Elsevier

Agricultural Systems

Volume 196, February 2022, 103334
Agricultural Systems

Cognitive resources to promote exploration in agroecological systems design

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2021.103334Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Guidelines are proposed to structure cognitive resources fostering exploration in agroecological system design.

  • Resources capitalize on both science-based and experience-based knowledge

  • The knowledge capitalization is facilitated by collective workshops attended by knowledge owners.

  • The progressive elaboration of the resources was informed by feedback from users in design situations.

  • The proposed cognitive resources enhance convergent and divergent thinking in design workshops.

Abstract

CONTEXT

To support agroecological transition aimed at sharply reducing the use of synthetic inputs, agricultural systems must undergo in-depth change in which biological processes are enhanced with a view to providing ecosystem services. This transformation of the cropping systems requires design processes which should rely on the exploration of science-based and expert-based knowledge and of alternative solutions (divergence thinking), and on the tailoring of the solution to the situation at hand (convergent thinking).

OBJECTIVE

Our objective is to build, together with end users, cognitive resources structuring knowledge. These resources will then serve to guide users in the exploration of agroecological solutions that are both disruptive and tailored to the situation in which they will be implemented.

METHODS

Based on theoretical insights from Design Studies, we first proposed guidelines for building cognitive resources to support divergent and convergent thinking. Based on these guidelines, we built prototypes of cognitive resources, with specific knowledge structures adapted to design reasoning in agriculture: the function-based resource and the biology-based resource, to stimulate divergent thinking in the exploration process; and the experience-based resource to support both convergent and divergent thinking. We then conducted 12 user tests of these prototypes, with various targeted users (advisors, farmers, teachers, researchers) who were either designers of agroecological systems or contributors, eager to use actionable resources to share what they had learnt about innovative systems or their knowledge on ecological processes. We received feedback from the designers who had used the resources in context, and from the contributors who had developed cognitive resources using the suggested guidelines.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

Our findings highlight how the resources support agronomist-designers and facilitators in their activities during the exploration part of a design process, from the preparation of design workshops to the stimulation within workshops and the ex-post documentation of a collective exploration for its reuse by other designers. Contributors recognized that the suggested guidelines and prototypes would both help to build on existing knowledge and enable future reuse by designers. They also noted the completeness, the evidence and the value-laden nature of the content. We finally discussed how these cognitive resources could be collectively enriched by a community of practitioners with diverse expectations and values, sharing the common goal of designing agroecosystems conducive to agroecology.

SIGNIFICANCE

Our research contributes to a critical shift in knowledge capitalization (mixing science-based and experience-based knowledge) to support the design process of agroecosystems, involving various actors, including practitioners.

Introduction

In-depth changes are required in agricultural systems to face current environmental and socioeconomic challenges. For example, to strongly reduce the use of pesticides in arable systems, it is necessary to change crop sequences and several techniques (e.g. sowing date, cultivar, sowing density, N-fertilizer management), to reduce the risk of pest occurrence and development within the crop (Jacquet et al., 2011). Thus, shaping agricultural systems that are less dependent on external synthetic inputs and that rely on ecological processes, such as biological pest regulation (Berthet et al., 2019; Médiène et al., 2011) or environment-friendly nutrient cycling, calls for a huge efforts in innovative design (Meynard et al., 2012). As ecological processes are highly dependent on pedo-climatic conditions, and the choice of alternative techniques varies according to the socio-economic context, such systems need to be tailored to local conditions (Prost et al., 2017a). Innovative design involves an exploration process to build the disruptive innovations required to satisfy entirely new expectations (Hatchuel and Weil, 2009). In many cases, a successful exploration has been described as including successive periods of divergent and convergent thinking (Cross, 2008). In divergence phases, generally occurring at the beginning of the process, the design space (i.e. the space of possibilities) is enlarged through exploration of a wide range of alternatives, whereas in convergence phases, the aim is to deepen, adapt, evaluate and finally define the solutions to the situation at hand.

To generate solutions, designers both use and produce knowledge to progressively refine the properties of the object under design (Hatchuel and Weil, 2009). As the features of agricultural systems are highly dependent on the context, exploration should benefit from knowledge that is not only science-based (usually generic), but also experience-based (most often locally dependent) (Doré et al., 2011). Yet the production of scientific knowledge on biological and ecological processes, a key aspect of agroecological systems design, has been neglected for decades due to agriculture's heavy dependency on synthetic inputs, particularly in developed countries. Moreover, the largely local and patchy existing knowledge on the links between such processes and farmers' actions is poorly shared between farmers. Yet as design continues in action (Schön, 1992), observations and feedback from the implementation of innovative, effective and uncommon farming practices can usefully inform design processes, enabling other farmers to learn from pioneering experiences when designing their own systems (Girard and Magda, 2020; Goulet et al., 2008; Salembier et al., 2021; Toffolini et al., 2017). There is great value in sharing situated knowledge and past experiences, most often produced locally (Prost et al., 2017a). Knowledge-sharing tools and resource-supporting design are increasingly being developed online to widely share science-based or experience-based knowledge. Examples are the online platform Atelier Paysan dedicated to farmer-built equipment for agroecology (Salembier et al., 2020), and the French web tool GECO dedicated to sharing knowledge on agroecology (Soulignac et al., 2019). There is also an increased use of social networks by farmers and advisors, who share past experiences online (Détienne et al., 2012; Prost et al., 2017b). These experiences are thus widely disseminated. A remaining challenge is however to determine how they support the de-contextualization process described by Toffolini et al. (2017), so that generic knowledge can be derived from them, and applied by more and more farmers. Hence, there is still a need to develop structured design-support tools to help designers in their exploration of knowledge, and specifically to ensure that a diversity of experiences and feedback are capitalized on.

