In order to provide openness and flexibility to the design, the planning and execution of a currency project is an iterative and adaptive process. A spiral, rather than a straight line leading from start to finish, more accurately describes this method of progression. This does not mean going round in circles, but rather consciously seeking to revisit certain core elements regularly, knowing they might have to be amended when other elements change, whether due to deliberate decisions or external factors.
In today’s transient, diverse and increasingly virtual communities, people and the roles they are able to play are very likely to change during a project’s lifetime. A currency will often start up with one set of people around it and be carried forward by a different group. In most cases, this also determines the character and details of a project.
As the process reaches the phase of design-refinement and approaches the crucial practical steps of piloting and ‘learning from doing’, many ideas, concerns, questions and feedback that have been discarded previously might resurface or become relevant to the final design. As such, it is always better to hear too many perspectives at early stages than too few.
The four core elements for any currency implementation process are: - participants – who? - their objectives – why? - functional design of the currency – what? - and finally, the organisational and practical necessities to making the currency a reality – how?
As a currency project proceeds through different stages of planning and implementation, these four core elements function like the cardinal points on a compass. The project’s pathway revisits these points as it ascends, bringing improvements in the currency’s design and final implementation.
With each step forward, the overall project will have changed a little, with the four core elements mutually shaping, informing, enabling and limiting each other along the way.
Each of the four can, in their own way, claim primacy over the other, yet none can fully define the others without being effected in return.
This is why we visualise the currency design process as a spiral continuously moving through the four cardinal points as it moves up through eight different stages in its progress, from planning to piloting and finally full operation.
# See also - Contents - The Process of designing a currency - Phase A: Planning