Social Design-Designing for Social Impact
How as a designer / non-designer can you incorporate skills and strategies to bring a social change and make an impact
What is Design?
In the early stage of my design career, My understanding of what design is that it's about creating aesthetically pleasing products that attract the users which in turn increases the business value. Hence I looked forward to improving my visual sense and continuously focused on creating ‘delightful’ interfaces. Five years down the lane my perspective towards design has changed a lot. Even now when I tell people that I am a designer they often misunderstand as a person who makes pretty software. Within the industry, it's very rare to find a designer who has the same understanding of what truly a design is.
Every company, every industry owns a design team whose function differs from one to another, naming some — Industrial design, UX Design, Interior Design, Automobile Design, Architectural Design, and so on. Within the UX design itself, we have a diverse team such as Interaction design, Visual Design, Information Design, Motion Design, etc. Amazingly UX design is something that sits under across all industries ranging from urban design to a small product that sits on your desk.
But in the end, no matter which field of the industry or which design title we hold, we all have one goal: Solving the right problem
“Design is not about what it looks like, its about how it works” — Steve Jobs
What is Social Design
A couple of years back I was actively networking with design folks in various meetups, workshops, and virtual platforms to gain much more knowledge on from various industry leaders. Not till when I attended a summer workshop on Designing for behavior and Impact by Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design in Kochi facilitated by Alexandra Fiorillo, I was exposed to this whole new world called ‘Social Design’ which is actually a need of the hour right now, a field of design that touches millions of people’s life purposefully.
Social design is an application of design methodologies to solve complex human issues by deeply understanding their experience towards these problems. It tackles issues on sustainability, health, technology, and the vulnerability of people. It uses the human-centered design mindset as a creative launchpad in solving these complex issues.
Why it has to be “design”
Because it is a
- Process Driven
- Systemic approach
- Collaborative
- Human-centred
Core Principles of Social Design
1. Ethics and Empathy
There is a great difference between sympathy and empathy, as sympathy is more of feeling sorry for the user, while empathy is putting yourself in the shoe of the user. Being empathetic is the key soft skill for any designer as a matter of fact.
Ethics is about understanding your role in society and acting responsibly and morally towards the people you’re designing for.
2. Team Collaboration
Team collaboration is a communication and project management approach that emphasizes teamwork, innovative thinking, and equal participation to achieve objectives. In terms of social design, you will be working with as many field experts as possible such as a health expert, sanitation experts, etc with whom you would have to constantly engage and collaborate to create a feasible solution. Social designers work in interdisciplinary teams and are enablers and facilitators of the effective team process.
3. Social Literacy
Social designers must understand the context, complexity, and interconnectedness of the social problem. They must develop positive human values and cultural sensitivity in order to design effective intervention.
4. Design Research
Engage the stakeholders in the research process to define the problem and develop a solution. Generally, the research process is broadly classified into two types — Qualitative Research and Quantitative Research that is applied ethnographically to collect, interpret, and apply data in various forms.
5. Design Thinking + System Thinking
Design thinking is a creative problem-solving approach that involves key stages — Understand, empathize, define, prototype, test, and refine the solution collaboratively to effectively address the social problem. D-school design thinking, Ideo’s design thinking and Double diamond design thinking model are some of the widely popular tool used for solving social issues.
System thinking is a strategical problem-solving approach to help to solve problems that are dynamic and complex in nature.
For example — The eradicating hunger problem would be complex and dynamic in nature due to various factors involved in the hunger problem in a country such as poor living conditions, employment status, etc, and hence it needs system-level thinking to solve them.
Both system thinking and design thinking can be worked either independently or co-dependently based on the complexity and nature of the problem statement.
6. Form and Function
Understand, analyze and interpret the complex concepts, problems, and processes to translate into visual (Campaign poster, communication design) or physical form (product, service, architectural, etc)
7. Design Entrepreneurship
Turn ideas and innovations into actions for lasting and sustainable solutions. There is a common say “Think like a system, Act like an entrepreneur”
Design thinking case study: Ideo’s Clean Team (In-home toilet for Ghana’s urban poor)
Inspiration
This is a design research phase that involves talking with sanitation experts for six weeks of shadowing a toilet operator, digging into the history of sanitation in ghana, and talking to scads of Ghanaians. An important historical note came out too, For years Ghana had night soil collectors, people who cleaned out bucket Latrines each night. But because many night soil collectors dumped the waste in the streets, night soil collection was banned in the 1990s. This means the team can leverage existing behavior around in-home waste removal, but they would have to avoid any association with illegal dumping.
Ideation
The ideation phase took 7 weeks that involves a lightning-fast prototype, After brainstorming with clients and everyday Ghanaians, the team determined which direction to take and began testing its ideas. What aesthetic do people like? Would a urine-diverting toilet work? Were people were comfortable with the serviceman coming to their home? Where in the home would the toilet go? One of the best practice of prototyping is that it gives you real-life feedback to one of the ideas.
Implementation
The final clean team design included a product, a service, branding and communication, and a key element for implementing the service as a sustainable business.
Learn more at www.cleanteamtoilets.com
Meanwhile here are some ways to start thinking like a social designer:
- Find the right problem to solve
- Do proper research to ensure that what you’re designing doesn't harm or offend any community or group of people
- Community first
- Quick and dirty prototyping
- Continuous learning and reflection
How to get started :
- Introduction to Human-Centred Design — https://www.acumenacademy.org/course/design-kit-human-centered-design
- System Practice: Learn to use systems thinking approach to move from “impossible” to impact https://www.acumenacademy.org/course/systems-practice
- Start by participating in the open challenges and solve with brilliant minds people across the world: https://www.openideo.com/
- Explore various topics and case studies on social design: https://currystonefoundation.org/social-design-insights/
- Resources on design for impact: https://www.designforhealth.org/
- Toolkits for social design: https://diytoolkit.org/tools/
- Civic service design case studies on Newyork public services: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/servicedesign/
References
- Youth Action net: 7 Core Principles of Design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNDkmzBQn4E
- The clean toilet case study took from Introduction to Human-Centred Design course material
