Summary and notes

1. DESIGN AND SOCIAL IMPACT
Smithsonian
Inst. (2013)
Çiğdem Demir
ID 501 ADVANCED
PROJECT
DEVELOPMENT IN
INDUSTRIAL
DESIGN

2. #KEYWORDS

3. #EVENT

4. #SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

5. #TITLES FROM THE SUMMIT

6. #QUESTION MARK 1

7. #QUESTION MARK 2

8. #-SID- TERMS

9. #FROM SUMMIT
«as designers, who have always been
professional problem solvers, have moved more
assuredly to authoring systems and strategies
as well as objects,they have turned their
sights to the needs of underserved
communities.»

10. «’Social Impact Design Summit’were to build a
stronger support structure for social impact
design and to help young designers who want to
enter the arena understand what their
opportunities are.
We want to know what are the big needs of the
field, what are the big issues, and to come out
of here today with a few incremental ideas of
ways to moveforward.»

11. «the service of improving lives, stressed the
importance of the user’s perspective in shaping
innovation»
«Lemelson believes
that design is the critical translator for that
user perspective»

12. #QUESTIONS FROM SUMMIT
1. Where are the gaps in the field of socially
responsible design? What are the biggest
challenges to this area of design?
2. What are organizational models of
successful and sustainable ways of working
in socially responsible design? What are
current organizations missing? What are they
doing wrong?
3. How can we effectively prepare future
generations of designers for this growing area
of design? Is this a viable career path? If so,
how do we raise awareness of this profession?

13. ...

14. #GAPS AND CHALLENGES
Summit investigates these gaps and challenges
and define them.
According to them, there is no agreement about
the field. However, identity crisis is not the
issue of the summit they say(!).
«but rather exposed the complex and global
nature of the issues these designers are
addresing.»

15. #GAPS AND CHALLENGES
In the summit there are many participants from
diverse areas of socially responsible design.
«They not only reflected but also enacted the
struggle of finding a common language.»

16. «Socially responsible is often the wrong term
to define what it is trying to address. Often,
socially responsible design implies a) solving
the problem of poverty, or b)prioritizing
people and use in a design problem rather than
design itself, or c) sustainable design, which
is equally hard to define. Being socially
responsible—or solving urban problems through
design—means addressing politics,
globalization, health, education, criminal
justice, or economics among others.»

17. #STANDARDS AND ETHICS
In the summit there are many participants from
diverse areas of socially responsible design.
«They not only reflected but also enacted the
struggle of finding a common language.»

18. #DEFINITION, STANDARDS
In the summit, the definition, standars and
ethics of socially respnsible design is
struggled to set.

19. #QUESTION MARK 3

20. #CULTURAL BIAS
Socially responsible designers are working
through local cultures. Their actions may creat
harm on rather a benefit if the design solution
not fitting the cultural codes. Hence there are
also some efforts to make a ‘culture code’
«a comprenhensive framework of 100 cultural
conditions» for rebuilding post-eartquake
Haiti»

21. #QUESTION MARK 4

22. «cultural bias takes the form of blinders—a
failure to recognize the innovative
capacity of local populations.»
«60 to 70 percent of India’s housing stock is
built by the people themselves-no architects,
no enginners, no housing finance
agencies..These are major designers solving
major proplems. We have lost the ability to
look at that. We are not supporting them. We
are not recognizing them.»

23. #QUESTION MARK 5

24. #SUSTAINABILITY
the goal of socially responsible design as
enabling a community to take on a project and
to create a life of its own after designers
have left.
Not objects, but designing a local strategy?

25. #VALUE AND IMPACT
Implementaton of ideas is difficult and
expensive. Hence, this doesn’t work to make an
imapct. However, there is also the problem of
persauding some would be-stake holders to be
part of social design projects.
The understandign of what social design is can
help a success.

26. #MODELS
What are organizational models of successful
and sustainable ways of working in socially
responsible design?
Hybrid models:IDEO.org
Design Center Models:Massachusetts Institute of
Technology D-Lab
Incubator Models: Ashoka
Contexual Models: Gujarat Decebtralized
Reconstruction Project
Parallel Model

27. #PATHWAYS
Social Design as approach, profession,
discipline?
A perspective?
Ethos of designer’s work?
A mode of practise, not a profession?
There is an example of N55,defining themselves
as art collective.

28. #QUESTION MARK 6

29. 12.03.15