order to hold its location.36
Although
unplanned, we now we use this signal all over the
world to send text messages. Supposedly, everything
from insoles and braces, to smoke detectors and baby
food were invented in the quest for space travel.37
In fact, the recent spate of ‘life-hacks’ celebrates
these unintended or wider consequences of design.
Design at 10
10
Design at 10
1
Formality
Informality
The popularity of this repurposing of products is huge.
Online social news and entertainment site Buzzfeed,
now has an entire DIY section and hosts articles with
titles like “18 Everyday Products You’ve Been Using
Wrong” which have over 6 million views.38
The same human ingenuity and repurposing we
see in informal systems is being celebrated as part of
this DIY movement. This trend began in its modern
form in the 1920s as part of the radio hobbyist scene,
followed by the punk ‘zine’ scene in the 1970s. With
modern access to technology the DIY movement has
now expanded to include makers, hackers, hobbyists,
lifehackers and citizen-scientists.39
To aid this growing movement we have seen
designed products to support the growing number
of participants. Products like Squarespace and
Wordpress support the informal and amateur
development of websites. Forbes article “30 Terrific
Tools for Small Businesses”40
categorizes a host of
tools to help starters build their own business. Across
all sectors there has been a growing demand for
designed platforms and tools that enable individual
people to do more on their own.
The open-source software movement has redefined
economic models, software creation and our
understanding of social dynamics through informal
and emergent action. The creation of programs
like Linux relied on many potentially, untrained,
undocumented, unregistered and unknown software
coders 41
—many of the same features we associate with
informal systems. In the world of design there has been
a growing movement towards morphogenetic design,
or the creation of a set of variables, which through
either computer modelling or chemical interactions,
grow into emergent structures.41
The aesthetics and
strengths of Turing’s patterns have been recognized
across architecture and product design.
In these contexts we celebrate collective unplanned
human ingenuity, emergence, informal development
and re-appropriation. Yet in the context of informal
human systems we demonize them and shrug them off
as unimportant, potentially dangerous and inferior.
This example of life hack, turns a
toaster on its side for grilled cheese
This example of a life hack, is a
power scrubber built from a drill.
© seriouslyforreal.com© seriouslyforreal.com

2322
Hacking
Products like Lego leverage this DIY human
ingenuity to make a toy with potentially unlimited
variations and iterations. The creation of
interlocking micro-pieces creates a low barrier
to entry for children to tangibly manifest their
imagination—a DIY product for children. As a
result, Lego has become the world’s largest toy
brand, the worlds most popular toy and even the
world’s largest tire manufacturer. 43, 44, 45
Products like Lego create a low-barrier to
repurposing. Although a Lego model comes with
a suggested form, the barrier to remaking and
expanding on this form is so low that even a six
year-old can do it. Lego requires this low-barrier
as there is little final utility for Lego creations.
Compare this to computing platforms such as
Arduino and Processing, which have much greater
final utility and therefore a higher payoff for users.
This allows them to be successful despite forcing
users to learn electronics and a coding language to
interact with their products.
All systems have this tension between barriers
to repurposing and potential utility. This could
be thought of as a walled garden. If the wall is
especially high it is difficult to climb, but if the
garden is full of delicious fruit then it might be
worth climbing. If the garden, however, is mainly
full of thorns with a few grassy areas the wall
would have to be very low for you to want to climb
over and get inside. At the advent of an informal
settlement, the risks and benefits of not building
their own community are at the scale of life and
death. In this context people quickly abandon the
formal systems and resort to drastic unplanned and
ingenious behaviors no matter what the barriers to
entry are.
These barriers to entry often perpetuate an
assumption that design is ‘successful’. If something
User
Barrier to Hacking
Potential Utility
HIGH BARRIER HIGH REWARD
LOW BARRIER HIGH REWARD
HACKING IS DIFFICULT
HACKING IS EASY
HACKING IS NOT WORTH IT
HIGH BARRIER
LOW REWARD
works just well enough for people not to complain,
or to be able ‘hack it’ then it will continue to be used,
inspite of its imperfectness. However, as soon as you
lower the barriers to ‘hacking’ and repurposing you
realize that every design is flawed. The IKEA Hackers
website neatly demonstrates this. IKEA seemingly has
a product for every situation and every home, and their
products are often built with modular components to
increase compatibility. Yet, inspite of this, people have
found the components inadequate for a wide range of
uses. The fact that IKEA furniture comes flat packed
and unassembled has lowered the barriers of entry just
enough to encourage people to ‘hack’ their products.
This has led to a remixing and repurposing of multiple
products to create improved solutions in specific
contexts.46
Products solve this problem through modularity,
or the creation of interacting pieces that converge
to create higher-order forms, whether they are Lego
models, or IKEA furniture. This modularity helps to
ease the imperfectness of products. Lego and IKEA
find a balance between formal design and informal
hacking. Lego is both a designed product, and an
informal play-tool. IKEA builds formal products
that require informal construction and can be easily
repurposed and “hacked”. And the success of these
solutions is because they rely on, instead of playing
down, human ingenuity—they design space for
informality.
Death of the Designer
There is a perpetual tension between humanity and
governance; the heterogenous nature of humanity
requires unique products and solutions, yet, the
hierarchical, top-down and cost-saving nature of
business and government requires the efficiency
and speed of uniformity. Design is the mediation of
the homogeneous needs of big organizations and the
heterogeneous needs of individual people. Informality
is the workaround an individual creates to massage
a designed product, service or system to better meet
their own unique needs. Informality, is in a sense, an
essential component of the design process. When a
designer unleashes a ‘thing’ (in the loosest sense of
the word) upon the world, they can make claims as
to its purpose (actually rhetoric) but it is for the user
to decide what it’s real purpose is. In other words,
informality is the right of the user to interpret a
designed object in the way they see fit. As Roland
Barthes claims, in his famous literary critique the
Death of the Author, “the birth of the reader must be
ransomed by the death of the Author” 47
so too must
the birth of the user come at the cost of the death of the
designer.
DESIGNER USER

