Social design aims to satisfy human needs and improve social quality by designing solutions that empower users. It involves understanding user lifeworlds from phenomenological, sociological, and epistemological perspectives to design with users' subjective experiences, social/material conditions, and life circumstances in mind. Social design addresses wicked problems which are difficult to define and solve due to their ill-formulated nature and conflicting stakeholder values. The social design process involves understanding contexts, identifying problems and user groups, analyzing information through user empathy, creating inclusive solutions that change systems rather than just produce outputs, and measuring both short-term tangible and long-term intangible impacts.

1. SOCIAL DESIGN
KshitizANAND @kshitiz
Design for the other 90%

2. 90% of a designer’s time is spent on the richest 10%
- Paul Polak

3. CAN DESIGNERS
CHANGE (IMPROVE)
THE WORLD?

4. Yes it
can!
Design is for
the elite only!

5. Design has become the most powerful tool with which
man shapes his tools and environments (and, by
extension, society and himself)
- Victor J Papanek, Design for the Real world

6. WHAT IS COMMON?

7. WHAT IS
SOCIAL
DESIGN

8. The foremost intent of social design is the satisfaction
of human needs. The broad objective of social design
is to improve ‘social quality’.
It is about designing new functioning to elevate
individual and community capability and propose
solutions that genuinely empower and extend the
capability of the user.
- Alastair Fuad-Luke on Social Design, in book ‘Design Activism: Beautiful
strangeness for a sustainable world’

9. DESIGN for
WANT
DESIGN for
NEED

10. THE NEED?

11. UN Millennium
DEVELOPMENT GOALS
hp://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

12. WHAT AM I TALKING
ABOUT ?
2.2 million people
globally each year die
due to _______?

13. WHAT AM I TALKING
ABOUT ?
2.2 million people
globally each year die
due to Diarrhoea
hp://www.who.int/water_sanita6on_health/diseases/diarrhoea/en/

14. hp://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

15. EVIDENCES?
There
are
a
lot
of
individuals,
companies
working
on
this
now
and
they
span
across
sectors

31. hp://www.slideshare.net/kshi6z/design-­‐u-­‐turn-­‐from-­‐want-­‐to-­‐need

32. Human centered design
IS AT THE HEART OF
SOCIALDESIGN

33. ARGUE
Have ‘Design Thinking’ and
‘Social Innovation’ become
permanently intertwined?

34. UNDERSTAND
LIFEWORLDS
- Edmund Husserl introduced the concept of the lifeworld
in his ’Crisis of European Sciences’(1936)

35. Lifeworld:
(German Lebenswelt)
hp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeworld
A state of affairs in which the world
is experienced, the world is lived.
A universe of what is self-evident
or given.
Cannot be understood in a purely
static manner as all things appear
as themselves and meaningful.

36. This collective inter-subjective
pool of perceiving, is both
universally present and, for
humanity's purposes, capable of
arriving at 'objective truth,' or at
least as close to objectivity as
possible.
Lifeworld:
(German Lebenswelt)

37. Research
perspectives

38. 1. Phenomenological
2. Epistemological
3. Sociological

39. Phenomenological
(- Husserl Schütz)
- see the lifeworld to be the study of the structures of
subjective experience and consciousness
- to understand that we each individualistic,
“I-the-man” and all of us together, belong to the
world as living with one another in the world
- the world is our world, valid for our consciousness
as existing precisely through this 'living together.’

40. Phenomenological
(- Husserl Schütz)
- One has to place oneself in a context comprised
of the various others and the collective shared
experience of individuals and objects.
- It is therefore not about the individual ego of the
designer; rather we, in living together, that we
understand the world.
WHAT IT MEANS

41. Individual (subjective) understanding of the lifeworld
Lifeworld

42. Sociological
(- Habermas)
- Viewpoint of an objective reality of the society,
taking account the social and material
environmental conditions and their relevance
-The view of the lifeworld is more or less the
background environment of competences, practices,
and attitudes representable in terms of one's
cognitive horizon
-lifeworld as consisting of socially and culturally
sedimented linguistic meanings

43. Sociological
(- Habermas)
WHAT IT MEANS
- the focus here thus is not on the consciousness
of the individual, but to understand the practical
rationality that is being governed by the rules of
that system
- Social coordination and systemic regulation
occur by means of shared practices, beliefs,
values, superstitions, alternate and parallel
governing bodies and structures

