This project is a collaboration with Jeccica Charleworth.

A campaign to promote design thinking with a social approach in design education.

What do these terms mean to us

Service design & Local intelligence

Service design

Questioning the question and looking for answers by designing the research.

The people involved are the experts on what they do and why or what they would actually want. It is our job to reveal this information and build the services using what we have learnt.

Local intelligence

Collective knowledge of people and groups that have a practical understanding of the issue at hand.

These experts are present at every level of the service, from service provider to service consumer.

Combined this stands for

service design with local intelligence creates a new methodology for designers to work together with experts, users and professionals, to improve the services within their locality.

Our goals

1. We want to set up a program of workshops, for design students to discover how they can use their creative skills in improving the services around them.

2. They will form a think tank and work closely together with local experts acting as resource in creating a blue print of the systems and services in their area.

3. The design outcomes generated by this think tank will highlight opportunities to improve existing and initiate new service ideas.

The project phases

Phase 1

Research and development

- Finding partners, local and international.

- This phase is about making connections and promoting the value of this methodology

Phase 2

Facilitating the workshops

- The aim of the workshop is to create a think tank for real local issues

- Designers experienced in designing services will lead the workshop

- Various case studies will be presented by visiting practitioners

- Workshop components consist of: observation, interviews, participation, co-creation, mapping and visualizing

Phase 3

Feeding back the outcomes to the local stakeholders

- The results of the workshop will be a carefully edited document indicating directions and benefits to develop the addressed services.

-The outcomes  become an integral part of promoting social change by designing services using local intelligence.

What are the benefits

The Students

Opportunity

to use design thinking to tackle social issues

Learning

new research & mapping techniques

Experience

working directly with real people for a real client

The Experts

Awareness

of you & the people around you

Empowerment

to make you feel useful

Belonging

being a part of where and how you live

The Local Bodies

Awareness

that a social approach brings economic advantage & design plays a key role in innovating local service infrastructure

Action

a locally developed service opportunity map

Where we want this to take place

We want the workshops to take place in design colleges in Europe with a focus on Eastern Europe

The design education in this area is reflecting the emerging economy and shows great opportunity to embed the principles of designing services using local intelligence.

Who is our network

Design experts

UK & NL based service design practitioners eg:

live/work, thinkpublic, UsCreates, 31-volts, STBY & others who believe in this way of working.

Design education

Design course leaders eg: interaction design, architecture, strategic design, product design & urban planning.

European connections

NGOs, funding bodies, initiative agencies & project facilitators.

In short

We want to provide a service to students, residents & local government that will activate future social & economical benefits.

We ask you to support us in launching this campaign, to enable us to research, develop and implement a tool that will promote the value of social innovation using design thinking.

“The next generation of designers could hold the key to some of our more intractable social problems.”

Helen Gresty, Executive Director of

NESTA’s Innovation Programmes

“The social innovation camp is about designers collaborating with people who have a practical understanding of social needs in order to create social change”

A hacked quote of Anna Maybank & Paul Miller, co founders of ‘the social Innovation camp’ initiative

“Design activism is about engaging with community groups and local organizations to give them a voice and aid them in achieving, and even recognizing, their goals”

Jeremy Lehrer describing the work of

Piece Studio a Baltimore-based graphic design practice