Social designers

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Comment by Satu Miettinen 1 day ago

Yes, I have skype and I would be happy to chat :), I message you my address

Comment by rufflemuffin on November 6, 2009 at 3:17pm

Satu we must have a talk about my current project. we are coproducing a social enterprise with a community..using for me, a service design mentality but in a more coproductive way..its hard to break away from the terminology constraints to get this right.

have you got skype?

Comment by Satu Miettinen on November 6, 2009 at 8:31am

About prototyping social design > there are now so many project, programs that have both service design and social design elements that why wouldn't we try to draw out some experiences out of these? One of the key experiences that I have from both social design and service design projects is that commitment with the community is one of the key factor! Also one of the experiences from social design side is the tools for co-experiece are lacking, participatory approach may still lack in many cases. There are good individual cases where service design tools are in place but when you take a general look this does not apply.

Comment by Satu Miettinen on November 6, 2009 at 8:25am

I think the comments are all great. I didn't propose that service design is tool for only CORPORATE world nor that social design is tool for ONLY creating GOOD. :)
But I do propose that social design and service design thinking have some differences. I*m thinking social design is quite complex system and needs distinct orentation. My comment wasn't a scientific remarc :) either. But I have written quite many academic papers on social design (www.satumiettinen.com)

Comment by Matt Jones on November 5, 2009 at 8:43pm

Lukas, I am looking for a method to prototype things like:

Developing transportation options for children w/o healthcare to local clinics

Educating illiterate parents on how to create an environment of learning at home

Creating opportunities for children of drug addicts to overcome their circumstances.

All of these are easy to brainstorm and generate possible solutions...but REALLY hard to prototype. The groups that are addressing these issues have very limited resources, and can't afford to fail "late" in the process. DT is helping to get great options on the table...but the RP is a sticking point.

Arne- how would we go about setting up an area to create our "dictionary"? I imagine it may be a long process!

Matkku - very good point!

Comment by Markku Nurminen on November 5, 2009 at 8:04pm

Service design is an area of design and not limited to corporate world only. Architectural designers create private and public buildings and environments.

Comment by Lukas Golyszny on November 5, 2009 at 8:03pm

Matt, what do you want to prototype? There are many different rapid prototyping methods for the evaluation of services. It very much depends on the process, the stage in your process you need to run the test for, the objectves of the test, and the nature of the service itself.

By the way I like the idea to finally define all the buzzwords here ;-)

Comment by Matt Jones on November 5, 2009 at 7:50pm

rufflemuffin-
Great insights into the variances that exist in so many of the terms that are being used in this context.

If i might be so bold (as the newbie) to suggest that this group take a few of those terms and decide what "working" definitions they will use in order to decrease the confusion and better equip ourselves to communicate with one another.
These don't have to be widely accepted beyond this group - and may never make it to Wikipedia!
ie. Social Responsibility - 'socially aware'... "If I wanted to help tackle global warming, perhaps I'd design a kettle that only boiled the amount of water you needed..."
Social Design-" social design we locate and focus the work more clearly in the marginal and see that it will create benefit to the people there..."
Service Design -"a tool for creating business advantage for corporate world..."


It is only lunch time here so I am just getting warmed up for the day!

Comment by rufflemuffin on November 5, 2009 at 6:16pm

Satu, I think that service design isn't just about creating business advantages for corporate companies. Service design is about adding value, and I guess we could consider that value as anything.

For example (on my current project with @getgoglasgow http://sustainournation.ning.com ) we have been following a 'service design' process that I have used when working with business' and public sector to develop a social enterprise that tackles a social issue. So in this sense, the value could be reducing crime, more interactions between adults and children, increased uptake in exercise to encourage healthy living

We set ourselves a set of principles at the beginning that I guess could be described as our ethical guidelines for the project. We looked less at what co-design is, and more at what co-production is about. We wanted to create a sustainable solution that was developed by the community and so they could take the reigns of it. We didn't want to be parachuting designers, which had happened in a project a few years before us, where 'social designers' came along, tackled a social issue, created something in their studio and presented it to the community. Needless to say, it didn't take off, because the community didn't own it.

Service design, for me in this instance, is the backbone for our social design endeavor, it's the process that has tied all our research, insights and interactions with residents and stakeholders together. As Thomas points out, the way in which services are created by designers typically follow a process that seek to understand what people need, both service providers and customers, perhaps this is being socially aware..and if we take it away from a business context, does this constitute what we mean by the term 'social design'...

Something that interested me the other day on http://plateandserve.wordpress.com was Joel Bailey's comments on the sdnc conference talk, Cocreation sucks!: (which if anyone has a taping of, I would like to see)

"...It basically explored the misuse of co-design in the world. All good and interesting but for me it went a bit far down the purist route, almost concluding that any designer involvement would skew the findings. Sadly, the reality of time and budget constraints mean that the designer has to intercede to help the group reach a conclusive point."

Joel points out correctly that we can't be purists as designers, but perhaps what we are talking about here is socially aware designers...

To summarize my evening rumblings, I think service design as a process and the way it is executed is undoubtedly linked to social design in the context of community projects or initiatives to tackle a 'social' issue/problem, it's a way of problem solving. Perhaps though, we are not talking about service design as an outcome but the process of service design acting as a glue to tie a project together, as you mention, the participatory design approach which service design is much a part of.

I want to put this out there though, are we talking social design in the communal sense or are we talking about being 'social designers' and to be 'socially aware'... If I wanted to help tackle global warming, perhaps I'd design a kettle that only boiled the amount of water you needed, or look at ways of designing features that encourage behavior change. Can can then look at behavior change manifesting through all types of design disciplines from graphics to packaging. Is the answer that, being a social designer is about the pure intention to do good ?

I think the question here is who are you? and what are your values? what do you believe in?

Really enough ramblings there for past 5pm!

Comment by Matt Jones on November 5, 2009 at 6:01pm

Thanks for the thoughts -
My particular area of interest is in helping not for profits create solutions for the people they serve rather than investing resources in treating symptoms. For example, a small community NFP sees a low literacy rate and decides to build a library. That is treating the symptom. It may help, but it won't solve the problem. A solid DT approach can uncover the core issues, and lead to effective solutions. Again, the challenge is how to Rapid Prototype the possible solutions effectively.

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