https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 4, no. 1 discern wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. their contribution towards the quality of the journal is greatly appreciated. beatrice villari, politecnico di milano, italy claire pillar, art+design: elearning lab, cyprus university of technology, cyprus francesco mazzarella, university of the arts london, uk hazal gumus ciftci, arizona state university, united states katja fleischmann, griffith university, queensland college of art, australia nailejileji mollel-matodzi, tshwane university of technology, south africa walter chipambwa, chinhoyi university of technology, zimbabwe zijun lin, politecnico di milano, italy reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 4, no. 1 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 1, no. 1 discern wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. their assistance towards the quality of the journal is greatly appreciated. dhriti dhaundiyal, doon university, india katja fleischmann, griffith university, australia alastair fuad-luke, free university of bozen-bolzano, italy andrew laghos, cyprus university of technology, cyprus carlos andres ortega, universidad del valle, colombia claire pillar, cyprus university of technology, cyprus fenja ellen sepers, studio abound, holland aakanksha sinha, seattle university, united states reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 1, no. 1 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 2, no. 1 discern wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. their contribution towards the quality of the journal is greatly appreciated. erika marlene cortes, universidad nacional autónoma de méxico, mexico dhriti dhaundiyal, indian institute of technology bombay, india katja fleischmann, griffith university, australia dóra horváth, corvinus university of budapest, hungary lucinda morrissey, universidad europea madrid, spain selin mutdogan, hacettepe university, turkey claire pillar, cyprus university of technology, cyprus lara salinas, university of the arts london, united kingdom marios samdanis, brunel university london, united kingdom stefania savva, synthesis center for research and education, cyprus scott schmidt, georgetown & clemson university, united states reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 2, no. 1 56 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. book review: design for social innovation: case studies from around the world claire pillar published online: may 2023 to cite this article: pillar, c. (2023). book review: design for social innovation: case studies from around the world. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 4(1), 56-58. 57 book review: design for social innovation: case studies from around the world claire pillara aart + design: elearning lab, cyprus university of technology. claire.pillar@gmail.com amatullo, m., boyer, b., may, j., & shea, a., eds. (2022). design for social innovation: case studies from around the world. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003021360 418 pp. featuring 45 case studies from 6 continents, this book is a snapshot of design for social innovation. an extensive introduction from the editors considers the boundaries and difficulties in projects based on design for social innovation: “with countless pilot projects, startups, and labs that have come and gone, the question is how the sustainability of design for social innovation practices can be enhanced. if that’s a question you care about, this book is for you”, they note. the editors’ intention for this book was to understand how design for social innovation can be sustainable. the case studies included resulted from a global survey and include projects from africa, asia, europe, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003021360 58 north and south america, oceania and a few cross-continent projects. a key concern is measuring the impact of design for social innovation projects. the editors found 37 different methods of measuring the impact of design for social innovation work, and ask: is it reasonable to use the logics of yesterday to assess outcomes that represent elements of tomorrow? issues their panel discussion identified were that dsi takes place at the intersections of disciplines and sectors with the involvement of many stakeholders; consultancy-based work is mismatched to goals of dsi initiatives and many factors are worked through as such projects progress. while the projects presented in the book were mainly funded by government or the third sector, the editors were encouraged that a third of the cases were funded by fee for service. the volume is a useful combination of ‘how we did our design for social innovation’ with panel discussion on issues facing design for social innovation. https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. book review: design for social innovation: case studies from around the world claire pillar published online: may 2023 to cite this article: pillar, c. (2023). book review: design for social innovation: case studies from around the world. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 4(1), 56-58. book review: design for social innovation: case studies from around the world claire pillara aart + design: elearning lab, cyprus university of technology. claire.pillar@gmail.com amatullo, m., boyer, b., may, j., & shea, a., eds. (2022). design for social innovation: case studies from around the world. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003021360 418 pp. featuring 45 case studies from 6 continents, this book is a snapshot of design for social innovation. an extensive introduction from the editors considers the boundaries and difficulties in projects based on design for social innovation: “with countle... the editors’ intention for this book was to understand how design for social innovation can be sustainable. the case studies included resulted from a global survey and include projects from africa, asia, europe, north and south america, oceania and a ... a key concern is measuring the impact of design for social innovation projects. the editors found 37 different methods of measuring the impact of design for social innovation work, and ask: is it reasonable to use the logics of yesterday to assess out... while the projects presented in the book were mainly funded by government or the third sector, the editors were encouraged that a third of the cases were funded by fee for service. the volume is a useful combination of ‘how we did our design for social innovation’ with panel discussion on issues facing design for social innovation. 1 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-non commercial-no derivatives 4.0 international license. book review: design justice community-led practices to build the worlds we need dhriti dhaundiyal published online: october 2021 to cite this article: dhaundiyal, d. (2021). book review: design justice community-led practices to build the worlds we need. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(2), 1-6. 2 book review: design justice community-led practices to build the worlds we need dhriti dhaundiyala aschool of design, doon university, dehradun, india. dhritidhaundiyal@doonuniversity.ac.in design justice community-led practices to build the worlds we need, by sasha costanza-chock. isbn: 9780262043458, 360 pp. | the mit press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12255.001.0001 (open access) ‘design justice community-led practices to build the worlds we need’ is an essential read for those involved with social design and social justice. defining design justice as “an exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival”, constanza-chock position it as a function of power in design processes, hypothesising that design justice is a result of who has power while researching and while designing, the decisions they make and how these decisions affect marginalised groups. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12255.001.0001 3 background the author, sasha costanza-chock, is a communications scholar, participatory designer and activist, using the pronouns she/her and they/theirs. currently working as associate professor of civic media at massachusetts institute of technology (mit), usa, they have published many other defining works on the links between information and communication technologies and social movements, such as ‘out of the shadows and into the streets! transmedia organizing and the immigrant rights movement’. their approach is to take the established paradigms of the design process and reassess the fundamental tenets with the lens of social justice. they use the storytelling approach of critical feminism to give examples of lived experiences that illustrate the norms, values and assumptions encoded in the socio-technical systems in our society. they write against the production and reproduction of systemic oppression, with the confessed idealistic aims of building a better, more inclusive world. constanza-chock laud langdon winner’s thesis ‘do artifacts have politics?’ (1980) as a driving force for their work. they criticise the standardisation of products and services to the exclusion of the minority, which was first highlighted by simone browne in her book ‘dark matters’ (2015). they first gave the ‘resisting reduction’ manifesto in their essay in the journal of design & science (2018), writing from their standpoint of knowledge from embodied experiences as a non-binary trans-feminine person. their competency is based on lived experience and empirically grounded in participatory action research and codesign, specifically from their association with research action design lab, tech for social justice and the civic media: collaborative design studio course at mit. the book presents a manifesto based on principles put first put forward by the design justice network (2015) to transform design for good to design for liberation. the manifesto posits that people who are most harmed by generic design decisions usually have the least influence on those decisions, and proposes a rethink and reframe of design processes. in particular, the author questions the values, practices, narratives, sites and pedagogies embodied in design processes. book structure constanza-chock begin by tracing the roots of design justice in value-sensitive design, universal design and inclusive design. these shifts in design theory have brought in threads of feminism and anti-racism from science and technology studies (sts), in particular the ‘matrix of domination’ (collins, 2002). the author theorises that design justice stems from a core concept of design, ‘affordances’, originating in the 1970s in cognitive psychology. chapter one relates stories of design affordances, products being used in ways that were not originally designed or intended, such as the use of facebook as a site of mobilisation for social protests. the author constructs the implicit injustice perpetuated by disaffordances and dysaffordances (wittkower, 2018): one constrains function while the other makes users misidentify their own identity to access functions. ‘dysaffordance’ is driven by gender dysphoria where standardisation becomes discriminatory design. the average excludes those who don’t meet the definition of ‘average’. the next chapter moves the argument from equity to accountability and community control, in the context of participatory processes, user-led innovation and feminist human-computer interaction. constanza-chock note that although all humans design, only some earn a living out of it: generally privileged professionals, high in the matrix of domination. these professional networks concentrate agency and power within groups of others like themselves, perpetuating discriminatory social structures in technologies. chapter three gives examples of the design of design technologies with a case study of twitter, where the counternarratives of its origins have been forgotten. constanza-chock decry the popular and prominent narratives of innovation and design as ‘well-resourced corporate mythologies’ (p. 116) that concentrate and celebrate the individual genius inventors, discounting and ignoring other contributions like social movements. 4 another example is the microsoft ‘reinvent the toilet challenge’, where designers and inventors around the world raced to innovate the ideal toilet. the definition of the project’s aims and scope weas controlled by the novelty narrative, and the values of social good embedded into the designed objects were sadly ignored. chapter four covers the changing landscapes of design processes with the newly emerging subaltern sites like hacklabs, maker spaces, fab labs and hackathons, community gathering spaces that often reproduce social inequalities at the expense of marginalised communities. the author demands a reorganisation that challenges the tacit matrix of domination. the following chapter reflects on critical pedagogies and builds upon the theories of critical pedagogy, popular education and praxis, practical knowledge for action, constructionist design theories, community technology pedagogy and feminist pedagogies of data science. it lays a framework for democratising design education, not as a neutral process that maintains the status quo or challenges it, but about issues that people care about, teaching people to identify the correct problems, identifying root causes to generate correct solutions. critique the book outlines a manifesto for enabling all citizens to be equal decision-makers in the design process. this thought has been around in the design discipline for some time, but this book creates a formal manifesto for both design education and design practice. the book builds on the feminist sts approach that the world around us is socio-technical, and the infrastructure of constraints and affordances that determines how we design and use designed products is led by the codes that have been socially ingrained in us. the book is an examination of current design values, practices, narratives, sites and pedagogies to incorporate the tenets of design and social justice at the individual, community and institutional levels. figure 1 condenses the progress of the design process in participatory ventures across the spectrum from strong control to more consultative control. the aim is to help design for people who have been excluded due to omission. figure 1: analysis of community participation throughout the design process (constanza-chock, 2020, p. 91). 5 one of the book’s main strengths is that it abounds in examples of where design has inadvertently disenfranchised marginalised groups due to disaffordances and dysaffordances. this myopia in design affects not just tangible objects, images and the built environment, but also intangible socio-technical systems. the author leads with the example of the inadvertent prejudice of millimetre wave scanners at security check zones of airports against non-binary citizens, which resonates with the theatre of security one experiences in airports. costanza-chock echo foucault’s approach to knowledge as a form of the perpetuation of social violence if a conscious balance of power is not actualised in participatory design and acts of co-creation that jeopardise design justice. the onus is on the designer to reflect and realise equilibrium in design methods and design politics. costanza-chock criticise design for its ‘band-aid’ approach that ignores rather than examines root cause problem-solving. commercial design processes have been berated as ‘design by committee’, ineffective, inelegant and neglecting core concerns. design justice demands an intentional decision to frame the benefits as well as the harms of designed products and systems in a contextual manner. in recent literature, escobar’s ‘designs for the pluriverse: radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds’ (2018) and holmes’ ‘mismatch: how inclusion shapes design’ (2020) also expound on similar concerns of social injustice through omission. although the good intentions of design justice are undeniable, questions about its practicality have been raised by critics. design justice activists exhort the higher moral goals of creating the world we want to live in, but challenges of limited resources and time in the real world lead to trade-offs. there is a legitimate fear that no just outcomes may ever come out of the process, a fear that processes of design justice may slow real-world design processes down beyond viability, but design justice activists say that is a small cost to pay for a more just world, where design is a tool for liberation. summation though written before the global covid-19 pandemic, this book comes at an opportune time. the pandemic has exacerbated social disparities the world over, and the time is now ripe for community-led change that can help marginalised communities. exigent times like these can be catalysts for creating the right environment for transformational change that can be sustained. power structures are often bypassed, and change can be initiated from individuals across the socio-political spectrum. designers, developers and technologists hold immense sway in the current political economy, and, unknowingly, the infrastructure they build perpetuates larger systemic inequalities. positive action on their part can initiate change that has far-reaching consequences. the manifesto of design justice defined in this book can help designers reach that distant future in a fairer, more equitable way. references browne, s. (2015). dark matters: on the surveillance of blackness. duke university press. collins, p. h. (2002). black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. routledge. costanza-chock, s. (2018). design justice: towards an intersectional feminist framework for design theory and practice. proceedings of the design research society. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3189696 costanza-chock, s. (2020). design justice: community-led practices to build the worlds we need. the mit press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12255.001.0001 6 escobar, a. (2018). designs for the pluriverse: radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. duke university press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822371816 holmes, k. (2020). mismatch: how inclusion shapes design. mit press lee, u., mutiti, n., garcias, c., & taylor, w. (2015) (eds.). principles for design justice. design justice zine, 1. https://designjustice.org/zines winner, l. (1980). do artifacts have politics? daedalus 109, 1 (winter), 121–136. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i20024643 wittkower, d. e. (2016). principles of anti-discriminatory design. philosophy faculty publications, no.28. https://digitalcommons.odo.edu/philosophy-fac-pubs/28 46 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-non-commercial-no derivatives 4.0 international license. craftdesign for entrepreneurship, social innovation and sustainability ana margarida ferreira, dalia sendra published online: april 2021. to cite this article: ferreira, a. m., & sendra, d. (2021). craftdesign for entrepreneurship, social innovation and sustainability. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(1), 46-53. https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j 47 craftdesign for entrepreneurship, social innovation and sustainability ana margarida ferreiraa, dalia sendrab aunidcom/iade unidade de investigação em design e comunicação, av. d. carlos i, 4, 1200 649, lisboa. ana.margarida.ferreira@universidadeeuropeia.pt bunidcom/iade unidade de investigação em design e comunicação, av. d. carlos i, 4, 1200 649, lisboa. 20191040@iade.pt abstract crafts, under the umbrella of the cultural and creative sector, represent an important contribution to social development and cultural freedom. entrepreneurship through crafts and design brings a strategy to promote the empowerment of vulnerable communities. given the challenges our society is and will be confronting in the 21st century, such as the climate emergency, the process of digital automation in the human workforce, emergencies such as natural disasters or protracted crises, as well as the socioeconomic crisis that will follow the covid-19 pandemic, scientific knowledge on policies and strategies aimed at promoting sustainable development and ensuring the equality and social inclusion of vulnerable communities should be strengthened. this paper reflects upon the role crafts design and entrepreneurship can play in promoting sustainable development. keywords: craftdesign, entrepreneurship, social innovation, sustainability, women ́s empowerment introduction cultural and creative industries (ccis) have their source in individual competencies, creativity and skills and are a potential vector for creating employment and wealth (united kingdom crafts council, 2014). at the european level, ccis represent around 4% of european gdp and provide jobs to eight million people (addarii, & lipparini, 2017). in terms of european policy, important strategies, and programmes such as creative europe have been launched to reinforce the belief that culture and creativity are basic factors for personal development, social cohesion, economic growth, employment creation, innovation and competitiveness. the new creative economy opens the door to the recognition of the intangible values of creative processes and new business models. in parallel, entrepreneurship might represent an opportunity to achieve social, cultural, economic and environmental goals, and design might play a strategic role in promoting sustainability by introducing innovative solutions to social problems (sambade & ferreira, 2017). beyond the contribution to the economy of the ccis, these sectors trigger spillovers in other areas like education and social inclusion through their contribution to soft innovation (stoneman, 2011) and bring relevant tools for enhancing intangible cultural heritage and cultural freedom (sen, 1999). amongst the activities included in cultural industries, crafts play a key role. the craft economy generated £3.4bn for the uk economy, accounting for 0.3% of its gross value added (united kingdom crafts council, 2014). also, crafts bring relevant tools for promoting cultural diversity and supporting the social inclusion of vulnerable groups such as women, internally displaced people (idp), senior populations or communities in development at the local level (oecd, 2018). although crafts represent an important contribution to the economy and society, less attention has been paid to them by statistics and research in the field of creative industries, except for countries strongly supporting the creative economy like the united kingdom and australia where the research on crafts is particularly evident. one of the objectives of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development is to reduce the gender gaps and increase women’s participation in the economy globally, as women have less access to the labour market 48 (united nations general assembly, 2015). women’s participation in the global labour force rate is 48.5%, which is 26.5 percentage points below the rate for men (international labour office, 2018). giving them the opportunity of developing their own businesses and empower them at the social and cultural level, other key dimensions of human development, is essential to support human sustainable development. across the world and for centuries, women have nurtured cultural heritage (united nations industrial development organization [unido], 2013) by preserving traditional techniques, generation after generation, and enhancing traditional designs. nowadays, on the one hand, women are playing an active role in the awakening process of crafts as creative entrepreneurs (dupon, 2011). for example, craftswomen represent 61% of artisans recognised in portugal. however, there is a challenging lack of gender-based statistics related to crafts, and it is difficult to find gender-based indicators in terms of equal access and participation in the sector. some research has focused on crafts as a vehicle for feminism and activism and recognises the voluntary return of women to traditional crafts as the third feminist wave (offensend, 2012). at the same time, for some years now, the number of artisan women entrepreneurs making handmade products is increasing, surprisingly. most of the practitioners of the new craft who are working laboriously and passionately, experimenting with history, vision and feeling to produce high-quality modern and desirable objects of creation, are women. in the context of an economic crisis, the path of crafts may have offered professional opportunities to women who became unemployed or suffered professional discrimination in the labour market (d’ippoliti et al., 2013). moreover, initiatives being implemented worldwide are using entrepreneurship and design as strategies and methods to bring sustainable change and promote the empowerment of communities (bernarda et al., 2017) and the inclusion of social groups in vulnerable conditions, especially women from rural communities, senior populations, and people who have been forcibly displaced or who are at high risk. initiatives aimed at strengthening women ́s cooperatives, promoting women’s networks and building women ́s capacities in community leadership and business management are some examples. in this respect, international organisations such as the unido, the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr), the united nations development programme (undp) or the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) are also an interesting source of data and knowledge on how a creative economy can bring development. the report gender equality. heritage and creativity, published by unesco in 2014, brings important reflections to how cultural heritage and creativity can carry gender equality. research questions and hypothesis entrepreneurship through crafts design empowers collectives at risk of social exclusion, such as refugees, migrant women, rural communities, indigenous groups and senior populations. the combination of creativity and social innovation might respond to complex challenges, such as a future of labour automatisation, increased inequality and global interdependence. the interest of research on the role of crafts and design in supporting social innovation and change aims at identifying strategies to invent meaningful value and solutions to solve the wicked problem (buchanan, 1992) of the social exclusion of vulnerable groups. the proposed research will apply a design-oriented research approach to allow the investigation to integrate design as part of the research process and develop research through design. 49 “… craft has a huge potential to contribute to sustainable development in developing countries. it is labour intensive, it comprises a substantial part of the economic fabric of developing countries, and it has the potential to dovetail with the information revolution’s knowledge and creative economy to access new and lucrative sustainability-aligned markets. for these reasons, it provides developing countries with the opportunity to side-step the generic development paradigm, provided it can dovetail with the innovation-led, value-added, and manufacturing-oriented paradigm...” (reubens, 2019, p. 99) table 1: problems | solutions tree process analysis. taking these challenges into consideration, the research aims at finding responses to the following questions and project interests. • are crafts a powerful vector of social empowerment and economic autonomy? • are women at risk of social exclusion one of the groups that might benefit the most from this sector? if yes, why and how? • which role should design play in the development of artisanship as a strategic sector? what about information and communication technologies? • what are the best practices or social innovation methods to follow in this process? • which stakeholders should be involved? • what are the cultural impacts of promoting crafts as a strategic sector? other specific questions considering the interdisciplinary nature of this research that might allow the development of the study are: a) the concepts of crafts, design and craft design: • what are the more relevant disciplines of crafts being used by women? is there a mutual understanding about the perception of crafts? • how is the role of design perceived by craftswomen? • have craftswomen the same status, legal or informal, and social recognition everywhere? social inclusion and sustainable development human development and freedoms cultural dimension social and public life economic dimension crafts + design + social innovation enhancing and preserving cultural heritage personal empowerment networking entrepreneurship and economic autonomy gender inequality vulnerable women women idps women in rural areas women inmates senior women 50 • how do craftswomen perceive themselves: as makers, crafters, designers, artisans, entrepreneurs or artists? is there any distinction related to their social status, cultural identity or geographical location? b) social leadership and participation in the community: • what tools are used by craftswomen to promote their work? • do crafts strengthen women ́s social leadership? if yes, on what terms? • is there an informal network of craftswomen being developed on social media platforms? • what mechanisms are used by craftswomen to participate in the community of crafters? c) conciliation of professional and family life, economic independence, business sustainability and skills: • how do women get the necessary training to work as artisans? • what is the spatial–organisational format used by craftswomen? • under which labour conditions do craftswomen develop their work? • are we talking about a full-time job or a part-time job? or becoming a crafter in second life? • are crafts providing a professional career and long-term economic autonomy to craftswomen? • what are the challenges craftswomen face in terms of sustainability, marketing, market and internationalisation? d) cultural rights and participation in artistic and cultural life • do craftswomen perceive their work as the transmission of knowledge and heritage dissemination? • do women feel that they are promoters of dialogue between cultural heritage and design? and what about cultural diversity and cultural identity? • are women playing a key role in craft heritage transmission and enhancement nowadays? research plan and methodology the interest of the research on the role of crafts and design in supporting social innovation and change aims at identifying strategies to invent meaningful value and solutions to solve the wicked problem (buchanan, 1992) of social exclusion of vulnerable groups. the proposed research will apply a designoriented research approach to allow the investigation to integrate design as part of the research process and develop research through design. to find responses to these general and specific questions, the proposed research project is structured in three investigation phases that will combine interdisciplinary approaches in the areas of crafts, design, entrepreneurship and women ́s empowerment and the methodologies of ethnographic research, good practices analysis and applied research. regarding vulnerable women, the research will consider different challenges confronted by women at risk of social exclusion (unemployed, forcibly displaced and based in rural communities). it will follow collaborative principles and use ethnographic and empirical research (literature analysis, surveys and interviews), fieldwork observation, good practices analysis in cooperation with social innovation initiatives and applied research through collaborative workshops and self-experimentation. the use of crafts and design as a driver of social change is an approach being used by international organisations such as unhcr to promote idp’s social integration in several refugee camps, as well as by unesco, united nations conference on trade and development (unctad) and unido in developing 51 countries. associations such as la fabrique nomade (france), the refugee company (netherlands), cucula design (germany), ragamuf (finland-turkey), oloop design (slovenia), sep (jordan) and even the project made51 by unhcr, amongst many others, are using this approach to promote refugees’ integration. initiatives such as pet lamp (spain), carpet of life (belgium), ishkar (uk-france), a avô their trabalhar (portugal), ferramenta (portugal), tejiendo la calle (spain) and reklusa (portugal) also strategically use this approach to support other vulnerable groups such as indigenous communities, people living under protracted crisis, migrant women, senior women, rural women and women inmates. on the other hand, through the analysis of women entrepreneurs in the fields of crafts experiences, we would be able to better understand the challenges and impact at the social, economic and cultural level of developing a career in the crafts sector. their testimonials will be used together with interviews, focus group reports and questionnaires to complement insights identified with other methods. finally, collaborations with social innovation initiatives supporting vulnerable communities at risk of social exclusion and women artisans will be implemented to understand the business models implemented, the creative processes followed and the impact achieved. the findings and outcomes identified from the three phases of hand methods of data analysis used will be analysed and used to elaborate on the role of entrepreneurship through crafts design and how it can contribute to social inclusion and empowerment. the findings will serve as a reference for designers, institutions, organisations and companies who wish to promote the empowerment of collectives at risk of social exclusion through crafts design and contribute to the knowledge in the fields of entrepreneurship, design, crafts and sustainable development. research plan stages and objectives 1st stage first, a confirmatory approach will be applied to conceptualise the research and review and confirm the theoretical foundations, the purpose and the research questions (state-of-the-art). expected timeline: q1–q4 | semester 1 | year 1. 2nd stage in the second stage, the research will follow exploratory methods to analyse craftswomen’s perceptions and collect pertinent data from their experiences as entrepreneurs. in this regard, identification and study of case studies (preliminary case studies identified in the research plan and methodology plan) in portugal and other countries through residences, travel or participation in international seminars as well as applied research through collaborations and self-experimentation with initiatives and entrepreneurs in portugal will take place. expected timeline: q3–q8 | semesters 2–4 | year 2. 3rd stage third, the data will be interpreted, and conclusions will be drawn based on quantitative and qualitative indicators reviewed to gain an overview of common findings, challenges and differences. conclusions will be disseminated as concrete output in the form of a toolkit and/or guidelines depending on the consultations maintained with stakeholders and end-users. expected timeline: q5–q12 | semesters 4–6 | year 3. further research to bring entrepreneurship and design to crafts as strategies and methods to promote social innovation and the empowerment of vulnerable communities, the work plan proposed will allow us to achieve relevant 52 steps for the investigation in terms of boosting social-based and interdisciplinary research in the field of craft design for social change, providing evidence on the association between crafts and women´s empowerment, as well as strengthening the scientific knowledge and practice of researchers in the field. in this regard, next to the conclusion of the literature review and the development of the state-of-the-art, exploratory methods and ethnographic research will allow us to identify and analyse case studies. in this phase, the analysis of craftswomen’s perceptions as entrepreneurs as well as the development of collaborations with initiatives from a self-experimentation perspective will also be a relevant source of data and information. finally, the data and findings will be analysed to share the best craft design-based models of entrepreneurship with institutions or individuals who are involved in the promotion of women´s empowerment and crafts development as well as committed to the promotion of social innovation. references addarii, f., & lipparini, f. (2017). vision and trends of social innovation for europe. working paper, publications office of the european union. directorate-general for research and innovation. european commission. retrieved from https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/a97a2fbd-b7da11e7-837e-01aa75ed71a1 bernarda, j., et al. (2017). “transforming social dynamics by design: collaborative methodologies and the empowerment and resilience of the dommunities.” conference: design doctoral conference’18: transgression, iade, lisbon, portugal. buchanan, r. (1992). wicked problems in design thinking. design issues, 8(2), 5–21. d’ippoliti, c., et al. (2013). the impact of the economic crisis on the situation of women and men and on gender equality policies. directorate-general for justice, european commission. retrieved from https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/4a10e8f6-d6d6-417e-aef5-4b873d1a4d66 dupon, o. (2011). the new artisans. handmade designs for contemporary living. thames & hudson. international labour office (2018). world employment and social outlook: trends for women 2018 – global snapshot. geneva. retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/weso/trendsfor-women2018/wcms_619577/lang--en/index.htm oecd conference on culture and local development (2018, december 6–7). ccis and innovation: supporting cross feeds for local development. parallel session b2, discussion note. unleashing the transformative power of culture and creativity for local development, venice. retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/venice-2018-conference-culture/documents/b2-discussion%20note.pdf offensend, e. g. (2012). crafting a space: a feminist analysis of the relationship between women, craft, business and technology on etsy.com. dissertations and theses. paper 892. [thesis, portland state university. department of communication]. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.892. reubens, r. (2019). holistic sustainability through craft-design collaboration. london: routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351065665 sambade, a., & ferreira, a. m. (2017). co-designing the future: how designers and research labs play an important role to social engagement and sustainability. proceedings book of 9th international conference, senses & sensibility design beyond borders and rhizomes, lisbon, portugal. https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/a97a2fbd-b7da-11e7-837e-01aa75ed71a1 https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/a97a2fbd-b7da-11e7-837e-01aa75ed71a1 https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/4a10e8f6-d6d6-417e-aef5-4b873d1a4d66 http://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/venice-2018-conference-culture/documents/b2-discussion%20note.pdf https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.892 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351065665 53 sen, a. (1999). development as freedom. oxford university press. stoneman, p. (2011). soft innovation. economics, product aesthetics, and the creative industries. oxford university press. united nations industrial development organization. (2013). women in creative industries, gender newsletter no. 4. retrieved from https://www.unido.org/sites/default/files/201403/unido_gender_newsletter_no.4_a4_0.pdf united kingdom crafts council (2014). measuring the craft economy: defining and measuring craft: report three. tbr’s creative & cultural team. retrieved from https://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/documents/881/measuring_the_craft_economy_2014.pdf united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (2014). gender equality, heritage and creativity. paris, france. retrieved from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000229418.locale=en united nations general assembly. (2015). transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld/publication https://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/documents/881/measuring_the_craft_economy_2014.pdf https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000229418.locale=en https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 2, no. 2 discern wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. their contribution towards the quality of the journal is greatly appreciated. sarah baker, media design school, new zealand beatrice villari, polytechnic university of milan, italy sue giloi, inscape, pretoria, south africa marios samdanis, brunel university london, united kingdom scott schmidt, georgetown & clemson university, united states harah chon, lasalle college of the arts, singapore jyoti kapur, university of borås, sweden egemen okutur, bahcesehir university, turkey zoran markovic, university of botswana, gaborone, botswana lisa elzey mercer, university of illinois, united states neema munuo, brandenburg university of technology, germany reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 2, no. 2 50 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. comparing methods of transport in an age of social distancing rime cherai, jonathan gayomali, nuria benítez published online: november 2020 to cite this article: cherai, r., gayomali, j., & benitez, n. (2020). comparing methods of transport in an age of social distancing. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 1(1), 50-64. 