To enhance the emergence of solutions within design processes, Hatchuel and Weil (2009) showed the importance of knowledge structures. While designing a new objet, designers establish links between functions, also called functional requirements, and components, named design parameters. For example, in the design of a trailer, one function is to connect it to the towing vehicle, and the dedicated corresponding component is a hitch (Ulrich, 1995). Specific knowledge structures describe such links, referred to as functional diagrams (Ulrich, 1995) or the Suh matrix (described in Brun et al., 2018). During the exploration process, the use of new knowledge (e.g. new design parameters) often leads to knowledge restructuration: designers add, select and test knowledge, thus reorganizing the links between knowledge and breaking away from determinism existing in previous knowledge structures (Brun et al., 2016; Le Masson et al., 2016). To foster the design of agroecological systems, there is thus a need to develop knowledge structures adapted to agroecology, that are underpinned by these principles, thus favoring exploration processes. Yet proposing such knowledge structures is challenging since the objects to be designed (e.g. cropping systems) are characterized by the importance of their systemic features (Prost et al., 2017a). Building consistent interactions between practices, and between practices and the environment, must be at the heart of the design process if efficient agroecological systems are to be achieved. Therefore, knowledge-sharing tools should be designed to support the reasoning behind interactions between disruptive practices, including specific knowledge types and structures.

As ergonomists have recommended, the development of new tools to support action is improved when their targeted users are involved from the start of the design process (Béguin and Rabardel, 2000). From this user-centered approach standpoint, Cerf et al. (2012) suggested arranging “dialogue” between users and designers through the testing of a prototype of the tool under design and then an analysis of how the tool is used in real or work-like situations. Here we consider tools as knowledge-sharing resources that support the design of innovative agroecological systems, while the users may be farmers, advisors, experimenters, teachers, students, and researchers (all referred to as agronomist-designers). The users may also be actors who own scientific and/or experience-based knowledge and wish to share it, thus becoming contributors to such design-support tools. Therefore, the design of such resources should benefit from the tests around prototypes with the designers of agroecological systems and the contribution of those who capitalize on the knowledge.

Our study, based on a user-centered approach, aimed at developing prototypes of cognitive resources to support: i) agronomists-designers of agroecological cropping systems in the exploration of solutions; and ii) contributors in the capitalization on experience-based knowledge to inform exploration. We defined cognitive resources as knowledge-structured resources (i.e. mind maps, diagrams, or tables structuring knowledge). We first drew on theoretical insights from the Design Studies field, on the various ways to foster exploration processes. We then developed three types of generic resources based on these insights, while adapting them to the agroecological field. We also debriefed with targeted users and contributors of the resources (here, farmers and technical advisors) on the uses made of the prototypes in several work-like situations. Finally, we discussed our main findings.

Section snippets

Material and methods

Fig. 1 describes the sequence of steps, from the identification of strategies from the Design Studies field (Section 2.1), to the elaboration of cognitive resources (Section 2.2) and the testing of the resources in both design and capitalization workshops (Section 2.3).

Description of the function-based resource

Guidelines to build the three proposed cognitive resources are summarized in Table 2. The function-based resource (FBR), also called an exploration tree, shows a range of generic technical options for reaching a design goal (Fig. 2 for the example on the control of weeds with low herbicide use, in C1). FBR draws from the mind map of ​Reau et al. (2016)​. The proposed FBR includes reformulations of the design goal in terms of functional descriptions of what has to be achieved (Table 2; G1). For

Discussion

We suggest guidelines to build cognitive resources. However, as our results showed the importance of the social dimension both in the use and the elaboration of the resources, we have organized this discussion into two sections: the cognitive and the social dimensions of the resources. We, for the first time, investigated the development of guidelines to build the three knowledge-structured resources to support exploration in the design process toward agroecology (Section 3.1). We highlight

Conclusion

This study is based on a user-centered approach to elaborate knowledge-structured resources for the purpose of supporting divergent and convergent thinking within an exploration process: the function-based resource, the biology-based-resource, and the experience-based resource. We shed light on how these cognitive resources were used in design workshops: designers exploring alternatives, facilitators managing the exploration process within design workshops, and support contributors (i.e.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We thank all our colleagues involved in this research, and are deeply grateful to all the participants of the prototype tests. We also thank the reviewers for their feedback that helped us to improve the manuscript. We finally thank Liz Carrey Libbrecht for reviewing the English version of this paper.

This work was funded by the University Paris-Saclay, and by the national action plan Ecophyto (project FORCOCO 2018-2021). It was carried out under the umbrella of the Initiative for Design in

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