A framework for teaching Design for Social Impact

Working in the Social Design space is slightly different than working in the conventional product design space, where there exists a linear relation between a problem and a solution. Defining the exact right problem to address is primary to finding a sustainable solution, and often this ‘identifying the right problem’ is the biggest challenge for designers. Next, even if an ideal solution is figured out the practical realities are filled with ‘Wicked problems’ [Rittel, Webber] [19] and there is a constant struggle to find the right implementable solutions to the social problems.

In our paper we propose a framework for Designers interested in the field of Social Design to adapt. It proposes to embrace complexity, and adopt a divergent-convergent-harmonization approach to addressing the needs of the social space. We look into the notion of enabling designers to view from the different stakeholder view points toggle between thinking from a systems design to a product to design and then back to the system design.

We build upon this framework, by seeing its application in designing a system comprised of products and service for a child education initiative in rural Bihar, working towards improving the quality of education.

WHAT IS SOCIAL DESIGN

In order to build upon a framework for Social Design, it is important for us to understand the notion of Social Design or Design for Social Impact first. We are looking at the notion of Social Design, which itself has different definitions and meanings, from Alaistir Fuad –Luke’s book ‘Design Activism’. We understand and recognize these aspects of Social Design as a basis for this paper. He mentions, “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 functionings to elevate individual and community capability and propose solutions that genuinely empower and extend the capability of the user” [7].

PROJECT BACKGROUND

Our project Pick Me, Click Me, Educate Me!, works with the local government schools in the state of Bihar, and aim to improve the quality of education [16]. This comes as a need identified through evaluation of students (and also released in the ASER reports 2011, 2012) [18], which evaluates students from primary, and middle schools, whose learning levels are relatively lower than what would have been expected. We have adopted an activit- based approach to engage with the different stakeholders and come up with ways in which the quality can be improved. Amongst the other things, the project provides scholarship to high school students (called champions) to take up the work of interacting with primary schools and conduct activities there in lieu of their scholarship. Our Social Space thus defined is the primary school education in rural Bihar.

PRIMARY RESEARCH- IMMERSING IN THE LIFEWORLD TO UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT

Designers should base their Primary Research by immersing themselves into the lifeworld [Husserl, 1936] [1] of the social space. This is to enable the designer to understand the world one lives in, the everyday and the artifacts that compose this world. It is the onus of the designer to understand this space from three different perspectives i.e. phenomenological, epistemological and the sociological perspective. What perspective takes precedence over the others is dependent on the context of the design.

The phenomenological view [Husserl and Schütz] would see the lifeworld to be the study of the structures of subjective experience and consciousness. It is to understand that we as coherent universe of existing objects, we, each “I-the-man” and all of us together, belong to the world as living with one another in the world; and the world is our world, valid for our consciousness as existing precisely through this ‘living together.’ The key take away here being that for a designer to understand the notion of Social Design, 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.

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