51 comparing methods of transport in an age of social distancing rime cheraia, jonathan gayomalib, nuria benítezc a, b, cre(s)public collective. collective@respubliccollective.com abstract this article explores the new urban mobility paradigm in an after covid-19 world. the pandemic has dramatically changed the conditions under which users access and use public transportation. analysing mobility in cities across the world – new york, mexico city – the study highlights the dense demand for public transportation solutions in those two different megalopolises. the experience of covid-19 pandemics has shed the light on the necessity of rethinking the current offer and creating a new set of adaptive solutions which replace sanitary safety as a central element of assessment. to what extent are covid-19 and the possibility of other spreading of viruses affecting how common modes of transportation are thought about and used? the article revises first the modes of transportations. emphasizing the unique challenge of social distancing imposed by the pandemic, the study covers its consequences for users, cities authorities as well as operators. while it appears as a condition to contain the spread of the virus, it is also part of an economic equation for operators, who might struggle soon to cover growing operational costs, while running their networks with a smaller number of travellers. finally, the study opens the discussion on the opportunity offered by the pandemic to redesign and rethink our mobility more adaptively and sustainably. keywords: design, social design, social change, sustainability, innovation, technology, social enterprises, social awareness, social responsibility introduction the tragic spread of covid-19 nationally has resulted in disparate impacts across cities and sectors. inrix analytics allows for the analysis of movement in each of the country’s cities, and movement within cities, to provide an accurate representation of the dramatic changes observed. several overlying trends have emerged: first, consumer trips are down massively while freight trips have decreased to a much lower degree. second, trip reductions in metros closely track official guidance regarding work from home, social distancing, and shelter in place restrictions. as this crisis progresses, it is likely more cities will come to resemble those most impacted. inrix trip analytics provides a powerful means to measure and describe just how these changes are manifesting across the country and world which we're providing access to in the free dashboard below. to better capture the re-emergence of cities and businesses, inrix has also developed metrics and visuals to measure activity, regardless of the mode using inrix visit analytics metadata. we call this, “activity re-emergence trends”. to what extent are covid-19 and the possibility of other spreading of viruses affecting how common 52 modes of transportation are thought about and used? when common methods such as subway, private automobile, bicycle, and bus are not able to function at their peak capacity, leaving them unable to focus on density and efficiency, are they capable of adapting? what circumstances are lost and what new opportunities are created? in asking these questions we will look to current narratives of transportation strategies and struggles. “a modal shift occurs when one mode has a comparative advantage in a similar market over another. comparative advantages can take various forms, such as costs, capacity, time, flexibility or reliability.” (ronrigue, 2020) image 1: principles of modal shift | the geography of transport systems. precedents new york, united states the daily work commute in new york city offers a wide range of modes of transportation. although most new yorkers work within the same borough that they live, from the subway to the ferries, there are many options to their daily destination. new york city’s mean travel time to work is 33.3 minutes (u.s. census bureau, 2018). of all people who commute to work in new york city, 39% use the subway, 23% drive alone, 11% take the bus, 9% walk to work, 7% travel by commuter rail, 4% carpool, 1.6% use a taxi, 1.1% ride their bicycle to work, and 0.4% travel by ferry (u.s. census bureau, 2017). 54% of households in new york city do not own a car and rely on public transportation (u.s. census bureau, 2009). with roughly 50% of the population using public transportation and 50% taking private transportation, new yorkers have heavily relied on transportation that uses density as its main form of efficiency. 53 the pandemic has had a massive impact on m.t.a. ridership and is even seeking a $4 billion virus bailout. this is because ridership has fallen 60 percent on the subways, 49 percent on the buses and as much as 90 percent on commuter railways (goldbaum, 2020). as the largest transportation system in the united states, new york’s early trends are telling of what is to come for other large metropolitan areas in the country. even before the pandemic, new york has seen an uptick in bicycle usage. because of an increase of bicycle deaths in the past few years, safety measures have come into place including a plan called the “green wave”. the plan calls for “installing 30 miles of protected bike lanes every year, as well as 2,000 new bike parking spaces on an annual basis” (nycdot, 2019). recently, there have been new talks of building the first bridge from queens to manhattan in decades, with access to only pedestrians and cyclists (hu, 2020). the queens ribbon, designed by former city traffic commissioner samuel i schwartz would be much narrower than the adjacent queensboro bridge. image 2: nyc bike map 1997/ 2019 | green wave: a plan for cycling in nyc. the trend of bicycle usage will likely continue to trend upward, with some bicycle shops in brooklyn selling up to twice the normal amount. by the end of april, many distributors all over the united states have sold out completely. there is a question as to whether the transportation trends of pre-covid-19 will return to what it once was. with many people still working from home, according to a study by global workplace analytics, 54 estimates are that “25-30% of the workforce will be working from home multiple days a week by the end of 2021.” so maybe social distancing on trains will not be so much of a health concern, but an economic one. mexico city, mexico basic statistics of federal motor transport go up to 2018. however, inegi records 444,350,000 passengers in the subway monthly, and almost 213,000,000 monthly passengers for the metrobus (rbt). these numbers may illustrate most passengers in the city, but the reality is not such. today, in mexican cities, transportation is dominated by automobile use, and it outweighs the economic and social benefits of living in a city. this is predominantly because car users only cover their private costs related to the use of their cars, but not the social costs of increased congestion and poor air quality generated because of it. local pollution generated by gasoline combustion is estimated to be linked to the almost 14 thousand deaths in 2008 due to poor air quality, according to the world health organization (who, 2012). 24,000 deaths a year and 40,000 wounded are caused by road accidents and cost 126 billion pesos a year, or, approximately 1.3% of gdp (ministry of health, 2008; cervantes, 2009). recent estimates point to an alarming trend in increased car use in the last two decades, as the kilometres travelled by vehicles in the country (vkt – vehicle-kilometre travelled) have practically tripled, moving from 106 million vkt in 1990, to 339 million vkt in 2010 (medina, 2012). this growth, given the conditions of public transportation and urban development, means that urban mobility becomes so inefficient that not only does it not contribute to the country’s economic development, but it affects the quality of life of its inhabitants, due to the serious costs it generates and that are not covered by those generating them. the increase in automobile use has also upset mexico’s trade economics. 30 percent of mexico’s income comes from the production and export of oil (oecd, 2010). with the increase in automobile use and increased need for gasoline, mexico has begun importing gasoline and it has become the principal import in the country (147 billion pesos in 2010). national gasoline price stabilisation mandates international price comparison, resulting in a 76.6 billion pesos subsidy in 2010 and estimated to be 169.5 billion in 2011. this is more than the amounts spent on national poverty alleviation programmes combined. this policy is regressive, as 70% of this subsidy supports the wealthiest third of the population (scott, 2010; 2011). this not only contributes to the external fragility of the economy but puts pressure on public finances and creates social inequality. (itdp mexico, 2012). more remains to be said after the development of uber in mexico city. because of the health contingence, the new secretary of mobility, andrés lajous, enhanced the definition of emerging bike lanes, installed in the country's capital running parallel to the central routes of transportation. 55 image 3: ecobici is a shared bicycle system in mexico city, complementing the city's public transportation network. implemented in 2013, with 276 stations with 4,000 bicycles with an average of 25,000 users per day and 95,780 registered members. 56 image 4: green lines represent existing cycling infrastructure; dashed red the rapid bus transit system; dashed orange the subway system. [pink: cycling infrastructure proposal; blue: other interdependent projects; green: existing cycling infrastructure; dotted yellow: subway lines; dotted blue: light train; dotted red:brt system] cities such as copenhagen, denmark have an outstanding bicycle infrastructure. around 45 percent of the inhabitants commute to work, school or university by bike, covering around 1.4 million kilometres every day. according to a study, even more people in the greater copenhagen area bike to work every day than in the entire usa (herrmann, 2020). its target is hat 75% of all movement will be on foot, by bike or by public transport (kobenhavns kommune). copenhagen has been ranked as one of the most liveable cities in the world (mercer, forbes, copenhagen capacity); it might not be an assumption that much of this has to do with connectivity, accessibility and transportation within short distances, as well as walking and cycling as main transportation modes. analysing modes of transportation urban mobility is in most cities worldwide the result of a complex system. it is (i) shaped by policies and 57 regulations, (ii) highly dependent on the availability of land and its integration into a wider city design strategy, and finally (iii) fully relying on consumer preferences and behaviours. in a study published in 2018, mckinsey was analysing transportation in 24 cities around the world. aiming at apprehending the relationship and causality link between urban transportation and quality of life for the users, mckinsey’s experts identified five factors which they believed model the user’s experience. these factors were: availability, affordability, efficiency, convenience and sustainability. while this study was still relevant two years ago, covid-19 outbreak has completely changed the paradigm and has brought back travellers’ safety as the core element of the mobility scheme. half across 2020, cities are showing a decrease in mobility due to the pandemic. for example, landing in mid-april, a report written by an mit economics professor concluded that new york’s subway system was “a major disseminator—if not the principal transmission vehicle” in the city’s covid-19 outbreak. urban populations have opted for avoiding mass transportation systems when needed to mobilize. as a result, one can already anticipate the long-standing fears of sharing urban spaces and more especially public transportation, that might outlive durably the virus. image 5: santiago arau, pantitlán subway station in mid-april at 6pm, 2020. in reflecting what currently exists in these cities, the modes of transportation can be analysed not only in terms of what is traditionally measured but now also in terms of sanitary safety. this includes social distancing, and sanitary conditions, recurrent disinfection, use of masks for travellers, etc. an unprecedented concern, as transportation densely mobilised millions of people daily before the pandemic. how can safety be guaranteed by government and mobility strategies, if crowds cannot be avoided? how can this affect satisfaction with modes of transport? satisfaction can be defined as “the 58 comparison between a traveller’s experience and his or her expectations, and the affective response related to this. (soest, 2019). as people are increasingly returning to work and their pre-covid lifestyle, governments and city authorities are facing the challenge of reassuring the users of the safety of public transport. in a recent survey run by oliver wyman, 52% of respondents shared their discomfort in using public transportation. as the lockdown was eased in paris, authorities willing to avoid crowded situations had established a set of rules to enable the users to travel safely. the chosen solution was a required permission form justifying the reason for the journey. a few acceptable reasons were listed, amongst which medical appointments, urgent family reasons, or the necessity to work from the office. however, as highlighted in the oliver wyman study, on the long haul, public transport operators need the flow of passengers to return to a minimal level for them to be able to maintain their networks. image 6: oliver wyman, traveller sentiment survey, comfort after covid-19. [at the bottom: 1. uncomfortable: “very uncomfortable” or “somewhat uncomfortable”; “comfortable: “very comfortable” or “somewhat comfortable”. source: oliver wyman traveller sentiment survey, oliver wyman analysis.] in an article released in april 2020, the new york times was sharing the conclusions of the harvard university t.h. chan school of public health: a link can be established between covid-19 deaths and air pollution. ironically, covid-19 could result in increased use of private means of transportation, amongst which cars. this glooming perspective would consequently generate more traffic congestions in urban areas, energy consumption and most of all pollution and eventually deteriorate the air quality. 59 in fact, in terms of energy consumption, modes of transportation can be discussed in both direct and indirect factors. direct factors range from fuel, charging, etc, while indirect factors include such things as maintenance of both the vehicle itself and of infrastructure (pérez-martínez & sorba, 2010).” the average energy consumption rates from passenger transport by car are about three times higher than from transport by bus. aircraft are 23 times less efficient than high-speed trains and 16 times less than bus transport. in other studies, cars have been found to consume 2.4 more energy per passengerkilometer than buses, and aircraft consume 27 times more than rail transport. (pérez-martínez & sorba, 2010). image 7: energy consumption of passenger transport modes, average speed and occupation rate: aircraft: scheduled airlines and charter, intercity train (it): eclectic and diesel tractions: regional train (electric traction), tram, bus and car (itf, 1990, pérez-martínez, p., & sorba, i. (2010). while many of these modes are developing new technologies, the shift in usage and therefore energy consumption also means a development in how cities look at efficiency. with health concerns being placed at the forefront, other factors must be utilized to curb the drops in public transportation. 60 image 8: energy consumption factors and rates for different modes of passenger transport (pérezmartínez, p., & sorba, i. (2010). positively, covid-19 could represent an opportunity for authorities and citizens to redesign mobility within cities, and reshape it towards a healthier mode. an example of this would be the growing trend of cycling, already started a few years ago, who has known unprecedented acceleration these last weeks. to accompany the growing interest in this way of transportation, local governments across france have been urged to create new bike lanes. therefore, paris under the leadership of its mayor anne hidalgo, has been provided with an additional 650km of lanes for cyclists during the pandemic. connection current infrastructure and social distancing trends as social distancing trends take hold over cities, and travel, private automobile utilization has become a greater factor than normal. in the united states, as the typical vacation season approaches, the national vmt is approaching new lows. according to a study by inrx, “nationally, vmt (vehicle miles travelled) fell to its lowest level for the seven days beginning april 6, 2020, where it fell 48% below the baseline, pre-covid level of travel. these, along with other indicators, reveals that the summer travel season will not be as large as in years past. ihs markit estimates that travel by car, though increasing mode share by 10% over last year, will still be more than three percent lower overall (pishue, 2020).” if private automobile travel is up 10% of mode share, what does this mean for other areas of transportation within the us? the correlation between metropolitan areas and their corresponding state are sometimes linked, however, cities such as dallas and houston are in the bottom 33% of vmt growth while the state of texas placed in the middle tier (pishue, 2020). this disconnect between city and state brings questions into borders and the separation of the urban and the rural. 61 interventions of policy and urban design may be able to curb the trends to realign with the current builtin infrastructure, but questions remain on how to make that shift. “to design effective interventions to bring about a shift in modes of transport that better aligns with the carbon reduction and health agendas it is particularly useful to explore how transport systems are currently perceived (soest, 2019).” an example of this stems from an academic study from the pennsylvania state university studied four towns in france regarding making a shift from private automobile to bus and had significant findings towards behavioural change. the reason for the study is a hypothesis of the psychosocial theories of behavioural change. image 9: theory of planned behaviour (yoshinori & david, 2019). “to be effective, travel policies need to go along with techniques to break inertia. at the same time, changing mobility behaviours requires a competitive and effective bus network. both are complementary. when taking the bus becomes objectively attractive compared to driving a car, such a program can lift barriers that would hinder a potential massive modal shift (yoshinori & david, 2019).” if looking to similar current users to modal patterns, the applicability of the shift to various modes of transportation can be implemented with a similar rationale to various cultures of travel and commuting. discussion the meaning of this shift is rooted in the idea that as people adapt to new working and lifestyle conditions, their mindset on transportation must also adapt to completely make the cultural change. what are the drivers in this shift? some modes of transportation are proving to be more adaptable than others with plans of expanded access and applicability while some are only limited to changing singular factors such as distance and regularity. in july 2020, chicago department of transportation added 66 new stations, and 3,500 additional bikes into the far south side in direct response to the pandemic (clafey & hofer, 2020). meanwhile, the speed at which we adapt differs from city to city, being driven by a multitude of both non-political and political factors. 62 “a generalist top-down approach to urban planning involves consultation with a wide range of senior stakeholders, such as those responsible for city governance, leaders of the different communities within the city and those for whom cities provide a focus of their professional activities (rogers, shipley, blythe, braithwaite & brown, 2014).” can the immediate need of adaptability meet the needs and speed of a forced rapidly changing lifestyle? comparing current precedents of cities and cultures and their willingness to adapt as both the outcome of public and governing bodies can potentially lead to a response that shifts the culture of transportation for the better. references soest, d. v., tight, m. r., & rogers, c. d. 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sustainable design: a systemic design model for the transition to a circular and sustainable economy david camocho a, josé vicenteb, ana margarida ferreirac aunidcom/iade unidade de investigação em design e comunicação, av. d. carlos i, 4, 1200-649 lisboa. alaboratório nacional de energia e geologia, i.p., estrada do paço do lumiar, 22, 1649-038 lisboa. david.camocho@gmail.com buniversidade da beira interior, faculdade de artes e letras, da, r. marquês de ávila e bolama, 6201-001 covilhã, portugal. buniversidade de lisboa, faculdade de arquitetura, ciaud, r. sá nogueira, 1349-055 lisboa, portugal. jmanvicente@gmail.com ciade, universidade europeia, av. d. carlos i, 4, 1200-649 lisboa. cunidcom/iade unidade de investigação em design e comunicação, av. d. carlos i, 4, 1200-649 lisboa. ana.margarida.ferreira@universidadeeuropeia.pt abstract successful and innovative design practices towards the development of more circular and sustainable products and services that are aligned with the current and future needs of our society rely on efficient practices that combine three main levels in the design and development process. the design management level which is responsible for establishing, planning and managing the development of design projects. the business level, which is focused on the feasibility and effectiveness of the project and its results in the short and long term. lastly, the design level that is responsible for the implementation and development of circular design projects. this paper is part of a phd research focused on supporting an innovative and efficient transition to a circular economy and sustainability through design. it describes the basis of a design model under development based on the design thinking process and an expert's survey carried at an international level and the research activities undertaken. it integrates the three levels in a systemic perspective, guiding the process and establishing the link between the needs of the design and development teams in terms of the definition of circularity and sustainability considerations and strategies, objectives and the activities, resources and practical tools needed to support the circular design projects. keywords: design, circular economy, sustainability, design systemic model introduction to achieve sustainability and the transition to a circular economy (ce), we need to shift to a more innovative and effective way to fulfil the needs of the society and change the paradigm of production and consumption of products and services. the way we design, produce, use, distribute and discard products has a strong impact on the economy, the society and the environment (european commission, 2019) and design practice are seen as a catalyst to shift from the traditional model of take-make-dispose to achieve a more restorative, regenerative and circular economy (moreno, de los rios, rowe & charnley, 2016). however, the approaches proposed so far in the field of design and innovation have not addressed and promoted significant changes at the system level (idil gaziulusoy, 2015) and designers who have the function of translating the strategies and concepts of circularity in the development of products and services that promote the closing of cycles, the efficiency, and sustainability of the systems, are challenged by new environmental, social and economic needs must adopt a holistic approach to problem-solving (bocken, de pauw, bakker & van der grinten, 2016) taking into account that most of the characteristics of the entire life cycle of a product are defined in the design stage. 3 as part of a doctoral research project under development which aims to promote and demonstrate to practitioners and companies the key role of design in this process, and to increase the knowledge in the fields of design for sustainability and circular economy, as well as support the design practice and the practitioners with guidelines and resources to develop sustainable solutions to current and future needs, the project addresses four main research questions: • how can design support the transition from the linear economy to the new model of a circular and sustainable economy? • what tools and methods can designers apply to support an effective design practice for a successful transition to ce in the real world? • how can designers overcome the barriers to the implementation of a design practice that effectively results in more sustainable products and services aligned with the european policies for ce? • and, how can design practice and the role of the design professionals be promoted in the ce context? to support the design practice and to reduce the gaps that exist between what is being developed and investigated in ce and its practical application in the development of more circular, sustainable and innovative projects, products and services, and to promote good practices, this paper presents a systemic model that is under development to meet the needs of designers in the integration of circularity aspects in their practice. the model aims to establish the connection of the design process, the business strategy and the design management towards circularity and integrates the inputs derived from the research undertaken and will be further tested and validated to ensure its adequacy and efficiency to support the process. design for a circular economy in the transition from the traditional linear approach to the circular economy, design makes a huge contribution. design plays a key role in the definition of the features and the profile of products and services. a more sustainable way to design, produce, and consume is a crucial objective for the development of our society (bhamra & lofthouse, 2007; braungart & mcdonough, 2009; manzini & vezzoli, 2010; margolin, 2014) that, according to recent studies, is only 9% circular ( de wit, hoogzaad, ramkumar, friedl & douma, 2019). with the responsibility of responding to product-service system problems, designers must integrate circularity criteria and expertise in problem-solving innovatively, adjusted to the needs of users, businesses, and society’s dynamics (ferreira, 2008). the circular design process and the underlying practice can be seen as more challenging and complex, requiring changes in the way of thinking and conducting projects focusing on a shift from product-based solutions to more sustainable and innovative system-based or function-based approaches. designers need to align their development process with the ce approach to replace the conventional end-of-life concept in which the materials and components of a product are disposed of after fulfilling the initial function, through closing solutions, slowing and narrowing the resource flows in production, distribution and consumption processes (bocken, de pauw, bakker & van der grinten, 2016). they need to apply several strategies in the development process focusing on the efficiency and sustainability of the entire system (rocha, camocho & alexandre, 2019). to foster an efficient design practice, there is a need to provide practitioners, business stakeholders, and other product developers with guidelines, resources and practices to apply design strategies for different circular business models (moreno, de los rios, rowe & charnley, 2016; bocken, 2016), and influencing and managing the value chains. building circular and sustainable value chains that are highly influenced by 4 product and service design, inevitably imply a fundamental change in design practice (camocho, ferreira & vicente, 2018; prendeville et al., 2013; de los rios & charnley, 2017). new or updated and upgraded methods and effective design-oriented tools are needed to support and promote design in the transition to a ce. the over-consumption of goods and services have actively seduced society, leading to excessive consumption of natural resources and the generation of huge amounts of waste and emissions (medkova & fifield, 2016). designing products more smartly and innovatively, extending their useful lives and changing the role of such products within the system is crucial to the achievement circularity and sustainability (camocho, ferreira & vicente, 2018; european environment agency, 2017). currently, and given the post-covid19 scenario in which we are, the effects of the pandemic have further reinforced this need to create a more ecological and resilient society. europe needs to be revitalized. companies, businesses and society must adapt to a new reality, and new revitalization mechanisms must be adopted. the european union recently launched the europe recovery plan (european commision, 2020) in which measures to revitalize and support organisations will be put into practice. in this context, the design is a fundamental element in adapting to new needs and must respond with integrated solutions that enhance innovation, sustainability, employment and the creation of value for all stakeholders. basis and rationale for the development of the design model for a ce the integration of sustainability principles in product development has been a concern of many professionals since the 70s, having, in a way, an important influence of vitor papanek’s book “design for the real world” (1970). the authors called into question the practice of design and the relationship of this professional activity with the environmental and social impact associated with product development. from green design to design for the circular economy, we have witnessed an evolution in design, in the concepts, practice and growth in complexity by integrating a larger scope of sustainability criteria (vicente, frazão & silva, 2012). numerous projects and initiatives have been developed, numerous examples of success are available in the market, however, this practice has never become mainstream. these approaches have always been related to niche markets and in general (hassi & wever, 2010) never managed to demonstrate the real benefits of being sustainable, taking into account, the environmental, social and economic pillars of sustainability. the ce can be considered as another step in the evolution of a necessary and fundamental demand for a more sustainable future and presents itself as a possible path in this direction, and in this way, the scientific, academic and business communities are highly motivated and committed in this respect. however, as mentioned above, despite the numerous developments in terms of methodologies, practices, tools, funding, etc., there is still a huge gap between theory and practice (camocho, ferreira & vicente, 2019), between what is being developed in research and development projects and what is applied in practice for new solutions that reach the market. it is essential to narrow this gap and provide designers, who have a fundamental and irrefutable role in the development of new products, sustainable services and systems, with interdisciplinary practices supported by synthetic methods, tools and guidelines that result in sustainable solutions that contribute towards an environmentally efficient future, fair from a social point of view and that creates value and wealth for business and the society. 5 in this sense, this research project intends to develop a synthetic method that supports this practice and that integrates the project development, the management and orientation of the design project and the perspective of the business, as presented in figure 01, implementing these considerations in early phases of the project (hassi & wever, 2010) with high innovation potential. figure 1: the 3 dimensions of the circular design model. this model results from the work and research carried out and aims to systematize and guide the design process by integrating aspects of circularity and sustainability that respect the intrinsic needs of the design process and activities. the model is based on four main sources of information. an extensive literature review, the national practices applied in portuguese products that are available in the market, the perspective of consumers and the perspectives of a group of international experts that were consulted within the process (figure 2). figure 2: circular design systemic model – sources. literature review for the development of the design model, the literature review that aimed to identify and analyze the main circular design systemic model literature review current design practice (national product review) consumers perspective experts review (international review) project development bussiness perspective design managment 6 sources at a national and international level provided a clear picture of the state-of-the-art and knowledge in the field of design, sustainability and ce with a special focus in identifying methodologies, tools, definitions and case studies of development and implementation of design projects oriented towards ce and sustainability (camocho, 2018). within the research project, several resources were collected and analysed. the ce is a current topic, and a vast number of activities and publications are being released frequently. these have been considered in the project and integrated as possible. besides the support in the development of the project and the design model, the collected information, with a brief analysis of each resource will be systematized and made available in the form of a database of resources oriented towards the design process aiming to provide designers and product developers with a source of relevant knowledge that is available and can be used as reference and inspiration to support innovative projects. identification of national products with sustainability criteria to map sustainable and circular design practices in portugal and to analyze how the sustainability and circularity aspects are being integrated into product development and communicated to the user, within the research project, relevant industrial products that are available in the market which have been developed with sustainability and/or circularity criteria and are placed in the market with sustainability allegations were identified and collected in a database of portuguese products. this will be made available to be used by the design community as a source of inspiration, collection of good practices and promotion of the sustainability and circularity concepts and their background. the collection of national examples was done to support the identification of the design professionals and companies linked to the products identified and, through interviews, the research aimed to identify and analyze how sustainable and circular products were developed and which are the needs, drivers, barriers and more information on the design practice towards a ce to support the development on the resources that will result from this project. the search and collection of portuguese examples demonstrated that despite all the efforts that are being done by research institutions, the portuguese government, academia, associations, organizations, ngo’s, etc., there is still a lack of national products developed and placed in the market. there are, however, several examples of products available, but the majority are imported from abroad. analysis of consumer perspectives the availability and dissemination of products and services with sustainability considerations is increasing worldwide. there has been a growing trend in informing consumers about the environmental aspects to take into account when buying products (young, kumju, seonaidh & caroline, 2008). in general, consumers, are more aware of the societal and environmental problems and challenges and demand new and improved products and services. yet, the gap between what is placed in the market by producers and what the consumer perceives is an important issue to overcome. the communication of products, the inefficiency of labels for most users who do not understand these topics, need to be designed in a more efficient way (camocho, 2019). for an efficient transition to ce through design, it is important to have a holistic and integrated approach. on the one hand, we need to supply innovative and sustainable products that meet the needs of consumers, and on the other, we need to have a sustainable consumption behaviour and features related 7 to products and services that allow an informed choice and efficient use by consumers. within the development of design projects for ce, designers need to better understand the consumer habits, perceptions and general knowledge regarding the sustainability aspects of products and services, and in this regard, within the research project, a consumers analysis was developed. the survey undertaken indicates that consumer believes in a common-sense assessment of sustainability based on their perceptions, which are not always correct and are partially supported by self-declarations and allegations from designers, producers, and retailers focusing only in few aspects of the life cycle, and in some cases, misleading consumers through greenwashing approaches (camocho, ferreira & vicente 2019). these findings and concerns should be translated into criteria to guide the development process and must be considered in the design model under development. survey of experts despite the evolution of the ce approach and wide dissemination and engagement at many levels of our society, which lead to the development of new business opportunities, new business models and developing new markets, is ce the solution to attain a sustainable society? to answer this question, the current research conducted an international survey, in which a group of international experts were contacted and invited to collaborate by sharing their experiences and perspectives about the current and future status of ce in practice. to develop an efficient survey, the purpose, goals and the sample were clearly defined to ensure focus, concise and provide useful data. the collected information allows the definition of an international overview of the practice, motivations and barriers in the transition to ce through design, and supports the research and development of methods, tools and guidelines to promote an improved design practice. to involve an effective and relevant sample, before the development of the survey, a database of international experts was developed as well as a questionnaire based on the compromise between the length and time needed to complete it and the need for data to support the analysis. through the questions, the research aims to understand the views and perspectives of the experts in the field on what concerns the practical implementation of ce, in what sense the experts consider that ce is the way to achieve a sustainable society in the future, what is considered the novelty that the concept and approach can bring to society, what are the main drivers and motivations to adopt ce in practice, what are the main barriers, how should we overcome the current obstacles and promote the design practice towards innovative and sustainable solutions, and what lessons can we learn from the past. the analysis of the data gives an overview of the perceptions of the experts that are working in the field and are facing the real challenges in the circularity path. from the expert’s inputs to the survey, more than 80% consider that ce is the way to attain sustainability. the around 20% that do not consider ce as the way for sustainability consider that ce is one important strategy, but many other must be integrated and considered in the development of our society and the future patterns for production and consumption. from the overall perceptions, ce can be seen as a change of mindset for consumers and industries, leading to the development of different ways of production and consumption, focusing on the real needs of the users, business and the society by adopting new development paths and new business models which can lead to a more dematerialized and efficient ways to fulfil the needs of all stakeholders in the value chain. the results of the survey which include also a set of motivation, barriers for the implementation of ce in 8 practice, ideas on how to overcome the obstacles and promote the design practice towards innovative and sustainable solutions and other relevant aspects will support the development and adequacy of the design model and the related resources. development of the circular design model and toolkit aiming to support and promote the design practice, a design model is developed. bild upon the results of the research, the above-mentioned review, the analysis of strategies, tools and methods, and other relevant information collected and analyzed, the structure of the model (figure 3) derives from the six main stages of a design project and relates the activities of the process with three levels that complement each other resulting in a robust model to support the design practice towards circularity and sustainability: • the project management level to support an efficient integration of circularity in the different phases and aspects of design management • the business level to align the development with the strategy and considerations of the business, promoting the efficiency and sustainability of the system. • the design team level, to support the practice and the integration of the circularity and sustainability considerations, methods and tools in the development of new and innovative products, services and systems. the model establishes the relation of the design thinking process with the goals of the ce to define how the resources can guide the design process to promote sustainability and circularity in processes. figure 3. circular and sustainable design model. the description of each step in figure 3 are the goals and objectives of each phase, how circularity should be addressed, which sub-activities are included in each step of the model and which are the inputs 9 (resources, time, human resources, etc) and the outputs needed, will allow a systemic definition, the planning and the development of the design for a ce project. the strategy for the design practice within ce will be supported by relevant tools, methods and guidelines that can be applied by practitioners in their daily activity to develop innovative and sustainable circular solutions. the translation of the model into the practice will be done through a design for circularity and sustainability toolkit. the toolkit to improve the role of design in the transition towards a circular and sustainable economy is being developed and will support the development of new projects that will result in new products and services with more potential for innovation, sustainability and circularity. conclusions and further development the circular design systemic model, structured in three interlinked layers that integrate the project development perspective, the design management approach, and the business perspective, will promote the adoption and implementation of circular design in practice. the model provides guidance and support to designers, project developers, project managers and business strategists engaged in this typology of projects, integrating circularity considerations, tools and methodologies as core activities in the development of new and efficient products and services. these align the current and future needs of consumers with improvements and benefits in the circularity profile of products and services with an added value for the business and the society. this model aims to reduce the gap between theory and practice, developed with an orientation towards the project, respecting the needs of the various stakeholders and aligned with the characteristics and needs of project management and development. the result, integrating a set of guidelines and different types of resources for project development, will 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(2008). sustainable consumption: green consumer behaviour when purchasing products. sustainable development journal, n/a. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.394 27 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. educational needs in cultural and arts entrepreneurship of women from marginalised backgrounds: a needs analysis for a social design intervention nicos souleles, stefania savva, ana margarida ferreira, andrew laghos published online: november 2020 to cite this article: souleles, n., savva, s., ferreira, a.m., & laghos a. (2020). educational needs in cultural and arts entrepreneurship of women from marginalised backgrounds: a needs analysis for a social design intervention. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 1(1), 27-36. 