The Design Council in the UK actively works on design for social and cultural change, and does in-depth analysis of people's behaviours and needs to define better student-centred classrooms (see photo), to restructure the nurse-patient relationship in diabetes treatment, or to focus on the power of sustainable transformation of an entire region (Dott07, a project in England's North East, managed by John Thackara).

 

In Belgium an old mining area is being transformed in an engine of regional growth through a radical choice for people-centred experience design.

 

In Germany the Zollverein School is the only educational institute in Europe that provides an MBA in management and design - with design interpreted as a process that can lead to innovation and better management for companies.

 

Companies meanwhile are hiring anthropologists to inform their design and strategic innovation process and make it more rooted in real life. Some of their early hires, such as Ann Kirah, a former senior anthropologist at Microsoft, are now starting business schools to rethink innovation as a people-driven endeavour.

 

Ranjit Makkuni in India, here interviewed, is rethinking the social role of technology and how we interact with computers through a focus on South-East Asian cultural practice where the whole body is an interface and spirituality is also about physicality.

 

Design aimed at social change is also affecting the architectural world, with people-centred participatory paradigms becoming increasingly mainstream.

 

Now also Torino 2008 is focusing on design as a powerful tool of cultural and social change, with a focus on companies, education, the social sector, neighbourhoods, the city, or the region. "Design is direction" became Torino 2008's first slogan.

 

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A new people-driven and socially engaged definition of design, which puts people at the heart of its process, is increasingly becoming a crucial paradigm in the global design discourse and practice. It has reinvigorated the field of design and the impact it can have on our lives, and provides a valuable addition to the other paradigms (e.g. political, technological, scientific, commercial) that have driven cultural and social changes so far.

 

There is not yet a fully settled consensus on how this people-centred design paradigm should be implemented, with some focusing more on culture (e.g. Ranjit Makkuni), others on sustainability, some emphasising business innovation, other focussing mainly on contextual research, and there are of course various degrees of overlap between these approaches.

 

We therefore aim to make the editorial section of the Torino 2008 website a place for discourse about these ideas.

 

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I thought it would be wise to start off with my own ideas on the matter, so that readers can understand where I am coming from and what drives me in my thinking and my work.

 

Over the last decade or so, many private companies but also some governmental structures have endorsed an innovation process that is based on people-centred design (sometimes also called "user-centred design").

 

It is a bottom-up activity that starts from insights in people's lives, comes up with some key understandings through a process of sense making, defines particular areas for further development based on a shared vision, and concretises these in prototypes that can be evaluated and tested.

 

In other words, these companies and public entities are moving from a "designing for" approach to a "designing with or from" model.

 

The ideas behind this model are not limited to new product and service development. As exemplified by this quote from the Design Council, they can also be applied to tackle our most pressing economic and social issues:

 

"The process involved in designing the world's most successful products, services and innovations is a highly transferable one. It's a process that can be applied to almost any problem. Employing a design approach brings with it a number of crucial benefits. These include a mechanism for placing the person - the ‘user' - at the heart of a solution; a means for experts to collaborate equally on complex issues; a rapid, iterative process that can adapt to changing circumstances; and a highly creative approach to problem-solving that leads to practical, everyday solutions.

 

However, design also goes beyond problem solving. Solutions to today's most intractable issues - such as the rise of chronic health conditions, the impacts of climate change, or the consequences of an ageing population - depend on the choices that people make in their everyday lives: how they eat, consume energy, or form relationships. Good design creates products, services, spaces, interactions and experiences that not only satisfy a function or solve a problem, but that are also desirable, aspirational, compelling and delightful. These are the qualities desperately needed by organisations in both the public and private sector which are seeking to transform the way in which they connect to individuals."

 

But irrespective of the focus - which can be the design of relevant products or services or the need to address economic and social issues - we always need to start with taking a careful look at the lives and needs of those who will be primarily affected: we have to go outside of the conference room, the research laboratory and the design studio, and obtain a deep understanding of what Genevieve Bell, Intel's chief anthropologist, calls the "messiness of everyday practice", to be seen as an essential characteristic of how we organise our lives.

 

A people-centred approach puts the end-user at the heart of the design process, not the business-owner or service-provider. It uses observation and qualitative research as its core methodology.

 

However, good design goes beyond mere understanding. It analyses these insights in terms of potential solutions for the future. People-centred design is a process of goal-oriented sense making, supported by good visualisations and an empathic design language.

 

Designers in other words need not only to understand people's lives. They have to be driven by an ethical vision on how products and services can or should enhance people's lives, e.g. by addressing current pain-points, inspiring social interactions or just adding joy to the process of use. A shared vision - which often has an ethical component - will help designers come up with ideas for solutions that will truly impact the quality of a product, a service, or even a city.

 

The final step in this design paradigm is that ideas for solutions need to be tested on a limited scale before they can be rolled out more widely: prototyping is an experimental approach that allows designers to implement ideas about future products, services or systems, and test them in context with people, to gain insights on what works, what doesn't and why, at an early stage of the design process.

 

Prototypes, which can be very rough or more refined, will help designers to understand the benefits, drawbacks or other issues related to the future use by consumers (or citizens) in the intended contexts. Often prototyping is done iteratively with future users adding again and again their voices to the desired outcome, in order to arrive at an end-result that closely matches people's needs and aspirations.

 

The design model I just briefly outlined is in my mind an approach can change products, systems and processes effectively and with great relevance for the people that it matters most to: the end-users.

 

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In the coordination of this section, I will however be careful to not only feature points of view that endorse my own ideas as outlined above.

 

My real goal in these interviews and essays is to share a broader view on design and to stimulate new thinking about how to best affect positive cultural and social change.

 

The list of people to be interviewed or to be asked to write essays and the topics to be addressed are not at all finalised. If you have comments or suggestions or want to contribute yourself, please contact me.

This essay by Mark Vanderbeeken sets out his vision behind the editorial section of the Torino 2008 website. It is not only an international window on the event, but also a place for discourse about design for cultural and social change.