Design for Social Innovation and Service
The Thematic Area (TA) of “Social Innovation and Services” (DxSIS) includes DESIS Labs projects with the keywords Services, Social Innovation and Design. This TA aims to gain deeper insight into these projects´ characteristics, specifically their aims and results.
One of the influences in the constitution and consolidation of service design was that of research activities and projects on design for social innovation and sustainability. Under this framework, social innovations are expressions of a socially diffused creativity and of a society on which everybody designs.
These studies defined social innovations as services, more precisely as new service models, whose interactions are based on local cultural values and interpersonal networks (relationships between individuals).
Design Service
The definition of designing for service (instead of service design) points to the processual characteristics of social innovations as services and the limits of the design intervention. It is highlighted the impossibility to thoroughly plan a service that relies on the co-production of value between participants, collaborative dynamics, interpersonal relational qualities and relationship building.
If designing for service is to design a platform for action – in the framework of social innovation processes – the character of the collaborations and the interpersonal relations between those involved cannot be forgotten. These are essential qualities to be fostered when designing for socially innovative services.
It includes designing platforms that foster mutual openness, conversations and meaningful encounters and, at the same time, that activate the local resources, knowledge and skills of those involved in the production of a commonly recognised result.
Given that, the possible intersections between social innovation and design for services are many and highly diverse, the work on this Thematic Area will consist in an overview on the way DESIS Labs are presently working and includes the following sub-areas:
Design for strengthening relations
In the complexity of contemporarysociety, social innovation is spreadingand its potential, as a driver of sustainable change, is increasing. To facilitate this process, the design community, in general, and design schools, in particular, can play a pivotal role.
Design for human/nature relationships
The process of this defining document for the DESIS future started with the DESIS Conversations 2020 – an initiative to discuss the present and the future of social innovation, design and DESIS itself. A DESIS Manifesto started to be written afterwards in a collaborative and open process with all DESIS Labs.
Design for empowerment and self-knowledge
Since September 2014, DESIS is a no-profit and cultural association, with the purpose to promote design for social innovation in higher education institutions with design discipline so as to generate useful design knowledge and to create meaningful social changes in collaboration with other stakeholders.
Design for university-community engagement
Members can be legally constituted higher education institutions or Universities with design disciplines, private or public, sharing DESIS motivations and visions and supporting DESIS activities (Labs projects, international Initiatives, Platform improvements).
Design for collaboration and conviviality
DESIS Network operates as a constellation of Labs and Lab-Initiatives, supported by a Platform. Each one of these Labs belongs to its own University and has organizational and administrative autonomy with respect to the Association.
MEMBERSHIP
DESIS Network’s purpose is “to promote design for social innovation in higher education institutions with design discipline so as to generate useful design knowledge and to create meaningful social changes in collaboration with other stakeholders.”
DESIS Network’s purpose is “to promote design for social innovation in higher education institutions with design discipline so as to generate useful design knowledge and to create meaningful social changes in collaboration with other stakeholders.” Applying members who share the same vision and fulfil the following requirements will become DESIS Labs.
Members can be legally constituted higher education institutions or Universities with design disciplines (hereinafter referred to also only as “higher education institutions” or only as “Universities”), private or public, sharing DESIS motivations and visions and supporting DESIS activities (Labs projects, international Initiatives, Platform improvements).
Once the Membership Request Letter and its attachments have been received by the International Coordination Committee, they will be analysed in order to verify if the formal requirements are satisfied. On this basis, feedback will be send to the interested teams.
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