Learning Design for Social Innovation
A weekly journal about the course ‘Design for Social Innovation’ in the Spring 2020 semester at Carnegie Mellon University.
Week 1
Whenever I thought of my career aspirations, even as a child, it always had an aspect of social innovation. As I started learning about design, during my undergraduate studies, I found methods and case-studies that let me explore it further. Some projects during my undergraduate studies of design touched upon complicated social issues — such as the education of economically weaker societies of India, maternity healthcare in rural India, systemic design against sexual assaults — among others. These projects influenced my worldview, when I think of my career pathways, or when I choose a research topic in an interaction design project.
I am happy to have joined the Design for Social Innovation course this spring semester, being taught by Arthi Krishnaswami, who speaks from a position of practical experience and knowledge blended. I am also happy about the diversity of students taking this class. There is a wide range of professional backgrounds — Management, Arts, Policy, HCI… and of course, Design (me!). I am looking forward to learning about DSI and connecting those to design for sustainability — particularly for two themes that I feel for — the environment and peace.
In this first week, we discussed the history of social innovation. We looked at the rise of consumerism after the industrial revolution in the 18th century, and its fallback in the 19th century with philosophers advocating for personalized, handcrafted artifacts.
This tied into the history of the boundaries of design. We saw how until the mid-20th century, Design was primarily being summoned for advertising. We know that is not the case now. What sparked this evolution? It might have been some of the distressed designers, who decided that enough is enough, and laid down their thoughts into a manifesto.
The first things first manifesto (1964):
A few decades into the 21st century now, Design is being leveraged to solve complex global issues. Reading Victor Papanek: Design for the Real World was a very insightful experience. It was also a relatable one, for I grew up spending my childhood in the ‘real world’, in a small town Tuljapur in India.
Papanek described the developing world as models for the developed world in some aspects — reuse and recycling culture, richness in renewable energy resources, small-scale technology, and a closer fit between man and nature.
Week 2
This week we looked at some very interesting failures in social innovation! One candid story is that of the PlayPump. They tried to solve a huge problem, water access in Africa, through a seemingly creative approach.
This project involved a huge transfer of funds, it rose the aspirations of the community, and it served as an inspiration for social innovators — until everyone realized that the reality was not so rosy.
This project illustrated components of failure in philanthropy projects, assuming that the philanthropist has sincere intent, like:
- Not researching stakeholder needs
- Generating unreal pomp within the community
- Disregarding the project’s impact on some stakeholders
- No iterations (important!)
- No testing (again, very important!)
- Not questioning the problem, solutions, or impact
We looked at some more such examples, where the vision and reality did not match. The One Laptop Per Child Initiative, a seemingly altruistic project actually can also fall in this category.
The laptops were not inexpensive enough to be relevant for developing nations. The software had significant influence from western culture and missed out on other cultural contexts. This initiative was focused on the number of laptops distributed, which is not the best strategy to reduce e-waste! Interesting read: What happens to your old laptop? The growing problem of e-waste
We looked at the rise of the concept of a cradle-to-cradle circular economy. A genuine effort to bring social innovation should define a problem clearly. It should answer the fundamental (yet difficult) questions of — Who would be impacted? What is the problem? How to measure impact?
Manzini: Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation seemed to me as a text that I will read again (and again!). It speaks about the concept of distributed sociotechnical systems, which allow for faster innovation, even though building its infrastructure has a high initial cost. Manzini emphasizes on distributing and testing as a way of learning. I could find this concept very familiar, relating it to Design thinking, where prototyping is important to tackle bigger questions.
Design, when everyone designs connects with Participatory design from my experience, where the power of changing or influencing a system is consciously distributed, by someone in a position of power themselves. We discussed how the dual role of context in the innovation process — to imagine possibilities, as well as to provide constraints to limit possibilities.
Examples of design as activism were intriguing to me, and their impact in the form of raising awareness, sharing knowledge, inspiration, even incentivization. One of the examples we discussed in class was Photo Ark (NatGeo) which I remembered vividly from visiting the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Another example we talked about was the Conflict Kitchen, and I got reminded of its story from Brett Yasko, its designer’s perspective.
Week 3
Goldsmith: The Power of Social Innovation was also a very insightful text. I liked his highlight on civic entrepreneurs from different walks of our socioeconomic structure — public servants and elected officials, venture capitalists and generous individual donors, faith-based providers, engaged citizens, and business leaders advocating new definitions of corporate social responsibility (Goldsmith, 2010, pg 15, 16).
