Manzini, E. (2015) Design, when everybody designs: an introduction to design for social innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

I used to believe that design was solely about planning and producing closed-ended products and services, heavily narrowed on expected outcomes. Being caught in a capital-driven process eventually made me feel disillusioned about identifying myself as a designer. This pushed me into a constant shift in my professional path—from strategist to designer—as I searched for a meaning of being a designer within the so-called creative industry. And my concern, is somehow nodded by Ezio Manzini when I found the term of design for social innovation.

In his book, Manzini describes how the concept of design has evolved alongside the increasing complexity of modern problems since our ancestors first shaped stone tools. From Herbert Simon’s 1982 classic definition of design as the process of transforming existing situations into preferred ones across various domains, to Ezio Manzini own definition of design as a culture and a practice concerning how things ought to be in order to attain desired function and meanings which involved open-ended process. And now, he introduced design for social innovation as; “everything that expert design can do to activate, sustain, and orient processes of social change toward sustainability”.

Design for social innovation is trying to reimagine the function of design into a potential process of triggering and supporting social change. At some cases, design for social innovation is foreseen as a process that can develop original or existing social invention into more structured prototypes and/or social enterprises. So instead of always asking what’s needs to be new or renew, social innovation help to fill in the fracture, bridging the gap between design and social humanities.What I find inspiring is how this positions designers as enablers for social invention, using their expertise and technology to identify and amplify grassroots ideas, making social invention elevated into more accessible, impactful, sustainable, and scalable innovation.

Design for social innovation is often related to other discipline: service design (to conceive and develop solution ideas that take into account the quality of the interaction involved) and strategic design (to promote and support partnerships between the different actors involved), thus, this is how co-design take part in social innovation.

Co-design has been echoed and integrated into many practices of design and production. Manzini highlights co-design is an approach that positions design as a powerful tool to address complex social challenges. It involves a wide range of stakeholders and reimagines design as a form of service and critical inquiry for development. And there are three component that is required to build a design for social innovation:

Social innovation requires a strong system and supportive circle. In this book, he stated that social innovation can sparked from a single (or more) passionate individual(s) or “social heroes”, so to speak, and requires a supportive organization or institution that can make the innovation last over time, grow and multiply. It took a village to change the future.

And not only start with passionate people, but design has to connect deeply with the people and embrace their cultural and creative dimension from them. This also means by giving people voice and room to imagine the change they want to see. By relating to individual problems and communities validation, it will build new possibilities, not only a single solutions.

The last important component is to identifying problem in both its local and its general dimension. This means to envision the local problem with the general or global problem that might create an impactful, sustainable, and scalable innovation that can be amplified to future challenges.

Design for social innovation is indeed designing a systematic impact on how society would live, this is neither a quick fix nor social design that works for urgent problems. It proposes structural changes to make society more sustainable, fair, and resilient, unlike quick-fix solution like charity.

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DelSesto, M. (2022) Design and the social imagination. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.

DelSasto appear to extending the concept of sociological imagination as first introduced by C. Wright Mills in 1950s, with the term of social imagination. To begin with, Mills’ sociological imagination is a potential quality of mind and a mode of thought, or a human capacity. In this definition, Mills also linked the causes of individuals problem (biography) with what is the background or the history that happened universally.

Sociological imagination aims to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar by linking personal experiences to broader societal contexts. For instance, the feeling of loneliness became more prominent during the pandemic due to prolonged isolation and the uncertainty that followed. While initially felt on an individual level, this experience resonated with many others globally. What began as a personal struggle ultimately reflected a widespread issue, which illustrating the concept of sociological imagination.

In extent to this, sociological imagination putting an individual story in history, by inviting ourselves as social creatures to be situated uniquely within a web of social relations that we shape and shaped us too. To see ourselves as a primarily social being is not to disavow freedom and creativity, but to empower it. To work in the crack and failures of social system by challenging social thinking and imagining conventional wisdom.

However, DelSesto expands the idea of human capacity and ways of thinking through the concept of social imagination, which goes beyond the sociological imagination that tends to focus solely on present realities, as what social sciences or sociology always been. Instead, social imagination encourages a future-oriented, collective way of thinking about what could be possible by analyzing “wicked problems”.

