Design, Social Change and Development: A Social Methodology

Social innovation is a form of systemic change to society, and designers are key proponents of this approach. This paper describes how design interventions were used in the Izindaba Zokudla project that aims to create opportunities for urban agriculture in a sustainable food system in Soweto. The creation of the Soweto Imvelo Market by designers and researchers from Izindaba Zokudla, a local farmers’ organisation and other stakeholders identifies two aspects of social innovation that were instrumental in developing this alternative in the Johannesburg Food System: The creative contribution that designers can bring to social innovation and the need to socialise design into broader coalitions for change. The paper describes the socialisation of designers and their artefacts and technologies in terms of the theory of social capital which leads to specific recommendations on how methods should be used and how we should understand the interaction of design with social movements. The creative contributions designers make disrupts and transforms the ways we think of food, and this facilitates the socialisation of design in social innovation interventions. The paper makes recommendations from this analysis in order to guide further interventions by designers for social innovation.

ABSTRACT The goal of this study is to explore the meaning of Social Design through design research, investigate appropriate methods for fieldwork study within this context, and seek ways in which design can bring about sustainable community development. In the process of conducting the research, some key elements leading to sustainability were identified that helped to create a “Design Model for Sustainable Community Development.” Through in-depth research of three Social Design case studies and interviews conducted with design experts, key methods were identified, providing insights for designers who might consider working in this emerging sector, while adding to the discourse of Social Design. This thesis also makes a distinction between “Design for Social Good” and Design for “Social Impact.” It affirms a paradigm shift in design practice towards a more human-centered approach, from designing for people to designing with people. Participatory Design, Exploratory Research and Ethnography are suggested as important methods that provide ways to work in Social Design that can foster ideas to bring about change that can impact societies. There is a new realm of opportunity for designers to work in this emerging social sector. By using their unique skill sets, they can begin to raise the value of design, so often misunderstood by people outside the sector and can be the “change leaders” people want and need today.

Proceedings of the IASDR Conference on Design Research, 2011

While issues such as clean production and energy efficiency are still central in sustainable development discourse, attention is increasingly on patterns of consumption at multiple levels in society. This opens new opportunities and responsibilities for design research, as we shift from a focus on product lifecycles to people's lifestyles. It also requires further understanding the 'social sustainability' aspects of the environment and development, including the complexity of problematics characterized by uncertainties, contradictions and controversies. In response, we propose a programmatic approach, in which a tentative assemblage of theoretical and experimental strategies frame a common ground for a collaborative and practice-led inquiry. We present a design research program based on two propositions: socio-cultural practices are the basic unit for design, and; transitions, and transition management, are the basic points of design intervention. Rather than affirming the status quo or the prevailing discourse, we argue for design research as a 'critical practice', in which cultural diversity, non-humans and multiple futures are considered.

The demand for creating shared values has emerged as a new direction in a society in which the mutual prosperity of all stakeholders is often undermined and sacrificed for the benefit of a few. For a sustainable society, the 'symbiosis' of community members is one of the critical factors and shared values among them is essential to achieve sustainable development. In this study, we suggest a design methodological approach aimed at the coexistence and well-balanced development of stakeholders. We named this specific approach the symbiotic system, 'considerate design approach' and introduce a business model development workshop as a case study applying it. This is a stakeholder-centred design which aims to draw a win-win strategy based on stakeholders' needs by synthesizing the process using service design tools. As a result of this study, we will discuss the features of this considerate design approach, the features of the solution by it, and the relation with social sustainability.

2021

and Rural Development Cover image: Amanda Larsson Other photos and illustrations: all featured, texts, photographs and illustrations are property of the authors unless otherwise stated. Other materials are used with permission of the owner.

Can communication design—a practice often associated with aesthetic triviality or unashamed consumerism—function as a change agent in a developing country? This paper suggests that as part of a multi-skilled, French-led assistance program, design has helped alleviate the plight of rural Haitian farmers, their families and the communities in which they live. First describing how Haiti's political, social and environmental conditions combine to negatively impact the island's farmers, this paper will then introduce the Farmer-to-Farmer and ANATRAF programs and why design was considered important to their allied missions. Next, it will explain how the design process and its resulting contributions will ultimately combine to support Haitian farmers in their desire for economic sufficiency, personal autonomy and renewed community. Finally, with this particular example in mind the paper will offer some generalized observations about socially focused design.