28 educational needs in cultural and arts entrepreneurship of women from marginalised backgrounds: a needs analysis for a social design intervention nicos soulelesa, stefania savvab, ana margarida ferreirac, andrew laghosb acyprus university of technology, art+design: elearning lab, limassol. nicos.souleles@cut.ac.cy bcyprus university of technology, art+design: elearning lab, limassol. stefania.savva@cut.ac.cy ciade, universidade europeia, av. d. carlos i, 4, 1200-649 lisboa. cunidcom/iade unidade de investigação em design e comunicação, av. d. carlos i, 4, 1200-649 lisboa. ana.margarida.ferreira@universidadeeuropeia.pt dcyprus university of technology, art+design: elearning lab, limassol. andrew.laghos@cut.ac.cy abstract despite the recognition that cultural and creative industries can foster significant economic potential and are one of europe's most dynamic sectors, contributing to the creation of millions of jobs across the european union, there is a noticeable lack of cultural and arts entrepreneurship programmes of study. the project creation (cultural and arts entrepreneurship in adult education), funded under erasmus+ strategic partnerships for adult education, seeks to redress this situation through a social design intervention comprising the development of a framework for adult education for the creative and cultural sectors across europe, with a specific focus on aspiring women entrepreneurs from marginalised backgrounds (migrants, refugees and asylum seekers). this study provides a needs analysis to inform the identification of the required educational needs for the target groups. it comprises desk research of the related literature plus data from an online survey. the synthesis of the prominent themes that emerged from this study indicates the need for a multifaceted instructional design approach that combines both the essential generic skills in entrepreneurship and acknowledges the structural, contextual and educational challenges that are characteristic of the target groups. keywords: entrepreneurship, education, women, marginalised, culture, arts introduction the creative industries are the focus of different lifelong learning programmes across europe that aim to address adult training needs for a future workforce in a sector that requires a set of diverse skills to engage with cultural and arts entrepreneurship. in a study by essig (2017, p. 21), the author reminded us that education for cultural and arts entrepreneurship has moved on from the early ‘pioneering phase’ and is now transiting the ‘conceptual phase’, where related education is further defined, necessitating a ‘robust body of empirical research’. the view that education, skills and relevant training are not sufficiently addressed in the sector was also identified in a comprehensive report by the culture unit of the utrecht school of arts written for the european commission (2010). the authors argued that the proliferation of entrepreneurship education programmes in recent years have commercial success as the sole purpose. they do not cater to the creative industries where creative and cultural outcomes are considered more significant than financial outcomes (2010, p. 10; bridgstock, 2012, p. 129). for this article, the terms ‘cultural and arts entrepreneurship’, ‘arts entrepreneurship’ and ‘entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative sector’ refer to similar endeavours and are used interchangeably and as they appear in the reviewed literature. 29 the rationale for engaging with the early ‘conceptual phase’ of cultural and arts entrepreneurship was articulated as a policy priority area by the european union in 2007. the european commission’s document on a european agenda for culture in a globalizing world (2007) made an explicit connection between the contribution of the cultural industries and the creative sector in general and growth and employment. subsequently, in the same document, the european commission set as a specific objective to “...promote capacity building in the cultural sector by supporting the training of the cultural sector in managerial competences, entrepreneurship...” (2007, p. 9). this objective stems from the recognition that the cultural and creative industries can foster significant economic potential and are one of europe's most dynamic sectors, contributing around 2.6 % to the eu gdp and provide quality jobs to around 5 million people across the european union (eu) (european commission, 2010, p. 2). following on from the acknowledgement that the sector can contribute towards growth and employment, the project creation (cultural and arts entrepreneurship in adult education, www.creationproject.eu), funded under erasmus+ strategic partnerships for adult education, seeks to develop a social design intervention comprising a framework for adult education for the creative and cultural sectors across europe with a specific focus on aspiring women entrepreneurs from marginalised backgrounds (migrants, refugees and asylum seekers). the purpose of this article is to provide a needs analysis that informs the development of the appropriate pedagogical framework for the target group. this needs analysis comprises two parts. first, desk research was undertaken on literature, including appropriate european union (eu) documents, to track down useful existing pre-published information. second, an online survey in the form of a questionnaire (appendix 1) was undertaken (n = 55) for two months in early 2020, inviting representatives from academia, the cultural and arts sector and entrepreneurs as well as others to comment on their perceptions on what the required set of skills is for the target group. the outcomes of this needs analysis derived from the synthesis of both these parts, i.e. the literature review and data from the online questionnaire. literature review the project creation identified marginalised women to include all those with a migrant, refugee and/or asylum seeker background. the european institute for gender equality, however, provides a raison d'être for what makes these groups marginalised. marginalised groups are those that within a given culture and context are at risk of being subjected to multiple levels of discrimination due to the interplay of different factors including their social status, sex, gender, age, ethnicity, religion or belief, health status, disability, sexual orientation, gender, education, income, or living in various geographic localities. being a member of such groups or even being perceived to belong to them increases the risk of inequalities in terms of access to rights and use of services in a variety of domains, such as access to education, employment, health, social and housing assistance, protection against domestic or institutional abuse, and justice (european institute for gender equality, 2020). in the context of entrepreneurship, marginalised groups were identified in a study by the enterprise research centre (2018) to include the following four groups: a) migrant entrepreneurs, b) ethnic minority entrepreneurs, c) women entrepreneurs, and disabled entrepreneurs. each one of these groups is confronted with unique challenges in addition to those faced by entrepreneurs. for example, migrant entrepreneurs tend to lack understanding of the culture of their new country and combined with poor language skills they are unable to access the support available for new entrepreneurs (enterprise research centre, 2018, p. 8). ethnic minority entrepreneurs are confronted – among others – with racism, unawareness of available sources of finance, low adoption of information and communication technologies as well as dealing with language and cultural differences (enterprise research centre, 2018, p. 30 13). the lack of relevant education and managerial skills combined with having to operate in a predominantly male-dominated sector, are among the issues that impede women entrepreneurs. there are also overlaps with the previous groups in terms of difficulties in accessing finance and support (enterprise research centre, 2018, pp. 14-16). lastly, disabled entrepreneurs dealing with a wide variety of physical and/or mental disabilities, in common with previous under-represented in the sector groups – and among other challenges – struggle to access specialist advice and start-up funding (enterprise research centre, 2018, p. 18). the academic literature on entrepreneurship, in general, is extensive. however, the related literature on entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative industries is limited (chang & wyszomirski, 2015, p. 11). a meta-analysis of this literature by hausmann and heinze (2016) indicates that this literature comprises mostly theoretical/conceptual approaches to the topic and case studies. the second point to note from this meta-analysis – and something identified by a few authors – is the lack of an agreed understanding and commonly accepted definitions of entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative sector and what this entails. however, the overlapping areas in these varied definitions suggest that entrepreneurship in the sector entails, in a broad sense, a variety of cultural activities, diverse artistic outputs and products, cultural enterprises and the creation of tangible cultural capital. in a meta-analysis by chang and wyszomirski (2015, p. 24), the authors attempted a ‘preliminary’ definition based on their analysis that encapsulates the term in the following description: “...[arts entrepreneurship is] a management process through which cultural workers seek to support their creativity and autonomy, advance their capacity for adaptability, and create art as well as economic and social value.” this description is adopted as a working definition for this needs analysis, and it serves as a useful stepping stone to help identify the skillset required to foster entrepreneurship among aspiring women entrepreneurs from marginalised backgrounds. in a broad report by the directorate-general for enterprise and industry of the european commission (2008, p. 26), the expert group comprising a multinational team of european experts acknowledged that there are different emphases on how and what to teach, depending on disciplinary differences. however, the expert group recommended that the common elements of higher education (he) entrepreneurship, irrespective of disciplines, should entail instructional programmes that foster, among others, creativity, innovation, a proactive attitude, decision-making and leadership skills and an ability to work with uncertainty and recognise opportunities. the same report concluded that traditional instructional methods do not relate well with the development of entrepreneurial competencies, and multi-disciplinary partnerships are an essential element for the development of enterprising abilities (2008, p. 29). in a study from the united kingdom with a specific focus on how entrepreneurship is delivered in he for the creative industries (clews, 2007), the author highlighted the prevalence and significance of project-based and work-based learning. although this study did not seek to identify the range of competencies taught to learners in the creative industries, it identified the significance of soft skills such as networking, teambuilding and team-working (clews, 2007, p. 51). the learners who participated in this study identified as core competencies of entrepreneurship education for the creative industries good commercial skills, business management and good communication skills and as desirable attributes the ability for opportunity spotting and problem-solving (clews, 2007, pp. 56-58). similarly, it is argued that entrepreneurial failures in the sector are due to “a lack of strategic thinking, finance, and opportunity recognition skills” and “shortcomings in business management skills, market knowledge and networking skills (thom, 2016, p. 6). the characteristics of entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative industries were elaborated upon by a report produced by the utrecht school of the arts (2010). although the focus is on providing an 31 understanding of the sector from the perspective of related industries, it is possible to discern the ‘transversal problems’ that are common to these industries (utrecht school of the arts, 2010, p. 6) and thus identify some areas to address through educational programmes. a major theme that emerged from this report highlights the challenge that small creative enterprises are confronted with if they want to expand. networking and clustering to benefit from a collective position are options to pursue because in the cultural and arts sector many professionals are likely to be self-employed (bridgstock, 2012, p. 124). other challenges include access to knowledge about market opportunities, appropriateness of business models, knowledge of intellectual property rights (ipr), locating funds and seeking financing. these themes are part of the recurring skills noted in the literature on entrepreneurship. for example, in an extensive study by thom (2016, p. 13) the ‘crucial’ entrepreneurial skills were identified as the abilities to think creatively, apply strategic thinking and planning, recognise and realise opportunities, network, exercise leadership and understand finance and marketing. for reasons of convenience, we will refer to these recurring general skills as generic, i.e. they form an important component of all programmes of study in entrepreneurship. what hinders the identification of specific learning needs, vis-à-vis entrepreneurship for women as well as minority ethnic groups, is the lack of extensive research in this area (chreim, spence, crick, & liao, 2018; white, 2018). we take for granted the need for generic skills, but there are indications that due to contextual factors (culture, ethnicity and religion) these skills can be negatively skewed concerning women and ethnic groups (chreim et al., 2018, p. 4). for example, in a report that specifically focused on women’s entrepreneurship (halabisky, 2018), the ability to locate funds and effectively seek financing was identified as a characteristic challenge for women entrepreneurs, who are confronted with greater difficulty in this area than men (henry et al., 2007, p. 246). this applies across all eu states (halabisky, 2018, p. 14). the educational value of mentoring is identified as a generic element for all entrepreneurship studies, on the premise that it can facilitate guidance and support while at the same time it is perceived by learners as offering exposure to real-life practice (final report of the expert group, 2008; halabisky, 2018, p. 18). the significance of mentoring to address the challenges women are confronted with is an oft-repeated theme in the literature on policies that support women entrepreneurs (henry et al., 2007, p. 262; bridgstock, 2012, p. 132). mentoring – by successful women entrepreneurs – is explicitly proposed for aspiring ethnic women entrepreneurs, who are often confronted with the combined disadvantages of gender and ethnicity. while the generic educational challenges are common among all groups, mentoring for ethnic women can offer, among other things, insights into non-business issues, such as dealing with perceived gender expectations within certain cultures and managing a work/life balance regarding childcare (chreim et al., 2018, p. 9). a concept used in the literature to describe the dimensions of ethnic entrepreneurship is ‘embeddedness’. this relates to the spectrum of social agencies and networks and structural parameters (the politicoinstitutional and socioeconomic environment) that host the aspiring entrepreneur and the degree to which the latter encounters these either as obstacles or as advantages (chreim et al., 2018, p. 2; rath, & swagerman, 2016, p. 154). the implications for education in cultural and arts entrepreneurship for women from marginalised backgrounds are not immediately obvious. awareness of ‘embeddedness’ and all that this entails does, however, point towards a multi-level skillset that includes the ability to evaluate opportunities within the respective socio-political contexts. 32 emergent themes for two months in early 2020, a total of fifty-five (n = 55) respondents answered the online questionnaire (appendix 1). the data were gathered through convenience sampling due to time limitations, and this infers the possibility of a sampling error and lack of representation of the target population. however, the sampling process can also be considered as a wide delimitation. the authors deliberately sought a wideranging spectrum of opinions, inviting all those who consider themselves informed on the subject, irrespective of their background, to complete the questionnaire. for the first question of the online survey, most respondents (36.36%) identified themselves as professionals. some indicative descriptions they provided to qualify their professional roles include teacher of english as a second language, project manager, freelance consultant, product developer, trainer, linguistic mediator, professional in the field of cultural heritage and architecture and vocational education expert. the second-biggest category of participants (29.09%) was academics, and among the listed disciplines were textile printing, architecture/design for built environments, inclusive design, fashion design and design and multimedia. the third group in size was entrepreneurs (18.18%), followed by those that did not identify with any of the previous categories and listed themselves as ‘others’ (9.09%). the last and smallest group comprised of postgraduate students (7.27%). after repetitions and redundancies were removed, the outcomes from the second question (appendix 1) were mapped (table 1) and classified according to the following four divisions: a) personal attributes; b) personal skills (hard and soft); c) structural/contextual challenges; and d) distinctive issues for cultural and arts entrepreneurship. predictably, the replies to the second question confirmed the range of generic skills that are an important component of all programmes of study in entrepreneurship and are identified in the literature review. this mapping exercise also provides a list of distinctive social, structural and educational challenges that are unique to cultural and arts entrepreneurship for women from marginalised backgrounds. personal attributes personal skills (hard and soft) structural / contextual challenges distinctive educational challenges • courage • confidence • perseverance, persistence • grounded, strong sense of self • self-efficacy • diligence • resilience • assertiveness • adaptability, flexibility • willing to take risks • motivation, passion • be a dreamer, have a vision • open-minded • emotional intelligence • communication • ability to learn • persuasiveness • presentation skills • creative thinking, problem-solving, critical thinking • networking • budgeting, business planning, accounting • management • negotiating • teamworking • interpersonal skills • leadership • digital marketing, social media skills • fundraising • use of technology • public speaking • access to systems and services • cultural and gender inequalities • integration • intercultural competencies • mentoring • ability to recognise, analyse and question the power structures that marginalise • overview of actualities in culture and creative industries • basic knowledge of art history 33 • understanding of social processes • knowledge of ipr table 1: mapping of attributes, skills, and contextual and distinctive educational challenges. selected indicative statements from the respondents illustrate how the respondents perceived some of the items in table 1. for example, “… [women from marginalised backgrounds] need opportunities, access to systems, services and education to be able to learn about which skills they have and can build on and to be exposed to cultural, arts and other sectors as part of that learning. from this exposure, awareness there are discovered interests to pursue and pathways to take” (respondent #50). and “they [women from marginalised backgrounds] need to be well networked beyond their locality and community. this often needs to be done with the support of a cultural intermediary/support person to help make connections and 'translate' key information. women from marginalised backgrounds often experience discrimination for structural reasons rather than through a lack of their skills and competencies. in other words, it is not all about their skills but it is about the environment, the social and cultural inequalities in society” (respondent #43). last, “… [women from marginalised backgrounds] must be well-aware of their rights and [be] able to defend them. strategic thinking, communication skills and creativity [are needed]” (respondent #16). next, the respondents were asked to rank (1 = lowest, 12 = highest) in terms of importance twelve skills identified in the literature review. figure 1 represents this ranking. the total value for each item in the chart represents the cumulative average of choices among all the respondents. as an overview, the differences between all of them can be considered minimal, and this suggests not a prioritisation in terms of the educational value, but rather a pedagogical framework that incorporates all of them or at least as many as possible. figure 1: ranking of skills. networking skills communication skills understanding context business, accounting skills marketing skills (offline, online undestanding innovation strategic, analytical, creative thinking use of technologies, icts knowledge of european markets innovative business models opportunity recognition divergent, convergent thinking 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 34 the last question of the online questionnaire sought qualitative data on what the respondents perceived to be the characteristic challenges and opportunities for women from marginalised backgrounds to succeed as cultural and arts entrepreneurs. repetitions, redundancies and overlaps were removed, and replies that offered insights and something not previously identified is quoted as stated. “they [women from marginalised backgrounds] might be stuck with a label that chokes their creative process by making them create only about their marginalising context. having a point of view and a message doesn't mean you are stuck with your identity and can only create about yourself and your reality. artists imagine (respondent #55).” “…they [women from marginalised backgrounds] are locked in downward spiral ecosystems that punish ambition/risk-taking and reward submission/status-quoting. to name just a few of the components of this ecosystem: political and social power, gender, race, class, legitimacy, elitism, language, literacy, education, information, exposure, access, finance, social and financial capital … what they do have in their favour is talent, cultural and social literacy, commitment, intelligence (tactical and emotional), spiritual strength/ wisdom, resilience and a strong sense of self (respondent #53).” “…there are also opportunities to change the context of the status quo/establishment and apply out of the box thinking to create new, unique, and unexpected industries/creative businesses and practices (respondent #50).” “…the main challenge is to convince yourself to become an entrepreneur, especially for women from marginalised backgrounds. culture and arts are emerging business sectors where interesting opportunities can arise, therefore entrepreneurial and innovative training is necessary to support those women in meeting this challenge (respondent #24).” conclusion this needs analysis aims to inform a social design intervention comprising the development of an appropriate pedagogical framework in cultural and arts entrepreneurship for women from marginalised backgrounds. the synthesis of the prominent themes that emerged from the literature review and the data from the online questionnaire points towards the need for a multifaceted instructional design approach that combines both the essential generic skills in entrepreneurship and an acknowledgement of the structural, contextual and educational challenges that are characteristic of the target group. ideally, the instructional strategies and overall pedagogical framework to be developed will approach these themes as intertwined and interconnected, but also recognising the unique challenges that confront women from marginalised backgrounds. references bridgstock, r. (2012). not a dirty word: arts entrepreneurship and higher education. arts & humanities in higher education, 12(2–3) 122–137. chang, j.w., & wyszomirski, m. (2015). what is arts entrepreneurship? tracking the development of its definition in scholarly journals. arivate: a journal of entrepreneurship in the arts, 4(2), 11-31. chreim, s., spence m., crick d., & liao x. (2018). review of female immigrant entrepreneurship research: past findings, gaps and ways forward. european management journal, 1-13. 35 clews, d. (2007). creating entrepreneurship: entrepreneurship education for the creative industries. brighton, uk: higher education academy art, design, media subject centre. commission of the european communities. 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(2017). same or different? the “cultural entrepreneurship” and “arts entrepreneurship” constructs in european and us higher education. cultural trends 26 (2), 125-137. doi: dx.doi.org/10.1080/09548963.2017.1323842 european commission. (2010). green paper. unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries. brussels: european commission [com(2010) 183 final]. european commission. (2008). entrepreneurship in higher education, especially in non-business studies – final report of the expert group. brussels: european commission, directorate-general for enterprise and industry halabisky, d. (2018). policy brief on women’s entrepreneurship. oecd sme and entrepreneurship papers, no. 8, oecd publishing, paris. doi: 10.1787/dd2d79e7-en hausmann, a., & heinze, a. (2016). entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative industries: insights from an emergent field. artivate: a journal of entrepreneurship in the arts 5(2), 7-22. henry, c., orser, b., coleman, s., foss, l., welter, f., ahl h., berglund, k., braun, p., de bruin, a., diaz-garcia, c., gawell, m., lawton smith, h., lewis, k., mcgowan, p., nziku, d., pettersson, k., sheikh, s., tillmar, m., & yousafzai, s. (2017). women's entrepreneurship policy: a 13-nation cross-country study. in t. manolova, s. tatiana, c. brush, l. f. edelman, a, robb, & f. welter (eds.), entrepreneurial ecosystems and growth of women's entrepreneurship: a comparative analysis (pp. 244-278). cheltenham, uk: edward elgar. rath, j., & swagerman, a. (2016). promoting ethnic entrepreneurship in european cities: sometimes ambitious, mostly absent, rarely addressing structural features. international migration review, 54(1), 152– 166. thom, m. (2016). crucial skills for the entrepreneurial success of fine artists. artivate: a journal of entrepreneurship in the arts, 5(1), 3-24. white, j. c. (2018). toward a theory of minority entrepreneurship in the non-profit arts sector. the journal of arts management, law, and society, 1-13. wishart, m. (2018). under-represented entrepreneurs: a literature review. coventry, uk: enterprise research centre, warwick business school. 36 appendix 1 question 1: are you a) an academic/researcher? in what discipline? b) a professional? what is your occupation? c) an entrepreneur? d) other? please provide a brief description. question 2: in your view, what are some skills and competencies women from marginalised backgrounds need to succeed as cultural and arts entrepreneurs? question 3: rank each item below separately in terms of importance for women to succeed as cultural and arts entrepreneurs (1 = lowest, 12 = highest). strategic, analytical, creative thinking divergent, convergent thinking opportunity recognition understanding innovation understanding context communication skills innovative business models marketing skills (online/offline) knowledge of european markets 44 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. digital job onboarding: an erasmus+ project for digital upskilling of youth eirini papageorgiou published online: may 2023 to cite this article: papageorgiou, e. (2023). digital job onboarding: the erasmus+ project for youth’s digital upskilling. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 4(1), 44-55. 45 digital job onboarding: the erasmus+ project for youth’s digital upskilling eirini papageorgioua asynthesis center for research and innovation, nicosia, 1101, cyprus. eirini@synthesis-center.com abstract for many people, digital working has become a reality, especially through on-the-job training during the covid-19 pandemic. students were home-schooled, and companies and offices operated distance working. digital skills became a key determinant in the employability of young people, and dealing with these new digital job realities is assumed by potential employers. millions of jobs requiring digital skills already exist, and more will be created in the coming decade. the demand for digital skills in the workplace has never been greater. however, unemployed (young) people, school leavers in the transition to work, who are not embedded in a supportive institutional framework, have widely missed this capacity-building opportunity. the target group for this project is youth not in employment, education or training (neet), as well as other young people at risk of marginalization. this project aims to help job-seeking young people adapt to the “new normal” after covid-19 by improving their digital skills. keywords: social impact, innovation, digital upskilling, job onboarding, neet, youth, unemployment, employment, education, training, young people introduction digital job onboarding (djo www.dj-training.eu) is an erasmus+ project funded by the european union which aims to familiarize youth with forms of new digital professional life, to upskill young people and to activate their career potential with a special focus on new forms of digital working. djo’s overall objective and scope is to close the gap of the digital divide during job onboarding for vulnerable target groups, especially young unemployed people without academic educational backgrounds, by developing, testing and delivering a training programme. the programme is led by fh joanneum gesellschaft, one of the leading universities of applied sciences in austria. other members of the consortium are dex innovation centre in the czech republic, which is a private innovation centre raising funds, creating new products, building startups and providing educational services, fondazione fenice onlus, a training and research centre in italy with specific skills in designing and implementing didactical and training activities in sustainable development, haaga-helia ammattikorkeakoulu, the second largest university in finland, jugend am werk steiermark gmbh in austria, a non-profit organization providing social services to support children, young people and adults in all the ups and downs of life and synthesis center for research and education in cyprus, which initiates and implements social impact projects with a focus on social inclusion. all participating organizations are experienced in the fields of social innovation, education and training. methodology as part of the project, an online survey was conducted, and several best practice examples have been collected in each partner country. the 3-month survey was held online via limesurvey and focused on current and future needs related to digital competencies in the workplace. it was addressed to representatives of the project’s target groups. during the survey, the consortium reached https://dj-training.eu/ 46 out to 252 employers, 238 companies and 233 unemployed young people in 5 countries: austria, cyprus, the czech republic, finland and italy. the main research questions were intended to inquire about what kind of digital skills are needed from the point of view of employers, as well as what kind of digital skills unemployed young people think they need to meet the demands of the current job market. towards evaluating the importance of job fitness competencies, the best practice examples collected through interviews, concerned the following main categories: 1) dealing with computer programs and pc software, 2) new forms of work and requirements for job duties in the future, 3) personally organising the demands of present-day jobs, 4) professional use of social media in professional applications and 5) safe use of computers and the internet. onboarding onboarding is a process of adult learning. it often involves a series of training and orientation programmes providing new employees with knowledge of the organization’s vision, mission, operations, products, services and processes to build strong links between the employees and the organization. onboarding is necessary for new employees to enable them to perform well in the new job and meet the organization’s expectations. training also allows employees to improve their knowledge and skills, attitudes and confidence at work. digital skills at the workplace: an overview different definitions of digital skills or competencies exist, and different terms such as “digital literacy”, “digital competencies”, “ict-related skills” and “e-skills” are often used synonymously and/or interchangeably. digital skills are broadly described by unesco (2018) as the ability to use digital devices, communication application, and networks to access and manage information: basic or essential digital skills are considered to be the following: • email and instant messaging • word processing • social media for business • web-based research and problem-solving • data entry and handling • behaving safely and legally online advanced digital skills are considered to be the following: • user experience design • coding • programming, web, and app development • seo, sem, and content creation • data analysis at the same time, digital competence is one of the key competences for lifelong learning (council of the european union, 2018). based on its updated (2018) definition: “at work and for participation in society. it includes information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, media literacy, digital content creation (including programming), safety (including 47 digital well-being and competencies related to cybersecurity), intellectual property related questions, problem-solving and critical thinking ...”(council of the european union, 2018) findings of the online survey: current state in partner countries 1. dealing with computer programs and pc software 1 = training/competence for recently hired employees would be extremely important for me. 6 = training/competence for recently hired employees would not be important for me at all figure 1: dealing with computer programs and pc software. for both target groups (employers and unemployed people) the average importance ratings are relatively low (employers = 2.75; unemployed people = 2.87). in the area of dealing with computer programs and pc software, there are clear differences between the target groups of employers/companies and unemployed people: • while the importance of training using a wide variety of software tools is expressed homogeneously among unemployed people, there is a clear preference among companies. • classic software programmes for day-to-day work (office, mail programmes, online communication and browser programmes) are preferred from the company’s point of view as basic skills are important. • high-end programmes (online collaboration, project management, erp solutions …), on the other hand, are losing their importance from the companies’ point of view, in contrast to unemployed people. 2. new forms of work and requirements for the job duties in the future 48 1 = training/competence for recently hired employees would be extremely important for me. 6 = training/ competence for recently hired employees would not be important for me at all figure 2: new forms of work and requirements for the job duties in the future. for both target groups (employers, and unemployed people), the average importance ratings are high (employers = 2.03; unemployed people = 2.21). in the target group of unemployed people, the various aspects of competences for new forms of work and requirements for job duties in the future are considered little differentiated in relation to their training needs. on the other hand, there are clear priorities from the point of view of the companies: • competence in agile and flexible working • competence in working in teams and • competences in self-organization. interestingly, the crucial global challenge of sustainable, ecological actions is regarded with more or less low relevance from the point of view of both target groups. 3. personally organising the demands of present-day jobs 1 = training/competence for recently hired employees would be extremely important for me. 6 = training/competence for recently hired employees would not be important for me at all figure 3: personally organising the demands of present-day jobs. for the employers, the importance ratings are on average higher than for the unemployed people (employers = 1.67; unemployed people = 2.18). when it comes to skills for personally organising the demands of present-day jobs, there is a clear difference between the assessments of companies and unemployed people. 49 • companies say that these skills are more important than unemployed people estimate their need for further training. • while in the case of work–life balance both groups express relatively uniform importance, aspects such as politeness/manners, self-management and time management are assessed with higher importance by the group of employers. 4. professional use of social media in professional applications 1 = training/competence for recently hired employees would be extremely important for me. 6 = training/competence for recently hired employees would not be important for me at all figure 4: professional use of social media in professional applications. for both target groups, the importance ratings are on average low (employers = 2.86; unemployed people = 2.82). when it comes to skills for using social media professionally (e.g. facebook, instagram, snapchat, linkedin, xing, twitter ...), the assessments of importance are for companies (in the direction of their employees) and unemployed people in terms of their need for further training exactly at the same level. however, the absolute level of importance in this area is generally relatively low. 5. safe use of computers and the internet 1 = training/competence for recently hired employees would be extremely important for me. 6 = training/competence for recently hired employees would not be important for me at all figure 5: safe use of computers and the internet. for the employers, the importance ratings are on average higher than for the unemployed people (employers = 1.52 = high score; unemployed people = 2.25). when it comes to skills for the safe use of computers and the internet, the assessments of importance for companies (in the direction of their employees) and unemployed people in terms of their need for further 50 training are very different. for companies, these competences are the most important of all five topics. they expect their employees to have very high qualifications in almost every aspect. for unemployed people, in contrast, there is less need for further training in these skills. findings of the online survey. current state in partner countries 1. dealing with computer programs and pc software the first competencies group is comprised of competencies for using computer programs and pc software: a) microsoft office (e.g. excel, word, powerpoint) b) programmes for video conferencing (e.g. teams, zoom, webex) c) programmes for surfing the internet/browsers (e.g. firefox, chrome, edge) d) programmes for online collaboration (e.g. miro, mural, google docs) e) online project management (e.g. trello, asana) f) programmes for planning corporate resources (e.g. sap, microsoft dynamics) g) programmes for editing files (e.g. text editor, notepad) h) developing software (e.g. visual studio, webstorm, android studio) i) programmes for automating tasks (e.g. macros, scripts) j) file-sharing programs (e.g. onedrive, google drive) figure 6: 1st competence group competences for using computer programs and pc software. most of the companies have the opinion that the competencies of microsoft office, video conferencing and surfing the internet are very important. the competencies of online collaboration and project management” seem to be very interesting only for italian companies. only three companies from the czech republic, cyprus and italy believe that this competence group is not important. all three companies belong to the production sector. 51 2. new forms of work and requirements for job duties in the future the second competencies group deals with new forms of work and requirements for job duties in the future. in the interviews the following points were raised: a) agile, flexible working b) entrepreneurial thinking c) self-organization d) teamwork e) networking f) sustainable & ecological action g) innovation and h) basic legal knowledge figure 7: 2nd competence group – new forms of work and requirements. overall, all competencies are important for the companies in all participating countries. only the competencies of networking and innovation have slightly less interest amongst the companies, and czech companies in particular showed no interest in these subjects. 3. personally organising the demands of present-day jobs the third competencies group deals with the demands of present jobs and personal organising: a) work–life balance b) manners/netiquette c) time management d) self-management e) crisis management and f) goals achievement (i.e. ownership and decisiveness, prioritising and coping with uncertainty) 52 figure 8: 3rd competence group – demands of present jobs and personal organising. the companies’ views towards this competence group show quite interesting national differences. in italy, all competencies are of significant importance, while czech companies see only time management as very important. finnish companies are very interested in all sub-competencies of this competence group. 4. professional use of social media in professional applications the fourth competencies group is about competencies for professional use of social media in professional applications (e.g. facebook, instagram, snapchat, linkedin, xing and twitter). the following issues were discussed: a) networking through social media b) overview of social media and c) creating your profile on social media d) not used in the company 53 figure 9: 4th competence group – professional use of social media. 