Wicked problems are complex issues without clear root causes and involve constantly changing variables, for example is problem in poverty. According to Rittel and Webber’s definition, such problems require bold thinking and innovative research, not only to understand their nature but also to imagine what solutions might look like. This is exactly how social imagination is needed, to engage the people on what the world they want to live and see. And somehow, the wicked problem is fully dependent and tangled into specific issue or area only, it makes some intervention in specific area can not be replicable. However, the method or the framework can inspired and be implemented on several wicked problems.

Design and the social imagination also trying to link the distinctive sector between design and social sciences. Design professions have typically been associated with intervention, communication and action, while social science has long been associated with thought and reflection. Often times, design and social thought are too frequently considered distinct in terms of how theories can be applied in practice. Design and the Social Imagination brings together the creative, action-oriented sensibility of design with the reflective, analytical capacities of the social sciences to offer models, ideas and strategies for shaping the future of the world we live in.

Therefore, DelSesto introducing social imagination as the extension of realities using possibilities and creativity. It is believe that social imagination is a mode of thought, which similar to sociological imagination, however it encourages individuals to envision alternative social realities and engage in reflective action to address societal issues. He also referred to Zygmunt Bauman’s human praxis about fundamental basis of human societies, where human can be both subjects and objects of unfolding social realities. So practically, human have their own agency to transform existing conditions into something imagined if only they are provided and facilitated in the community.

On the other hand, to change the systemic issue in the society might not be an easy work. DelSasto mentioned, in most contexts, it can be easier to simply accept the social world as given, living out identities, work, and policies that others have previously or traditionally formed. Albeit the human mind might full of creative potential to invent and make, is also highly conditioned and habit forming around routines of the status quo. It can be personally, professionally, and politically more comfortable to accept the world as it is rather than reinventing or innovate the world as they imagined. This is why laboring to re-make the very conditions under which new social realities might come into being is a daring and courageous act.
Therefore, it is important to include and involve people in the process, to actually ignite the social imagination and make people dare to imagine the life that they want.

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Bregman, R. (2021) Humankind: a hopeful history. Translated by E. Manton and E. Moore. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

It is true that human is driven by selfishness and self-interest, it is a very basic human nature and act of survival according to Bregman, as he begins the book. In contrary, he also believe people that it is realistic and revolutionary, so to speak, that people are altruistics or good.

Using several case studies, he showed several examples on how crisis and uncertain conditions make people hand in hand to help each other, strengthened the community with solidarity. Bregman also quoted from Thomas Hobbes, a well-known philosopher, human life is naturally ‘solitary, nasty, brutish, and short’ because theoretically human are driven by fear. Thus, human long for a safety from fear and have a ‘a perpetual and restless desire of power, that ceaseth only in death’. Which later resulted in ‘a condition of war of all against all.’ But Hobbes also give argument towards this–anarchy can be tamed and peace established, if only we all agree to pursue liberty.

Fear disempowered civilization to have democracy to choose the way they live. On the other, Rousseau: it was the structures of civilisation that made humans self-interested.

Another interesting finding that I found in this book is an observation from Morris Janowitz and Edward Shils. They were observing the reason behind the resilience and why did the Germans continue to fight so hard during the war. Were they brainwashed or possessed by any ideology that blinds them in the combat? However, the result of the observation was the otherwise. It was Kameradschaft/Friendship. All those hundreds of bakers and butchers, teachers and tailors; all those German men who had resisted the Allied advance tooth and nail had taken up arms for one another. And apparently it goes the same with American soldiers who fought in Vietnam, their camaraderie that drives them to fought to each other.

Some truth are so painful to accept, how can every soldiers in the world were actually driven by the empathy and humanity towards each other? Although there is no excuse in doing war and crimes, but people do have sense of defending to one another in friendship. Making solidarity a strong kinship to progressing or achieving a certain goals.

Apparently it is also rooted from how human is actually rooted deeply in empathy, although it might not naturally presence in human. Bregman quoted from Professor Paul Bloom, empathy operates like a spotlight, highlighting a specific person or group of people in one’s life, while simultaneously causing the rest of the world to “fade away”. Thus, it is hard for people to empathize every single persons in the world. He argues, that human does not only need empathy but also compassion to give about the change.