27
here is a shift from thinking of design as a
practice of things to a practice of “protocols,
platforms, services and systems.”48
Design now
creates work in sectors as diverse as public health,
government services, humanitarian relief, public
education and infrastructure. These are all highly
complex, interwoven systems of people and policy
that are designed with a purpose in mind, but often
create unintended consequences and results. When
dealing with public policy and large-level systems,
despite a greater degree of heterogeneity we see a ‘one
size fits all’ style approach. If a system isn’t working
for someone, and the risks of hacking or repurposing
the system are lower than the potential utility or
benefits, then informal alternatives will appear. The
way these large-scale system policies are currently
designed means that this informality is seen as failure.
Hacking is seen as taking advantage, finding loop-
holes, corruption or abuse. The repurposing of land for
informal settlements is viewed as collective theft, not
as “zone-hacking”.
Unfortunately, when a government designs a
system, unlike products, they rarely encourage ‘correct
usage’, rather, they discourage perceived misuse.
This makes the barriers to entry extremely high.
By ‘hacking’, or repurposing a governmental policy
you risk imprisonment, fines and social stigma. It is
only because of the extreme conditions surrounding
informal settlements that there is chance for informal
policy, space and ‘zone-hacking’ to exist.
However, informal policies and urban planning, like
‘slums’, achieve a number of things that governments
often fail to provide for: central and affordable shelter,
pedestrian-oriented planning, high public transport
usage, high social capital, diverse space usage,
organic or slow iterative architecture and voluminous
PARTTHREE
InterdependenceDesigning with and for informality.
T