5. safe use of computers and the internet the fifth and last competences group concerns the safe use of computers and the internet, and the following issues were raised: a) safely browsing b) secure handling of sensitive applications like online banking c) secure handling of emails d) secure management of passwords e) secure handling of personal data f) secure use of social media and g) secure exchange of confidential files 54 figure 10: 5th competence group – safe use of computers and the internet. this competence group shows the greatest interest from all participating companies and nearly all companies. the companies that have shown a great deal of interest in these topics do not belong to the production sector. conclusions figure 11: average importance ratings in the 5 competency areas. organizations value the importance of the five competency areas towards their employees. unemployed people, on the other hand, value the importance of further training in these skills areas. we can still compare both importance ratings, as they also reveal an interesting picture: • the importance of training is rated relatively equally among unemployed people across all five competency areas. • it is different in companies: there are major differences between the individual competencies. from the point of view of the companies, three topics of competence are particularly important (ranking): 1. safe use of computers and the internet 2. personally organising the demands of present-day jobs (work–life balance, manners, selfand time management) 3. new forms of work and requirements for job duties in the future or skills managing new forms of work (agility, entrepreneurial thinking, self-organization, teamwork, networking, sustainability, innovation and basic legal knowledge) 55 next steps the completed study on (new) digital professional life and the current situation at workplaces, alongside the needs of employers and employees, will serve as the basis for the formulation of the content of a curriculum for a training programme targeted especially at 18-25-year-old unemployed youth. the curriculum will consist of 5 modules. this training programme will be implemented in the form of elearning with links to physical learning (blended learning), suitable for learning at home but also in the workplace context. the curriculum will be streamlined according to the feedback collected during the implementation phase through work-related sustainability projects. references atchoarena, d., selwyn, n., chakroun, b., miao, f., west, m., & coligny, c. (2017). working group on education: digital skills for life and work. broadband commission for sustainable development; unesco. https://tinyurl.com/5x87rcc5 council of the european union. (2018, june 4). council recommendation of 22 may 2018 on key competences for lifelong learning. official journal of the european union. https://tinyurl.com/57b7mcah council of the european union. (2020, november 4). council recommendation of 30 october 2020 on a bridge to jobs – reinforcing the youth guarantee and replacing the council recommendation of 22 april 2013 on establishing a youth guarantee. official journal of the european union. https://tinyurl.com/4hwzrd96 digital job onboarding. (2022). digital job onboarding pr1 report. https://tinyurl.com/3mv7kjmx drucker, p. (1974), management: tasks, responsibilities, practices. harper & row. statista (2022). youth unemployment rate in eu member states as of january 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries statista (2022). unemployment rate in the european union as of june 2022, by country. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115276/unemployment-in-europe-by-country/ unesco. (2018, march 15, last updated 2023, april 20). digital skills critical for jobs and social inclusion. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/digital-skills-critical-jobs-and-social-inclusion world economic forum. (2020). the future of jobs report. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/wef_future_of_jobs_2020.pdf https://tinyurl.com/5x87rcc5 https://tinyurl.com/57b7mcah https://tinyurl.com/4hwzrd96 https://tinyurl.com/3mv7kjmx https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115276/unemployment-in-europe-by-country/ https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/digital-skills-critical-jobs-and-social-inclusion http://www3.weforum.org/docs/wef_future_of_jobs_2020.pdf https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. digital job onboarding: an erasmus+ project for digital upskilling of youth eirini papageorgiou published online: may 2023 to cite this article: papageorgiou, e. (2023). digital job onboarding: the erasmus+ project for youth’s digital upskilling. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 4(1), 44-55. digital job onboarding: the erasmus+ project for youth’s digital upskilling eirini papageorgioua asynthesis center for research and innovation, nicosia, 1101, cyprus. eirini@synthesis-center.com abstract for many people, digital working has become a reality, especially through on-the-job training during the covid-19 pandemic. students were home-schooled, and companies and offices operated distance working. digital skills became a key determinant in th... keywords: social impact, innovation, digital upskilling, job onboarding, neet, youth, unemployment, employment, education, training, young people introduction digital job onboarding (djo www.dj-training.eu) is an erasmus+ project funded by the european union which aims to familiarize youth with forms of new digital professional life, to upskill young people and to activate their career potential with a sp... the programme is led by fh joanneum gesellschaft, one of the leading universities of applied sciences in austria. other members of the consortium are dex innovation centre in the czech republic, which is a private innovation centre raising funds, crea... methodology as part of the project, an online survey was conducted, and several best practice examples have been collected in each partner country. the 3-month survey was held online via limesurvey and focused on current and future needs related to digital compet... out to 252 employers, 238 companies and 233 unemployed young people in 5 countries: austria, cyprus, the czech republic, finland and italy. the main research questions were intended to inquire about what kind of digital skills are needed from the poin... towards evaluating the importance of job fitness competencies, the best practice examples collected through interviews, concerned the following main categories: 1) dealing with computer programs and pc software, 2) new forms of work and requirements f... onboarding onboarding is a process of adult learning. it often involves a series of training and orientation programmes providing new employees with knowledge of the organization’s vision, mission, operations, products, services and processes to build strong lin... digital skills at the workplace: an overview different definitions of digital skills or competencies exist, and different terms such as “digital literacy”, “digital competencies”, “ict-related skills” and “e-skills” are often used synonymously and/or interchangeably. digital skills are broadly described by unesco (2018) as the ability to use digital devices, communication application, and networks to access and manage information: basic or essential digital skills are considered to be the following: • email and instant messaging • word processing • social media for business • web-based research and problem-solving • data entry and handling • behaving safely and legally online advanced digital skills are considered to be the following: • user experience design • coding • programming, web, and app development • seo, sem, and content creation • data analysis at the same time, digital competence is one of the key competences for lifelong learning (council of the european union, 2018). based on its updated (2018) definition: “at work and for participation in society. it includes information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, media literacy, digital content creation (including programming), safety (including digital well-being and competencies related to c... findings of the online survey: current state in partner countries 1. dealing with computer programs and pc software 1 = training/competence for recently hired employees would be extremely important for me. 6 = training/competence for recently hired employees would not be important for me at all figure 1: dealing with computer programs and pc software. for both target groups (employers and unemployed people) the average importance ratings are relatively low (employers = 2.75; unemployed people = 2.87). in the area of dealing with computer programs and pc software, there are clear differences between... • while the importance of training using a wide variety of software tools is expressed homogeneously among unemployed people, there is a clear preference among companies. • classic software programmes for day-to-day work (office, mail programmes, online communication and browser programmes) are preferred from the company’s point of view as basic skills are important. • high-end programmes (online collaboration, project management, erp solutions …), on the other hand, are losing their importance from the companies’ point of view, in contrast to unemployed people. 2. new forms of work and requirements for the job duties in the future 1 = training/competence for recently hired employees would be extremely important for me. 6 = training/ competence for recently hired employees would not be important for me at all figure 2: new forms of work and requirements for the job duties in the future. for both target groups (employers, and unemployed people), the average importance ratings are high (employers = 2.03; unemployed people = 2.21). in the target group of unemployed people, the various aspects of competences for new forms of work and req... • competence in agile and flexible working • competence in working in teams and • competences in self-organization. interestingly, the crucial global challenge of sustainable, ecological actions is regarded with more or less low relevance from the point of view of both target groups. 3. personally organising the demands of present-day jobs 1 = training/competence for recently hired employees would be extremely important for me. 6 = training/competence for recently hired employees would not be important for me at all figure 3: personally organising the demands of present-day jobs. for the employers, the importance ratings are on average higher than for the unemployed people (employers = 1.67; unemployed people = 2.18). when it comes to skills for personally organising the demands of present-day jobs, there is a clear difference between the assessments of companies and unemployed people. • companies say that these skills are more important than unemployed people estimate their need for further training. • while in the case of work–life balance both groups express relatively uniform importance, aspects such as politeness/manners, self-management and time management are assessed with higher importance by the group of employers. 4. professional use of social media in professional applications 1 = training/competence for recently hired employees would be extremely important for me. 6 = training/competence for recently hired employees would not be important for me at all figure 4: professional use of social media in professional applications. for both target groups, the importance ratings are on average low (employers = 2.86; unemployed people = 2.82). when it comes to skills for using social media professionally (e.g. facebook, instagram, snapchat, linkedin, xing, twitter ...), the assessments of importance are for companies (in the direction of their employees) and unemployed people in terms of th... 5. safe use of computers and the internet 1 = training/competence for recently hired employees would be extremely important for me. 6 = training/competence for recently hired employees would not be important for me at all figure 5: safe use of computers and the internet. for the employers, the importance ratings are on average higher than for the unemployed people (employers = 1.52 = high score; unemployed people = 2.25). when it comes to skills for the safe use of computers and the internet, the assessments of importance for companies (in the direction of their employees) and unemployed people in terms of their need for further training are very different. for compani... findings of the online survey. current state in partner countries 1. dealing with computer programs and pc software the first competencies group is comprised of competencies for using computer programs and pc software: a) microsoft office (e.g. excel, word, powerpoint) b) programmes for video conferencing (e.g. teams, zoom, webex) c) programmes for surfing the internet/browsers (e.g. firefox, chrome, edge) d) programmes for online collaboration (e.g. miro, mural, google docs) e) online project management (e.g. trello, asana) f) programmes for planning corporate resources (e.g. sap, microsoft dynamics) g) programmes for editing files (e.g. text editor, notepad) h) developing software (e.g. visual studio, webstorm, android studio) i) programmes for automating tasks (e.g. macros, scripts) j) file-sharing programs (e.g. onedrive, google drive) figure 6: 1st competence group competences for using computer programs and pc software. most of the companies have the opinion that the competencies of microsoft office, video conferencing and surfing the internet are very important. the competencies of online collaboration and project management” seem to be very interesting only for ita... 2. new forms of work and requirements for job duties in the future the second competencies group deals with new forms of work and requirements for job duties in the future. in the interviews the following points were raised: a) agile, flexible working b) entrepreneurial thinking c) self-organization d) teamwork e) networking f) sustainable & ecological action g) innovation and h) basic legal knowledge figure 7: 2nd competence group – new forms of work and requirements. overall, all competencies are important for the companies in all participating countries. only the competencies of networking and innovation have slightly less interest amongst the companies, and czech companies in particular showed no interest in the... 3. personally organising the demands of present-day jobs the third competencies group deals with the demands of present jobs and personal organising: a) work–life balance b) manners/netiquette c) time management d) self-management e) crisis management and f) goals achievement (i.e. ownership and decisiveness, prioritising and coping with uncertainty) figure 8: 3rd competence group – demands of present jobs and personal organising. the companies’ views towards this competence group show quite interesting national differences. in italy, all competencies are of significant importance, while czech companies see only time management as very important. finnish companies are very inte... 4. professional use of social media in professional applications the fourth competencies group is about competencies for professional use of social media in professional applications (e.g. facebook, instagram, snapchat, linkedin, xing and twitter). the following issues were discussed: a) networking through social media b) overview of social media and c) creating your profile on social media d) not used in the company figure 9: 4th competence group – professional use of social media. 5. safe use of computers and the internet the fifth and last competences group concerns the safe use of computers and the internet, and the following issues were raised: a) safely browsing b) secure handling of sensitive applications like online banking c) secure handling of emails d) secure management of passwords e) secure handling of personal data f) secure use of social media and g) secure exchange of confidential files figure 10: 5th competence group – safe use of computers and the internet. this competence group shows the greatest interest from all participating companies and nearly all companies. the companies that have shown a great deal of interest in these topics do not belong to the production sector. conclusions figure 11: average importance ratings in the 5 competency areas. organizations value the importance of the five competency areas towards their employees. unemployed people, on the other hand, value the importance of further training in these skills areas. we can still compare both importance ratings, as they also r... • the importance of training is rated relatively equally among unemployed people across all five competency areas. next steps the completed study on (new) digital professional life and the current situation at workplaces, alongside the needs of employers and employees, will serve as the basis for the formulation of the content of a curriculum for a training programme target... references atchoarena, d., selwyn, n., chakroun, b., miao, f., west, m., & coligny, c. (2017). working group on education: digital skills for life and work. broadband commission for sustainable development; unesco. https://tinyurl.com/5x87rcc5 council of the european union. (2018, june 4). council recommendation of 22 may 2018 on key competences for lifelong learning. official journal of the european union. https://tinyurl.com/57b7mcah council of the european union. (2020, november 4). council recommendation of 30 october 2020 on a bridge to jobs – reinforcing the youth guarantee and replacing the council recommendation of 22 april 2013 on establishing a youth guarantee. official jo... digital job onboarding. (2022). digital job onboarding pr1 report. https://tinyurl.com/3mv7kjmx drucker, p. (1974), management: tasks, responsibilities, practices. harper & row. statista (2022). youth unemployment rate in eu member states as of january 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries statista (2022). unemployment rate in the european union as of june 2022, by country. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115276/unemployment-in-europe-by-country/ unesco. (2018, march 15, last updated 2023, april 20). digital skills critical for jobs and social inclusion. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/digital-skills-critical-jobs-and-social-inclusion world economic forum. (2020). the future of jobs report. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/wef_future_of_jobs_2020.pdf 51 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. centenary haberdashery in downtown lisbon margarida salvador, isabel farinha published online: october 2021 to cite this article: salvador, m., & farinha, i. (2020). retrosarias centenárias da baixa de lisboa. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(2), 51-63. 52 centenary haberdashery in downtown lisbon margarida salvadora, isabel farinhab aiade faculdade de design, tecnologia e comunicação da universidade europeia. margarida.lestra.salvador@gmail.com biade faculdade de design, tecnologia e comunicação da universidade europeia. isabel.farinha@universidadeeuropeia.pt abstract this study begins with a survey on the conditions of traditional haberdashery business in downtown lisbon, includes a study of the retail trade, analysis of the retro marketing concept and finally investigates the sustainability of consumption. it aims to propose marketing and design strategies that can help revitalize the economic value of haberdashery and remove these businesses from the dangers of obsolescence and anonymity. having understood the importance of communication with the consumer, through interviews, selecting a qualitative methodology and aligning this understanding with some theoretical concepts, we adopted a set of proposals for the creation of a new identity. for each haberdashery, a new identity was defined, as well as a broad one that encompasses all stores present in this study – retrós. these proposals seek to redefine traditional values by means of orientation and communication support, aiming not only to attract new target audiences, but also to consider creation of a new aesthetic and imagery that should not be disassociated from these brands nor be outdated. with the adoption of this creative strategy, some positive effect is expected on the relevance of haberdashery business, its financial impact and integration in the economic-cultural context that will give new life to rua da conceição haberdashery historical shops and their brands. keywords: retro marketing, sustainability, innovation, historical shops, haberdasher introduction reconfiguration of the traditional haberdashery business over the last few years, commerce has undergone profound changes, accompanied in parallel by changes in consumer behaviour, adapting and simultaneously demanding new responses from producers and distributors. consumers began this behaviour in a more intense and constant way due to the mass consumerism that is now inherent to life in the 21st century. these sharp and rapid changes resulted in the rapid obsolescence of some business models, which is why some retail trade that is more traditional and poorly articulated with the evolution of consumption, has become outdated, despite the resilience registered in various sectors. rousseau (2017) states that “throughout this century, the face of commerce has changed more than during the previous two millennia” (pp. 10–11). in the second half of the 20th century, a consumption logic was adopted, whose evolution was very fast and intense, bringing new consumption dynamics, but also other standards of consumer demand. it should be noted that the pace imposed today, mainly in urban areas, changes the entire behaviour 53 that the consumer has towards commerce – by looking for more convenience in consumption and seeking the lowest prices. as products are increasingly accessible and prices tend to be lower, largely due to mass distribution, small and traditional commerce outlets find themselves forced to reinvent and differentiate themselves in the face of this constraint. when a consumer product fails to work as intended, the consumer quickly replaces it with another instead of repairing it. replacement is cheaper, less time-consuming and often less costly. for this reason, retail stores with more limited supply or with products that are not ready to consume such as haberdashery, become less frequented by clients, due to the disappearance or at least scarcity of some professions that had regular customers, such as dressmakers. being less frequented, the businesses break down and their livelihood is threatened. it is at this stage that these spaces are confronted with the need to reassess their business model, as not doing so would only mean financial decline. haberdashery outlets are, according to porto editora’s dictionary, “haberdashery shops”; they are “sellers of retrós, railings [trimmings], articles made of silk thread, etc.” (https://dicionario.priberam.org/retroseiro). nowadays, it is almost unrealistic to think that the average consumer goes to a haberdashery to buy tools for themselves or someone else to repair or make a piece of clothing from scratch. the typical 21st-century consumer buys something that is replaced when it no longer is in good condition and without consuming a lot of resources. this is the general picture of the thinking of today’s consumers. for this reason, it is urgent that some businesses, although resilient in their present condition, be rethought so that they survive the new challenges of the 21st century. with this concern, this project emerged to present strategies, objectives and goals for five haberdashers located in rua da conceição, in the heart of lisbon. based on the above idea, this study intends to define a marketing and commercial design strategy for the five stores. it is hoped that this project will contribute to giving back to these businesses a more stable financial situation due to innovative methods and practices, starting with a diagnostic phase based on the characterization of the business units and ending with an intervention plan aimed at redefining the business and its commercial strategies. τhis work has as its main objective to restore the vitality that haberdashery once had within the retail market and promote the adoption of strategies intended for a better business future. it is also hoped that the path outlined will reveal some relevance for today’s consumers and enhance the reputation of the business units in their context. it is intended that these stores, as a niche in the retail market, become once again a shopping reference and regain their relevance. and, although this reappearance is conditioned by using different strategies from those that are currently prevailing, they gain relevance in the lisbon retail market. 54 research question according to creswell (2010), it is important to formulate the questions and hypotheses that lead to an investigation. punch (1998) argues that a hypothesis is defined by anticipation, as it equates the results with the research problem. creswell (2003) adds that hypotheses are normally used when one wants to compare two scenarios. due to the nature and the way this investigation is intended to be focused, the research questions objectively guide the project's implementation. the opening question marks the start of the investigation: can marketing and communication design contribute to the revitalization and redesign of the traditional haberdashery businesses in downtown lisbon? following this, operational questions were also formulated in a second phase, aiming to complement and enrich the opening question: 1. how can a traditional business become sustainable and adjust to current socioeconomic and cultural constraints? 2. how can the identity of a traditional business be maintained to make it economically viable? commerce as a source of identity the exploration phase explains the historical and social development of cities and the economic activities of commerce, proceeding to a reflection on their interactions and dependencies, namely in the traditional commerce of downtown lisbon. the emergence of these business spaces and their evolution is explored, thus creating an information network where all matters explored help to structure solutions to this investigation’s problem/object. this analysis would not be fully complete if currently pertinent and frequently debated themes were absent – amongst them, the market concept of saudade, nostalgia, the curatorship of commercial space, the sphere of the commercial and cultural world and the paradigm shift of consumption and other strategies for more conscious consumption. image 1: the five haberdashery shops’ signs: bijou, alexandre bento, adriano coelho, arqui chique and nardo (clockwise from top). 55 in this subchapter, the main academic works for this investigation are the book by rousseau (2017), “resiliência do comércio: as lojas centenárias de lisboa”, the work of lisbon city council (câmara municipal de lisboa, n.d.), “lojas com história”, the work “retromarketing old is wow!” by cruz (2013) and the work of herculano (2001), “o comércio retalhista português: pós-modernidade, consumidores e espaço”. methodology in the first stage of outlining the methodology, it was defined that methods of a qualitative nature based on an exploratory study of an inductive nature are privileged. specifically, in this project, and because the entire historical framework gave us a vision of the past, to understand the present and project the future, it was necessary to find a set of strategies that would allow a deep understanding of the reality on which it plans to intervene. for this reason, the answers to the initial questions were sought through field research, where the formulated question or problem is experienced. this direct collection was chosen since it is believed that the answers are precisely in the field, obtained through an interview survey, from the various haberdasheries subjected to research. these interviewed parties are the faces of haberdashery under study, the ones who have been dealing daily and for several decades with these business changes. they are privileged witnesses, who transmitted through their experience and position in the business, the best inputs on the area. the interviews were carried out in the stores of the five respondents to have the possibility through observation of visualizing the environment to which those involved in the interviews are subject (image 1). after analysing each interview individually, a general assessment of all interviews was carried out. in this way, it was possible to find contrasts or points in common, resulting in the best insights for the project’s construction. although the interviewees, in general, show discontent and pessimism regarding the adversities of the business, they do not seem to consider other strategies or objectives to solve the problems they identify. for example, regarding graphic identity and communication actions, it is noted that haberdashery, as it was not necessary for many years, never thought of this subject as being extremely important for the dissemination or constitution of their brand reputation. now that the main consumers, the fashion designers, have disappeared, it is urgent to project the future not only based on sales in the store’s physical space. having been faced with this issue, which plays an important role in this project, they state that they cannot do so, as they do not have the experience, resources or knowledge of how to proceed. everything that is part of the rules and procedures is traditionalist with little innovative character, almost unalterable from what was done in the year in which the different haberdasheries opened. the way communication is handled is no exception. the values also do not reflect a concern to keep up with the needs of consumers in current times, being limited mainly to quality and customer service, which, despite being important, should not be the only ones. these were the common points, which were found to be the most pertinent and where the greatest opportunity for transformation and change resides. 56 • first, most of those responsible for haberdashery show pessimism and discontent with the situation their businesses are going through now but do not consider any strategy or objectives to overcome them. many can identify where the problem lies, but they cannot formulate an answer to overcome it. • they do not recognize the importance of communication, marketing or graphic identity strategies. for many years, dressmakers were the main target for this business, relying only on the store’s good reputation. everyone knew that on that street you could find many haberdashers. however, now that it is an almost extinct profession, it becomes urgent to attract new clients and define a communication strategy. with this factor, it is also important that brands have an identity so that they are identified and consistent in the way they present themselves. they understand that this may be important for the business, but they lack resources or capabilities. • the existing marketing rules and procedures are traditional and not very innovative. they have been the same almost since the beginning of the century. the business continues to revolve around customer service in the sales area, which, despite being very valuable, cannot be sustained in this way. • service to the public and product quality are the values these stores find important. a change in the strategy of these stores must, above all, start with the constitution of their base values. reparo-te this project is structured to define an important proposal that considers adding value to the haberdashery business in rua da conceição, aiming above all to practically answer the introductory question: can marketing and communication design contribute to the revitalization and reconception of traditional haberdashery business in downtown lisbon? after a descriptive phase in which some weaknesses were identified, such as the absence of a graphic identity, communication and advertising, marketing techniques, values and mission, a strategy and some actions are proposed to help remedy some weaknesses and gain business viability. as a starting point, brand identities were developed, seeking to articulate and balance the traditional form with contemporary communication. having this confrontation between maintaining a traditional business, which has its heritage, with the new demands of a captivating and modern presentation, this project focuses on the search for harmony between these two different poles. the new graphic identity tries to be representative of what these stores once were and their current and future vision. in this way, five identities corresponding to haberdashery were created: bijou, alexandre bento, arqui chique, adriano coelho and nardo, and one more brand, which brings them together as a group. the name is retrós, and its mission is to represent these five stores as well as their common ground (fig. 1). the second step carried out in this project responds to the need to develop a communication and marketing strategy. the means and platforms that best suit the brand and the new target identified were defined. in addition, the motto and values that are intended to communicate 57 and adapt to the guidelines and values of sustainability were created to communicate the retrós brand. this brand represents the collective of all five haberdashery stores involved in this project. it is a question of changing the perspective towards which these stores are directed and orient them towards being places of knowledge supply and materials for textile repair. this is an opportunity to adapt these businesses to the value of sustainability and act as a hinge for good practices. in the end, it is hoped that haberdashery can reach a safer position in the market, no longer be an obsolete business, start having a relevant and prominent position and contribute to the sociocultural spectrum of the city of lisbon. to guide the way forward, explanatory objectives were defined. to make them more concrete and specific, the objectives were divided into marketing, financial and sociocultural objectives. marketing objectives: • build loyalty with existing consumers • increase brand visibility through the media • expand the target audience to a younger audience • increase consumer involvement with the brand mission and values • build a solid image that represents the brand financial goals: • increase sales volume • increase the profit margin • make store visits convert into more sales sociocultural goals: • go beyond the cultural and commercial universe to become a reference in downtown lisbon • promote sustainable consumption behaviour through products and repair services • appeal to new conscious consumption for more sustainable practices • bring people with a common interest in sewing together to share ideas and knowledge • call for more sustainable behaviours through upcycling, which according to the cambridge online dictionary (n.d.) means “the activity of making new furniture, objects, etc. out of old or used things or waste material” • promote practical skills in clothing repair the communication lure, towards which all stores must be directed, should be based on the textile industry’s sustainability. the promotion of a circular economy becomes the most important value to communicate. hence, within the retrós group, reparo-te was born, a service that promotes the circular economy of textile objects through sharing sessions. it is intended that the stores are perceived as centres for the promotion of more conscious consumption, as they can find the knowledge and materials to do so. these stores defend quality as one of the most important values they consider in their products, coinciding with one of the main values of slow fashion. 58 business is sustained and directs its conduct, communication and the continuity of a solid and trustworthy relationship with consumers through brand values. the way consumers perceive the brand will certainly be influenced by the values transmitted to them. for this and any rebranding, values that give the brand a skeleton must also be rethought. the base pillars of this brand are the five values of sustainability, quality, service, community participation and search for innovation based on tradition and history. the competition was identified and the target consumer characterized as one who does not just look at function and aesthetics. consumers have a series of requirements that often involve ethical behaviour. consumers with ethical concerns related to sustainability who seek to deepen their knowledge of sewing and upcycling are considered the target audience. we are mainly looking for a young/adult target audience between 23 and 45 years. based on the structural issues for the retrós brand and the individual haberdasheries, the concept to be followed in the communication campaign was identified, as follows: • rationale: a growing number of consumers are increasingly looking for ways to adjust their consumption to more sustainable ways and practices, such as maintaining and preserving their clothes for as long as possible. the path to achieving this is still hampered and conditioned by the lack of knowledge of where to find the necessary tools and knowledge in one place. • insight: stores that survive are like a piece of clothing that is very dear and that the owner seeks to preserve and make it last. it takes persistence, care and some ‘patching’. these haberdasheries, which persisted over the years, now help to repair something that is also treasured by consumers, such as clothing. haberdashery history gives colour and meaning to patches and seams. • promise: facilitate the provision of training or materials for repairing and preserving textiles. sustainability and the pieces that are dear to consumers are also important for those who visit the store, which is the justification for this pledge. • campaign concept/signature: patching is creating. during the interviews with those responsible for each store, it was verified that communication or visual identity was never given much importance as a way of boosting the business. this compromises the memorization of the brand and its credibility. communication without this becomes fragile and inconsistent for the consumer. for this reason, an identity was created for each haberdashery and for the group that aggregates them, as well as a manual of good practices, to guide the brand’s implementation. even though the identities are all different, we sought to check common aspects that would make it seem that all brands come from a common visual style and that they all belong to the same core. in addition to the logos sharing the same graphics, there was a concern to preserve some aspects that are still part of the brands, such as the lettering on each store’s façade. this element, which is part of 59 the logo, was linked by a symbol that represents of a characteristic haberdashery object (fig. 1). figure 1: the graphic identity of retrós and the alexandre bento, adriano coelho, nardo, arqui chique and bijou haberdasheries (l–r) represent what this business is all about. αs for the graphic identity of retrós, it was chosen because it embodies the core word that names the businesses represented and refers to what they still sell. ‘retro’ is also the beginning of the word ‘retrospective’, which means looking back, paralleling the antiquity of this business supported by traditional foundations. from this, the intention is to create an identity with a view to the future. concretely in the symbol, each haberdashery is represented by two retrós threads and a colour. each thread is an indispensable part of building something. together, they can give a body to a unit, like a fabric. since the fashion industry is one of the most polluting, sustainability was defined as a primary value for the brand, and a service was created shared by all the haberdasheries involved. these are sessions for the practice and dissemination of knowledge about upcycling. it is not enough to offer the sale of materials; it is also necessary to share knowledge. these sessions, which are intended to bring together interested parties with issues related to sustainability seek to deepen knowledge of sewing and upcycling, and the repair of textile objects or creating objects from waste is proposed. the sessions will be held alternately in each store involved with three agents responsible for each session: a store employee, a designer and two seamstresses or experts in this area. the presence of all these agents is essential for the proper functioning of these reparo-te sessions (figs. 2 & 3). figure 2: graphic identity of the reparo-te programme. figura seq figura \* arabic 1a identidade gráfica da unidade retrós e das retrosarias alexandre bento, adriano coelho, nardo, arqui chique e bijou (respetivamente da esquerda para a direita) representa o que este negócio trata 60 although it is a social and environmental project, there is also the purpose that products are sold and that sales increase. the intention is to help sell old stock and for new consumers to start visiting these stores. with this new insight associated with ecological practices, we want this new consumer to look to haberdashery stores as tool stores, where they can find the necessary materials to give a new opportunity to their textile pieces through textile upcycling. in this way, after registration is paid, a bag and consumable materials will be made available. these sessions are very important, as they reinforce the value that the retrós brand intends to pursue. although a large financial return to each store is not envisaged, this service is part of the strategy to communicate the importance that sustainability asserts for the brand. because we believe that reparo-te is an important service and that it promotes the brand, a communication strategy has been created to communicate this service. the dissemination will include cultural agenda platforms, online platforms of stores with a history, retrós social networks, the retrós website and a collaborative network of associations or entities that promote similar services and with the same mission. all disclosures must be made on the retrós brand website, which will contain more information and direct access for registration. figure 3: information brochure about the reparo-te programme. a good name, as the respondents said, is no longer sufficient for effective communication. as this area is forgotten, and as it was confirmed as an important field, a communication strategy focusing on the means that are more permeable to the target audience was planned. thus, digital media was the chosen channel, including the retrós website, but mainly focusing on social networks like facebook, instagram and youtube, each with a purpose and a mission. the youtube channel should work as an extension of the reparo-te programme and the brand’s main value, namely sustainability. the website has a more institutional and figura seq figura \* arabic 3folheto informativo sobre o programa reparo-te 61 informative function and should contain information about the brand and the haberdasheries as well as enabling the registration and scheduling of the reparo-te sessions. conclusion the contributions that can be made to equate the current state of the units/businesses with history and identity in themselves entail several challenges. the first is to have a comprehensive research objective and, although in a state of decline, it is the traditional haberdashery outlets of downtown lisbon. conversely, this study also considers the enormous challenge of reflecting, researching, analysing, creating and proposing hypotheses to keep alive, dynamic and successful, the businesses of the few existing haberdasheries on rua da conceição. in summary, an environment of instability and despondency, closely linked to the past, could be detected in the stores in this study. in recent years, several stores have closed, and those that survive express fear for their future because they think their business has become obsolete. these stores have little relevance to society and do not present great value to consumers, and except for a small niche, demand has been decreasing. despite the interviewed subjects showing discontent and pessimism in the face of business adversities and seeming unable to find solutions, they are faithful to defending the businesses’ interests and relevance. they do not seem to consider a strategy or goals to address the problems they identify with; their financial condition has deteriorated, their preferred audiences of dressmakers have disappeared. strategies, knowledge and means to attract potential customers are lacking. they do not consider the need to create a visual identity or develop communication actions to add value to the business beyond sales in the store’s physical space. in general, they do not reveal any concern with keeping up with new business models or being more active on this front. this leads to an extreme need to rethink the business and add value and relevance based on innovation. the entire project component in this work was based on this objective and developments were initially thought of in the context of retro marketing. the most interesting option, but also the most challenging, was to follow the path of sustainability and new business values, as well as a way of interacting with markets and (re)conceptualizing the business model. there is a type of consumer who is interested in issues related to the environment and ethical behaviour, who seeks to repair their clothes or try to make the most of their potential. in the search for competition, it is concluded that there is a market for this project (reparo-te) that is sensitive to these issues. this was verified through informal conversations and the frequency of meetings organized by relevant stakeholders. one objective considered in this project was to reach some answers and these were found. a business, despite trying to stay true to its principles and focuses, must also try to understand the social environment and what its needs are. without these, stores are losing focus, function and identity. a new strategy, business concept and ways of communicating were designed. values such as sustainability gave rise to the reparo-te project. the strategy first went through an analysis of business objectives, value and analysis of the competition, realizing how important it was to create a new image for the brand(s) – individually and together. 62 considering the importance of the visual image, work followed to define this image, as an expression of identity – retrós, and of each business unit. a fusion between traditional and current was intended as an element of communication. to the question raised at the beginning of this study, i.e. whether marketing and communication design can contribute to the revitalization and redesign of traditional haberdashery business in downtown lisbon, it is considered that marketing and communication design can effectively contribute to this. that said, some of the actions and pieces created for this purpose are evidenced in the proposal, considering that a traditional business can be redefined, becoming sustainable and adjusting to consumer trends and market demands, and it is still possible that with this innovation, its identity and traditional business traits are maintained. study limitations and recommendations for future research the qualitative method adopted allowed the collection of in-depth information from field agents who have been in the haberdashery business for decades, since the information that exists about this business in portugal is very limited. this lack of information constitutes the greatest limitation in this study. the sample is also a problem, since of the agents interviewed, now only four haberdashery owners in rua da conceição remain. for this reason, and because the knowledge of this business has tended to be passed on orally over generations, it is feared that some relevant information may have been lost over time. as there are not many studies on this topic, the information described in this project, supported by the interviews, may not be the most reliable, even though there are not many more actors or sources. the conclusions reached cannot be extrapolated to other spheres of traditional business. for future works/projects, it is proposed that the approach to this type of case be carried out in a more integrated way in a network involving other stakeholders. during the realization of this project, the need emerged to speak with other social actors, namely the identified direct competition. it should be a more in-depth study, involving, for example, suppliers, customers, official bodies and the municipality of lisbon, to obtain a multidimensional view of the same issue. for example, in the business itself, it must be possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses more deeply to try to establish a network of opportunities for each entity involved. in addition, it is possible to plan and integrate the promotion actions in tourist actions, circuits and activities by integrating visits to haberdashery outlets in exclusive tourist itineraries. some small agencies arrange visits to the city of lisbon to places with little prominence in conventional tourism. they aim is to give a different perspective of the city of lisbon to those who are interested in places that are still unexplored, and this could be an additional opportunity. for example, the loft brand already organizes visits to haberdasheries on rua da conceição and some fabric stores for participants who are interested in sewing and buying relevant materials. these itineraries work as both cultural and functional visits. 63 this article stems from the master’s thesis: margarida lestra chaves salvador, retrosarias centenárias da baixa de lisboa, 2020. project thesis (masters in design and advertising) iade-universidade europeia, (isabel farinha) https://comum.rcaap.pt/handle/10400.26/32344 references câmara municipal de lisboa (n.d.). lojas com história. http://www.lojascomhistoria.pt cambridge dictionary (n.d.). "upcyling." in cambridge dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/upcycling creswell, j. w. (2003). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method approaches (2nd ed.). sage publications. creswell, j. w. (2010). projeto de pesquisa métodos qualitativo, quantitativo e misto (3rd ed.). sage publications. cruz, a. p. (2013). retromarketing old is wow! edições ipam.
