Design with society: why socially responsive design is good enough

Abstract

This paper seeks to make the case for socially responsive design. It does this by offering a broad contexualisation of previous accounts of design, including those made in this special issue, and by proposing new and useful ways of understanding the need to address multiple actors and design agendas in the design process. The paper also reviews and identifies problems with some ideas about collaboration and agency in the context of social design and design-led social innovation. It suggests that equitable arrangements between stakeholders are essential to ensure the successful delivery of design for social change in the real world. It also argues that robust socially responsive design and innovation methodologies and engagement strategies are essential, and need to be mindfully applied by designers seeking to make effective and appropriate contributions to meeting societal goals in new, sustainable ways.

Keywords:

• socially responsible design
• socially responsive design
• social innovation
• sustainability

Notes

1. In making this observation about design being informed by two distinct patterns of activity (market and social design) we draw on Stuart Hall's seminal article on two paradigms in cultural studies (Hall 1980, 1986). When it was first published, this account went some way towards explaining the influences upon cultural studies, as an emerging academic interdisciplinary field of the humanities. We believe a similar investigation of design paradigms would be valuable.

2. Most recently by Robin Murray, who defines it as including ‘the state but also civil economy of a philanthropic third sector, social enterprises and cooperatives operating in the market, and the many strands of the reciprocal household economy – households themselves, social networks, informal associations as well as social movements’ (Murray et al. 2010, p. 10).

3. A frame refers to a way of ‘seeing’ a situation. To reframe is to challenge and overcome limiting beliefs, what limits a particular worldview. If we let these go, new conceptions and possibilities can develop. Reframing in the context meant here is articulated by Schön (1987) and Schön and Rein (1994).

4. Paternalistic design approaches are defined as those typified by an unstated assumption that there is an imbalance of agency within the social design or social innovation process, particularly where this leads to designers and funders deciding what is needed, and how best to address those needs, without acknowledging the rights or responsibilities of those affected.

5. Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a methodology that seeks to uncover and utilise the strengths within communities as a means for sustainable development. The writings of Kretzman and McKnight (1993) were influential in setting up this approach.

6. For example, see resources on: http://www.abcdinstitute.org (ABCD 2011).

7. Winnicott (1970) argued that only in unusual cases, where there are problems with individuation, the typical transitional object for the human actor develops into a perverse fetish. Our point is that perverse fetishism is rare and most experiences of separation (human individuation) occur without a problem and so do not lead to fetishism. However, in offering an account of the good enough designer we implicitly raise separation issues too, between the ‘expert’ – the designer – and other social actors, which are relevant to the discussion of fetishism. For example, designers’ not allowing, or actively seeking to develop, autonomous roles for other actors in the co-design process may cause other actors, as well as designers themselves, to locate ‘design’ or ‘design thinking’ (Brown 2009) as a transitional object, with the risk of this object (design or ‘design thinking’) becoming fetishised by them. To grant such eminence to ‘design’ and ‘design thinking’ is also to fetishise the notion of a ‘right answer’ that ‘experts’ might identify. All this contributes to a ‘dependency’ on design and designers that locates co-design as a needs-based approach over an asset-based approach.

8. For example, Martin Perks of Spiked, an online journal linked to ‘The Battle of Ideas’, a festival of debate hosted by the Royal College of Art, London, has described designers working on health and crime initiatives as paternalistic, ‘experimenting’ on the public and ‘colluding with government’ to deliver top–down agendas, including inappropriately using strategies such as design ‘nudges’. While this opinion is easy to challenge, the fact that it is expressed reveals there are clearly issues to address about who has the power and agency within these sorts of projects.

9. Manzini and Rizzo and Hillgren et al., after Björgvinsson et al. (2010), draw upon the ancient Nordic and Germanic societies’ understanding of ‘things’ as assemblies, rituals and places where disputes were dealt with and political decisions made. This implies that ‘a prototype not only can be viewed as a thing (an object) but rather as socio-material relations where matters of concerns can be dealt with’.