Urban Governance, 2023

This article contributes to research into new forms of participatory urban governance aimed at creating more sus- tainable cities. Focused on food security, which has, like ‘sustainability’, economic, ecological and socio-political dimensions, our research examines how urban agricultural initiatives have been promoted in Lisbon and how connecting and integrating them in urban planning strategies could contribute to the progressive transformation of the city into a more sustainable one. This integration is viewed as a complex, ‘wicked’ problem in that it encom- passes various interdependent problems that are hard to solve due to the conflicting goals of involved actors. For this reason, we suggest that Design Thinking could help urban planners in addressing it, since it offers flexible, iterative and participatory ways of generating development insights based on users’ needs and contexts. The way this methodology is used is illustrated here to carry out the literature review on these issues in Lisbon. From this, the centrality of food systems in concerns related to urban sustainability emerged, as well as suggestions on ways to adjust urban planning so that it takes better account of them in the future. Our research aligns with recent studies on the use of Design Thinking in urbanism, some of them dealing with the food-energy-water nexus, and provides, through urban agriculture, a practical focus of study that urban citizens might feel more capable to comment and participate on.

This contribution aims to understand the specificity of thinking and making social innovation, within and through the design field and its practice. The first part of this paper frames the relationships between project and design, characterising their definitions and goals. Design is presented as a discipline and field of action, where both thinking and the project process are directed at reaching a sustainable change in society. The second part of the paper presents how social innovation by design leads to new epistemological questions and dimensions within design's practices and challenges. Consequently, the University of Nimes' pedagogical and research--driven design initiative illustrates how a commitment to social innovation by design has fostered new productive practices and knowledge, in turn leading to new forms of participation, collaboration and interaction between actors and users. In our experience, mixed methods and interdisciplinary dialogues are key elements in achieving social innovation by design.

2009

This paper is part of an ongoing doctoral research project on titled; Value Creation through Sustainable Design intervention; A case study of Indigenous bamboo cane products in Botswana. Through its practice and manifest, design cuts through the core of human life, and its impact is intricably woven into and reverberates through our daily activities. Whilst there may be an agreed set of definitions and processes for design amongst professionals, there is a plethora of interpretation of design by the everyday person, depending on their context of interaction and understanding. This is more evident in the rural communities of the world, far removed from the glitz of the advanced technological trappings, where simple, but focussed design interventions make a big difference and add substantial value to the everyday life. In this context design manifests itself as a strong economic and social conduit, with a balanced sustainability platform. This paper reflects on and documents the curre...

This paper focuses on the roles of designers for enabling sustainability of livelihoods in disadvantaged communities. This paper was drawn from my doctoral research which I completed with communities with people with physical disabilities in Amphoe Phrapradaeng, Samut Prakran province in Thailand between 2007 and 2010. The main objective of this research was to find ways to enable the people with physical disabilities in one particular disadvantaged community to attain sustainable livelihoods and to continue flourishing long after the completion of the research project. This research was guided by three main research question; what strategies and tools designers should use in order to enable themselves and the community to undertake a collaborative investigation, how these strategies and tools were used in order to achieve research objectives, and what role and contribution of designers are as design researchers for enabling the community to attain a sustainable livelihood. To achieve a real outcome, this research was designed to investigate a real-life situation of a community of people with physical disabilities in Amphoe Phrapradaeng in the Samut Prakran Province in a semi-urban area of Thailand as a case study because the research was embedded in this community. This was a collaborative research with nineteen community members of this community. The research methodology of this research project was Participatory Action Research (PAR) by using the Sustainable Livelihood Framework (SLF) for data collection and evaluation of the effectiveness of the implementation of this research with the participants. This research has a basis in the theoretical frameworks established in the field of Human-Centered Design (HCD), which is a specific approach to design, and Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) which is an approach to sustainable community development. The activities of this research were multiple cyclical processes. These processes were composed of a group discussion for reflection and planning a new action, the taking of that action, observation, and then a group discussion for reflection and planning a new action. These activities were set up through a series of four workshops because they were designed for facilitating and enabling the participants to improve their capabilities to reach their full potential to achieve a sustainable livelihood. The research outcomes have shown the participants and their community discovered an alternative livelihood that could enable them to reduce or avoid vulnerability in their community and become more self-reliant. After the completion of this research study, they still continued to improve their capabilities and are pursuing a sustainable livelihood in their community. This research also revealed that PAR integrated with HCD and combined with SLA were shown to be effective strategies and approaches because they facilitate the knowledge transfer to the participants and their community and enable them to generate and implement their own idea. Reflection, traditional visualization, and the communication skills of designers were essential in such research because reflection enabled the participants and to recognize a change in their community explicitly. The visualization and communication skills of designers were very sophisticated and powerful tools in this process because they made complex situations or problems easy to understand and made new ideas and potential solutions visible during group discussions for reflection and planning. In conclusion, this research has shown that these research strategies, approaches and tools would not work effectively unless they were operated by designers who work as design researchers had a mindset for and behaved as an agent of sustainable change. This role is not a catalyst because it was innovatively, consciously, intentionally responsible for enabling people to have a sustainable and satisfying livelihood. A sustainable change agent should be mindful and work responsively to support local people, especially disabled people, to attain their goals. However, the project itself was a catalyst because it sparked a new idea for the participants and their community, showed them how to identify their own problems, let them generate their own solutions, and pursue a sustainable livelihood that they designed for themselves.