 herculano, c. (2001). o comércio retalhista português: pós-modernidade, consumidores e espaço. gepe. punch, m. (1998). politics and ethics in qualitative research. sage.
 rousseau, j. a. (2017). resiliência do comércio: as lojas centenárias de lisboa. principia. salvador, m. (2020). retrosarias centenárias da baixa de lisboa (dissertação de mestrado). iade faculdade de design, tecnologia e comunicação da universidade europeia, lisboa, portugal. https://comum.rcaap.pt/handle/10400.26/32344 1 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. the neighbourhood home: an environments system from sharing to caring ilaria longo, sonia massari, alessandro spalletta published online: april 2021. to cite this article: longo, i., massari, s., & spalletta, a. (2021). the neighbourhood home: an environments system from sharing to caring. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(1), 1–15. 2 the neighbourhood home: an environments system from sharing to caring ilaria longoa, sonia massarib, alessandro spalletta c aistituto superiore per le industrie artistiche (isia), rome, 00186, italy. ilaria.longo1993@gmail.com broma tre university, rome, 00154, italy. sonia.massari@uniroma3.it cistituto superiore per le industrie artistiche (isia) – deputy director, rome, 00186, italy. alessandro.spalletta@ edu.isiaroma.it abstract cities are changing. wars, climate change and idealised better life opportunities open the doors for massive migration. unfortunately, however, the new arrivals with their different backgrounds and lifestyles are often perceived as a threat to pre-existing culture and home. but what is ‘home’? from the results of ethnographic research and an online open survey conducted for a master’s degree final thesis in systemic design, ‘home’ is the neighbourhood that involves all the values and behaviours that everyone needs in their everyday life. this research led to the academic concept of the ‘neighbourhood home’, a system of new environments for future inclusive cities that aims to make all the inhabitants ‘feel at home’. this notion is based on the idea that inclusion is developed through empathy, creativity and know-how, discovering the cultural rituals and myths of different peoples. in every structure (like homes of music, language, clothing, etc.), new and old citizens can rediscover their common roots, which have always been, today as yesterday, interconnected through a multiplicity of cultural handicraft expressions. the pilot project designed is ‘meeteat’, a home that promotes informal cooking classes and social eating and is ingredient-driven (chosen on a seasonal basis) and organised by volunteer citizens in the neighbourhood. with the neighbourhood home’ thesis, we aim to propose a system that can turn diffidence into curiosity, conflicts into sharing and exclusion into caring. keywords: city, migration, roots, inclusion, sharing introduction: big cities and migrations the world is constantly changing, and so are cities. they grow, their boundaries fade, and they change as fast as the new economic, commercial, social and political dynamics. according to the world urbanization prospect 2018, globally, most people live today in urban areas. figures have radically changed from 751 million city residents in 1950 to 4.2 billion in 2018, and this is expected to increase to 8.6 billion in 2030 and 9.8 billion in 2050, more than double compared to today (un department of public information, 2018). “cities have been sites of incessant and most rapid change throughout their history ... the change is so profound and the pace of change so mind-bogglingly quick that we can hardly believe our eyes and find our way amidst once familiar places”. (bauman, 2018) while in some developing countries high walls separate the rich from the slums, generating an immovable division that does not allow for social mixing, big cities of europe and north america see their borders widen, making space in the suburbs for new inhabitants. cities become worlds that mirror the incessant mobility of our age, with the respective fears and anxiety. new and old inhabitants walk through their streets, with their dreams, problems, needs and different backgrounds. 3 “on the one hand, the world becomes a city, an immense city where the same large companies, the same products are found everywhere. on the other hand, the city, the big city, represents a world. the diversity of the earth, the diversity between rich and poor, ethnic, cultural, origin and condition diversity: in the big city everything mixes. in it, we collide with the diversity inherent in the world”. (augé, 2017) big cities of developing countries are theatres of incessant movements: today’s citizens have frenetic lives, and frenetic work and sometimes forget natural human rhythms and sociality. however, the entire world also sees every day continuous migratory movements of different people who must leave their country, and their homes and feel the loss of their roots. “nomads traditionally studied by ethnologists have a sense of place and territory, a sense of time and return. this nomadism is, therefore, different from what is metaphorically called as such when speaking of current mobility. … it corresponds to the paradox of a world in which theoretically anything can be done without moving and in which nevertheless one move”. (augé, 2010) literature review: issues and opportunities for social inclusion when we talk about ‘cities’, we are not only thinking of buildings, streets and shops but, above all, we are thinking of their inhabitants, who have to live together side by side. migratory phenomena that have intensified in recent times (although always present in the history of humankind) have brought many new inhabitants into the world’s most flourishing cities. the caritas xxvii immigration report shows that in 2017, italy hosted 5,144,440 immigrants—speaking only of the regularly resident—or 8.5% of the total resident population and is ranked fifth in europe and eleventh worldwide in the list of countries that hosted the largest number of international migrants. most live in major urban centres (caritas and fondazione migrantes, 2018). a huge number of people, today and in the last decades, left their home, their motherland and their familiar places because of war (68.5 million between 2007 and 2017; unchr, 2018), famines, desertification and climate change. immigration and the consequent social tensions have undoubtedly become one of the most important and urgent issues of our time. foreigners are often perceived by citizens as ‘strangers’ or even ‘enemies’ who raise suspicion because of a poor or inexact knowledge of their culture and customs. “strangers tend to give anxiety precisely because they are ‘strange’ and therefore frightening in their unpredictability. … we know too little about foreigners to be able to interpret gestures and decide on appropriate answers, understand their intentions, and guess their next move. and not knowing how to proceed, how to behave in a situation that we did not create or control, is one of the main causes of anxiety and fear”. (bauman & cupellaro, 2016) the 2018 european commission report shows that half of europeans (46%) are ‘not very well informed’ about immigration and integration, in general, and tend to overestimate the number of immigrants in their country. four out of ten europeans believe that immigration is more of a problem than an opportunity for their nation, and this opinion is even more negative in italy, the base country of this study, which is one of the countries that demonstrates major hostility towards immigrants. most italians do not believe that integration is taking place successfully (european commission, 2018). 4 another report, ‘a fragmented italy’, demonstrates that there is a general feeling of self-loss among the citizens because of these social changes, to the degree that “half of the population reports that they have sometimes felt foreigners in their own country” and the majority fear that the national, traditional cultural identity is disappearing (more in common & the social change initiative, 2018). conversely, this sense of loss and these fears are perceived more by foreigners who have consciously left their territory, culture, connections and memories. the new places are foreign to them, and their condition is often of loneliness. the ‘integration’ we often hear about does not mean exchange, cooperation, mutual integration and organisation, but a pact of tolerance. foreigners are asked to set aside their roots, uniqueness, traditions and knowledge to embrace those of the new country. only by denying what makes them ‘different’ from us opens up the possibility of dialogue. however, dialogue is not only possible by denying the differences between peoples, but rather looking curiously at the roots we have in common because “the history of humanity is dotted with mergers of different groups ... it is a story of languages, religions, knowledge that have met and continue to meet, merging”. (giusti, 2007). these previous themes engaged us in reflection. how can foreigners be part of a community and be viewed as an opportunity for something better? this study, a master's degree’s final project that was designed from november 2018 to july 2019, addresses whether an integrated approach could be possible, considering migrants as persons with unique knowledge and wisdom. working in cooperation with some reception centres and communities in rome, through focus groups, co-planning activities and specific meetings that involved migrants, some concepts have been defined to mediate between the local and the migrant culture. methodology and research to understand both locals’ and migrants’ real feelings and desires, the study started with ethnographic research through direct contact and online to collect as many insights as possible to develop a humancentred proposal. two places in the city of rome, rich in diversity and multiculturalism, were chosen for interviews and meetings: the esquiline market in vittorio emanuele and the peripheral district of centocelle. these well-known landmarks for peaceful coexistence between citizens and foreigners were chosen to allow easier conversations and exchanges. the first is a famous social gathering place, in which culinary ingredients from all over the world can be found, brought by migrants who, with their commercial activity, supply their communities. here foreigners can find everything they need to prepare the typical dishes of their cultures and restore the sense of roots and traditions. “i miss my mother, my family, my sister. but we keep in touch, i see them online, and slowly i don't miss anything here in italy”, an asian boy said in front of the fish counter. he said that he also slowly appreciated italian cuisine: “i really love pasta; it is so versatile. in the early days i ate only recipes from my culture, but over time i also enjoyed the meat and fish dishes of yours”. an elderly arab man also stated: “at the inauguration of this market, we had a great party. it was called 'taste the world'. everyone brought something [a dish], and every day there was a different cuisine, together with dancing, music, etc. it was the union of the world at the table, a union that brings happiness, love and peace”. second, in the centocelle district, small groups of arab and indian women stroll with their children, dressed in their traditional clothes and conversing in their languages. 5 “what do you miss most of your land?” “the taste of the fruit and vegetables of our typical agriculture and the dishes that my mother cooked in my family”. “tell me about a good time you had in this city”. “it was in a small market: i was telling how meat is cooked in my culture, and a person looked at me in amazement. he was a jewish man, and he said that his family also cooks meat in a similar way. we laughed … it was beautiful. it made me think that the world is small”. to extend the range of interviews, an online survey was launched on social networks, which allowed people to speak more freely and anonymously. a platform like facebook is used by both italians and foreigners because the internet enables them to keep in touch with their friends and family in their country. eighty persons answered the question "what is 'home' to you?" and the results were collected, analysed and clustered in a word cloud map to trace the most frequent feelings, grouped with different colours, and the most frequent word pronounced, excelled with a higher dimension. image 1: word cloud map of the clustered answers to the survey “what is ‘home’ to you?”. the majority perceived ‘home’ as the place where affection and warmth can be found, where there are feelings of welcoming, appreciations and so many memories. ‘feeling at home’ is about a sense of ‘family’ and ‘belonging’ in everyday life, a place that is familiar and well-known. at home, people can relax and be authentic and spontaneous because they feel protected like in a reassuring refuge and can express themselves. there are relationships and sociability, that sense of ‘being together’, which forms a solid community. however, the most interesting aspect that emerged from the survey was the role of the neighbourhood, which is a perfect intersection between the overall city and the welcoming atmosphere of our own home. the neighbourhood represents an important part of daily life: in these places, everyday memories are built 6 and insecurity can be illuminated by progressive familiarity with its streets and shops and with the people who daily navigate them. system concept: the ‘neighbourhood home’ setting the neighbourhood as the ground of the concept, we defined the design scope as ‘inclusion’, not of foreigners in a different land, but rather of all citizens, old and new, in the fabric of a city that is constantly changing all over the world. the project aims to promote the transmission of different cultural knowledge and then co-creation behaviours within the community of the neighbourhood, to build a new, unique and collective cultural heritage that is flexible and resilient and can be perceived by every inhabitant as their own. the neighbourhood home project was born: a space for socialisation, receptive to inhabitants’ needs and open to neighbourhood improvement proposals. the goal is to improve people's inclusion in the small context of the neighbourhood, encouraging people to share their roots’ culture and knowledge. by understanding each other’s different cultures and traditions, a sense of belonging can be created, and new values and behaviours can be built. this goal can be achieved through a common mediator of all humankind: culture. promoting cultural activities in the neighbourhood home, citizens will be able to network, know each other, co-create and share local initiatives. each different culture produces, today as yesterday, specific traditions, rituals and myths that are grounded as cultural roots. as anthropology and sociology teach, only by understanding cultural practices do we understand the people who are part of it. moreover, with a neighbourhood home in each district, an entire system of welcome, culture and creativity can be created. each home can have a specific cultural focus: there will be a home of music, a home of costumes, a home of language and many others. in all its forms, from culinary to literary, artisan, musical, and so on, culture can be a link between people throughout the world. image 2: the neighbourhood home system concept. each structure is imagined as a newly built pavilion with a specific shape and provides specific tools based on the cultural focus. the home buildings can be on land that needs redevelopment within the urban structure and is itself the first improvement to the district. the contents of the activities in each neighbourhood home will not be fixed but variable, as they will be spontaneously proposed and self 7 managed by the neighbourhood’s inhabitants, which is a flexible way to allow everyone's creativity to emerge and shine. by creating a net of inclusion among the inhabitants, the second goal of the neighbourhood home system is to enhance and develop the neighbourhood itself and the city and to bring the restored empathy (massari, 2020) from people to the territory in which they live. in the space perceived as their own home, inhabitants are enabled to discuss neighbourhood issues and identify solutions together, for example, to organise a petition and volunteer events for their community. the project may interest both private and public institutions, such as municipalities, regional authorities or large companies providing goods and services that are sensitive to social issues. this system could also become supportive of municipal policies and help to manage the complexity of the problem in the neighbourhoods of rome, as in other cities. case studies of neighbourhood communities the concept of the neighbourhood home combines the scopes of citizens’ inclusion with neighbourhoods’ revaluation with a benefit especially for the peripheral districts who have seen their borders widen. but it is not the only initiative in the world that aims to improve neighbourhoods’ conditions in a big city. the ‘school of neighbourhoods’ (‘scuola dei quartieri’, https://www.lascuoladeiquartieri.it/) is a project of the municipality of milan with two purposes: to create projects and services designed and implemented by citizens for improving the lives of neighbourhoods; and to transform the suburbs of the city, enhancing the energy, creativity and resourcefulness of their inhabitants. through workshops, training courses, competition notices and public incentives, the school helps citizens to realise ideas and projects that are useful for the entire local community. the system includes a website and an app that present similar sections: #goodstory collects real stories of people who, through their dreams and activities, have created something good for their neighbourhood; and #goodidea tells the school about competition notices and shows the citizens projects that could win the opportunity to be realised. moreover, by registering on the app, citizens can see the calendar of events and initiatives promoted by the school, which is a series of opportunities available to everyone to help regenerate the suburbs. across the ocean, in america, the artist and professor, theaster gates, has launched numerous projects for the redevelopment of the greater grand crossing neighbourhood in the south side of chicago. that urban area was full of abandoned and decayed houses because of the failing housing market, buildings which people no longer knew what to do anything with. working collectively with other artists, architects, activists, educators and entrepreneurs, theaster started reshaping, as one of his pieces of art, how people imagined the south side of the city. he founded the rebuild foundation (https://rebuild-foundation.org/), a non-profit organisation focused on culturally driven redevelopment in under-resourced communities. for their most celebrated work, the ‘dorchester projects’ on dorchester avenue, he bought two of those vacant buildings—now called the archive house and the listening house—and involved the local neighbourhood in the restoration. the foundation turned the renewed buildings into cultural institutions to stage exhibitions, small dinners, lectures, book readings and workshops in the neighbourhood community. the listening house gathers discarded books from collections and out-of-business bookstores. the black cinema house plays movies that are important and relevant to the black people of the neighbourhood. in the arts bank, there is a collection of memorabilia from people who live or have lived on the south side, which reflect its identity and talk of its complexity. 8 what interested theaster the most was not a single house or building, but rather the cooperation between that house and the local school, shops, markets, parks, etc.; connections through all these buildings can have a dialogue with each other. he was able to collect all the people passionate about their neighbourhoods and gather together the right professionals who could realise their dreams through his lens of culture and art. his purpose was to rekindle the interests of the inhabitants through culture to get them to reinvest in their place. his attention goes to the connections that can be created between one house and another and then between one neighbourhood and another. both these case studies demonstrate the existence of widespread social interest in the improvement of cities to adapt and react to global changes and guide new ones within their territory. the participation of citizens in the renovation of their neighbourhoods is not only possible but desirable. only the inhabitants themselves can stand up and carry out initiatives to improve their living conditions. bottom-up projects are possible and are already implemented in cities. what is needed is the development of a culture aimed at sustainability through workshops, training courses, social initiatives, awareness campaigns, etc., to stimulate the common desire for improvement and the will to do something about it. these testimonials show that the objectives of renewal, dialogue and inclusion can be achieved by activating a network of interested people: first of all, citizens and municipalities, with the support of cultural institutions, investors, social change associations and also private companies and organisations. moreover, migrants can be an active and positive (no longer negative and neglected) part of this change, allowing them to finally feel part of a place that appreciates them, listens to them and values their different knowledge and points of view. pilot project: the neighbourhood… food as a pilot project for the neighbourhood home system, food culture was chosen as an intermediary for inclusion and socialisation, since food is one of the most immediate vehicles for sharing the rituals, knowledge, lifestyle and myths of different cultures. “eating other people's food seems easier—even if only apparently—than decoding its language” (montanari, 2011). food has never been seen by human society as mere nourishment, but has always been enriched with other symbolic and relational meanings that go beyond its nutritional value. “sharing the same food is at the origin of all rituals” (barilla center for food and nutrition foundation, 2019). sharing a meal represents an ancient and always effective bridge between cultures: diners will first notice the differences between their culinary cultures, but then, most importantly, the things in common. foods, ingredients and recipes in history have always travelled across lands and continents following people (bloch-dano & prencipe, 2017), which is why today’s typical ingredients of a culinary tradition often actually originate on the other side of the planet (the tomato, very dear to the italian cuisine, for example, is originally from america). for a neighbourhood home centred on food, two core activities have been imagined: cooking classes focused on an ingredient chosen by the home on a seasonal basis and social eating sessions, in which all the participants of the cooking class can share the meal. these activities will allow not only people to gain confidence in each other in a relaxed context but also to understand how the ingredients connect people around the world. every inhabitant of the neighbourhood can freely and spontaneously propose a cooking class in the home setting and can add the event in the community’s (online and offline) calendar. through the classes, people can share stories of their culture, specific gestures and cooking rituals from their typical tradition, teaching 9 a recipe that fits the established seasonal ingredient. the social eating at the end of the lesson brings all participants to the same table and makes that social inclusion effective. image 3: ‘meeteat’ pavilion from above. image 4: architectural elevation, front (above) and rear (below). the structure, called ‘meeteat’, is imagined as a newly built pavilion entirely designed around the themes of integration, nourishment and sustainability. the journey starts at the entrance area, provided by 10 a reception for passers-by’s curiosity and information, an entire wall of interactive digital frames showing past initiatives that have become shared neighbourhood memories and modular and freely aggregable seats for dialogue and waiting. here citizens can also have information about the network and the activities of the other neighbourhood homes in the city. these are in constant communication with each other. registration for the initiatives can take place on the online platform, on the interactive screens or at the desk set up for support. image 5: entrance area with a reception desk and view of the dining hall. image 6: entrance area, focusing on the seats and the digital frames. over the entrance, the journey continues in the kitchen area, the main feature of this home. here, all those who want to participate and learn will be able to register for free, bring ingredients with them and use the spaces and tools provided by the structure. the kitchen has an innovative and ‘neutral’ interior design because the neighbourhood home needs to be flexible and abstract from any specific culinary cultures. this choice of neutrality aims to create new behaviours and values that favour community and participation rather than choosing a typical layout of one culture at the expense of others. 11 image 7: kitchen area from outside. image 8: kitchen area, with a focus on the ‘earth’ section during a cooking class. 12 image 9: architectural plan of the kitchen with the semantic and functional organisation. to identify a common core of all food preparation, every possible action of a general cooking process was analysed: 1) storing the participants’ ingredients: containing and refrigerating 2) preparing the ingredients: cutting, cleaning, kneading, washing, etc. 3) cooking (if needed): boiling, frying, smoking, grilling, steaming, baking, etc. 4) dishing up 5) washing the clustering and arrangement of these activities and their corresponding furniture took inspiration from the lévi-strauss culinary triangle semantics. the metaphor of the four natural elements (water, earth, air and fire) was used because each one is essential in all culinary traditions and can evoke the imagination of the ancestral rites of all culinary spaces. a) the ‘water’ section collects all the ‘filling’ (as a cauldron) and washing activities: containers, pantries, shelves, refrigerators, sinks and dish drainers; b) the ‘earth’ section is dedicated to handwork such as ‘kneading’, ‘cutting’, ‘forming’, etc. and has a group of worktops equipped with sinks, drawers for instruments and waste bins; c) the ‘fire’ and the ‘air’ sections are six functional blocks for fire-related activities, each provided with a different type of cooking: stove, oven, wood-burning oven, grill, plate and deep fryer. the ‘air’ section corresponds to the ventilation hoods system on these fire blocks to guarantee vapour and smoke absorption. the six fire totems are the core of the entire meeteat pavilion because they 13 represent—at a mythical level—the fireplace of the tribe, around which stories, culture, myths and rites are transmitted. image 10: social eating in the dining hall (street view). the journey in this home ends in the dining hall, where the experiences of inclusion, socialising and empathising are consolidated by sharing the meal altogether. this is a meeting space, too, a comfortable area that allows citizens to discuss neighbourhood problems, find some solutions and organise collective social events. to merge these two purposes (the social eating sessions and the citizens’ meetings), a modular table has been designed that allows multiple combinations for space flexibility. in meeteat, a community as a sustainable and inclusive network can be created, responsibility for neighbourhood wellness can be fostered and a renewed sense of belonging can be inspired. "there is a growing need to find new ways to defeat food paradoxes (malnutrition, non-sustainable production systems and the battle against food waste, to name a few). in the past 15 years, the design method has been consolidating into this field of food. participatory design and co-creation in food experience design became popular along with the discipline of food design and social design." (massari, 2017) conclusion around the world, many projects have been designed to increase inclusion and interaction with migrants and foreigners in response to global and urban changes. however, fewer projects have been designed for the inclusion of all citizens to stimulate a new sense of community belonging and a renewed civic responsibility. the neighbourhood home project aims to highlight the common roots of all peoples in the world, who have always been interconnected by culture through migration and trade in history. culture is the human dimension par excellence: in each territory, culture has been shaped in typical expressions, rituals and 14 myths that enclose people’s real essence and values. it is necessary to understand these rituals to realise the underlying cultural values and traditions. transmitting and sharing gestures of typical cultural activities from all over the world, the neighbourhood home system will help create inclusion with each other in the district (and the entire city) context. this approach can generate not only a more inclusive society in each neighbourhood but also a possible common cultural heritage, composed of new shared values and behaviours and can become part of their daily lives. no longer “i” and “them” but an "us". curiosity for diversity must be the social innovation engine, an opportunity for growth and wisdom that allows us to recognise and valorise, in the end, our common roots. more inclusive cities and nations should be the most desirable goal today, transforming conflicts and social exclusion into interconnections and sustainable communities. references augé, m. 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(2018). global trends: forced displacement in 2017. retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2017/ https://www.ipsos.com/it-it/unitalia-frammentata-atteggiamenti-verso-identitanazionale-immigrazione-e-rifugiati-italia https://www.ipsos.com/it-it/unitalia-frammentata-atteggiamenti-verso-identitanazionale-immigrazione-e-rifugiati-italia https://rebuild-foundation.org/ https://population.un.org/wup/publications/ https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2017/ 89 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. domestic kitchen design as a tool to reduce food waste maísa neves pimenta, eduardo gonçalves, cristóvão valente pereira published online: april 2021. to cite this article: neves pimenta, m., gonçalves, e., & valente pereira, c. (2021). the domestic kitchen design as a tool to reduce food waste. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(1), 89-100. 90 domestic kitchen design as a tool to reduce food waste maísa neves pimentaa, eduardo gonçalvesb, cristóvão valente pereirac amaisa.pimenta@alumni.usp.br buniversidade europeia, iade, av. d. carlos i, 4, lisbon, 1200-649, portugal. unidcom/iade-unidade de investigação em design e comunicação, av. d. carlos i, 4, lisbon, 1200-649, portugal. eduardo.goncalves@universidadeeuropeia.pt cfaculdade de belas-artes da universidade de lisboa, largo da academia nacional de belas-artes, lisbon, 1249-058, portugal. ciebacentro de investigação e de estudos em belas -artes, largo da academia nacional de belas-artes, lisbon, 1249-058, portugal. c.pereira@belasartes.ulisboa.pt abstract this paper describes broader research undertaken for a master’s degree in product and space design at iade, universidade europeia, lisbon, portugal. it aims to define guidelines for the development of domestic kitchen projects that contribute to reducing food waste. after this research, our goal is to further develop its outcomes through future research and the implementation of the resulting guidelines in a lifesize field experiment. we departed with the hypothesis that space design may influence users’ behaviour; therefore, it can be used as an active tool in favour of sustainability. we defined a methodology that informed a review of the literature, case studies and surveys. we analysed comprehensive themes regarding the problem, which enabled a holistic approach to the issue. we conclude this paper by showing the pertinence of our research proposal, a novel way of combining specific strategies from three primary areas of knowledge (design for behavioural change, food waste and interior design) to achieve our goals of reducing food waste in domestic kitchens and contributing in this way to a more sustainable society. keywords: sustainability, kitchen design, food waste, design for behaviour change, interior design introduction this paper presents the initial stage of a master’s research project based on the hypothesis that space design, as an influencer of human behaviour (sommer, 1969), can act as a tool to contribute to food waste reduction in the context of domestic kitchens. at the same time, we study how space can change behaviour and how it has the potential to reduce waste with these changes. we aim to define guidelines that serve as a source of information for professionals in the sector. we defined portugal as the study context, more specifically the area of lisbon. this choice is supported by both the data—according to which portugal currently wastes 17% of the food produced for human consumption, which corresponds to 1 million tonnes per year (baptista, campos, pires, & vaz, 2012)—and by the limitations in scope and time of the study, which is being developed over one year. the research is based on a deductive approach followed by a non-interventionist methodology. at first, we point out that, as shown by ponis, papanikolaou, katimertzoglou, ntalla and xenos (2017), food waste impacts mean land, energy and water waste. in this context, it is essential to differentiate between the concepts of loss and waste. the concept of loss is a natural result of the inefficiencies in the production and industrial system (baptista et. al., 2012), while waste is “the decrease in the quantity or quality of food resulting from decisions and actions by retailers, food service providers and consumers” (fao, n.d.), i.e. what could be avoided through better management and behaviour. 91 considering the above, we focus on the domestic scale, with families as the main subject. fao (n.d.) estimates that about one-third of all food produced in the world is wasted. according to the organisation's 2011 report, in 2009, europe was responsible for 22% of this waste, 52% of which was at the consumption stage of the chain (figure 1). these numbers show what baptista and colleagues (2012) mean by saying that it is in families that food waste proves to be higher. also, it justifies our choice of study, as the transition to sustainability will be a big and articulated process of social, cultural and technological innovation (manzini & vezzoli, 2002). figure 1: food lost or wasted by region and stage in the value chain, 2009 (percent of kcal lost and wasted) (adapted from lipinski, hanson, waite, searchinger, lomax, & kitinoja, 2013). furthermore, we pursued a bottom-up strategy: that is, consumer awareness actions have a relevant impact throughout the supply chain. aschemann-witzel, de hooge, amani, bech-larsen and oostindjer (2015) recognise that there must be a synergy of action in all stages of the chain, but they state that the consumer has a crucial role in this change. they exemplify this impact by showing that “retailers apply aesthetic standards to accept or reject foods based on the assumption that consumers will only buy foods fulfilling these standards” (2015, p. 6458). in parallel, we identified a disconnection between sustainable behaviour and environmental awareness (junior, da silva, gabriel, & de oliveira braga, 2015; kollmuss & agyeman, 2002; kraus & emontspool, 2017). that is, there is a gulf between the information disseminated through environmental education and society’s practices and choices. considering this, we propose an innovative approach seeking to comprehend the relationship between consumers’ space at the domestic scale (the kitchen) and their attitudes related to food waste. this approach is supported by the concept that space design has a significant role in behaviour change (cummings, 2012; montazeri, gonzalez, yoon & papalambros, 2012; scott-webber, konyndyk, french, lembke & kinney, 2017; wu, digiacomo & kingstone, 2013). it is a promising strategy when it comes to the reduction of food waste. 