44. Individual (subjective) understanding of the lifeworld
Rules of
governing
Practices
Beliefs
Superstitions
Agreements
Lifeworld
View from the rules of the system
Towards an objective reality
Of that what is agreed upon and
governed by and followed

45. Epistemological
- touches upon the notion of ‘life conditions’ as a
further reference point to understanding the social
space.
- life conditions include material and immaterial living
circumstances as for example employment situation,
availability of material resources, housing conditions,
social environment (friends, foes, relatives, etc.) as
well as the persons physical condition.

46. WHAT IT MEANS
- It is entrusted on top of the lifeworld and the
Social and material environment conditions.
Epistemological

47. Individual (subjective)
understanding of the
lifeworld
Understanding the life conditions that are a result of the
rules and the individual’s positioning in the lifeworld
Viewing within and
Of Life Conditions
Rules of
governing
Practices
Beliefs
Superstitions
Agreements
Life conditions

48. BELIEVE
IN WHAT YOU SEE
IN WHAT YOU HEAR
IN WHAT YOU FEEL
INWHATYOUEXPERIENCE

49. INSPIRE
IDEATE
IMPLEMENT

50. WICKED
PROBLEMS- Rittel Webber [ 1973]
With social design you would run into Wicked Problems

51. “Some problems are so complex that you have to be
highly intelligent and well informed just to be
undecided about them.”
- Laurence J. Peter

52. It is a class of social system problems, which are
• ill-formulated,
• the information is confusing,
• there are many clients and decision makers with
conflicting values,
• the ramifications of the whole system are
thoroughly confusing,
• it is messy, circular, and aggressive,
extraordinarily difficult to categorize or define.
CHARACTERISTICS

54. DEFINING
WICKED PROBLEMS
IS IN ITSELF A
WICKED PROBLEM

60. ALLPROBLEMSARE
OPPORTUNITIES
IN DISGUISE

63. Multiple starting points and often no clear end mark the
characteristics of wicked problems as the solution are
intermingled with another problem within the same social
space and share a causal relation to each other
Anand
K,
Haag
J;
“A
framework
for
teaching
Design
for
Social
Impact
,
Feb
2013

64. COMMUNICATE
COLLABORATE
CREATE

65. RESEARCH
AGENDA

66. CONTEXT
• Understand context
properly
• Talk to and study
different stakeholders

67. IDENTIFY
• Large problem space
• Small problems in large
problem space and how
they connect with each
other

68. USER GROUPS
• Identify different user
groups
• Differentiate between
target group and
affected group

69. Empathize
• Remember cultural rules
• Do not hurt sentiments

70. ANALYSIS

72. CREATE SOLUTIONS
Do not make just
some noise

73. CREATE SOLUTIONS
Break patterns
set norms
Change systems

74. INCLUSION
Design with (not for)
to create change

75. INCLUSION
Design with input
and involvement of
beneficiaries

76. QUESTION
How can things be
better?

77. MEASURE
The outcomes of the
work done and not
just rely on Outputs

78. hp://www.slideshare.net/CharlesGYF/six-­‐habits-­‐of-­‐social-­‐entrepreneurs

79. hp://www.slideshare.net/CharlesGYF/six-­‐habits-­‐of-­‐social-­‐entrepreneurs

80. IDEATION

81. Product

82. Product
in
system
Anand
K,
Haag
J;
“A
framework
for
teaching
Design
for
Social
Impact
,
Feb
2013

83. DCI:
Divergence – Convergence - Integration
Anand
K,
Haag
J;
“A
framework
for
teaching
Design
for
Social
Impact
,
Feb
2013

84. System-Product
Harmonization
Anand
K,
Haag
J;
“A
framework
for
teaching
Design
for
Social
Impact
,
Feb
2013

85. Social Design process
Anand
K,
Haag
J;
“A
framework
for
teaching
Design
for
Social
Impact
,
Feb
2013

86. MEASURING
IMPACT

87. a) Short term
b) Long term

88. a) Tangible
b) Intangible

89. THANKYOUEmail: kshitiz@happyhorizons.in
Twitter: @kshitiz