Issue 13: Autumn 2012Subscribe via RSS

By Vera Sacchetti Sacchetti, V. Design Crusades: A Critical Reflection on Social Design, Unpublished MFA Thesis, School for Visual Arts, New York. I’d like to finish this review with some excerpts from a design writer and critic, Vera Sacchetti, who has recently completed an MFA in Design Criticism at the School for Visual Arts in New York (www.schoolofvisualarts.edu), writing a thesis entitled “Design Crusades: A Critical Reflection on Social Design”.  Though the thesis is not … Continue reading →

By Per‐Anders Hillgren, Anna Seravalli and Anders Emilson Hillgren, P., Seravalli, A., Emilson, A. (2011)  Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation, Co-Design, vol. 7, no. 3-4, September-December, pp.169-183 This article is written by three members of the Medea Living Labs, an innovation lab at Malmö in Sweden.  It draws connections between the predominantly Northern European and Scandanavian tradition of ‘participatory design’ and design for social innovation. The authors begin with an excellent synthesis … Continue reading →

By Thomas Darwin Darwin, T. (2010)  From the Townhall to into the Studio: Design, Democracy and Community Resilience, The Journal of Design Strategies, vol. 4, no. 1, Spring, pp. 29-33 This is a short article, but it is full of practical wisdom and insights for those prepared to dig deeper than a cursory reading.  This is one piece of writing that could have benefited from the addition of some visual design as there are so … Continue reading →

By Elizabeth Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers Sanders, E. and Stappers, P. (2008) Co-creation and the New Landscapes of Design, CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, Taylor and Francis, vol. 4, no. 1, pp.5-18. Liz Sanders, one of the co-authors of this article, is a ‘legend’ in the human-centred design field, having practised, researched and written in and around this area for over two decades.  The founder of the consultancy and … Continue reading →

By Lucy Kimbell Kimbell, L. (2011) Rethinking Design Thinking: Part I, Design and Culture, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 285-306 This article takes a critical look at the rise and rise of design thinking in the world of business and social innovation.  Written by Lucy Kimbell, a Fellow at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, and a designer herself, it focusses particularly on the limitations of design thinking as it has been … Continue reading →

By Daniela Sangiorgi Sangiorgi, D. (2011)  Transformative Services and Transformation Design, International Journal of Design, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 29-40 Fast-forward from the RED paper to a more recent article written by Daniela Sangiorgi, a lecturer in Service Design and Service Innovation from Imagination Lancaster (see www.imagination.lancs.ac.uk).  This is a more academic view of transformation design, but in many ways it is also more radical in its interpretation of the potentials of transformation design … Continue reading →

By Colin Burns, Hilary Cottam, Chris Vanstone and Jennie Winhall Burns, C., Cottam, H., Vanstone, C. and Winhall, J. (2006)  Transformation Design, Design Council UK, London. Transformation Design is an oft-cited publication that is credited with laying some foundations for linkages between design and social innovation.  It is included here for this reason – whilst not new, it has certainly been influential as design approaches are increasingly applied to social innovation.  The publication comes out … Continue reading →

By Geoff Mulgan Mulgan, G. (2010)  In Improving Public Services and Social Innovation the Design World has Vital Insights to Offer, Blog Post available at British Politics and Policy at LSE, London School of Economics Blog pages, blogs.lse.ac.uk Geoff Mulgan, CEO of NESTA (National Endowment of Science Technology and the Arts), and Visiting Professor at a number of universities including the University of Melbourne, offers a very useful framework for assessing the contribution of design … Continue reading →