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THE DESIGNER AS SOCIAL INNOVATOR
"The main activity of designers will be as social innovators," said Ezio Manzini during an intimateconversation with o2NYC on May 6. Ezio's talk outlined an exit strategy for conscious designers, a shiftfrom making things to designing tools for a better society. For those of us who have signed on to thegreen revolution, who commit to having the conversation with clients, sourcing better materials, reducinglife cycle impacts, doing the hard work of greener design, we need an exit strategy. How do we stopmaking things less bad and start actually solving for climate change?Ezio Manzini has been thinking about the sustainable design problem for 20+ years. A professor of Industrial Design at Milan Polytechnic, he is Director of CIRIS (the Interdepartmental Centre for Researchon Innovation for Sustainability), and is the author of several books on sustainable design: The Materialof Invention, Artifacts: Towards a New Ecology of the Artificial Environmentand Sustainable Everyday.
Ezio feels he has "been telling the same story for 20 years. Always change it by the end it is the same."What has changed lately, though, is his rhetoric, from the soon to be possible to the here and now. Thatis the opportunity that crisis brings – a chance to rethink how we've been operating as a society, andoffer new visions for how we can live.Ezio first pointed out the problem with the green design movement, and its focus on "fixing the past,"which is "doomed because it requires asking people to 'reduce,' asking them to have 'the same, but less.'Instead we need to offer them 'different, but better.'" So what's better?Ezio points to a movement started in Europe that's recently gained ground here in the US: Slow Food.A response to the negative effects of an industrial food system, Slow Food provides access to local,diverse food sources, connects them to actual farmers, and celebrates quality. Slow Food is not a productinnovation like organic packaged noodles or natural chocolate cookies, it is a product service system thatenables end-user consumer to become co-producers of the food that they eat. The end result creates abetter tasting product (the food), a more authentic connection to the food (transparent production chain,relationship with farmer), and enjoyable experience (participation in community supported agriculture,communal meals in natural settings).
So what is social innovation exactly and how can designers help?
A definition from EU President Jose Manuel Borosso: "Social innovation means the design andimplementation of creative ways of meeting social needs. It covers a wide field ranging from new modelsof childcare to web-based social networks, form the delivery of healthcare at home to new ways of encouraging people to use sustainable means of transport." We can begin to see the designer's role thenin this process. The skills and practices that are unique to designers can be applied to find the next socialand sustainable innovation, and to amplify its adoption:
Designer Vision
Much of the work and practice in social innovation to date has been lead by social scientists, economists,and NGO workers – long on policy, short on truly creative problem solving. Designers can fill this roleby being realistic optimists, by looking for opportunities that require this kind of innovative designthinking, and stimulating the strategic discussion with visions, proposals, and tools to implement change.As Ezio says, "there is a difference between the transformation that happens normally and a designedsystem. Designed systems are stronger and more replicable. Designers transform an idea into practice."
Product to Prototype
"Prototypes are appearing. they provide the building blocks of a future society." What can a designerbring to the equation? "The challenge is to transform the prototypes into products." To learn from thesmall and local, and to reinvision how an edge practice can become mainstream. Designers know fromexperience how to transform prototypes into products, and know the promise and limitations of this work. The very act of creating a prototype has value, as Ezio reminds us. "The purpose of a prototype is toshow that something is possible."Right now, those prototypes are emergent as grassroots one-off examples in neighborhoods all over theworld but are the work of local heroes. Community supported agriculture. Timebanks. Neighborhoodgardens. Co-housing. How do we create a model where this kind of social practice becomes the norm,and does not require heroics to succeed?Designers also know, however, that in the work of moving from prototype to product, something is oftenlost, "this is not without risk as they lose some of their original qualities." The role of designer then shiftsfrom making things into mass produced consumer objects, to shepherding local sustainable practices intowider mainstream society.
Enabling Solutions
An evolution of product service systems, enabling solutions go beyond meeting customer needs toallowing individuals or communities to achieve their own results with their own skills and abilities. SlowFood is a solution that works because individual actors participate in a system that creates value foreveryone involved. Materials are becoming scarce, but "in a small, densely-populated, highly connectedplanet, social resources are the most abundant." The work of the designer then is not to solve theproblem with a perfect object or service, but to create a platform for co-designing with individuals incontext within their local community.Networks and technology are not the solution, but the enablers to more effective social innovation."Social innovation in the age of networks is a process of change where new ideas are generated byactors directly involved in the problem to be solved. ...The objective of design is to create more probableconditions to act in a collective and collaborative way. We create the conditions, not the solution." The
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The Designer as Social Innovator
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