Goldsmith outlines what social entrepreneurs do well, and what makes them more pragmatic than others —
- Focus on outcomes
- Measuring the impact
- Leveraging resources
- Clear goals
- Clear business models
In this book, we also see the need for failure as a part of the innovation process. It seems important for social innovators to be reducing aversion to risk, being more disposed to iteration, thinking of long-term sustainability of the innovation, and not overly focusing on the innovation product itself.
We then moved on to look at an important aspect of the social sector — and it is important in any sector, for that matter — funding! Although, most social service efforts model themselves based on external funding, which is why philanthropic grants become quite important for their survival.
Social innovators might have to navigate through these tensions:
- Levels of hierarchy in philanthropic organizations
- Being steered by funders on the direction of the problem and solutions, which might help the funder’s agenda (Eg. using a particular technology without justifying its need in the context)
- Competition for the same grants from other social workers in the same sector, which seems almost ironic, when you consider the altruistic nature of their purposes.
Funder, Producer, Beneficiary
Looking at the triangle formed by these three stakeholders helped me understand their relationships, and also imagine the possible tensions between them.
I got reminded of the Midday Meal Scheme by the government of India, which offers free afternoon meals in public schools in India. I am seeing Funders are tax-paying citizens of India. The Producer here is the MHRD of India, and the Beneficiary here is this little ecosystem of children, their families, and teachers.
In 2014, I had taken many field visits in public primary schools in the locality of Amingaon, Assam, India. From interviews with teachers and children, I had learned that many children came to school simply for the free meal. Moreover, some teachers did not get bothered by this (more free time at work)!
In class, we talked about a few ways of dealing with such complications, as selecting the right parameters to measure, adapting those parameters with time, and iterating on the solution based on stakeholder responses.
Iteration is the favorite stage of the design process for many user-centered designs! I have now understood its overlap with the policy design process. The method suggested by Arthi seems to me like almost superimposing Design and Policy processes and creating a more robust way to create impact.
Week 4
Over the last weekend, I conceived the idea of what would be my manifesto. I reflected on my personal beliefs, found how they connected with my design practice, and pictured how I might be able to communicate this interestingly.
I wrote a letter to myself from the future!
In class, we had a group critique where I received wonderful feedback from classmates. The concept of Letter from the future seemed to prompt a lot of imagination! From the class discussion, I got ideas on initiating physical interaction with the manifesto similar to a letter in an envelope, and even conceptual questions like in 2040, if people would write letters what form might they take? I will be creating the next version of this manifesto over the weekend… stay tuned!
In the class on Wednesday, we looked at the writings of:
To initiate design in the broader context of a situation is a very interesting and powerful role for the designer, and I generally wonder what form does this role exist in the industry?
Week 5
At the start of this week, I worked on the second version of my manifesto. Many thanks to my classmates and Arthi for honest feedback and creative ideas!
In the second iteration, the key areas that I worked upon were:
- Writing stronger, more declarative statements. I focused on this area the most because this was the most challenging area for me personally and I generally struggle with being assertive.
- Making the content more concise, and outlining clearer actions that I am willing to do to realize the vision in my manifesto.
- Typography to bring out the essence of thoughts in my manifesto, and to enable the readers of my manifesto to skim through it.
I stayed with the idea of writing a letter from myself in 2040 to myself in 2020 and I felt it was the right level of abstraction for the 20-year timeframe. :)
This was the second version of my manifesto.
This week in class, we started on a new task of writing a short paper about a topic or theme within social innovation. I thought of the questions that I care about and problem areas that I want to do something about:
- Climate change
- Cruelty on animals
- Sexual violence
- Waste pollution
Learning from the Frame Creation model of Kees Dorst, I gave an attempt at framing the problem in these areas:
To be honest, it was challenging to describe the problem in multiple frames. But it was very valuable because it helped me find the frame in which I feel some level of agency within the scope of my skills and resources.
In the class sessions this week, I had feedback sessions with my classmates and Arthi, where I found different perspectives on the problem frame of ‘Flights burn fossil fuels which cause high carbon emissions.’
I then utilized the Social Design Pathways matrix to ideate upon solutions for this problem frame and thinking of the nature of each solution — whether it is a Stand-Alone Intervention that would need an Individual Designer or if it is a Cultural Transformation that might need Cross-Sector Group participation.