92 thus, we understand the kitchen as a system and not just as a set of appliances and storage spaces. hebrock and bocks (2017) show that the solutions currently available explore mostly smart fridge functions and packaging, with very low diversity. they conclude that “there is great potential for more innovative thinking that can challenge existing practices more profoundly” (p. 390). therefore, the design of a kitchen that aims to be more sustainable must consider not only its production but also how it will be used and how it can change habits. after all, as cummings (2012) argues, it is necessary to create a favourable environment to promote sustainable behaviour, making these activities as convenient as possible. literature review design for sustainability and behavioural change in 1963, environmental concern was marked by the launching of r. buckminster fuller’s work, operating manual for spaceship earth, in which we identified a call for a design revolution to guide the world towards a more sustainable future. later, papanek and fuller (1972), in design for the real world: human ecology and social change, highlighted the role of a tool for social and environmental change. in 1978, gui bonsiepe’s work, theory and practice of industrial design: elements for a critical manual, established the link between the study of sustainability and industrial practice. in monteiro (2019), we noted a novel approach that aims to draw attention to the impact of design and its choices on the world. in walker (2012), we identified the goal of creating a material culture with more value. similarly, manzini and vezolli (2002) proposed new forms of production compatible with the environment, aimed at a new consumer society. they advocated for the need to change development parameters so that development is not measured in terms of production and consumption but according to the reduction of these. in the same way, we understand that one must also consider new ways of organising daily life, the sustainable aspect of the product as a cycle and consider how a product influences its users. besides, the development of design for sustainability aims at promoting a fundamental change in user behaviour (manzini, 2015), so to determine the strategies for this “there is a need to understand behaviour and its determinants” (strömberg, selvefors & renström, 2015, p. 163). when addressing the consumer, the works of junior and collaborators (2015), kraus and emontspool (2017) and kollmuss and agyeman (2002) investigate the relationship between the possession of knowledge and tools for sustainable behaviour and the behaviour itself. that is, trying to understand how to reduce the gap that exists between them. these authors also point out that it is complex to understand why people choose environmentally responsible attitudes and to identify the barriers to adopting more appropriate behaviours. in this research, we highlight one of these determinants, which is space, whose impact on its occupant has long been demonstrated by environmental psychology studies (scott-webber et al., 2017). the literature review shows examples of these impacts on behaviour in research related to health and well-being spaces (petermans & pohlmeyer, 2014; ulrich, 1991), workspaces (vischer, 2008) and educational/ library spaces (campbell & schlechter, 1979; o'kelly, scott-webber, garrison, & meyer, 2017; scott-webber et al., 2017). 93 as far back as 1969, sommer drew attention to the lack of emphasis given to activities developed in internal spaces and how the configuration of the latter can impact them. for sommer (1969), “not only must form follow function, but it must assist it in every way” (p. 5). in the same sense, augustin, frankel and coleman (2009) stated that the design of a physical place influences its user and, therefore, it can shape his/her attitudes and behaviour. for the latter authors, well-designed spaces, in general are compatible with the planned activity; communicate important information about their users; are comforting to the psychological needs of their users; are challenging by presenting opportunities for individual development; and are continuous in time, evolving and adapting to new needs. in the field of sustainable interior design, stieg (2006) points out the need for a connection between theory and practice, analysing the difficulties of the interior designer to act responsibly. in the same sense, maté (2006), bacon (2011), aktas (2013) and hayles (2015) discuss the concepts of green interior design, the difficulties related to the specification of sustainable materials and the understanding of the project in all its cycles. in portugal, it is relevant to mention the work of vicente (2012), who studied furniture production processes to create information and support tools for a more sustainable practice. one of his main conclusions is that it is necessary to facilitate the work of the designer with the proposition of tools that are integrated into the product development process. in the same way, this research aims to build knowledge to give support to the professional, which is much aligned with our own goal for the development of the guidelines. food waste when it comes to the food consumption chain, bagherzadeh, inamura and jeong (2014) point out that, worldwide, the household scale is responsible for wasting 38 million tonnes of food per year, or 76 kg per capita per year. in portugal, a study conducted in 2012 by baptista and colleagues pointed out that 1 million tonnes of food produced for humans is lost or wasted per year (see figure 2). of this amount, it was estimated that about 314,000 tonnes are wasted on a domestic scale, i.e. about 32 kg per capita per year. figure 2: food losses in portugal by year (adapted from baptista et al., 2012). several studies have sought to understand the causes of food waste in different settings, as well as the search for viable solutions to the problem (aschemann-witzel et. al, 2015; ponis et al., 2017; visschers, wickli & siegrist, 2016). the results reaffirm that behaviours related to food choices and food handling are major influences. furthermore, they point out that it is essential to increase consumers’ awareness of the issue and how individual choices impact the whole. aschemann-witzel and colleagues (2015) concluded that there are three main focuses of action for effective change: (i) date labelling; (ii) expectations and 94 perceptions; (iii) and consumer behaviour in food handling at the household scale. the last point is pointed out by the authors as central, being the focus of action in this investigation. hebrok and boks (2017) divide the existing solutions in the field of design according to how they act, namely: information and knowledge, packaging, food risk and regulations. the authors conducted an extensive review, cataloguing and categorising studies to find potential intervention points. they show that several factors lead to waste, related both to behaviour (preferences, ideals, culture and convenience, for example) and to the physical structure of kitchens (ways of home food storing and packaging, for example). here we propose a more comprehensive analysis of the issue by trying to understand how these various solutions interact with each other. we will update and discuss these results. kitchen-focused interior design in this research, we address the kitchen as a dynamic and central space in the daily life of the western family. despite historical differences between contexts, it is possible to say that, today, this environment is the stage for technological revolutions and new activities that reconfigure domestic dynamics. considering this, bell and kaye (2002, p. 46) call attention to the need to think of it “not just as a collection of wires, appliances, and internet points, but as a space in which people live.” freeman (2004) points out that kitchen space is a very rich field of exploration between the past and the future of our society, illustrating the potential of design in understanding man as a social creature. bell and kaye (2002) agree with this point of view and add that the kitchen space, the act of cooking and food itself constitutes a set of cultural icons, being employed as metaphors for more complex meanings and actors throughout history. the understanding of the kitchen space as home, as centre and the result of social relations, is a subject treated by bell and kaye (2002), freeman (2004), bech-danielsen (2012) and shove (2007). in freeman (2004), we realise how the kitchen space has become determinant to the development of modern society; in bech-danielsen (2012), we see how everyday life has changed the way people see residential architecture, with a focus on the kitchen. for that reason, in this research, we seek to understand the dynamics of the kitchen in our context to add a new layer to the functionalities of this space, to combine rationalism with the fight against food waste. methodology as mentioned, this research aims to develop guidelines that support kitchen design towards more sustainable behaviour, focusing on food waste reduction. this study consists of a mixed methodology with two phases: deductive and analytical. first, in the deductive phase, we will consolidate knowledge about the subject, which will then serve as the basis for the second phase, which will result in the formulation of interior design guidelines. to this end, we seek to answer the following research questions: a. how can interior design contribute to more sustainable behaviour when preventing food waste? b. what are the factors that influence users’ behaviour regarding food waste in a domestic kitchen? c. how are users’ food consumption and handling habits related to the design of the kitchen? to answer question a, we carried out an extensive literature review, which sought themes related to “design for sustainability”, “design to combat food waste” and “design for behaviour change”. we intended to expand and consolidate the state of the art on the subject. also, we sought to understand what solutions exist in the field of design, identifying opportunities for action. 95 on the relationship between behaviour and the environment, wu and colleagues (2013), cummings (2012) and montazeri and collaborators (2012) investigated the impact and influence of space on sustainable decisions to identify how design can act to promote sustainable behaviour. in this sense, lilley and collaborators (2006) identified three possible approaches to design for behaviour change: eco-feedback (information provision), behaviour direction (user incentive) and intelligence (imposition of limitations and directing actions). in this research, we will focus on the latter two to structure our proposed guidelines. we will work in constraining or affording actions through the space design and non-perceived solutions that guide the users. in addition, we aim to understand how interior design can change behaviour. we selected case studies that intend to understand how space, even in other contexts, influences behaviour. from studies related to workspaces, we identified aspects that interfere with task performance, approaching our problem as a domestic task. in educational environments and libraries, we identified attributes that corroborate engagement with space and with the problem. here are the most relevant to our investigation: • spatial organisation; • design details; • ambient conditions and resources; • view and visual access of the workspace; • flexibility of the space divisions and furniture (to empower the user and support different needs); • environmental messages (to be symbolic and inspiring); • core connectedness (to give a sense of belonging); and • adaptability (to be able to change over time). in question b, we focused on food waste at the household scale to understand the causes and potentials for action. we researched and analysed previous studies that addressed the theme in several countries, including portugal, to identify strategic paths to solve our problem. question c relates to portuguese cuisine and habits and will be answered by reviewing studies that have carried out extensive research with the population. whitehead (2005) points out that to understand what goes on in each space, it is necessary to perceive some categories of human interaction phenomena. amongst these, we selected the essential ones for this research: • space: the nature of the environment where the interaction takes place; • objects: what they are and how they are organised; • actors: who they are; • behaviours: acts, activities and events; • patterns of interaction between the actors; • ideational elements: beliefs, attitudes, values and significant symbolisms; • broader social systems: behaviours and ideations found in the specific social system; and • goals, motivations and agenda of the individual and the group of the actors in the social setting. looking for information related to actors (demographic data) and the broader social systems, we will use statistical data collected by national demographic institutes, such as pordata (base de dados portugal contemporâneo [contemporary portugal data basis]) and ine (instituto nacional de estatística [national institute of statistics]). looking for information related to behaviours, ideational elements, goals, motivations and agenda, we will look at the results of the report do campo ao garfo, desperdício alimentar em portugal (from the fields to 96 the tables, food waste in portugal), made by baptista and colleagues, in 2012. also, we will carry out surveys to obtain more specific information related to kitchens, daily habits and the relationships between users and space. in this way, it will be possible to complement the available data. conclusions the research efforts have focused on the deductive phase, with an extensive literature review that sought to establish an overview of the issue. it was possible to strengthen the initial hypothesis that interior design can act as a tool for changing behaviour towards more sustainable practices. furthermore, we were able to define strategies and justify the relevance of the research both in terms of the study setting (portugal) and the scale of the intervention (domestic). there is currently much media coverage on the issue of food waste, with increased concern and a sense of guilt regarding both environmental impacts and social inequalities (baptista et. al, 2012). however, the disconnection between behavioural intentions and the attitudes themselves means that the problem needs to be approached holistically. it is of utmost importance to better understand social, demographic and cultural factors if we are to propose solutions to make this link. in the literature review, we found several solutions in the field of product design, e.g. smart fridge, grocery list, fridge cam, smartphone connection, colour coding, apps, online advice, awareness campaigns, storage guidance, smart data labelling and edible coatings. these seek to combat the problem based on new forms of planning, stocking, packaging and informing. we sought to approach the issue from the perspective of interior design, understanding the kitchen space as a holistic system in which we can integrate innovative solutions with existing ones. we can state that the relevant numbers regarding food waste in portugal, presented by baptista and collaborators (2012), firmly justify the relevance of the research. also, the same authors state that in industrialised countries, food waste is concentrated at the distribution and final consumption levels, which reaffirms the importance of action at the household scale. moreover, we believe that the obtained results can be considered, with appropriate adaptations, for other western countries, with similar cultures and habits. it is also important to add that the covid-19 pandemic crisis has created new challenges to the academy, and introducing new tools to reduce losses and waste of food is one of them (galanakis, 2020). according to kantar (2020b), two trends are observed: (i) the growth of food delivery and takeaway; (ii) and the increase in the number of meals made at home, probably because of the growth of teleworking. eurofound (2020) states that in the european union, it is estimated that 39.6% of paid work by dependent employees was carried out at home during the pandemic. the study conducted by kantar (2020a), comparing the months of january to august 2020 with those of 2019, showed that in portugal, there was a 23% drop in out-of-home consumption and a 3% growth in in-home consumption (delivery and takeaway). it also showed that in france, the number of family meals per week rose from 18 to 24 during the lockdown period of 2020. in brief, we have identified the working strategies that will guide us to our proposed outcome. using behavioural direction and intelligence as our main approaches, we will define our guidelines. considering who our actors are, how their actual kitchen space is, how they behave and interact, and to which social system they belong, we can propose a new type of scenario. to complete this proposition, we will need to define how to organise the space, what the main design details are, what the necessary ambient conditions 97 and resources are, what the visual strategies are, how to be flexible, what the main environmental messages are, how to create a core connectedness and how to be democratic and adaptable. finally, it is possible to conclude not only that there are solid grounds to justify the pursuit of this research but also that our main objective can be achieved, contributing to solving the problem of food waste through innovative solutions. furthermore, it is our goal to test the proposed guidelines on a full-scale field experiment in future research. references aktas, g. g. 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(2013). a sustainable building promotes pro-environmental behavior: an observational study on food disposal. plos one, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0053856. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0053856 abstract introduction literature review design for sustainability and behavioural change food waste kitchen-focused interior design methodology conclusions references 16 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. far-sighted communities: design meets future studies to boost visioning and participatory foresight elena enrica giunta, maria chiara cattaneo, rocco scolozzi published online: april 2021. to cite this article: giunta, e., cattaneo, m. c., & scolozzi, r. (2021). far-sighted communities: design meets future studies to boost visioning and participatory foresight. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(1), 16-28. 17 far-sighted communities: design meets future studies to boost visioning and participatory foresight elena enrica giuntaa, maria chiara cattaneob, rocco scolozzic adesign department, politecnico di milano, italy; società economica valtellinese (sev) scientific board. elena.giunta@polimi.it bcranec, università cattolica del sacro cuore, italy; sev scientific board. mariachiara.cattaneo2@unicatt.it cdepartment of sociology and social research, university of trento, italy. rocco.scolozzi@unitn.it abstract the increasing uncertainties of all contemporary communities require future literacy, and strengthening the participatory dimension of foresight practice is part of the solution. the “montagna 4.0 futurealps'” project involved high school students, teachers, businesses and stakeholders of valtellina, northern italy, in local laboratories of participatory foresight through a codesign approach. this article briefly reports the project framework and the visioning exercises undertaken to build meaningful images of the future (2040). such images should be able to question and broaden the current development visions of the alpine valley and inspire a collective design of its development trajectories by raising the community’s awareness of current and future changes. the activities took place over six workshops with three meetings each from september to december 2020, involving students (“@scuola”), local stakeholders (“community lab”) and the general public and experts (“open talk”). each workshop focused on a specific topic, such as the mountain of tomorrow, sustainable innovation, social innovation and sustainable communities, protection, production and promotion, sustainable mobility and events for alpine tourism. the outputs consisted of uncertainty scenarios, postcards from different futures and indications to make development strategies future-proof, which are all elaborated on in this article. keywords: codesign, design thinking, foresight scenarios, future literacy, envisioning, commons, social innovation, local development introduction all our decisions are based on some images of the future, from daily individual choices to an ambitious personal career project and from a local administration’s daily decisions to longer-term projects and programmes for the local area or the country. design thinking naturally involves sharing images of an imagined future service or artefact to develop or materialise. when the object of visualisation and development is a larger system such as a territory or its subsystems, such as tourism, housing policies, mobility and accessibility, the level of complexity increases. future studies’ paradigms and tools can help to untangle this complexity and integrate the design process to be more explicitly future-oriented. being future(s)-oriented means considering some critical questions for the design process, leading to future(s)proof solutions. these questions concern the possible changes in the specific design context and the extent of the uncertainties that could make solutions effective today but non-functional in the future. in this article, we elaborate on an experimental codesign project that involved an entire community and different social groups. we present the premises and the educational vision first, followed by the case study and the wider context of the experimentation. in addition, we describe the stages and the approaches, thus representing a potential toolkit for participatory foresight. 18 premises: the indifferent citizen and the far-sighted citizen the school’s mission as a social institution is to educate proactive citizens, responsible for their choices and their community’s qualities, providing tools and facilitating the learning of skills. the expected result of every effort and investment in this direction is to create open futures of personal and collective fulfilment with the ideal outcome of bridging personal futures, collective or even global futures (think about climate change as connected to choices of individuals and entire countries), overcoming the dichotomy between optimism and pessimism through a proactive attitude based on long-term views and critical thinking (bodinet, 2016; miller, 2015). these goals are made more difficult in times of great uncertainty where society and individuals are tempted or invited to lock themselves into a “bubble of the present”. living in such a “bubble of the present” means being less and less related to the past and to the future, with increasing concern or even fear about an uncertain future and real or imagined risks, at the same time without meaningful references from the past. the condition of living in a “bubble of the present” could be associated with “shorttermism”m an attitude in which individuals primarily prefer short-term values (marginson and mcaulay, 2008). it can also be related to an extreme philosophical interpretation called “presentism”, according to which “only currently existing objects are real. computers, but not dinosaurs or mars outposts, exist” (sider, 2001). at the other extreme of living in a present bubble is “futures consciousness”, which, according to the futurist anita rubin (2002, p. 906), is an “active and action-oriented perspective on the future, present and past and the relations between these. [it is] an internalised form of the development of thinking [and] a specific effort to form a conception about the meanings and consequences of issues and our daily actions”. rubin thus highlights the notions of agency, internalised future thinking and the links between the past, present and future. inspired by these ideas, we distinguished two opposite fictitious types of citizens: the “indifferent citizen” and the “far-sighted citizen”. the first represents the citizen as a self-centred individual, essentially a consumer of services and products who is interested in satisfying their primary or induced needs soon, without a perspective from which to assess the consequences in the medium and long term. when not satisfied, their urgency easily creates frustration and apathy. in any case, the same limited horizon leads them to a reactive attitude towards events and in the face of undesirable changes (“surprises”) to seek others’ faults and responsibilities. the “far-sighted citizen” is interested in their own history and the history of their community or of those who share their time. their horizon of perception, observation and action is broad enough that it necessarily intersects and interacts with that of other citizens, so they easily see their fulfilment as connected to that of their own community. this attention trains them to better understand changes and distinguish between those that are uncontrollable and those that can be influenced by their own actions (compared to the former they prepare to adapt; compared to the latter they prepare strategies). through all this, the far-sighted citizen somehow owns their time, recognising their responsibilities. the “montagna 4.0” project described below starts from these premises with the ambition not only to educate "far-sighted citizens" but also to facilitate "far-sighted communities". the design approach and the futures studies tools seem to ground effective synergies towards this objective. nowadays, it is increasingly essential to think in a cohesive, community-based logic capable of reflecting on the changes underway as 19 well as co-constructing new opportunities. this also applies to mountain regions experiencing profound and increasingly rapid changes, impacting both the global and local levels. montagna 4.0 futurealps framework and background (sev) has operated since 1993 as a think tank to promote sustainable and quality-oriented local development in valtellina, recovering fundamental values and pursuing strategic orientation for the future from a global perspective (quadrio curzio, 2008). since 2017, through its scientific committee, sev has offered a series of workshops in bormio to strengthen the local community through participation and co-responsibility. investing in people with interactive workshops is deemed critical, as future choices are to be made as a community. "montagna 4.0, building the future together", with ten meetings for each edition, has registered broad participation, open to the whole community, and with the integration of different skills. by calling it "montagna (mountain) 4.0, building the future together", a legitimate question that arises is "what about mountain 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0"? montagna 1.0 may refer to the "subsistence" age. “2.0” concerns the industrial revolution’s effects, with the first industrial activities and factories. “3.0” relates to the intensive exploitation of natural resources and a strong relationship with the city. “mountain 4.0” thus opens up new scenarios for the potential of the green economy, digitalisation and innovation that can unlock regions. it is a question of being aware of what effects change brings about and recalling the need for conscious and coherent policy choices at a community level. it represents a process of laying the foundations for a new awareness in the face of change, aiming to curb depopulation risks by showing opportunities for growth and sustainable development can be built together. year after year, it has envisaged an open competition of ideas, since there are no top-down recipes but only bottom-up solutions. the second edition of the competition extended its focus to high school students so that they could explore the relationship between mountain identity and innovation. it was named "the mountain i would like" in a growing focus of young people to envision the(ir) future(s), as the future is to be seen as plural, given multiple possibilities for the futures to happen. building on "montagna 4.0", "montagna 4.0 futurealps" represents an example of how community selftraining and participation methods can be experimented, beyond the mere consultative dimension. this leads to new dimensions of taking care of the community that grows itself through forms of awarenessraising in order to contribute and actively operate in the co-definition of their development scenarios. therefore, the adopted approach from the start aimed to focus on the local identity’s fundamental values, a precious starting point to confront challenges and build opportunities, in order not to be overwhelmed by change. "montagna 4.0" involved university professors and representatives of the alps as witnesses of specific practices on topical issues with a mix combining an academic-scientific approach with practical examples and ideas. the main topics discussed included circular economy and sustainability, business innovation, tourism models, destination management for the enhancement of local assets and effects on tourism, biodiversity and alpine development, identity and values, social change and welfare, climate change, finance, resources, alpine culture and communities and mobility. the workshops represented a valuable tool for community growth, highlighting that an innovation culture is critical for local development. for this reason, proceeding with the experimentation has been fundamental by making “montagna 4.0” – labelled futurealps—move around in the various valtellina districts and through a network with other alpine areas. 20 the process was structured into six workshops taking place throughout the area, with mornings explicitly dedicated to schools, afternoons to community labs and evenings for the whole community with discussions aimed at enlarging the vision of the whole alpine area. the keywords of futurealps have become community, innovation, territory, sustainability and tourism. the opening in bormio focused on the future of mountains, choices to be made and strategies, with particular attention to the future of tourism looking at the demand side. subsequently, the focus shifted to companies and the area in which they are based, considering the potential of digitalisation, corporate responsibility and the creation of shared value. furthermore, futurealps focused on what strengthens and disrupts communities and helps them be more aware of their resources. another central theme has been environmental protection, production and promotion and scenarios for the appropriate enhancement of tangible and intangible heritage. the following workshop focused on mobility and how critical it is to network today for tomorrow’s mobility and the close relationship between mobility and tourism. here, too, the operators confronted the students’ visions of the theme of sustainable, shared and smart mobility. in the "montagna 4.0 futurealps" final workshop, students and then stakeholders concentrated on the future perspectives of tourism and events in the alps and how communities could be proactively involved. there was also reference to the winter olympics of 2026, a unique opportunity for the valley and an extraordinary tool within a longer-term (2040) plan. “montagna 4.0 futurealps” developed according to both a horizontal and a vertical dimension: horizontal as moving both in space throughout the territory and in time since looking at 2040, a journey often described as taking place through space and time. the vertical aspect entailed each day’s structure with three consequential moments feeding one another, morning postcards from the future labs with students, intergenerational afternoon community labs and evening open talks looking at the alpine dimension. a design toolkit for participatory foresight the future alps process embraces a codesign approach and tools to nurture participation and answer the specific need to include significant non-expert viewpoints, especially concerning the young generation. we can take the example of the most common and acknowledged design creative processes, the double diamond conceptualised by the design council (2014), arguing that all the steps of the divergent and convergent phases could be developed collaboratively. considering this sequence of phases as a linear process, we can create a two-pole axis that summarises the subject matter behind the design. the topicdriven activities refer to the problem/situation that must be investigated (first diamond); the conceptdriven activities refer to an orientation defined through the problem-solving brief (second diamond). the futurealps process mainly goes through the first topic-driven phase. with its expertise in facilitating and activating communities, how could design support such participation in developing future imagined scenarios? in massive codesign, as meroni et al. (2018) said, a crucial issue is how to conduct the practice of “joint inquiry and imagination” of codesign. it is described as a process «in which diverse people jointly explore and define a problem and collectively develop and evaluate solutions. it is a process in which participants can express and share their experiences, to discuss and negotiate their roles and interests, and to jointly bring about positive change» (steen, 2013, pp. 27–28). in each workshop, specific labs dedicated to students helped them think creatively about future scenarios by looking at the most uncertain factors and their impact. each student (of about 150, from 6 schools) was 21 invited to make personal reflections, to discuss in small groups of peers from the same class and face to face, to interact with working groups from other schools (connected online) and finally to produce postcards from the future. alongside this, the community labs triggered intergenerational dialogue between students and stakeholders through a backcasting approach, moving from possible futures twenty years from now to roadmaps to undertake today. scientific studies and experiences from all over the alps were presented in the evenings, with best practices shared. this structure allowed us to foster participation and make co-creation accessible. there is not full consensus about the definitions and reciprocal boundaries of the terms participation, collaboration, codesign, co-creation and co-production. this is perhaps because some academics include “use” itself as one of the last phases of the design process, thus calling all the activities “co-design” (for example, pre-design, discover, design, make, distribute and use are the phases according to sanders and stappers, 2012). at the same time, other scholars distinguish design activities, which happen at project time, from consumption moments, which happen at use time (project/use time distinction can be found in ehn, 2008). the term co-creation will be used as a hypernym of both codesign and co-production, as freire and sangiorgi (2010) do. what co-design does is simulate use before actual use happens by involving potential final users as sources of ideas and experiences. of course, during the futurealps format, we can just practise co-design, reflecting on co-production only thanks to other colleagues’ examples (the contents evening talks). we could see how other alpine communities look at their possible futures by adopting similar or different tools. besides, the shared aim is to strengthen local communities to extend and consolidate their networks of relationships through a continuous learning process, thus reshaping futures in times of pandemics. designers and tutors played the facilitators’ role, encouraging interactions amongst participants and raising awareness of the process. they also facilitated participants’ interaction, critical thinking, self-criticism and their capacity to think out of the box and beyond their own comfort zone. specifically, looking at the guidance approach, we can argue that it ranges between two positions, "active listening" (sclavi, 2003) and thought-provoking, reflecting a difference in purpose and situation. a scenario workshop facilitator does not tell people what to do or think, nor do they forecast anything, but they “draw out (e-ducare) the concerns of others” through leading questions and exploring the uncertainties relevant for the strategic issue. the facilitator then needs to know quite a lot about the subject under discussion to ask those questions that lead in the most productive direction (ogilvy, 2002). a thought-provoking style, on the other hand, leads the participants’ thoughts towards some critical aspects or opportunities of a given topic or concept. this guidance is likely to lead the participants on the thought process and speculative journeys aiming to generate reactions and, in general, responsiveness to a set of expected plausible scenarios. this is undertaken to anticipate and possibly manage the consequences. this position is, normally, congenial and familiar for a designer whose role in a debate or creative session is generally considered a contribution of ideas and input to be shared with the participants (manzini, 2015; meroni et al., 2018). in a thought-provoking approach, we can recognise the basis of what psychologists, as well as other practitioners, call “strategic conversations” (nardone & salvini, 2004; ratcliffe, 2002). 22 image 1: the collaborative design framework (meroni et al., 2018). by polarising these two guidance styles, we can create an axis that visualises diverse ways to facilitate and run co-design activities. on one side, there is (designerly) facilitation, which mainly draws and builds on active listening techniques. on the other side there is (designerly) steering, which mainly adopts a thoughtprovoking posture of designers as experts in envisioning the future. the second axis focuses on the abovementioned duality between topicand concept-driven issues. the two created axes generate a framework of four alternative intentions of (designerly) facilitation, which can be used within a comprehensive design process, the collaborative design framework (see image 1). within this theoretical framework, the futurealps process focused on the left side of the axis. the student groups could start by using a first tool, the “strategic scenarios” matrix (image 2), as a coherent representation of possible futures and plausible conditions relevant to strategies to build together. the workshop did not propose pre-established solutions. it was designed in an exploratory way with a set of variables and factors of change (steep: social, technological, environmental, economic, political factors) to select. in practice, the students were asked to identify the most uncertain and most impactful factors relevant to the workshop theme. the steps have been as follows: • analysing the factors of change, • reflecting on those that could have the most significant impact on the dimension of possible uncertainty and • ordering them and placing the two most uncertain and relevant on the axes of the scenarios matrix, in the combination of their plausible extreme 2040 conditions. to make an impact and uncertainty more understandable, those pillars were described as the legs of a coffee table. if the leg of the table is removed and everything collapses, then the impact is high. the uncertainty is instead linked to the probability that one of the legs supporting the table could collapse. so, the least impacting factors are those that, even if failing, the business continues as if nothing had happened. these are not of particular interest to us. on the contrary, we are interested in the ones that 23 would put everything into play if failing. as for uncertainty, it is about understanding what might happen with a focus on the most unlikely events. image 2: an example of the strategic scenarios matrix, by students. each quadrant of the strategic scenarios matrix was briefly described as a future world. then, students were invited to engage with exercises of visioning one of these futures, assuming a specific viewpoint. we assigned a personas profile to each group to help students reflect on the liveability of these “worlds” and wrote about the potential lives of the inhabitants of valtellina 2040. community organiser, mountain guide 4.0, alpine blogger/influencer, sabbatical climber were just a few selections of the 70+ personas we used in the futurealps process. as belonging to students’ different future worlds, these characters became 70+ senders of as many postcards from the future. the results of the six workshops were various and articulated: here we report an extract of the results of the first one (25th september 2020) focusing on tourism. in that event, 93 students participated in the morning session, divided into 14 working groups. in their opinion, the most relevant and impactful uncertainties for local development are summarised in the following table. 24 uncertainty factors 2040 plausible extremes climate increasing damage from climate change limited damage in prepared communities connections and transport the furthest areas are the most isolated all the areas of valtellina are well connected computer skills at the community level spread from the tobacconist to the mayor few can benefit from digital innovation for their own economic activity relations between innovation and tradition synergies conflicts and competition pandemic the next is “managed” and not problematic other waves will surprise us unprepared table 1. sample of uncertainty factors identified by the students. the operators in the community lab, stimulated by the “postcards from the future” have identified some “intermediate goals” necessary to prepare the favourable conditions for the desirable 2040 scenarios, excerpted here: • in 2030, tailor-made training for public administrators is periodically organised to work on longterm strategies; • in 2030, positive outcomes of the 2026 winter olympics remain on the territory, enhancing local identity. this codesign tool could be considered within the topic-driven/steering quadrant. this area of the collaborative design framework is about imagining and considering options beyond the world as it is. the collaboration aims at stimulating participants’ capacity to envision options beyond the usual way of doing things, thus challenging behaviours and conventions. the objective of the material used was to challenge and provoke the participants with unusual viewpoints, mind mapping or other creative practices, helping to steer imagination towards a “wow effect”. functional or fictional role-playing activities help make all participants actively contribute to giving voice to weaker people, stepping into the others’ shoes, representing all viewpoints and leveraging expertise. each postcard, with its brief storytelling, has led to a challenge for 2040. topic by topic, during the six workshops in the community labs, local representatives moved from these challenges to reflect on and develop a collective roadmap. referring, once more, to the collaborative design framework, we underline that the community labs with citizens belong to the quadrant topic-driven/facilitating. this area is about discovering and exploring options. collaboration is aimed at taking into account the needs and experiences of relevant stakeholders and users in order to capture their knowledge and/or engage them in the process (of visioning). materials used in this context could be a series of tools to extract the experience, knowledge, desires and needs of users and stakeholders or to investigate the project and frame its fundamental assumptions. in the futurealps process, a specific radar scheme was the tool we chose for selection and decision making. 