Blog 3: Book Reflection
Book Title: Design, When Everybody Designs — An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation
Author: Ezio Manzini
Main Topic: Design methods and systems for social innovation
Style: One author, book divided into 3 sections and 3–4 subsections in each section
Why did you choose this book — I picked this book because I am curious to know how that we can innovate to solve our society’s problems. As a normal person that lives in this society, I wish that I can solve many problems in our society — income inequality, psychological issues due to human relations, wastes in goods provided, etc. Since many of these problems aren’t completely solved, I just want to explore some of the methods suggested by this book that can be applied to solve these real world problems.
Overall impression: Although it is very hard to solve many of our society’s problems, the messages provided in this book are very powerful and inspiring to me. Specifically, in order to be socially innovative, people need to have an unconventional mindset about the society at first, and that more people should be working together and linking with different thoughts to improve the process at the very least. Of course, it is a good thing that society is changing fast, and I believe that people need to adjust and adapt to these changes. Only by embracing with these disruptions with awareness and openness, people can then potentially develop more tangible solutions.
Main Insights
- Designs in early civilizations were simple as people had simple demands, but as our society progresses with industrialization, organizations were formed, and more complex designs with processes were developed to meet more complex demands from people in the society.
- Design itself is a process rather than an outcome as there is always a room for improvement, a room for innovation, and a room of more diverse approaches. Experts design for professional work, while diffuse design can be a mix of amateur and professional designers that works on multiple problems at once.
- It is the traditional view of our society that may stop us from providing innovative solutions to the issues of our society. Therefore, we need to rethink of these problems in the other unconventional frameworks and address them accordingly.
Overall, I think this book is very much related to the project that we’re doing in class, as our project topic is to focus on one particular area of the global warming. For me, I am with a group that has been working on recycling issues in New York City. After conducting researches, doing interviews, brainstorming and selecting best ideas, and making prototypes, I think that the social problems we face can’t be solved 100%, but we can solve a few parts of them. The biggest aspect that our team has realized is that people need to be aware of the recycling issues, and only by letting them aware, people can be more willing to collaborate to cooperate by recycling more. Still, not people will come to agree on all levels in regards to recycling, but getting a good start will be on the right track to right solutions.
