Teaching the Next Generation of Transdisciplinary Thinkers and Practitioners of Design-Based Public and Social Innovation

Abstract

Amidst a wide range of complex social issues and public governance challenges, both in the United States and internationally, there is an increasing interest in the public sector around the idea of social innovation, particularly design-based social innovation. There has been a proliferation of sites and spaces (“public innovation places”) in which designers have joined a multiplicity of actors all working to innovate new approaches to the provision of public goods. To train future designers adequately to operate within this new environment, it is imperative to rethink the ways in which we as design educators think through and approach issues of social and political complexity, and how we frame those in the context of studio projects. For the past five years, the Parsons DESIS Lab has been working through this question focusing on design for social innovation, dealing with community organizations, not-for-profits and the public sector to build new capacities, skillsets, and roles for design practitioners in order to position them as contributing agents of change. In this article we discuss the pedagogical opportunities, limits, and difficulties around the training of future transdisciplinary designers and thinkers seeking to address a range of complex social and political issues and willing to operate within the interstitials spaces between government, civil society, and the market, where new social innovations may arise. To do so, we will focus on a Fall 2013 studio course taught at Parsons Transdisciplinary Design MFA Program entitled “The NYC Office of Public Imagination”. The challenge was for students to design a hypothetical governmental agency, find a place for it inside the existing structure and parameters of city government, and imagine what that agency would do using design as a catalyst for social innovation.

Keywords:

• design
• social innovation
• public sector
• public innovation places
• labs
• transdisciplinarity

Acknowledgments

Students who participated in the Fall 2013 studio The NYC Office of Public Imagination, at Parsons Transdisciplinary Design MFA Program (faculty: Lara Penin and Eduardo Staszowski, teaching assistant: Daniela Selloni). “Imagine Your Park” team: Liz De Blasi, Coleen Doyle, Gulraiz Khan, and Taylor Khun. “Public Goods NYC” team: Meg Durlak, Joe Wheeler, Michael Varona, and Reid Henkel. “Let’s Table” team: Christopher Taylor Edwards, Selim Budeyri, Song Sichun, Lillian Tong, and Jie Wang. “Talk on the Block” team: Doremy Diatta, Dong In Shin, Melike Kavran, Rachelle Tai, and Shahrezad Morssal

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Parsons DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Lab is a research laboratory created in 2009 at The New School in New York City. The lab works at the intersection of strategic and service design, management, and social theory, applying interdisciplinary expertise in problem setting and problem solving to sustainable practices and social innovation. It also serves as a resource for courses offered in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons and in other divisions of The New School; see http://www.newschool.edu/desis/.

2. For more information on the emergence of government innovation labs, see http://nyc.pubcollab.org/public-innovation-places/#govlabs/. For more information on the work of MindLab and iZone, see www.mind-lab.dk/en and www.izonenyc.org/.

3. For more on recent Parsons DESIS Lab initiatives, see www.amplifyingcreativecommunities.org and http://nyc.pubcollab.org/.

4. The Lower East Side is a neighborhood known for being a traditional immigrant and working-class part of New York City, but in recent years it has been suffering from a rapid process of gentrification that risks threatening its rich cultural diversity and affordability.

5. The workshop was organized in partnership with students and faculty from the Institute Without Boundaries based in Toronto, which at that time was working on a research initiative about complex networks and interconnected systems of innovation that define regions such as Toronto, New York, and Chicago as “gateways” to their respective regions and the relationships between these three urban centers. As part of this project, students from the institute and the Illinois Institute of Technology came to New York for a three-day workshop to explore new relationships between citizens and government.

6. The use of the empty storefront was enabled by our partnership with No Longer Empty, a not-for-profit arts organization with whom we have been working to activate neighborhood sites in New York City neighborhoods that are in transition through participatory inquiry, artistic engagement, and design-based curatorial activities. The initiative is part of The New School’s Collaboratory, a Rockefeller Foundation-supported initiative exploring how our university can enhance its engagement with diverse communities in New York City. This partnership also received a grant of the National Endowment for the Arts.

7. For more details on students’ projects, see http://nyc.pubcollab.org/public-innovation-places/#nycopi/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lara Penin

Dr Lara Penin is Director of the Transdisciplinary Design MFA Program. She is an Associate Professor of Transdisciplinary Design, School of Design Strategies, Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York. She coordinated the Area of Study of Service Design, and is co-founder of the Parsons DESIS (Design for Sustainable Social Innovation and Sustainability) Lab. Her work focuses on how service design can be applied to promote social innovation.

[email protected]

Eduardo Staszowski

Dr Eduardo Staszowski is Director of the Parsons DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Research Lab. He is an Assistant Professor of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York. His current research interests center on the intersection of design, social innovation, and public services.

[email protected]

Scott Brown

Scott Brown is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and member of the Parsons DESIS Lab. His research explores the manifold ways in which complex social and political issues become problems of design at the level of professional practice and design pedagogy.

[email protected]