Contemplating the conundrum of designing for cognitive justice
“Cognitive Justice: the right of different knowledges to coexist so long as they sustain the life, livelihoods, and life chances of a people.” Shiv Visvanathan, 2021 Unpacking this theoretical statement and putting it into practice in the form of design of interactive, collaborative, and social processes that comprise various participatory methodologies in design and innovation, […]
From the Exploratory Musing Dept: What might be social design’s role in the SDGs in the Nordics?
The scope and range for the object of design being the “social” (Koskinen, 2016) in the social welfare states of the Nordics, and I use the happiest one as my base of reference, is vast, varied, and immense. Rich and deep opportunities for practice based learning, research, and interdisciplinary development methodologies. By refining one’s focus […]
From multi-disciplinary to transdisciplinary design research
Exploring the transdisciplinary nature of knowledge let me conclude that insights gathered via various design research methodologies can be said to exhibit, for the most part, transdisciplinarity. The figure shared above from the work of Rassmussen and her colleagues (2010) helps clarify why. By visualizing epistemic integration correlated to the varying degrees of complexity and […]
What is social design?
Social design is an emerging stream of design that is still finding its space and boundaries (Chen et al., 2016; Koskinen, 2016; Markussen, 2017). Markussen (2017) argues against Manzini’s (2015) depiction of the ‘social’ in social design implying that it only applies to situations where people are poor or marginalized or recovering from a natural […]
People, Pesa & Place: A Multidisciplinary lens for innovation in social & economic development
This original Venn diagram visualizing the sweet spot of innovation success is a familiar one, with as many variations as there are practitioners. One of the most common is the one below, where business, people (or, as often, design) and technology replace the human centered qualities of viable, desirable and feasible. I’ve used them both […]
Reflections on design thinking for government: empowering policy makers and stakeholders
Yesterday I came across a post on The World Bank’s blog, “Design Thinking for Government Services: What happens when the past limits our vision of the future?” Given that I’m in the process of writing a report on the role that human centered design can play in government, that too for a developed nation, I’d […]