25 image 3: overview of the codesign toolkit for participatory foresight. as the final step of each workshop, the evening open talk broadened both community vision and understanding to an alpine framework with expert and academic contributions, thus acknowledging the ongoing process and bringing in social innovation practices from elsewhere. the added value of this final step consisted of both involving the general public as well as sharing participatory results with experts’ views and perspectives. conclusions the experiment is meant to continue with developments in different sectors (local communities and local schools) and geographies, also producing intangible results. these are about learning in terms of reframing the visions for local development and understanding the coming changes, not yet in terms of different decisions. in terms of overall impact, it may be underlined that such a participatory process has been experimental in the area with such a considerable number of students and high schools involved. teachers from the schools involved acknowledged that students really committed themselves, in such a particular and for many of them also complex moment due to the pandemic. it was meaningful to see that many groups of young people from the valley dared to think of a future that adults too often are afraid to envision and towards which they often look more disenchanted than hopeful. intergenerational dialogue represented a tool to be structured more thoroughly after this experimentation, with a call to ensure that what youngsters do not know depends on how adults communicate to effectively intercept them. among the stakeholders, after the six workshops, it was mentioned that a community of intentions was created, with strong conviction that everyone shares the intent to proceed with planning in an open and glocal perspective; with a critical vision of how to design what awaits us by 2040, not linked to habits or “it has always been like that” but trustful and inclusive of everyone's interests. among the facilitating elements within the experimentation of “montagna 4.0 future alps” lie the following: 26 1. the school has shown a formidable resilience in welcoming and actively participating in the process by strengthening the school’s presence in the community, with enthusiasm on the part of the students involved, even in a time of great stress for schools. 2. the dimension of listening and focusing on young people as actors with a vision that interests the community about the future remains fundamental and has received interest to continue shortly to make it more structural in the area. 3. looking at the stakeholders, the backcasting laboratories’ effectiveness is closely related to the extent the actors involved are willing to play the game, thus being open to thinking about future scenarios ten or twenty years from now. this requires openness and willingness to question consolidated paradigms of local economic development and management. we can take co-design as a paradigm of orientation, using its tools to "navigate" in a structured way: promoting ideas and visions on the one hand and enabling synthesis on the other. this endowment facilitates to “go beyond the present” as skills we focus on: the primary capability of forward-thinking communities. their competence of future consciousness is substantiated in five key dimensions: temporal perspective, systemic perception in systems, attitudes behind each action, values and concern for others and openness to alternatives. community-centred design, mixed with a futures studies mindset, therefore nurtured our experience to boost alpine far-sighted communities. community-centred design requires that facilitators develop two areas of competence: the ability to learn about the community and its habitat and the power of creatively collaborating with non-designers. civic engagement also helps to foster stronger relationships and trust across a local system, strengthening a society’s ability to work together to achieve shared goals for the future. we refer to this collaborative design approach as community-centred design (meroni & manzini, 2014), which can prompt or feed the service design mindset (meroni & selloni, 2018) that is increasingly characteristic of today's creative communities (meroni, 2007). additionally, participatory practices allow alpine territories to go beyond rhetorical or generic objectives of liveability and competitiveness and develop futures with a deeper awareness of local assets. the project revealed timely insights with the possible futures to draw specific actions to shape preferable outcomes. as the global pandemics challenged traditional paradigms, any change appeared to be possible, moving beyond centre-periphery in a polycentric approach calling for collective action to open up exciting futures to build. references bodinet, j. c. 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(2013). codesign as a process of joint inquiry and imagination. design issues, 29(2), 29-40. 37 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. action-centred design to find opportunities in times of multiple crises: designing a toolkit from a participatory conference alastair fuad-luke, seçil uğur yavuz, corinna sy, jennifer schubert, kris krois published online: november 2020 to cite this article: fuad-luke, a., yavuz, s.u., a., sy, c., schubert, j., & krois, k. (2020). action-centred design to find opportunities in times of multiple crises: designing a toolkit from a participatory conference. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 1(1), 37-49. 38 action-centred design to find opportunities in times of multiple crises: designing a toolkit from a participatory conference abstract the global crisis around the covid-19 pandemic raises questions about our societal conditions while amplifying the challenges of our existing multiple crises to wider questions of sustainability. such crises, which are both threat and opportunity, have been highlighted for 50 years within the design domain which has re-orientated towards ideas of ecological, social and economic transition and transformation. against this background, a 7-year old conference series, presciently called by design or by disaster, had to convert to an online format during the covid-19 lockdown in italy. applying eco-social and participatory design principles the participants of the conference, beyond crisis, co-created 21 parallel workshops tasked with the aim of each generating three actions on diverse topics reflecting the interests of the participants. live reports and synthesis of the actions generated a broad mapping of the situation to help build a spirit and momentum for social-ecological transformation through design. subsequent analysis of the content of the workshops and actions led to the development of a prototype opensource toolkit, the toolkit for designing actions in times of multiple crisis, that facilitates the creation of action plans with multiple actors. this toolkit for action-centred design has the potential to help diverse actors deal with multiple crises while simultaneously helping reconfigure our societal and human to other-than-human relations by materialising preferable rather than probable or possible futures. keywords: action-centered design, diverse actors, multiple crises, toolkit, transition, social-ecological transformation transition and transformation in times of multiple crises as the (still unfolding) realities of the covid-19 pandemic reveal the fragility of our systems and infrastructures, questions asked of our societal condition over the last 60 years rise to the surface once again but with a new urgency. the pandemic amplifies the challenges as a phenomenon of our multiple crises climate warming, destruction of biodiversity and habitat, the externalised costs of a neo-liberal global economic system and more (multiple crises reference). as the philosopher antonio gramsci sagely observed, crises destabilize socio-economic relations and cultural narratives of hegemonic regimes while simultaneously opening opportunities for the emergence of new symbolic and social possibilities (gramsci, 1971). against the dramatic, generational event of the current pandemic, the need to ask critical questions about how we embark on urgent social-ecological transformation is pressing. here we adopt driessen et al.’s definition of ‘societal transformation’ as ‘alterations to society’s systemic characteristics and encompassed social, cultural, technological, political, economic and legal change’ (driessen et al., 2013, 2 cited in brand, 2016). brand acknowledges that there are many possible definitions of transformation because as a diverse concept it has ‘broad containers and epistemic terrains’ that depend upon implicit or explicit assumptions and on cognitive interests (brand, 2016, p. 4). nonetheless, these observers highlight the huge ontological, epistemological and cultural challenge that transformation represents to human societies. notions of transition to more sustainable ways of living, working and modes of being through design have a long root of advocacy through ecological and social design in the 1970s, promoted by victor papanek, tomas maldonado, ian mcharg and others (papanek, 1974; maldonado, 1972; mcharg, 1969). they believed that designing has to be cognisant of human and ecological needs and be underwritten with new political, economic and design value systems to respond to contingent realities. in the last 20 years, these earlier design theories and practices were linked with the concepts of design for sustainability (dfs) 39 (charter & tischner, 2001; manzini & jegou, 2003), sustainable product services systems (roy, 2000), transformation design (burns et al., 2006), design for social innovation (chick, 2012; hillgren et al., 2011; manzini, 2014), design activism (fuad-luke, 2009; thorpe, 2012), transition design (irwin, 2015; irwin et al., 2015) and other emergent theories and practices. however, there has generally been little engagement from the design disciplines with transition management theory developed by various dutch scholars such as geels, schot, kemp, loorbach and others from the early 2000s onwards and transformation perspectives from other disciplinary fields that try to better understand and map how societies can change themselves. a key theoretical model underlying transition towards more sustainable development is the framework of the multi-level perspective (mlp) identifying the socio-technical landscape, regime and niche innovators. exploring and questioning the role of design, designers and designing in societal transformation is pivotal to teaching and research at the faculty of design and art in the free university of bozen-bolzano, south tyrol, italy. since 2015 it has operated a master in eco-social design and 2018 formed a research cluster entitled “trans-form” (fuad-luke, 2020) focused on ‘exploring design, art and social practices addressing political and eco-social issues’. as a core part of the curriculum activities, the masters students and teachers cocurate an annual conference called by design or by disaster (dod) (2020) a prescient naming given the ongoing circumstances of the covid-19 pandemic. the first dod conference, focusing on the transformative role of eco-social design practices in the transition towards more sustainable ways of living and working, was launched in bolzano in south tyrol in april 2013. since then, except for the year 2014, it has been an annual conference steadily building an audience and a network of hundreds of researchers, designers, artists, ngos, and others from italy, germany, austria and other eu member states. the focus is on the dissemination of new practices, case studies and initiatives complemented by keynote talks, minitalks, open workshops (suggested and facilitated by the participants), performances and other activities aimed at maximising discourse between the participants in a convivial approach and situation. since 2018 dod has partnered with the hier und da festival in the village of mals/malles in the obervinchgau/sopra val venosta, south tyrol, italy. mals/malles is a village renown in south tyrol and internationally as a community who rejected the use of pesticides in the municipality through a referendum and its resistance to the dominant agricultural infrastructures, systems and policies (ackerman-leist, 2017). the community runs the hier und da festival (hier und da, 2020). as a result of the covid-19 lockdown in italy in march dod20, scheduled for april 2020, was postponed to 1-4 october 2020. yet the opportunity was seized in april 2020 to create an online conference, entitled “beyond crisis” to open up questions as to the threats and opportunities presented to transition to more sustainable societies and the role design and designers can play. a participatory approach to creating an online conference in the covid-19 crisis a team from the masters programme, trans-form research cluster and external collaborative partners from other universities and not-for-profit organisations came together to organise beyond crisis a two-day online conference and workshop event. the key questions framing the conference were: • how to use the virus-induced situation to build up momentum for social-ecological transformation? • is the corona crisis an opportunity or threat to social-ecological transformation? a series of other, minor questions also framed the vision of the conference: • how can we establish another leading narrative that encourages positive actions? • what can we do now to nourish positive transformations and prevent the dystopian developments? 40 • what are the strategies, alliances and actions that can be activated for this purpose? • which framings, narrations, images and aesthetics are promising? through the dod blog and its extensive international network, a call was put out for proposals for workshop themes based on the above questions. during just 2 weeks, over 350 participants registered their backgrounds ranging from design practitioners and researchers, heterodox economics (degrowth and feminism alliances), sustainability studies and practices (environmental governance, ecovillages, etc.) to political activism. data was gathered through the online registration form in which the participants were asked to offer a contribution (talk, workshop or theme or topic) and express their expectations about the conference. the organizing team analyzed the data and through several iterative sessions using post-its with affinity clustering on a miro whiteboard, identified topics of interest, fields of knowledge and themes that could be tackled during the conference within a “workshop jam”. over 25 workshop themes were generated by this participatory process through the inputs of the registered participants (figure 1.). some workshops were proposed by facilitators with a specific topic, while some thematic workshop themes emerged based on the analysis of the interests and expertise of the registered participants. figure 1: the 25 workshops proposed by the registrants of the conference, synthesised by part of the conference team. 41 online modes of participation the online format of the conference has its limits due to the restriction of screen-based communication. therefore, the aim of the conference team was to use various interactive tools (such as miro whiteboards with a workshop template, break-out rooms in zoom and online social events such as a social presencing theatre) to enhance the engagement of the participants providing an experience of conviviality, lively collaboration and of “social undistancing” as saskia hebert called it. the conference team tested bigbluebutton and other open-source platforms for hosting the conference. however, due to the time constraints and technical limitations the zoom platform was chosen since it was the tool with the best performance enabling a dialog between so many participants. additionally, a live stream of the main conference inputs via youtube was possible for those participants who did not wish to use zoom due to data privacy issues. the conference was held over two days. on the first day, 9 experts shared their visions and thoughts around the conference topic with online presentations. following these talks, and throughout the conference, short breakout sessions of ten minutes were organized by randomly assigning four people to discuss and reflect on the conference issues. the second day started with some warm-up activities such as yoga and social presencing theatre, which were proposed and conducted by the participants themselves. the main activity was the workshop jam comprising 21 workshops in the programme to which participants subscribed (figure 1). a maximum of 13 participants per workshop ensured groups were small enough to encourage interaction online. all workshops were offered in parallel sessions. two different types of workshops were offered: • seven specific workshop formats were planned, facilitated and moderated by the participants and/or speakers who proposed their formats during the registration process. • eighteen thematic workshops were compiled according to affinity cluster analysis from the online registration forms. these workshops combined open space format, which means that they were facilitated and guided by the group itself, and the pro-action cafe, facilitating the move from questions to actions. this made it possible to offer multiple parallel workshops, as no major infrastructural preparation was required, but a custom-designed whiteboard, a miro template (figure 2), helped facilitate the process. the template offered a short instruction, a set of icons and post-its and was structured in four basic process steps: introduction, discussion, idea development and conclusion leading to three concrete action points. to support this open process, ensure a basic structure and provide visually substantive outcomes, each workshop had a visual note-taker, mainly students experienced in miro but also external volunteers. on the second day at the plenum session of the conference a spokesperson from each group presented a brief narrative of their workshop with the focus on the three action points. this was followed by a synthesis of the action points from all workshops by two of the authors (see figures 3 and 4, below). 42 figure 2: the miro template used by all the workshop groups. to provide an interactive feedback system for the participants at the end of the conference, another online tool, mentimeter (2020), was used. participants were asked open-ended questions (for example: “what are the inspirations, outcomes, learnings you gathered in the conference?” and “what is next? what actions will you take?”). the results were simultaneously shown to all participants through sharing on-screen. the record of the feedback gathered with mentimeter gave rise to the possibility to analyse expectations, insights and the actions of and by the participants while revealing their sentiments about the experience. a collective impression of co-presence in digital space emerged as the mind maps grew in real-time. real time analysis and synthesis of workshop outputs for the conference audience after the workshops finished in the morning session of the second day, two of the authors cut and pasted the three specific actions from each workshop into a text document then undertook a pre-coding of the actions to draw out critical key words, following coding methods developed by saldaña (2013). as this iterative process unfolded one author sketched the concepts and words generated by the key words (figure 3). the visual map shows the main concepts and the interrelations between them starting from the centre which represents the individual at a micro level and expands to actions that can be done collectively at a macro level. as seen in the illustration, most keywords range between two different states, for instance: micro-macro, individual-collaborative, digital-analogue, possible-impossible, secure-insecure, showing the fact that the crisis triggers a flexible, versatile, plastic thinking to cope with uncertainty and instability. moreover, this visual and word mapping embraces keywords connected to ideas and solutions that are open and accessible, emphasizing the need for shared knowledge to overcome the obstacles in the times of crisis. 43 figure 3: a visual and textual summary of key actions mentioned by the workshop groups. another author tried to ascertain where the actions were intended to take place systemically by assigning them to the micro, macro or meso level in a multi-level perspective framework (geels & schot, 2007) used by transition management theorists or by assigning them to categories of actions that could apply across all the levels (figure 4). there was a perceived need across many of the workshops to do system infra-(re)structuring by “keeping the good and changing the bad” through supporting essential systems and building regenerative systems together, that is, by “co-creating difference”. at the macro level this requires “new politics”; at the meso level, “new rights”; and at the micro-level, “new stories, new lives”. this requires a (significant?) shift in attitudes and habits of individuals, groups and institutions which were better exemplified in five intertwined categories: • new values • new languages, bodying (embodied experiences) and imaginaries • new responsibilities and civic approaches • new upward pressures (from the lower levels) • new dispersed tools and skills … suggesting radical shifts in how we perceive and act in and on our world(s), with whom and for whose benefit. this ontological shift was best described as acquiring new languages and bodying (expressing this through embodied feelings and actions) and imaginaries through: “bursting the bubbles, generating hope through action and exciting narratives, doing quantitative easing (euphemism for government central banks to print money or create bonds that inject liquidity into economies) for the people not the corporates, and by challenging politics by civic actions.” 44 figure 4: workshop actions summarised across a multi-level perspective (mlp) diagram. there was a sense from the conference participants that the participation, discourse and synthesis of outputs built a shared awareness of the threats and opportunities for transition during the covid-19 circumstances. also, it was clear that experiencing the conference seemed to empower people emotionally and interpersonally. post-conference outputs: the toolkit for designing actions in times of multiple crises the mentimeter results for the question “what is next?” was answered by 50 participants. the results range from personal actions to collective ones. most of the answers were emphasizing the importance of alliances and multidisciplinary perspectives for imagining and building more sustainable futures. some reported that they would continue working on the ideas developed during the workshop jam in the future, expanding their group to take actions in their localities, such as community building, taking political actions, searching for funding, etc. two of the groups of workshop participants actuated and formally organised active groups to generate specific initiatives the strategic alliances group and diverse economies resource fund. after the conference two of the authors revisited the original action outputs of the 21 conference workshops and the keyword coding exercise used to give the conference participants an initial synthesis of the actions within the transition management framing of the multi-level perspective model. an extended keyword list was generated by going through the word document of the original actions a second time. keywords were allocated to emergent categories in a new coding exercise. keywords were then checked against the final category list and either left in the original category or placed in one of the new categories, which were as follows: issue/topic/theme; concept; attitude; facilitation tools; actors; and actions. these categories were used to develop a set of cards and a process the toolkit for designing actions in times of multiple crises (figure 5) that can be used to develop an action plan by/for a group of actors for a particular issue/topic/theme and/or concept. 45 figure 5: an overview of the toolkit for designing actions in times of multiple crises illustrating the cards, maps and action plan. the toolkit provides a stimulating and flexible process for a group of people to co-generate an action plan for a particular context aimed at interventions to facilitate the transition to more sustainable projects and practices. there are three main steps to follow with the toolkit: step 01 orient yourselves! 1. begin the discussion ideally with 4-8 people. 2. define your context together. 3. choose or randomly select three cards, one each from the categories: issue/topic/theme, concept and attitude. you can also use the free cards to write your issues, concepts and/or attitudes. 4. based on the context and the three cards, define your idea(s) and objective(s). step 02 co-map the actors! 1. continue the discussion ideally with 4-8 people. 2. exploring the context you choose in step 1, identify the actors in the multi-level perspective (mlp) “landscape”. actors can be individuals, collective (groups, communities, not-for-profits etc.) or institutions but also non-human or other-than-human actors. 3. now select actors that can best help deliver your idea(s) and objective(s) to create your action plan. step 03 co-create your action plan! 46 1. place the completed actor cards one above the other on a table. 2. now choose the facilitation tools you would like the actors to use and place them alongside the relevant actors. 3. finally, for each actor, think of the actions they need to take to realize and concretize your idea(s) and objective(s). write action cards for the actors. 4. place the action cards alongside each actor in the time sequence they need to do them i.e. one action might be required before another action. 5. when all the action cards are in place with the actor cards and facilitation tools you have cocreated your action plan (figure 6). figure 6: completing the actor and action cards generates the action plan. playing with the toolkit cards facilitates deep discourse around the issue/topic/theme or a concept, or both and shows how different attitudes can dramatically affect the dialogue and outcomes for the chosen context. blank cards also offer the opportunity for participants to write down their own issues, topics, themes, concepts or attitudes and to invent new facilitation tools. new card proposals for the blank cards will grow and enrich the toolkit by each contribution. brainstorming the potential actors, their needs and objectives also helps build a more systemic awareness of who can contribute to creating new actions that can change or improve a situation or context. reflections and next steps the wide range of participants attending the conference and trans-/interdisciplinary participatory and dialogic design processes helped people from diverse knowledge domains turn workshop discussions into action plans for the contexts where they wanted to encourage ecological and social transformation. the diversity of actions suggested was notable for embracing and integrating actions at the macro, meso and micro levels of a multi-level perspective showing a more effective “bigger picture” of areas for change in 47 the socio-technical landscape, socio-technical regime and how a diversity of actions at the niche level could couple with actions at the higher levels. adopting a multi-level perspective analysis helps people to get out of their own knowledge and action bubbles and to see the bigger systemic challenges. this can reveal opportunities for seeing and building unusual (strategic) alliances to challenge or disturb existing socioeconomic and political systems. the design processes deployed during the online conference including the co-designing of the 25 workshop themes, the participatory design templates and working in small groups helped frame and deal with different aspects of the covid-19 situation and revealed the connections between the multiple crises. moreover, most of the participants tended to see the covid-19 crisis as an opportunity, although they did recognize threats from the existing socio-technical regime. as the conference was framed around “designing actions” and inviting the participants to come up with action plans, the results of the workshop jam were showing a range of characteristics of how to design, plan and take actions in the multiple crises. therefore, the conference not only gave rise to many real actions that were taken afterwards by the groups of participants but also to a toolkit that emerged from the valuable insights and ideas generated by the workshop participants. this toolkit represents the participatory nature of the conference, as its content was based on the participants’ action plans. whether to be a pandemic or other type of crisis, we urge to come up with not only new ideas centred with a human perspective but to take well-designed actions that are in the center of a network of multiple actors including, in latour’s framing of human and other-than-human actors in actor-network theory (ant) (latour, 2005). this will help drive the transition towards preferred rather than probable, possible or wild card futures (hancock & bezold, 1994). although the focus in the conference was towards human, cultural and social factors, our contingent realities involve biological, ecological and microbial factors so we should also consider an ontological shift towards “natureculture” and multispecies co-existence in symbiosis (haraway, 2003, 2016). in this sense, we also need an ontological shift in design(-ing) towards actioncentred design where the contributions of human and other-than-human actors co-regenerate our damaged (eco-)systems through social and material infrastructuring (star & ruhleder, 1996). actioncentered design does not seek to put any actors whether to be human or non-human in the center, but to focus on actions that interrelate actors humans and other-than humans. the prototype toolkit for design actions in times of multiple crises can catalyse fresh thoughts, perceptions, actions and new modes of production that can potentially change the “distribution of the sensible” (ranciere, 2013 [2000]) and hence challenge the existing socio-technical regimes that exacerbate our multiple crises. the emergence of the toolkit from the conference activities can nourish positive transformations by helping people think about novel strategies, alliances and actions by bringing together different kinds of actors. in doing so actions are generated which create their new narratives challenging existing uncontested narratives towards further dystopian developments. the toolkit, available for download from the dod blog (by design by disaster, 2020) was further tested at the hier un da festival in october 2020 to generate more positive narratives for social-ecological transformation. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank all the students, teachers in the free university of bozen-bolzano and diverse contributors, speakers and workshop facilitators outside the university who made the beyond crisis conference a success during the covid-19 lockdown. full acknowledgements are detailed here, https://designdisaster.unibz.it/conference-beyond-corona-and-capitalism-17-18-april-2020/. the toolkit for designing actions in times of multiple crises is open-source and available online on the https://designdisaster.unibz.it/the-toolkit-for-designing-actions-in-times-of-multiple-crises/ https://designdisaster.unibz.it/conference-beyond-corona-and-capitalism-17-18-april-2020/ 48 references ackerman-leist, p. 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(2012). architecture & design versus consumerism. how design activism confronts growth. london and new york: routledge. https://www.mentimeter.com/  how to use the virus-induced situation to build up momentum for social-ecological transformation?  is the corona crisis an opportunity or threat to social-ecological transformation? 22 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. the pedagogy of discomfort: transformational experiential learning lisa elzey mercer, deana mcdonagh published online: october 2021 to cite this article: mercer, l., & mcdonagh, d. (2021). the pedagogy of discomfort: transformational experiential learning. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(2), 22-35. 23 the pedagogy of discomfort: transformational experiential learning lisa elzey mercera, deana mcdonaghb auniversity of illinois, urbana-champaign, illinois, united states. lemercer@illinois.edu buniversity of illinois, urbana-champaign, illinois, united states. mcdonagh@illinois.edu abstract education is intended to be a transformative experience for the student. in the practice of transformative pedagogy, instructors provide students with the time and space to explore their own sets of beliefs, values and standards and how they incorporate those beliefs into their work, subconsciously and consciously. at times, transformative pedagogy can be uncomfortable. however, the value of discomfort in the pedagogical process of a design course is the ability to acknowledge a knowledge gap between one’s social experiences and the experiences of other social identities. this paper focuses on the value of transformative pedagogy in working through discomfort when learning about limit situations, developing a foundation for transformative pedagogy in a course setting, the importance of critical thinking in transformative pedagogy and how transformative pedagogy is presented with a focus on ethics, disability and responsible design. by embedding ethics, critical consciousness and strategic thinking, the process translates into a transformative practice of design and innovation. students learn new emerging ways of affecting change with a multiplicity of ideas when educators engage in transformative pedagogy. it is also to ascertain what kind of learning enables people to create solutions for communities involved in a continuously ongoing process of defining sustainable development. keywords: design pedagogy, empathy, experience design, transformational pedagogy, transformational practice, social impact introduction it is human nature to resist and avoid pain, while we reluctantly accept that growth comes from discomfort (e.g. social, economical and political). empathic understanding can develop through this growth and can lead to more impactful problem-solving, more relevant design outcomes, more intuitive forms of communication and the co-creation of knowledge that has transformative power. to develop thought leaders for our tomorrow, we need to reimagine how we teach them today. education is intended to be transformative for students and provide them with the space to develop critical thinking and produce innovative work and research. transformative pedagogy is a term that describes an educational experience or set of experiences that allow the student to gain a deeper understanding of social experiences and be transformed in their thinking to further understand the complexities of their social experiences. in the practice of transformative pedagogy, instructors provide students with the time and space to explore their own sets of beliefs, values and standards and how they incorporate those beliefs into their work, subconsciously and consciously. when design educators create an intentional space, either physical or conceptual, for students to discuss social experiences, students are more equipped to objectively begin to analyse and create an understanding of their own lived social experiences. this ability allows them to identify a knowledge gap between their own lived social experiences and other individuals’ experiences. while this process might be uncomfortable, it teaches them the epistemic practice of identifying their lived experiences and learning about another person’s lived experience. in addition, it supplies them with the necessary tools, insights and awareness to create a transformative practice of developing innovative designs (fricker, 2010). mailto:mcdonagh@illinois.edu 24 the challenge is not only to identify transformative learning that assists people to respond and adapt to modern conundrums. it is also to ascertain what kind of learning enables people to create solutions for communities involved in a continuously ongoing process of defining sustainable development. the relevant question is not only what makes up transformative learning but also what stimulates individuals and communities to take part actively in collective growth processes leading to an as yet barely discernible sustainable future (thoresen, 2017). this paper focuses on the value of transformative pedagogy in working through discomfort when learning about limit situations (freire, 1972), developing a foundation for transformative pedagogy in a course setting, the importance of critical thinking in transformative pedagogy and how transformative pedagogy is presented when the focus is on ethics, disability and responsible design. by embedding ethics, critical consciousness and strategic thinking, the process translates into a transformative practice of design and innovation. students learn new ways of affecting change with a multiplicity of ideas when educators engage in transformative pedagogy. developing the roots for transformative pedagogy in design the value of developing roots for transformative pedagogy in design is the development of space for students to focus on a specific social experience, also described as a limit situation. a limit situation is a social experience that prevents someone from living freely (freire, 1972). an individual who gains a critical consciousness of their own lived experiences can understand how their social identities intersect with their culture and how those identities can determine their lived experiences (freire, 1972; pinto, 1960). transformative pedagogy is intended to prevent the over-generalization of social experience through discussion and requires participants to develop a genuine and critical understanding of a social experience. one way of developing such an understanding is through the acknowledgement of social identities that are social constructs in our culture, i.e. race, gender and ability (crenshaw, 1989) and the way these social constructs turn into prejudices and biases that become ingrained in our everyday lives (ben-ari & strier, 2010; nadan & stark, 2017). designers can apply the iterative design research process to develop a design for a specific social experience and provide a transformative pedagogical experience. the steps include the following: 1) the development of the context of the social experience or limit experience being focused on, 2) the application of research—qualitative or quantitative, 3) the development of ideas based on learned factors, 4) the prototyping of those ideas and 5) the testing of those ideas. when implementing this process in a course where transformative pedagogy centres a social experience as the primary determinant of learning, students are prompted to engage in activities in which they must think through the perpetuation of limitations or oppression prevalent in design. gale and molla (2016) emphasize “[…] the importance of invoking pedagogic actions directed at creating an environment for learners to share cherished beliefs and assumptions without fear of ridicule or condemnation” (p. 253). when engaging in pedagogical activities, students can critically assess their values, beliefs and assumptions in a way that does not simply lead them to the ‘correct’ answer. instead, this form of learning highlights the diversity of design deliverables and innovation resulting from learning about social experiences different from our own and interacting with material that provides a safe learning environment. in addition, deeper understanding and empathy of others tends to reveal that many questions do not necessarily have ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers. theorists focused on transformative pedagogy see immense value in developing activities that provide students with the opportunity to understand another individual’s lived experience. 