Abstract

Although the term social design is being widely adopted around the world, conceptual clarity is still lacking. The way social design is understood and executed can vary greatly. Without a shared conceptual foundation, knowledge exchange and development are restricted, and so is the professionalisation of practice. This paper brings forward a framework that unites all social design around an overarching objective to foster the common good but argues that design activities to do so may be driven by different values and focus on different outcomes. We identify five components of social design: (1) care-driven design activities for the wellbeing of underprivileged people, (2) responsiveness-driven design activities for good governance, (3) political progress-driven design activities for empowered citizens, (4) social capital-driven design activities for beneficial communities, and, (5) resilience-driven design activities for sustainable future systems. We describe how the framework helps explain, discuss and systematically study social design.

摘要

尽管社会设计一词在世界范围内被广泛采用，但概念上仍然缺乏清晰度。社会设计的理解和执行方式可能有很大差异。没有共同的概念基础，知识交流和发展就会受到限制，实践的专业化也会受到限制。本文提出了一个框架，将所有社会设计围绕一个总体目标统一起来，以促进共同利益，但认为这样做的设计活动可能由不同的价值观驱动，并关注不同的结果。我们确定了社会设计的五个组成部分：(1) 为弱势群体的福祉而设计的以关怀为导向的设计活动，(2) 以响应为导向的善治设计活动，(3) 以政治进步为导向的为赋权公民设计的活动，(4) 社会资本驱动的有益社区设计活动，以及 (5) 可持续未来系统的弹性驱动设计活动。我们描述了该框架如何帮助解释、讨论和系统地研究社会设计。