Many thanks to classmates for their feedback on the problem frame and my ideated solutions. I learned a lot from understanding the problem frames described by everyone else and sharing with them whatever I knew about it.
I am now working on secondary research:
I am looking at the problem area of carbon emissions caused by flights and hoping to find inspiration, gaps, precedents, and meta-knowledge.
Here are two examples of case studies that have recently inspired me:
Week 6
This week, I iterated on defining the problem area for the paper and brainstorming possible interventions. Here is the train of thought I followed:
Air travel is desirable for human development.
We know that air travel has been a significant disruptor in the advancement of humanity. It has increased global connectivity and access. It has helped people know different parts of the world gain several unique experiences. By the end of 2020, the aviation industry will have grown by at least 50 percent in just a decade. Globally, the number of flights has been steadily increasing and is expected to reach 40.3 million in 2020.
Air travel causes extensive damage to the climate.
Around 860 million metric tons of carbon dioxide have been emitted every year by flights, which means at least 2580 million square meters of loss in Arctic sea ice every year. Moreover, aircrafts flying over the Arctic alone contribute to 15–20% of warming in those areas, where the ice cover is now declining at an alarming rate of 12.85 percent per decade.
Air travel emissions have a complicated web of reasons.
Most of us choose air travel because it is superiorly faster than other modes of transport such as trains, buses or driving. To be superfast, a commercial flight needs a highly energy-dense fuel. At present, this demand can be met by fossil fuels almost exclusively. Standard jet fuel has a specific energy of 11,890 watt-hours per kilogram. The most competent alternative to fossil fuels in aviation is biofuel. Biofuel is generated from biomass which is typically sourced from plants, which means that it absorbed CO2 in photosynthesis. Hence, even though biofuel causes emissions, it is justified theoretically to have net-zero emissions. A few aircraft by Boeing and Dassault have been able to fly on a hundred percent biofuel. Many airlines such as KLM, Finnair, Singapore Airlines have adopted aircraft that use a mix of fossil fuels and biofuels.
We do have concepts and demonstrations of sustainable air travel.
With the objective of widespread adoption of climate-friendly flights, secondary research indicates that we need disruptive innovation in multiple sources of renewable energy for aviation. To bring about this disruption, we need expertise from different disciplines such as engineering, mathematics, geology, meteorology, policy, communication design, media management, finance, administration — this list can be boundless.
In recent years, renewable energy has been a top focus of most governments, non-government organizations and private investors. Sustainability is on the agenda of 188 countries as of Mar 2020. United Nations and its units across the world have committed themselves to 17 sustainable development goals. Corporations such as Google or Microsoft, investors like Blackrock, and organizations such as WEF have committed to the cause of zero emissions.
What would it take to make all air travel sustainable? — Initial ideation on possible interventions
To bring in expertise from different disciplines to work on renewable energy in aviation, I first thought of designing a live awareness campaign on career transition towards renewable energy.
This campaign would be directed towards knowledge workers in different professions, such as engineering, policy, geology, or economics to name a few. It will be an appeal to skilled people to orient their abilities towards climate change, specifically renewable energy, and more specifically to the aviation industry, which represents a paradox between human advancement and destruction. An example of a product of this intervention will be illustrated below, wherein it draws inspiration from nationalist military recruitment campaigns in history, seeks to build a global patriotism, and speaks to express the voices of children from future generations.
The intervention takes the form of a digital platform that intakes live information from employers in the aviation industry about needs for research or workforce in clean and renewable energy. Live information then goes through a creative loop to be synthesized and designed into appealing communication products, which then seek to inspire skilled professionals of different disciplines and working capacities to the job needs. The success of this intervention will be measured by the number of career transitions into renewable energy. Eventually, the platform would evolve into an open-source and free platform with self-motivated contributions.
Week 7
This week I learned about the method of laying out an “Endgame” for a social innovation intervention, and how it can prove to be more important than even the intervention itself, particularly for funders.
Here is a PDF of What’s Your Endgame? by Alice Gugelev & Andrew Stern:
Studying an intervention
I am looking into the Solar Impulse, an experimental solar-powered aircraft project, with the lens of how it might feel if it were an everyday affair. I wonder about the possibility of going on a vacation on a faraway island, flying in a solar-powered aircraft, without realizing any difference from how I fly today!
