Co Design And Social Innovation

Although co-design has been practised in new service and product development for some years, it has only recently begun to appear in the burgeoning field of social innovation. It appears to be well-attuned to this new context, offering as it does an open-ended relational process to generate novel solutions to problems whose very definition seems to escape more conventional approaches. However, even less research attention has been paid to co-design than to social innovation. This book explores the potential of co-design as a social innovation process. It reviews the diverse theoretical and disciplinary foundations on which co-design is based. It proposes a framework for understanding co-design as a cohesive practice across the extremely broad scope of its potential applications. It explores appropriate approaches to governance and evaluation of co-design initiatives and outlines the key issues and limitations on its use. Although it is intended to provide a robust theoretical basis for researching co-design initiatives, it will also be of interest to anyone who is contemplating putting co-design into practice.

The role of design, both expert and nonexpert, in the ongoing wave of social innovation toward sustainability. In a changing world everyone designs: each individual person and each collective subject, from enterprises to institutions, from communities to cities and regions, must define and enhance a life project. Sometimes these projects generate unprecedented solutions; sometimes they converge on common goals and realize larger transformations. As Ezio Manzini describes in this book, we are witnessing a wave of social innovations as these changes unfold—an expansive open co-design process in which new solutions are suggested and new meanings are created. Manzini distinguishes between diffuse design (performed by everybody) and expert design (performed by those who have been trained as designers) and describes how they interact. He maps what design experts can do to trigger and support meaningful social changes, focusing on emerging forms of collaboration. These range from community-supported agriculture in China to digital platforms for medical care in Canada; from interactive storytelling in India to collaborative housing in Milan. These cases illustrate how expert designers can support these collaborations—making their existence more probable, their practice easier, their diffusion and their convergence in larger projects more effective. Manzini draws the first comprehensive picture of design for social innovation: the most dynamic field of action for both expert and nonexpert designers in the coming decades.

Although co-design has been practised in new service and product development for some years, it has only recently begun to appear in the burgeoning field of social innovation. It appears to be well-attuned to this new context, offering as it does an open-ended relational process to generate novel solutions to problems whose very definition seems to escape more conventional approaches. However, even less research attention has been paid to co-design than to social innovation. This book explores the potential of co-design as a social innovation process. It reviews the diverse theoretical and disciplinary foundations on which co-design is based. It proposes a framework for understanding co-design as a cohesive practice across the extremely broad scope of its potential applications. It explores appropriate approaches to governance and evaluation of co-design initiatives and outlines the key issues and limitations on its use. Although it is intended to provide a robust theoretical basis for researching co-design initiatives, it will also be of interest to anyone who is contemplating putting co-design into practice.

The United Nations, Australia Post, and governments in the UK, Finland, Taiwan, France, Brazil, and Israel are just a few of the organizations and groups utilizing design to drive social change. Grounded by a global survey in sectors as diverse as public health, urban planning, economic development, education, humanitarian response, cultural heritage, and civil rights, Design for Social Innovation captures these stories and more through 45 richly illustrated case studies from six continents. From advocating to understanding and everything in between, these cases demonstrate how designers shape new products, services, and systems while transforming organizations and supporting individual growth. How is this work similar or different around the world? How are designers building sustainable business practices with this work? Why are organizations investing in design capabilities? What evidence do we have of impact by design? Leading practitioners and educators, brought together in seven dynamic roundtable discussions, provide context to the case studies. Design for Social Innovation is a must-have for professionals, organizations, and educators in design, philanthropy, social innovation, and entrepreneurship. This book marks the first attempt to define the contours of a global overview that showcases the cultural, economic, and organizational levers propelling design for social innovation forward today.

This books focuses on co-design, and more specifically, on the various forms co-design might take to tackle the most pressing societal challenges, introducing public-interest services as the main application field. To do so, it presents an extensive study conducted within a particular community of residents in Milan: this is a social innovation story integrated into the discipline of service design, which simultaneously deepens the related concepts of co-design, co-production and co-management of services. Drawing upon this experience and further studies, the book presents the idea of a collaborative infrastructure and its related infrastructuring process in ten steps, in order to explore the issues of incubation and replication of services and to extensively investigate the creation of those experimental spaces in which citizen participation is fostered and innovation in the public realm is pursued. Lastly, the book develops other lines of reflection on co-design seen, for example, as a form of cultural activism, as an instrument for building citizenship, and as a key competence for the public administration and thus as a public service itself. The idea of co-design as a way to regenerate the practices of democracy is a recurring theme throughout the book: co-design is a process that seeks to change the state of things and it is intentionally presented as a long and complex path in which the role of designer is not only that of a facilitator, but also that of a cultural operator who contributes with ideas and visions, hopefully fostering a real cultural change.

Design has always played a role in the process of production, transformations in society and the economy, shifts in technology and impacts on the environment. The nature of the changes created by our post-industrial era is challenging the character of design and its role in society. The post-industrial era is creating complex projects for technology, service, systems, strategy and products. Clients are even becoming undefined stakeholders, and this can be extended to the entire community and the environment. The rise of digital technology and the knowledge society are introducing a new culture, which can be open, participatory, shared and collaborative. Here the designer is acting as a researcher, always questioning the character of the project, its outcomes and process. Open access, co-design, crowdfunding, digital manufacturing, open-source, DIY, enabling systems and networking can be included in the toolbox of the designer and can create opportunities to drive the change towards sustainability, equity and democracy. Social innovation is leveraging forms of collaboration and co-production in which designers, innovators, users and communities co-create knowledge and solutions for a wide range of social needs, exploiting the networking technologies. This book explores a number of areas where design can contribute to face the contemporary transformations in our society with real-life collaborative research and innovation projects. Through a number of Canadian social innovation case studies collected in social, environmental and technological fields, we recognize how the role of the designer cannot be limited to the production of finished objects; rather, designers can create tools and platforms to help users and citizens participate in projects, even allowing forms of personalization.

The role of design, both expert and nonexpert, in the ongoing wave of social innovation toward sustainability. In a changing world everyone designs: each individual person and each collective subject, from enterprises to institutions, from communities to cities and regions, must define and enhance a life project. Sometimes these projects generate unprecedented solutions; sometimes they converge on common goals and realize larger transformations. As Ezio Manzini describes in this book, we are witnessing a wave of social innovations as these changes unfold—an expansive open co-design process in which new solutions are suggested and new meanings are created. Manzini distinguishes between diffuse design (performed by everybody) and expert design (performed by those who have been trained as designers) and describes how they interact. He maps what design experts can do to trigger and support meaningful social changes, focusing on emerging forms of collaboration. These range from community-supported agriculture in China to digital platforms for medical care in Canada; from interactive storytelling in India to collaborative housing in Milan. These cases illustrate how expert designers can support these collaborations—making their existence more probable, their practice easier, their diffusion and their convergence in larger projects more effective. Manzini draws the first comprehensive picture of design for social innovation: the most dynamic field of action for both expert and nonexpert designers in the coming decades.

This book includes a deep-dive into the mindsets and methods of Co-design. It draws on the authors' experience across Australia and New Zealand, as well as design, trauma-informed practice, collective learning and social movements.