Editorial

The aim of this special issue of CoDesign is to interrogate design that takes as its primary driver social issues, its main consideration social impact and its main objective social change (Gamman and Thorpe 2006). The concept of social responsibility, the notion that an individual, a group of individuals or an organisation (or organisations) has responsibility to society, whilst topical, has been around as long as humanity. The benefit of such responsibility to society was described by Darwin, who argued in 1871 that,

Although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe … an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another [and therefore those within it] (2009, p. 110).

Here, Darwin is talking in terms of competition rather than altruism or empathy, but his argument is nevertheless clear: those societies that are comprised of individuals that accept inclusive, collective goals and responsibilities are more likely to be prosperous and sustainable than those that are not. A century later, the idea that design has a responsibility to society and environment was crucially defined by Papanek (1971/1984), who argued, alongside contemporaries such as Buckminster Fuller and E.F. Schumacher, that, ‘[d]esign has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environments (and, by extension, society and himself)’ (1984, p. ix). Given his perception of the enormous impact of design, Papanek addressed the consciences of designers and argued that they should seek to make a positive contribution to society and the environment by focusing on six core themes:

•	design for the third world
•	design for the elderly and disabled (design for minorities)
•	design for medicine, surgery, dentistry and hospital equipment (health)
•	design for experimental research
•	design for sustaining human life under marginal conditions, survival systems/hostile environments
•	design for breakthrough concepts.

Papanek also argued that design activity outside these themes consumed resources in pursuit of financial profit and had a negative impact on both society and environment. Consequently, he advocated that those designers who engaged with such market-led activities should contribute either a tenth of their time or a tenth of their income to socially responsible projects whilst continuing with their jobs.

More recent accounts of responsible design are less dismissive of the market and economic imperatives. Morelli (2007) argues that, ‘[t]he time has come to review Papanek … from a new perspective, which reduces the distance between market-based and socially oriented initiatives’. The addition of economics to the social and environmental imperatives of Papanek provides ‘a triple bottom line’, of people, planet and profit, for considering design innovation that contributes to sustainability (Elkington 1998).

Building social and environmental resilience and sustainability is of paramount concern today – when we face the challenge of meeting societal goals and needs in more sustainable ways, and of revising profit-driven models that, in their current form, appear to be failing to do so. Since the start of this millennium this challenge has preoccupied numerous design organisations. The work of these organisations, and the approaches applied by them, is the subject of discussion in all the papers in this special edition of CoDesign. Of particular interest are those design organisations that have sought to apply collaborative, participatory, human and user-centric design approaches within the practices of service design, social design and social innovation, to deliver products, services, systems and environments that develop and build capacity to meet societal challenges including those posed by health, crime, finance, poverty, diaspora, ageing population, energy use and climate change. Such challenges constitute ‘wicked’ and ‘complex’ design problems. Tackling these problems requires attending to multiple, combined and sometimes contradictory stakeholders, agendas and contexts (Rittel and Weber 1973). Navigation and negotiation of complex design scenarios first require articulation of nuanced understandings about the role of design and designers in the process: understandings that, we argue, must go beyond the purist and somewhat naïve account offered by Papanek if design is to address the ‘real world’ today.

Each of the articles in this special issue, in its own way, attempts to progress beyond Papanak's (1971) and also Whiteley's (1993) accounts and offer new perspectives on a way forward for design and designers that seeks to meet societal challenges. The contributions offer updated accounts of participatory and co-design processes in order to understand the role for design in attempting to engage with, if not to lead, social change. The first paper, by Melles et al ., offers a contextualising approach to design history and the theory of socially responsible design. The authors, in considering the role of co-design in socially responsible and sustainable design initiatives, note a number of objectives for design (and designers) that comprise a proposed ‘framework’ for socially responsible design, and highlight the need to avoid passivity of consumers. Camacho Duarte et al . develop further the account of what might be needed to design for twenty-first century society. They describe a number of projects where co-design and participatory design processes have been used to ‘design against crime’, linked to their work in developing and delivering projects under the auspices of the Designing Out Crime (DOC) research centre at UTS, Sydney. The papers by DaSalvo et al . (linked to work in the USA), Hillgren et al . (linked to work in Sweden) and Manzini and Rizzi (linked to a review of several international case studies) individually and collectively offer sophisticated insight into how best to accommodate and facilitate pluralism within design, and to acknowledge contradiction within and between drivers and agendas of social actors within social innovation and socially responsive design processes.

The final paper in this issue is our own contribution. It is deliberately positioned at the end of the volume and seeks to frame the practice of socially responsive design in relation to the cutting-edge accounts of socially responsible design and design-led social innovation provided by the preceding articles. We invite you to form your own opinions of the field described by these earlier contributions before we try to frame your gaze. Our paper engages with many of the concepts introduced by the other authors contributing to this volume, and attempts to interrogate them further, in order to offer a broad account. It is true that in making the case for socially responsive design we challenge Melles’ and de Verre's framing of what Papanek (1971, 1984) and then Whiteley (1993) describe as socially responsible design, as a realisable design outcome and/or approach. As our contribution argues, this distinction is not a pedantic matter, but signals a radically different view of the designers’ role, namely, that, as designers, we are only able to be responsive rather than ultimately responsible in terms of the way we engage with and deliver local social, political and ethical objectives through design. In suggesting that design responsiveness is good enough, we seek not to be flippant but instead to offer a new account of how, as designers, we might best foster pluralism in design and, furthermore, embrace the need for fraternalism in design. Ultimately, we support the arguments made by all the authors in this volume that, when addressing societal challenges, collaboration in design is not just another methodological choice but a vital practice if design is to deliver sustainable social change in the real world.

Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe

Design Against Crime Research Centre/Socially Responsive Design Hub,Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London, UK