A Manifesto of Change or Design Imperialism? A Look at the Purpose of the Social Design Practice.

Social design[1], design activism, service design, and design for good are some of the buzzwords being used amongst designers, institutions, and organisations to describe a form of design that seeks to investigate the designer's role in society by tackling community, political, and social issues. Social design is meant to pave the way for design to move away from a Eurocentric discourse, engage communities, spark local innovation, and help increase collaboration between communities, policy makers, and institutions to bring about social change and ideas through design. But there are a number of issues and questions that arise: Where is the context? Where is the shifting of the discourse? Why do we continue to design at rather than design with? What are the true intentions of these projects? How can we measure the results? Where are the designers from the non-Western world? What does community participation mean? In this presentation, I would like to critique the discipline of social design by discussing the issues through case studies and discourse, and offer solutions on how designers and social design projects can truly begin to engage in debates and shift the discourse to be more inclusive of designers around the world.

[1] Throughout this presentation, I will be using the term ‘social design’.