Design for social innovation From critique to prototyping an emerging practice

Aditya Pawar!PhD student, Umea Institute of Design

A brief presentation to fellow design doctoral students on the big debates in social design. June 2014

Critique: Purgatory of (social) design

Philips Chulha Stove Life- Straw One laptop per child

There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few of them. !

- Victor Papanek, Design for the real world

Transformative + Design

Transformative design is meant to express a way of living well, while at the same time consuming fewer resources and generating new patterns of social cohabitation

!- Burns, Cottam, Vanstone and Winhall, RED Report

Why this is an ‘emerging’ practice

1 The loss of personal creative authorship 2 Shaping behaviour rather than form 3 Transformation design is never done 4 Creativity happens in run-time, not just in design-time 5 Diversity over quality 6 Design becomes a pro+amateur community

Challenges to designers/ researchers

Research goal: Prototyping Practices

…..we aim to 'prototype' not objects or services but practices in order to experiment and explore the implications of social, cultural and technological changes and challenges to design…..

!!

Research questions

!a. Redefining the designer’s role and capabilities in transformative design? !!b. How can design manifest itself embedded in the context of concern? !!c. What are the new aesthetics of formless design?!!!!

Knowledge through reflection in action

Participatory action research… with communities of practice… !

Related work by others

Design Pilots (ongoing)

• Sliperiet: Social collaborative open organisation !

• Umea Pantry: Niching sustainable food strategies in Umea !

• Services that Google cannot provide: Community co-creation at Umea Public Library

!• Urban sanitation: product service system for urban slums in Dhaka

!!!

Positive deviations: Eco-local food production around Umea

• Ecological vegetable farming • Ecological sheep farming • Permaculture farming • Farming for self-sufficiency • Urban farming

1. Umea Pantry: Niching sustainable food strategies in Umea

FarmersUrban/ guerrilla farmers

Citizens RetailersRestaurants

Farm Fork

The brief = Matters of concern.

• POTENTIAL FARMS: Park land that is not used for urban farming but has the potential to be used.

• EXISTING URBAN FARMS: Existing urban farms in Alidhem, Carlshem, Ersboda and Broparken.

• NEIGHBOURHOOD INVOLVEMENT: The neighbourhood involvement depends on the activities organised around farming and the inhabitants themselves

• Alidhem

• Ersboda

• Study-circle HQ

• Carlshem!! !

• Broparken

NEGOTIATING RESOURCES!

LAND: Legally procured land or Illegally procured land

MANURE: Manure placed by the municipality

WATER: Permission taken to access underground municipal pipelines

TOOLS: Tools are pitched in voluntarily by members

SEEDS/SAPLINGS: Seeds and saplings volunteered by members

… negotiating boundaries

2. Sliperiet: Social collaborative open organisation

STRUCTURING OPEN-NESS Workshop Proposal for Sliperiet

Background

Sliperiet aims at being an environment where students, researchers. startups/companies, public & private organisations can meet and have the opportunity to learn and collaborate with each other. Sliperiet consists of an incubator, maker-lab and meeting zones which are its main service offerings.

At this moment Sliperiet faces a number of challenges, for example identifying what constitutes its success as a creative milieu? And foremost, to create a open-environment where people feel comfortable in co-production of businesses, design and fresh knowledge.

Because organisations now operate in an environment of constant change, the challenge is not how to design a response to a current issue, but how to design a means of continually responding, adapting and innovat-ing. With respect to sliperiet, the challenge lies beyond operationalisation of resources, towards establishing a organisational culture of design driven innovation.

At the fuzzy front end of its formation, we are proposing a series of participatory workshops, to investigate how Sliperiet can avoid the top-down/ paternalistic oraganisational model, in favour of a more enabling model that is centred on the concept of co-production and active particiation from its own community. The participatory workshop is proposed to be attended by internal Sliperiet staff (people responsible for service provision), creative communities and stakeholders. This is to ensure that the internal organisational culture of sliperiet and quality of service resonates with the community’s needs and is open for external input.

Proposal byMarlene JohanssonAditya Pawar

Entrepreneurial

zone

Maker zoneMeeting zone

Workshop: Co-imagining the value of sliperiet

Sliperiet UsersInternal Environment External Environment

Motivation/ mission/ values

Organisational culture

Core processes & rituals

Physical-technological infrastructure

StudentsInternal actors

Researchers

Creative -cultural companies

Entrepreneurs/ Start-ups

Serious play

Discussion

Analysis SynthesisParticipatory input Participatory output

Breaking up into socio-material raw materials

Re-assembling into new socio-material assemblies - Boundary spanning

- Infrastructuring/ Scaffolding

- Prototyping /futuring - reconfigurations

- Making things visible - Tracing & probing - Critical design - Foresight/ projecting - Narratives - Trust & confidence

building

Designing publics Transformative design

Design-time Post-Pre-

What can a social design process look like when the design is never done?

How can we make transparent the black-box of big society?

What are the limits of social design?

Fuzzy front end Later end

Latent Design & discovery

Mobilisation Main streaming Embedding

• Period of under performance or gradual improvement before innovation occurs

• Strategy and process for innovation are developed

• Piloting innovative ideas, developing new structures and terms

• Innovation becomes routine as ideas and working practice are main streamed in one place, service or sector

• Value of innovation grows. Systemic innovation may occur, where the locality has the potential to innovate in other sector

Source: Young foundation (2007)

90% Design engagements

How can we scale up human centred design? to take on complexities of designing

for communities and networks