PART THREE: INTERDEPENDENCE
2928
cultural production.49
Not only do they achieve all these benefits but
they do it incredibly quickly and at a fraction of the cost of most urban
projects, inspite of the common government efforts to stop their
progress. Informality can be viewed as a human need to exercise their
own creativity and better fit products and services to their own unique
requirements. This is seen as a success story when focused on Lego, Linux
or IKEA, but as a negative quality when looking at informal settlements,
informal business or waste pickers.
Designing with Informality
Informality only exists as an extension of the formal world. Informality
is the reaction to incorrect systemic purpose for individuals. Informality
subverts the rules and regulations to create new systems that don’t
fit within formal frameworks. It is therefore possible to argue that
informality is a response to the broken systems of formality. In the case
of the favelas, the formal world could not provide low cost housing and
informal settlements subsequently arose; for small businesses formal
tax laws and regulations devour start-up capital and stifle growth so
informal businesses start; and with waste pickers high barriers to
formal employment and the failures of current waste collection, provide
them with informal work. If these informal systems are the collective
repurposing and redesign of broken systems on a massive scale then,
instead of ignoring or demonizing these spaces, shouldn’t this be the first
place design looks to diagnose and fix these systemic problems?
Returning back to the example of the disappearing night-soil collectors
in Ghana we have a prime case study of how design can intervene within
informal systems. Ideo.org, alongside Unilever, is piloting a new system to
continue the practice of night-soiling but legitimize it in a way that makes
it sustainable. Alongside improved technology and home sanitation the
Clean Team project is rebranding the night-soil collector. One of their core
impact metrics is focused on their personal wellbeing and social status.
Hopefully, in drawing out and rebranding this informal worker as a formal
and important service, Clean Team can perpetuate the positive benefits of
the informal system while removing the negative. This project exemplifies
how design can transform existing negative informal systems into
preferred situations. Design’s role can be to examine informal systems
and extend, amplify, re-connect or tease-out the positive elements while
minimizing, removing or disconnecting the negative components. 50 51
Design also has a role in the diagnoses of the positive elements of an
informal system. Through Mandou Bem, and before
that Mark, we used design to build knowledge around
existing informal systems. As codified and categorized
by Meagan, design is a powerful tool for discovering
and uncovering positives. This is an essential first
step in any intervention, especially within an informal
system. Mandou Bem uncovered and amplified the
existing system of youth activism in both favelas and
Colonias. We hope this project serves as a further
case study to show the results that design can have
when, through an unbiased approach, you identify and
amplify valuable aspects of informal systems.
Designing for Informality
There are copious examples of designers leaving room
for informality, emergence and human ingenuity in
products and even services, to great acclaim. Yet,
in policy, urban planning and other large human
systems-design, informality is given very little space.
As design shifts into a mode of building large-scale
systems, designers, need to develop a level of trust
for our human users. Instead of treating unexpected
consequences of systemic design as misuse we need
to openly design room for informality to grow, and
to create resilient and efficient networks. The two
systems of formal design and informal repurposing
are interdependent—both systems require the other to
function optimally.
Mandou Bem attempts to leverage this
interdependence by encouraging informal youth to
get active in their community and become part of the
formal voice for policy change. The platform is also
only a framework for emergent content that allows
youth to express themselves in a variety of ways. The
hope of Mandou Bem is to communicate the value of
informality through the voices of the youth and help
them redesign and hack the formal policies that so
often oppress them.
Design’s New Role
Informality is undeniably a huge part of modern
society—it transcends culture, wealth, development
and disciplines. Furthermore, it has incredible
economic and cultural significance, often more so
than parallel formal systems. Informality even has
strengths that formal design often seeks to replicate,
such as efficiency and resilience.
There are many design precedents where
repurposing and hacking is celebrated as human
ingenuity and creativity. Informality is just as
much a representation of this ingenuity, yet it is
often demonized and ignored, specifically in the
context of large scale human systems, such as
informal settlements. Unfortunately, informality
is too often mistaken for illegal, unintended or
inferior consequences of a formal system. In
actuality, informality is the name we give to specific
workarounds or hacks practiced by people when
formal systems fail. Instead of ignoring these informal
systems, design should look to them to help diagnose
and rebuild failing systems. Informality, however, has
significant problems and fails in its own way, which is
why it too requires top-down design.
Design and informality are therefore interdependent
systems. Moreover, leaving space for informality has
wide ranging beneficial consequences. Design, as a
practice needs to, therefore, respect human ingenuity
in systems and leave more room for informality in
the design of everything from products to policies.
Mandou Bem is an attempt at designing for this formal,
informal interdependence.
“
Informality is a
response to the broken
systems of formality.
”

Favela Paraisópolis,
São Paulo

3332
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MFA Transdisciplinary Design, 2014
Parsons The New School for Design

Design for Informality

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