Here is a 3-min presentation summarizing my learnings and questions:
Week 8
I am in the process of writing an analysis paper on the Solar Impulse project, the landscape of solar-powered aircraft, and possibilities in renewable energy.
Abstract of analysis paper
A one-hour flight typically costs 600 square feet of ice cover on the Arctic. Air travel has shown a growth of approximately 50% in the decade from 2010–2020. It has been crucial for the advancement of humanity, but we must investigate planet-friendly ways of flying. This paper provides an analysis of an intervention in the space of sustainable air travel: Solar Impulse, an experimental solar-powered aircraft project, run by a team of approximately 50 people in Lausanne in Switzerland, led by 2 innovators with varied backgrounds in engineering, piloting, management, psychiatry, ballooning.
The project began in 2003 with an aim to demonstrate clean technologies for impossible goals. In the first two phases of the project, they built two full-fledged aircraft, Solar Impulse I and Solar Impulse II. Their key milestones were a 19-hour intercontinental flight in 2012 and a circumnavigation of the Earth in 2015–16. The fundamental working principle of these aircraft is to equip its surfaces with solar panels, energize batteries during the day, and fly through the night. These aircraft are lightweight, sensitive to turbulence, have a vast wingspan, and hence difficult to pilot. Where a typical jet fuel-based flight can fly approximately 40 people in 1 hour, the Solar Impulse II can fly 1 person, the pilot, within 8 to 12 hours.
The first two phases of this project cost an investment of $170 million, funded by approximately 10 individual sponsors and 50 corporations. This project is situated within a larger effort towards promoting green energy and sustainable technologies. The third phase of this project is planned to develop an unmanned aircraft to be applied in fields such as communication, agriculture, infrastructure, or military ISR. Presently, we can only speculate on the trajectory of this project if it would have directed itself towards succeeding fossil fuel-based aviation.
Spring Break Week
Referring to the theories in What’s Your Endgame?, it is evident that this intervention has crossed the stages of start-up, proof-of-concept, and early scaling. I wonder how might solar-powered aircraft become a norm? What would it take for the project Solar Impulse advance from demonstration flights to widespread adoption in the entire aviation industry?
Endgame possibilities for Solar Impulse
Commercial adoption: The first two phases of this project cost an investment of 170 million dollars, funded by approximately 10 individual sponsors and 50 corporations such as Solvay, Omega, Google, Dassault, and others. It is pragmatic for this project to continue commercial adoption, particularly for R&D efforts. We can see rising awareness among airlines to track emissions, optimize fuel efficiency, fund renewable energy, use biofuels, or encourage responsible flying decisions. Some examples of such airlines would be KLM, Swiss, Delta, United, or JetBlue. We are also seeing an increasing number of experiments with flights running on electric batteries and biofuels in aircraft, some examples of which are Falcon 20 aircraft of NRC, several aircraft in KLM’s fleet, or certain jets in the US Air Force. Owing to climate activism in recent years, a solar-powered aircraft would be a highly alluring investment for corporates across all industries, which is seen in their focus on achieving sustainability directly or indirectly. We can see this intent in recent announcements by Google, Microsoft, or Amazon. Investment in renewable energy has always been a viable route to offset emissions, particularly for corporates in fossil fuel industries, such as ExxonMobil’s investment plans for renewable energy. Major investors worldwide have also been redrawing their portfolios to finance green enterprises, such as BlackRock’s announcement in WEF 2020.
Government adoption: The combined investment required to execute the first two phases of the Solar Impulse project was $170 million, and it served well in executing demonstration flights. However, if the Solar Impulse II were to be scaled up to carry 40 passengers, or if it were to match the flying speeds of today’s commercial flights, it would need funding of substantially higher order. Government grants could then act as more integrated sources of funding, reducing administration costs. For instance, the European Union announced in mid-2019 an Innovation Fund for interventions which have been able to make successful demonstrations, financed by emissions trading that may amount up to €10 billion. Another large government, the United States, announced in early 2020 a funding of $125.5 million for solar energy projects. An example of government adoption in aviation policy is the CORSIA which mandates all European airlines to monitor and offset their emissions by 80%. This policy could be a key driver for European airlines such as KLM, Swiss, Air France to heavily invest in renewable energy.
