Social design

Course goals

After completing this course students:

• are able to shape a design process for a social issue;
• are able to collaborate in a design process with students from other disciplinary backgrounds;
• are able to present the results of a design process in a catchy and accessible manner;
• have knowledge of the most important scientific theories in the field of social design;
• are able to apply theories about social design to social issues.

Content

In our society we have all kinds of difficult issues that we cannot solve with a traditional approach. How can we improve the environment? How can we tackle poverty? How do we ensure inclusive cities? New, creative ways to address these questions are urgently needed.
These creative research methods (mapping, co-creation, design research, prototyping, empathic research, storytelling) and strategies (interventions) are central to this course: you will learn how to use creative methods to develop an innovative approach to tackle difficult problems in society.

Social design is about designing new social interactions – projects, organisations, services, policies, networks, institutions, platforms – based on creative ideas. Social design is nothing special since, after all, improving these interactions is central to many social sciences. What is new, however, is that the ways to think about this have been methodically developed. The Design Way has revolutionized thinking about redesigning social interactions. Ways of thinking that have long been applied in the design of products – chairs, lamps – and technological systems – cars, computers – have now found their way into the design of social interaction.

In this course you will learn to think like a designer so that you can apply the creative methods from the design world to the world of organisation and management. The social design approach differs greatly from a traditional approach to social and policy interventions. Where traditionally the emphasis is on the detailed analysis of the situation and possible interventions – think first – in social design the emphasis is on prototypes and pilots – act first. Learning about interventions does not happen through lengthy analysis beforehand, but through trial & error.

Central to this course is the approach of design thinking. This is a method, a way of thinking and working to tackle problems in a practical and creative way with a great emphasis on action. This is difficult for social scientists: we decenter the role of texts and analyses and start working with prototypes, test labs and experiments.

Status
This course is part of the Minor Social Entrepreneurship of the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance.

Note for exchange students
Resits may be scheduled after the end of the teaching period. Please consider this when planning your departure from the Netherlands. If in doubt, please ask the course coordinator when the resit is scheduled.