Framing Design for Social Innovation
“Design for Social Innovation,” I said confidently.
“What’s that?”
“Well,…” I followed a bit timidly.
That’s a good question. A question, believe it or not, that we discussed quite frequently in class — especially at the beginning of the semester. When our professors mentioned we’d be “framing DSI and what it means,” there was a chuckle from everyone, followed by curious, and perhaps somewhat nervous, glances around the room. Maybe some other students felt the way I was feeling. We all have our reasons why we chose to apply to this program, but were these reasons really in line with the Design for Social Innovation definition? We walked into the auditorium to find out.
The Breakdown
Perhaps it’s best to start from the beginning — or maybe just a breakdown of each word. Well, let me take a step back. In all of our classes we’re learning about, dissecting, and discussing what natural and social systems are, how they function, how we can identify intervention/leverage points, and how we can work with communities to develop solutions where all stakeholders can find value. Although not a social system, words make up larger systems of sentences. The arrangement of the words is important. The specific arrangement gives meaning and value. In the same way we look at smaller parts of a larger, interconnected system to understand how the larger system functions and interacts, we can look at the breakdown of singular words to understand the meaning of the sentence–or in this case, a title.
Design
As time progresses, our ideas and thoughts evolve. At first, I understood Design to be a noun. Design is something you create. Something you create for people. We create “designs.” I was a Designer who made designs. That seemed pretty simple. But then, Design was reframed for me. Design is part of a process — we utilize design, as a part of our overall process to create something with communities. Yes, with and not for. Design is my process. It’s how I create things. It’s how I build things. It’s how I learn to understand the world around me. It’s thinking, listening, and understanding, and listening (yes, I wrote that twice) about what people need and desire, why people need these things, and how people feel. As Designers, we need to be attuned to the needs of the people we’re co-creating with. In this reframed mindset of Design as a process, Design remains iterative. Iteration is the key to any process. Dubberly explains the Design process as “synthesize, evaluate, analyze.” Below is a poster which explains how one can think about the cyclical nature of processes (available for download from Dubberly Design.)
For
Let’s look at Merriam Webster’s Dictionary definition of the word “for”: “used as a function word to indicate purpose.” Purpose. That’s the crux of all of this. Creating designs that have purpose and well thought out intentions behind their design and implementation.
Social
This is the reason we are here. Humans are social beings. We want to interact with others. We crave learning. We want to learn and understand others. This is our human element. It’s an element with which we can not live without, simply because it’s who we are and how we function. This is all about being connected with each other. It’s about how we thrive and struggle with each other. We must work together as a collective group, for the betterment of all humanity. This portion is about working with others to understand (and sometimes reframe mental models) how providing for also satisfies our individual needs. Being “social” is about “interconnectedness,” but we’ll get to that later.
Innovation
Like Design, “innovation” is also a process. In today’s society this is a word that gets tossed around a lot. Everyone wants to be innovative and produce the next hottest item on the market. But innovation is more than the next big tech product. Innovation is about transformation. Peter Drucker defines innovation as “the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” It’s about constructing new and desired realities. When we’re designing new and desired realities with people in communities, ethics becomes increasingly significant. While we design, we must ensure that our process of innovation remains humanistic and human-centered. As Designers, we must put our “expert” mindset aside, and remember that all humans can provide insights, have imagination and can help to develop potential solutions. Inspiration can come from anywhere and anyone. The people with the best solutions might be the people you’re working with. After all, who knows their community better than they do? Community participation is key in this entire process.
How do we work with (design) communities (social) to develop new and desired realities (innovation)? Let’s start with understanding “interconnectedness.”
Interconnectedness
I told you we’d come back to this word! Going back to our analogy of sentence structure, how do these words interact and intertwine with each other? How do all of these smaller parts of a community interact with each other within a larger social system? Everything that we engage with, every person, every place, every living thing is interconnected and there is unique context that surrounds them all. Design for Social Innovation is cross-disciplinary. Everyone is involved, because we’re all connected. That’s what makes these proposed solutions so valuable. Not only do Designers have stake in the process, but everyone does. There is no hierarchy. Co-creation and interconnectedness. Because we need to understand and empathize with who we’re working with and understand how the choices we make will impact not only the lives of today, but the lives and environments of tomorrow. How can we generate win, win, win solutions? Let’s work with communities to find those more impactful leverage points.
Design for Social Innovation is a program about doing more than good in the world. It’s larger than all of us. It’s addressing systemic change at all different levels. There is a plethora of intervention points. We all came here for different reasons, but we came here to try to understand, learn, and wrap our minds around how social systems function and govern, and how we can create new systems or sometimes work within existing systems.
I came here to be challenged. No, I was never ready for this journey and I don’t think you ever can be. It’s an unsettling feeling sitting in class and wondering how and why you want to impact the world. Are your intentions good enough? Will your honest and genuine intentions hurt the communities you’re working with? If problems are solved now, will they still be “solved” decades from now? Why is Design for Social Innovation important? It’s a place where we can begin to ponder, wonder and discuss what the world could look like. What do communities want their futures to look like? How do we hope to craft our own futures? It’s about learning, processing and iterating to move forward toward a world full of equity for all. It’s about creating space for conversations to happen-real conversations-the conversations that make you think and the conversations with others that challenge you. I have challenged myself to transform into the best version of myself. Maybe, that’s what I hope for all. For everyone to be the self that they’ve always wanted to be. The self that you understand and appreciate, so that you can finally take the time to love and appreciate others.
There’s no one else I’d rather be on this journey with.