Replication: Going ahead, I can imagine the Solar Impulse taking a form of replication through a combination of commercial adoption and government adoption. In the near future, if the Solar Impulse project continues to harness investments from the private sector or the government sector, they would be able to innovate further and scale up their aircraft models to fast commercial flights, or resilient telecommunications equipment, or robust defense machines. In the case of commercial flights, their endgame could be replicable aircraft models for aerospace manufacturers and airlines, that are as easy as fossil fuel-based models to adopt and operate.
Week 9
We are deep in a coronavirus crisis, and I pray that it gets over soon, before causing more damage than it already has.
In the Design for Social Innovation class this week, we are thinking about the next project, which would be focused on learning how to design deliverables for a specific audience, exercising methods like stakeholder mapping and experience mapping. We are choosing between working upon (a) previously chosen paper topics, or (b) the highly topical coronavirus pandemic or (c) the fishing community in Pittsburgh.
The effects of coronavirus in multiple contexts, on multiple scales, have occupied my mind for the last few weeks. In the next couple of weeks, I would be keen on investigating social and economic challenges arisen due to the pandemic, and here a few design opportunities I feel motivated to work on:
Connectedness
- How might we help people take care of loved ones despite the distance? (We are all strangled into isolation, and it is for the best. It is known that isolation has harmful effects on mental health, and the news about coronavirus cases rising or death tolls must be adding to stress levels. I would be interested in finding ways for everyone to stay connected with people they know, make sure their loved ones are safe and fine, and maintain positivity about the near future).
- How might we enable people who are not tech-savvy to catch up with remote working? (My mom and dad have been teaching engineering students for 20-25 years, and they are highly used to offline teaching methods. It’s a whole new thing for them to conduct online classes or create video lectures :) I am interested in helping people similar to my parents in age, tech literacy, or language barriers, with learning how to go digital).
Socioeconomic equity
An economic slowdown has begun with factories getting shut down, travel bans halting the hospitality industry, and stock market indices falling all over the world, economists predicting a recession, amidst the layoffs and suspensions, some design opportunities in this context would be:
- How could people prepare for the current economic slowdown and recession predicted by the pandemic?
- How might there be a more equitable distribution of the economic consequences of this pandemic?
- How might daily wage laborers withstand this economic meltdown and prepare for a likely recession in the coming months?
- How might we facilitate the process of sharing difficulties and needs, with the government or other aid-providing agencies, for people who do not have access to digital platforms?
Article on layoffs in the US due to coronavirus (11 Mar 2020)
These early coronavirus-related jobs cuts appear to have mostly affected younger, entry-level employees and gig workers. Workers receiving pink slips said they have no idea whether these layoffs will be permanent and that it is nearly impossible to look for another job right now, with many companies instituting hiring freezes. Uncertainty is high, and as people lose jobs — or fear losing jobs — they typically scale back spending even more, which has a ripple effect on local economies.Some of the hardest hit so far are gig workers and independent contractors. They are caught in limbo: Work is drying up, meaning they are effectively laid off, but they do not get to collect unemployment insurance. A payroll tax cut President Trump has proposed would not help them.
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Article on the challenges in unemployment benefits (18 Mar 2020)
Layoffs are continuing to mount by the tens of thousands, prompting a surge of applications at unemployment offices nationwide as coronavirus brings more of the U.S. economy to a standstill. For the week ending March 7, unemployment insurance claims totaled 211,000, according to data by the Department of Labor. In New Jersey, 15,000 applications arrived on Monday, causing the state’s website to crash, local affiliate WHYY reported. The White House is working with congressional Republicans on a stimulus plan that could send two $1,000 checks to many Americans and allocate $300 billion to help small businesses avoid layoffs, according to two senior administration officials and a Treasury Department fact sheet. Much has yet to be finalized on the $1 trillion emergency plan.
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Article on why Pakistan ‘cannot afford’ to shut down cities (18 Mar 2020)
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has called upon his countrymen “not to panic” amid a spike in coronavirus cases in the country, warning that the spread of COVID-19 was inevitable and that Pakistan cannot currently afford the economic cost of shutting down its cities. “We thought that if we shut down our cities, then people are already suffering, if we save them from corona[virus] on the one side, on the other side they’ll die of hunger,” he said in a televised address to the nation late on Tuesday. “We did consider shutting down cities when we were at 20 cases … but I want to tell you all that Pakistan does not have the conditions that are in the United States or Europe. Our country has poverty.”