25 the experiences should not exist in isolation, but the process should involve prompts or interventions that generate critical thought in the student that requires an assessment of who they are, their values and their beliefs (nolan & molla, 2018). through the focus of transformative pedagogy, we provide emerging designers (design students) with the time and space to be innovative when designing for complex social issues. learning about the person we are designing for is not a unique or new concept in design but is a foundation for many designers. as koppen and meinel (2012) wrote, “understanding the perspective and social context of the user is one of the most important parts of design and design education” (p. 35). transformative pedagogy can encourage a designer to consider human experiences we might not otherwise think of or even have the words to discuss. our collective forms of understanding are rendered structurally prejudicial in respect of content and/or style: the social experiences of members of hermeneutically marginalized groups are left inadequately conceptualized and so ill-understood, perhaps even by the subjects themselves; and/or attempts at communication made by such groups, where they do have an adequate grip on the content of what they aim to convey, are not heard as rational owing to their expressive style being inadequately understood (fricker, 2010, p. 6). by removing the ‘distance’ between ourselves and the experiences of others, we begin to understand knowledge from a more intimate and personal perspective. for the student, this educational experience tends to be memorable in comparison to more abstract constructs. for design students, the notion of designing for your future self (e.g. ageing and disability) or your wider community (e.g. gender and ethnicity) is critical to meaningful and impactful design solutions. when we try to understand and contextualize a social experience outside of our own experience, we require tools that provide us with the means to be critically conscious of what is outside our known ways of understanding. mcdonagh-philp and denton (2000, p. 111) used the term “empathic horizon” to describe “the boundaries to a designer’s knowledge and understanding” (mcdonagh & thomas, 2010, p. 180). they added that understanding is itself progress toward the development of relevant outcomes. this way of understanding could occur through words that offer a person agency by supplying a term that matches a social experience or tools that physically and mentally contextualize a limit situation. while these terms or tools might lead to some discomfort for students, educators must create meaningful space for ethics and criticality to be discussed within a course—space allowing exploration or a period of discovery. transformative pedagogy takes a critical approach to pedagogy from the perspective of both the educator and the student, and it requires both to leave their comfort zone and engage in “critical investigation of the self” (zembylas & mcglynn, 2012, p. 1). the feelings of discomfort in these situations are important to acknowledge and are what ultimately allow a student to identify their knowledge gap and then encourage them to determine their individualized positions of accountability regarding different forms of ‘-isms’, i.e. racism, ableism and sexism (nadan & stark, 2017). discomfort in the pedagogical process at times, transformative pedagogy can be uncomfortable; however, when one or more social experiences are the primary learning objective in a classroom, educators can centre the activities to prompt critical reflection and self-actualization. this provides students with the opportunity to learn how their social identities differ from those around them. this type of pedagogical experience in a design course allows students to approach a design challenge from a more empathic and contextualized space of understanding. “this critical analysis provides a space to create a context of understanding, a different way of knowing, to become change agents. this is evident in classes where students are presented with transformative pedagogy and transformative practices that prompt 26 critical thought and interventions for disrupting the status quo […] to transform students’ experiences of discomfort into generative learning tools, a process which requires time, energy and emotional investment.” (do mar pereira, 2012, p. 133) yale professor and social activist, bell hooks, shared a student’s experience walking into her classroom: “we take your class. we learn to look at the world from a critical standpoint, one that considers race, sex, and class. and we can’t enjoy life anymore” (hooks, 1998, p. 42). after she heard this, her students continued to talk with her about the pain or discomfort a person can have when learning their way of knowing. other instructors have written of a similar experience of an “uncomfortable classroom” (do mar pereira, 2012), which describes didactic discomfort, i.e. intellectual and/or emotional discomfort felt by students, which is triggered directly or indirectly by the material covered and/or methods deployed in a course and is perceived by teachers (and often also by the students themselves) as an experience that can enable or generate learning. this discomfort is an acknowledgement by an individual who is starting to develop a critical lens for the social experiences of people who have different social identities. it is the act of knowing that there is a limit to one’s knowledge when it comes to other people’s social experiences. the acknowledgement of not knowing is a form of epistemic injustice and can be unforgettable for people who have come to this realization. as educators, we need to help students question how they tell their own stories, how they engage with a community with those around them and whether they are willing to acknowledge what they do not know. nadan and stark (2017) added, “the development of critical reflectivity among students is also related to their exploration of their own identities and (largely privileged) social positions and how these shape their assumptions, attitudes and images about the ‘other’” (p. 686). the impact of criticality on transformative pedagogy a person’s ability to critically understand their own social identities allows them to reflect on their own social experiences more critically. transformative pedagogy teaches students critical thinking and critical consciousness and provides them with a lens for seeing the diversity of opportunities and ways of doing rather than focusing on a social monoculture. nadan and stark (2017) emphasize the importance of this process by highlighting schön’s (1983) conceptualization of a ‘reflective practitioner’ as one who creates new meanings through observing and analysing case experiences, either during the experience (reflection in action) or in retrospect (reflection on action)” (schön, as cited in nadan and stark, 2017, p. 686). through the conceptualization of an experience, emerging designers can develop a process in which they begin to develop an understanding of a specific social experience through listening, critical thinking, analysing and intentionally breaking down barriers in their assumptions. “having the ability to reflect critically on one’s practice brings to light contradictions and inconsistencies relating to beliefs, understandings, and practices, and enables teachers to be adaptive professionals.” (nolan & molla, 2018, p. 722) transformative pedagogy allows students to develop a critical consciousness and an individualized design practice with a foundation of ethics that become embedded into their work. this style of teaching and learning ultimately translates into a transformative practice in which innovation can flourish. siegel and dray (2019) wrote, “when companies allow a deep emotional understanding of people’s needs to inspire them—and transform their work, their teams, and even their organization at large—they unlock the creative capacity for innovation.” in the following sections, we present two courses focused on how students learn new ways of affecting change about ethics and a responsible process for developing design 27 solutions and how their designs can affect change for people who have experiences outside of their own. the first course highlights ethics and responsible design, utilizing the framework of racism untaught (racism untaught, n.d.). the second course highlights disability and the role design can play in enhancing quality of life through more relevant products, environments and experiences, by employing empathic design research methodology. ethics and responsibility + design the racism untaught course is a 16-week course focused on critically analysing artefacts, systems and experiences that perpetuate racism and the oppression of historically underinvested communities (racism untaught, n.d.). since the development of the framework in 2018, this course has been taught four times at the university of illinois. the students are guided through the design research process and prompted with design-led interventions that provide them with a way to analyse and reimagine racialized design challenges and critically assess anti-racist design approaches (mercer & moses, 2019). students learn how “ever-escalating pressures toward simplification and speed have generated innovation in the types of deliverables that researchers produce in their effort to condense information and make it digestible to others” (siegel & dray, 2019, p. 82). this course aims to guide students through identifying forms of racialized design, a design that perpetuates elements of racism. the learning outcomes in this course include critically analysing artefacts, systems and experiences that perpetuate racism and the oppression of historically underinvested communities, prompting students to select qualitative and/or quantitative methods to assess individual and shared experiences of racism. the instructor works with the students to examine systemic forms of institutional racism that are essentially invisible and how we and our culture perpetuate them. this course uses the iterative design research process to cultivate learning environments for students to further explore issues of race and racism. students utilize design research methods and processes to solve systemic problems and inspire further work in the public sector or a passion for public service. before the students start using the racism untaught toolkit, they go through an onboarding process in the first two weeks in which they unpack the concept of racism and the role racism plays in their lives. they begin the process by navigating their own story, background, cultural identity and upbringing to help shed light on their cultural biases and how they came to acquire them. the students then participate in the following activities: writing a poem critically assessing where cultural bias is present in their upbringing; creating a social identity profile in which they share five social groups they belong to and the roles they hold in each group; carrying out personality assessments; and developing a community agreement for the semester to use during more difficult conversations. at the beginning of the course, it is verbally acknowledged that everyone is learning new concepts and language, and students are asked to be open to change and flexible when new knowledge is gained. marta elena esquilin from bryant university and mike funk from new york university wrote on the importance of community building and the value of engagement agreements. they provided over 20 guidelines for a meeting or classroom environment (esquilin & funk, 2019) to create an intentional space for conversations focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. through a course, they work together on the development of a community agreement that includes prompts such as the following: 1) listen actively, 2) speak from your own lived experience using “i” statements, 3) seek to repair harm when you mess up and 4) step in, step back; that is, if one person is often speaking within a space, they should step back to allow others who are quieter to speak up. 28 students are divided into groups based on what the instructor has learned from the onboarding activities in weeks two and three. the students are prompted with a racialized design and begin using the racism untaught framework, starting with the first step, context. this step has over 60 cards, which include definitions and terms that focus on elements of racism, sexism and ableism. students use the terms in this deck to create the context for the racialized design they have been prompted with (figure 1). the conversations often teach students unfamiliar words and prompt discussion on how forms of oppression are perpetuated and supported in the world around us. the terms also provide a specific understanding of the prompt, which prevents oversimplification and overgeneralization in conversations on race and racism. participants often speak of the ownership of agency they earn when learning a new element of racism that applies to a racialized design they have interacted with themselves or have witnessed the interaction (siegel & dray, 2019). the students are asked to identify why each element of oppression (racism, sexism or ableism) are relevant to the identifier and which elements are not. this first step allows participants to understand how to break down one instance of racism into the various ways it is present. to exemplify different elements of racism in design, the course focuses on three identifiers: artefacts, systems and experiences. these three areas include comprehensive examples of racialized design, which designers can positively affect in our society. figure 1: the first phase in step one of the racism untaught framework. 29 figure 2: the second phase in step one of the racism untaught framework. the first step also includes a diagram outlining what are called the levels of oppression. this allows further contextualization of the instance of oppression on four distinct levels: 1) beliefs—personal beliefs, ideas and feelings that perpetuate oppression, 2) agentic action—when oppressive beliefs translate into oppressive behaviour, 3) institutional—structural oppression that results from agentic oppressive behaviour and 4) cultural—norms, values, beliefs and trusted systems of acquiring truth that preserve, protect and maintain oppression (figure 2). “a vague, general sense of knowing the user is not empathy. as gregory bateson said, information is a difference that makes a difference. because designers are trying to 30 make a difference in users’ experiences, we need to be able to explain nuances of difference across those experiences.” (siegel & dray, 2019, p. 83) the next five weeks are focused on the second step, define. this step has about 50 cards, including qualitative and quantitative methods and theories to define how the participant might approach the design challenge. in this step, students must create a thesis question to help focus on their design challenge. the instructor provides students with this guiding question: “how might design be used to [action] in order to [create change] with [stakeholders]?” students garner factors from their research to move forward to the next step, ideation. the next step is called ideate and is completed in one week. this step includes over 100 cards. during this step, students begin to determine what they will create—an artefact(s), a system(s) and an experience(s)— and which will help dismantle the form of racialized design. students determine how they can affect change and how they can be part of the solution. this step includes a quadrant map to help evaluate the value of each idea. on the x-axis, students consider the intent of the idea in comparison to the impact, and on the yaxis, students consider how far the idea might shift stakeholders from systemically oppressive thought(s) to anti-oppressive action(s). students plot their most robust ideas and discuss whether their idea only has good intentions or if it will have an impact and focus on anti-oppressive actions against oppressive thought. this quadrant map is often revisited in the prototype stage to help students ensure they continue to work toward impact and an anti-oppressive final deliverable. the fourth step, prototype, is worked on for five weeks. this step has approximately 30 cards and walks students through a low-, midand high-fidelity prototyping process. the low-fidelity prototype is nonfunctioning and is initially presented to communicate an idea. a mid-fidelity prototype is limited in functionality, and a high-fidelity prototype requires minimal modifications for the final deliverable. in this step, students work iteratively through the framework to further contextualize or apply research methods to help them understand how the idea they are creating impacts communities. the last step is called impact and is focused on for one week. this step has approximately 20 cards. this step helps students understand their impact on their work because of the iterative framework and design interventions. this process is iterative and the time frames are meant to support the students moving to different steps to ensure they are conducting research and learning from the people who would engage with their designs. disability + design “if a designer chooses a scientific approach, the whole design process will have strong similarities to a research process. this will limit or eliminate not only what is considered to be the preconditions of the design, but also what is possible, what is needed, what is desired, and what the eventual outcome will be. it will no longer be a design process.” (nelson & stolterman, 2012, p. 33) traditional scientific research tends not to impact the researcher on such a personal level. research outcomes are specifically based on unbiased researchers. when focusing your efforts on creating a bridge between lived experience and theory, researchers need to be more empathic and lean into the experiences of others. seeking whole knowledge is a balance of what is true (scientifically provable) and what is real (a person’s experience) and directs the designer to develop a deeper felt sense for and understanding of others (mcdonagh, 2015, p. 422). the disability + design course (established 2008) is based on empathic design research and aims to bring together design students, non-design students and students (from any discipline) with disabilities. it brings 31 the students together as equals by elevating the value of the diverse range of lived experiences beyond the typical person. the students are encouraged to embrace the development of the new norm, those living with a different lived experience. by expanding the students’ empathic horizons through experiencing discomfort, vulnerability and frustration with activities of daily living (e.g. eating, walking and grooming) (woodcock et al., 2017), they develop a deeper understanding of other people through their own experience. this bridges the gap between themselves and others. challenges become more relatable (hansen & philo, 2007). another person’s experience becomes relevant to them. two student activities are shared that highlight 1) the levelling of the classroom and 2) the physical and almost immediate impact of analogue empathic tools in simulating physical challenges. levelling of the classroom for many courses, the student cohort’s profile and ability level tend to be similar. for this course, a diverse range of abilities and design awareness constitute the student group. therefore, a need arises beyond the typical ice-breaking activities. one of the initial activities that resonates with students regardless of their abilities is the self-portrait. students are required to draw themselves (maximum 5 minutes per task) using (i) their feet, (ii) their less dominant hand and finally (iii) their dominant hand. for those students with limited physical mobility, they can also hold the mark maker (e.g. pen, pencil) in alternative ways (e.g. in their mouth). after overcoming the initial shock of the task, which takes away all the perceived drawing ability of the design students and leaves all the students reimagining how they utilize their bodies for this task, students begin to ‘let go’ of realistic two-dimensional outcomes. the outcomes are truly remarkable. non-design students who were told that they did not have drawing skills can draw. design students who have progressed their academic careers based on their drawing skills have to reassess their notion of the portrait, particularly with the non-perfect portraits they have created. overall, the activity brings the cohort together more as equals struggling individually with this task. ultimately, students tend to delight in their unexpected ‘foot’ and ‘less dominant hand’ portraits, which often capture the essence of the person more organically than their more typical ‘dominant hand’ portrait (figure 3). figure 3: range of foot portraits (from design and non-design students). empathic tools we acknowledge that the only way to experience it is to experience it. however, empathic tools and approaches offer the able-bodied, young and healthy student the opportunity to physically experience challenges with activities of daily living. these tools range from low technology (e.g. tape up an elbow or knee joint with tape to restrict mobility) that is low cost and utilizes commonly found materials within the home and/or classroom to high technology (e.g. oculus end-of-life experience software). low-technology 32 tools can be made by individual students at home and do not require significant cost beyond materials and time to construct them. higher technology, such as the gerontology (gert) suit, provides a holistic system that can be applied to an individual so that they are experiencing several physical augmentations simultaneously but represents a greater expense (us$4500). the body can accommodate and efficiently adjust to one augmentation (e.g. reduced hearing or reduced vision), but when multiple ones are combined a more immersive experience is achieved (figure 4). experiencing the familiar material landscape through the perspective of limited vision, hearing, mobility and strength can result in an almost instant emotional response within the student. activities such as the foot portrait and tools such as the gert suit challenge the student’s mindset as they relate to others. reducing this psychological gap between themselves and the ‘other’ (e.g. elders or people with disabilities) supports more empathic design outcomes. through personal challenges (discomfort), understanding and humility develop within and beyond the classroom. introducing this way of knowing the range of experiences develops a more empathic mindset. designing for others becomes more aligned with designing for our future selves. it becomes personal and more relevant. figure 4: empathic tools (gert gerontology suit) simulating range of physical impairments. copd: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. 33 the value of such experiential learning activities is in the opportunities for learners to go beyond assumptions (felt sense) to more tangible ways of understanding (felt experience). care needs to be taken, as many students have not experienced physical vulnerability (diminished vision, hearing or mobility), and conducting these activities within a safe environment (e.g. a classroom) and avoiding potentially harmful (activities of daily living) activities (e.g. making hot beverages) needs to be thought out. these activities are time-consuming and require planning and resources. however, overall, the benefits are significant to the individual, especially if they reflect upon their experience. when communicating through speaking out loud to others, they will generate and acknowledge the meaning they create and why it is of value to them personally and ultimately professionally as designers going forward. conclusion the development of activities for students that prompt critical thought and potential discomfort capture a person’s understanding of a limit situation. other ways of doing this are through a visual map, such as an empathy map or journey map, that students use to gauge what they have learned through the learning process. it enables them to reflect on the points of discomfort and acknowledge what they have learned. these activities allow students to reflect on the work they conducted over the semester, reflection being "the process of critically assessing the content, process or premise(s) of our efforts to interpret and give meaning to an experience” (mezirow, 1991, p. 104). reflection is vital because, as siegel and dray observe, “the pressure to develop design sprints for students to work through does not allow them to develop thoughtful final deliverables where they can conduct secondary and primary research to developing innovative solutions” (p. 82). learning is a social interaction that takes place through a combination of different processes in the body (genetic, physical and biological) and mind (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, beliefs and senses). an experience is therefore interpreted cognitively, emotively, or practices and integrated into a person’s biography, resulting in greater self-awareness (jarvis, 2009). references ben-ari, a., & strier, r. 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(2012). discomforting pedagogies: emotional tensions, ethical dilemmas and transformative possibilities. british educational research journal, 38(1), 41–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411926.2010.523779 introduction levelling of the classroom empathic tools the value of such experiential learning activities is in the opportunities for learners to go beyond assumptions (felt sense) to more tangible ways of understanding (felt experience). care needs to be taken, as many students have not experienced physi... 95 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. involving or not the beneficiaries as role players in social initiative games: analysis of case studies pedro sancho, rute gomes, cláudia pernencar published online: october 2021 to cite this article: sancho, p., gomes, r., & pernencar, c. (2021). involving or not the beneficiaries as role players in social initiative games, analysis of case studies. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(2), 95-122. 96 involving or not the beneficiaries as role players in social initiative games: analysis of case studies pedro sanchoa, rute gomesb, cláudia pernencar c, d aiade, faculty of design, technology and communication, european university, 1200-649, lisbon, portugal. psanchoferreira@gmail.com bciaud, lisbon school of architecture, lisbon university, 1349-063, lisbon, portugal. rutegomes@fa.ulisboa.pt cicnova, nova institute of communication, faculty of human and social sciences, nova university of lisbon, 1069-061, lisbon, portugal. claudiapernencar@fcsh.unl.pt dlida, research laboratory of design and arts, school of fine arts and design, polytechnic of leiria, 2500-321 caldas da rainha, portugal. abstract social inequalities are increasing the initiatives in which the provident state is requested to find solutions and tools to improve the social impact. in this perspective, the management and entrepreneurship fields assume a huge relevance in social innovation and social entrepreneurship. manzini suggests (2015) that a more efficient model for fighting social inequalities within a vulnerable community is to involve the beneficiaries in the process when solving social problems through project development. with the focus on manzini’s (2015) proposal and having in mind the beneficiaries’ involvement in this kind of initiative, a question emerged: what is the role of the beneficiaries’ involvement as a critical success factor in the development of social innovation projects? a literature review was undertaken and guided the action of a case studies analysis matrix following these parameters: 1) business model; 2) public funding dependency; 3) beneficiaries’ involvement levels and 4) business sustainability/longevity. seven social entrepreneurship projects were analysed. the results and the discussion conclude that a correlation between longevity and the beneficiaries’ involvement exists. when people are suffering from a lack of basic needs, their involvement in a project is affected. in such cases, the project’s success is at risk. this being so, the design of social impact projects should consider the beneficiaries’ involvement to positively influence their longevity. however, for this to happen, beneficiaries’ basic needs should be assured. keywords: beneficiaries’ involvement, design for social change, social entrepreneurship, social inequalities, sustainable development introduction social impact projects have been growing, according to bahmani et al. (2012). this increase is due to the ineffectiveness of social policies based on welfare models. these practices are focused on fighting social inequalities that are overcharging the national providence resources (netto, 2013). as a social service mechanism, it involves donating goods or services directly to the beneficiaries without any level of involvement or commitment by them. welfare practices do not solve the existing root of the problem but rather the consequences. in this way, public and private project development agents keep being overwhelmed with problems that are not solved effectively. 97 in this context, management and social entrepreneurship began to have a huge relevance through the application of specific tools that provide efficiency and innovation, fight poverty and hunger and improve the health system, housing and education. this article aims to understand how the beneficiaries’ involvement directly affects the social impact of a project’s success. as suggested by authors such as manzini (2015), beneficiaries suffering from social inequalities may play a very important role in the development of a social impact solution through their involvement. this context can be measured using different levels of involvement as proposed by manzini (2015, p. 107). each level implies distinct project management approaches and beneficiary behaviour. the study that will be presented in this article intends to answer the following research question: what is the role of the beneficiary’s involvement as a critical success factor in the development of social innovation projects? literature review social impact projects are overloaded because social inequalities have increased. they aim to ensure the country’s providence resources. the overloading scenario happens for various reasons: 1) human resources with low salaries or working as volunteers; 2) social organizations operating in the field without a strategic vision; 3) lack of management competencies (franco, 2015); 4) a great dependence on public funding, but most of all; 5) by the fact that the structures that fight against social inequalities usually follow welfare practices and do not provide any investment in social policies to eradicate the main causes of this inequality (netto, 2013). the welfare state is a system that allows a country’s government to assure social services to its population, such as public health, unemployment support, etc. for that, taxes are used. this path is essential in fighting inequalities, but the system becomes overwhelmed/overcharged. this happens because a great dependence on the system by its beneficiaries exists. this scenario caught the attention of several entrepreneurs with a set of tools, techniques and models used in corporate entrepreneurship. these entrepreneurs developed individual or collective initiatives to fight against social inequalities generated by different actual contexts. thus, the entrepreneurship and management fields assumed greater importance in social innovation and social entrepreneurship. the inclusion of these themes in different contexts, expressed by the need to make social initiatives financially self-sustainable, either by patrons’ donations, strategic partnerships or the sale of their own products or initiatives. new business and collaboration models amongst partners seek these initiatives to become sustainable and increase their positive impact (bahmani et al., 2012). manzini (2015) defends a strategy where involving the beneficiaries in the production and management of a social entrepreneurship initiative is a key factor. 98 figure 1: beneficiaries’ involvement quadrants in social innovation projects. source: manzini (2015, p. 107), fernando vieira’s illustration. manzini claims that last century was dominated by the concept of “if someone is hungry give them fast food or a tin of ready to eat (or, if they can afford it, give them a luxury restaurant)” (manzini 2015, p.94). this assumption focuses on solving inequalities without any effort, thought or knowledge production developed by beneficiaries. this is the kind of approach netto (2013) refers to. they neither improve the individual’s conduct of systematic problem-solving nor seek effectiveness and longevity. social impact solutions that select beneficiaries as actors in the project development can add value to the project, as the beneficiaries invest their own time managing and operating the project. this is one of the most efficient ways to develop social impact, a long-lasting project and ensure the subsistence of the initiative. manzini (2015) proposed levels that assume different parameters (fig. 1): 1. quadrant a: beneficiaries show low levels of involvement in the activity. manzini claims that this happens when the provider/designer only serves the final user. in this ‘collaborative encounter’, the condition of being involved does not reveal huge value through the project collaboration. this quadrant is found in welfare-based projects. 2. quadrant b: also represents beneficiaries’ low levels of involvement. however, here, they are final users and involved in the project’s design and management. the goal is to understand how the project can serve them efficiently. the path here is not directed towards the organization. 3. quadrant c: the beneficiaries are intensively involved in the project’s activities. there is coproduction amongst the beneficiaries. both providers and beneficiaries are co-producers and add value in a collaborative perspective. 4. quadrant d: the beneficiaries have a strong connection. they are involved autonomously in project activities without the provider’s intervention. all the social innovation operation is in the beneficiaries’ charge, who become simultaneously the project providers and beneficiaries. 99 in more urgent operational contexts, such as agriculture and fighting poverty, beneficiaries’ involvement is a key factor in designing, implementing and measuring the social initiative. working with beneficiaries in a project allows them to recognise their weaknesses, and consequently, the project design will easily meet their needs (foley et al., nd). similarly, thou (2012) argues that beneficiary involvement provides more sustainability in a project because the metrics that monitor it are used by the own project’s beneficiaries. this scenario allows an efficient and effective adjustment of the project’s strategy. in short, beneficiary involvement contributes to the activities’ operationalization required by a social initiative and allows the development of more successful and reliable metrics, based on the beneficiaries’ inclusion in their planning. the opposite scenario also happens. in africa, for example, many development programmes are planned and implemented without community inclusion, which led them to close. another critical success factor is when a great dependence on communitarian funds for project development is used to fight the problem (kinyata & abiodun, 2020). in sum, the involvement of beneficiaries in a social initiative acts as a tool of empowerment. the beneficiaries acquire deeper knowledge about their problems, which allows them to identify real needs and design initiatives that are more likely to have an effective social impact. this means that the involved actors are articulating, working and managing more effective realistic project metrics. methods and materials to answer the question set, two main methods were applied: first, a narrative literature review of communitarian intervention (kinyata & abiodun, 2020), design for social innovation (manzini, 2015), social entrepreneurship (patel & mehta, 2011) and social service (netto, 2013) with the main goal of understanding the importance for beneficiaries of being engaged in a social initiative. second, we listed specific parameters to help the research team develop a qualitative analysis method to compare social entrepreneurship case studies. this critical empirical analysis aimed to comprehend different practices/models of management and functioning related to social entrepreneurship projects and identify the relevance of beneficiaries’ involvement as a critical success factor. tool case studies comparative table with a list of parameters to figure out each social entrepreneurship case study’s details, a comparative table was developed in two sections, as follows: 1. identification: based on the project’s identity from the portuguese social innovation and entrepreneurship map (mies), the topics were: 1) goal of the project and excluded intervention areas; 2) identified problem; 3) entrepreneurs’ identification; 4) function and impact on geographical area; 5) identification used, as they were not framed within the research goal. parameters as a business model and longevity were added empirically aiming to establish a relationship amongst both. manzini’s beneficiary involvement scale (manzini, 2015) correlates beneficiary involvement in a social initiative with the business model and consequently with longevity. by contrast, the topic of dependence on public funds was introduced because the researchers wanted to understand if there was a direct relationship between this and longevity. 2. analysis: 1) business model, comprising a set of activities enabling a project’s increase in social value in; 2) public funding dependency, i.e. how much these initiatives rely/depend on public funding to carry on their mission; 3) beneficiary involvement level, i.e. the involvement of the beneficiaries in the project, on distinct levels (manzini, 2015); and 4) business sustainability/ longevity, representing the time the project remains active and its growth. 100 sample selection the inclusion criteria for the case studies were: 1) social entrepreneurship initiative and 2) involving activities from distinct intervention areas. these are justified because social entrepreneurship projects and profit-generatin entrepreneurship projects reveal natures from different contexts and several distinct actors, such as stakeholders, beneficiaries, cultures and developed solutions. a variety of social entrepreneurship projects enables more diverse analysis. table 1 presents the seven social entrepreneurship initiatives selected from mies, the portuguese platform that records in detail the spatial distribution of social innovation and entrepreneurship nationwide, and from selected social entrepreneurship literature. selected project goal a lijjat sisters to provide financial support empowering women who aim to achieve their independence and want to be integrated into the labour market. b refood to stimulate the fight against food waste through tracking restaurant leftovers. c dress for success to integrate women socially and professionally by strengthening their self-esteem. d wow – word of woman to inspire others and spread experiences, histories, values and projects created by women. e reklusa to occupy, educate and reintegrate female inmates and former inmates socially and professionally. f manicómio to provide financial autonomy and break the stigma towards mentally ill patients. g a avó veio trabalhar to fight against seniors’ isolation and promote active senior ageing. table 1: selected case study projects. the case studies analysis is summarized through a table that includes details of the parameters, followed by critical reflection that cross-references the data collected with the literature review. case study analysis each case study includes a brief description of the project and an analysis of the business model, public funds dependency, beneficiaries’ engagement level and business sustainability/ longevity (tables 2–8). figures 2–8 are infographics that explain how the business model works. figures 9 and 10 compare the difference in the set parameters within the sample. 101 case study a, the lijjat sisters project, recruits indian women who, due to their low social status (indian caste system), are unable to find a job to provide financially for their own families. lijjat sisters recruits and integrates them, providing a job; thus, the women end up being socially integrated and having the possibility of being financially autonomous. in this project, every employee receives profits from the generated sales of the papad snack. case a: lijjat sisters business model recruitment and professional involvement of indian women, who are responsible for producing and selling traditional papad snacks. the profit from sales is distributed equally amongst all the collaborators no matter the tasks they perform within the project. public funding dependency none. beneficiary involvement level quadrant d: extensive beneficiary participation in the management and production. business sustainability the lijjat sisters began in 1959 with seven collaborators. after 50 years, this number increased to 42, and their turnover reached 111 million dollars. the value chain is considered the top reason for a business’s longevity. table 2: case study a – lijjat sisters. 102 figure 2: lijjat sisters’ business model. image credit: fernando vieira. refood fights food waste and directs meals from local restaurants to people in need through partnerships established between refood, a chain of local portuguese restaurants, and volunteers who distribute the meals in the cities where the project is active. 103 case b: refood business model refood depends 100% on volunteers, does not generate any profit and is managed by an executive committee. the value chain is considered vulnerable because it depends on volunteers, government funding and donations. the switch of authority from the collecting units may compromise the project’s quality and credibility. the business model is an example of how the use of different management tools, namely human resources, are capable of effectively fighting a problem. public funding dependency yes beneficiary involvement level quadrant a: based on social assistance, the beneficiaries are only served by the social initiative project manager; quadrant: the beneficiaries are involved in the project concept and design. business sustainability refood has been growing since 2011. it started with one pickup for the shipping and distribution. in the beginning, it served 34 beneficiaries with only one volunteer. by 2020, this had increased to 25 pickup vans and 4000 volunteers. table 3: case study b – refood. 104 figure 3: refood’s business model. image credit: fernando vieira. 105 dress for success empowers women to enable them to enter the job-hunting market by providing fashion advice and preparing women for job interviews. case c: dress for success business model the dress for success business model depends financially on patronage. image consultants and professional agents develop their activities near to the beneficiary women identified by other institutions. public funding dependency none. beneficiary involvement level quadrant a: based on welfare, the beneficiaries are only served by the project. business sustainability this portuguese case was founded in 2012 and is still active. table 4: case study c dress for success. 106 figure 4: dress for success business’ model. image credit: fernando vieira. 107 word of woman provides marketing and management consulting services to women entrepreneurs. they work directly with women in order to boost their entrepreneurial capacities. case d: word of woman business model wow works directly with their beneficiaries, providing marketing and communication services. to keep the business model active and robust, wow depends only on its collaborators. public funding dependency none. beneficiary involvement level quadrant a: based on welfare, the beneficiaries are only served by the project manager. business sustainability active since 2013. table 5: case study d – wow 108 figure 5: wow’s business model. image credit: fernando vieira. 109 the reklusa project aims to provide female prison inmates with craft skills, financial income and social integration after prison time. through partnerships with designers, jewellery pieces and fashion accessories are developed and produced in a partnership with tires prison. a percentage of the product sales is allocated to the inmates. after they leave the prison, they assume functions within the project, such as sales or manufacturing. case e: reklusa business model reklusa’s business model is based on a partnership with tires prison. the product design is developed outside the prison and then sent to the prison to be developed manually by the inmates. the final products are sold at the reklusa shop. a percentage of sales is collected to be included in a financial fund for the prisoners. the remaining amount is for the trademark. public funding dependency none. beneficiary involvement level quadrant c: this involves co-production of the project’s gathering value. the beneficiaries dedicate their time and knowledge towards the project. business sustainability the project started in 2013. the lack of government support and no involvement by other associated partners, such as tires prison, caused its end in 2018. the project is no longer active. table 6: case study e – reklusa. 110 figure 6: reklusa’s business model. image credit: fernando vieira. manicómio provides a space for individuals with diagnosed mental illness to express themselves through art. manicómio offers a scholarship for the beneficiaries and acts as an intermediary with national and international art dealers. a percentage of the sales goes to the resident artists. they have also held art workshops for members of the public who are interested in learning different types of arts and crafts. a percentage of the workshop revenue also goes to the resident artists. 111 case f: manicómio business model manicómio is based in an art gallery space that actively encourages artistic work by people diagnosed with mental illness. two founders guarantee to assure the project’s management. all the created work is developed by the beneficiaries. they are supported by sponsorship, which includes meals, transport and a salary. in addition, the peoples’ salaries come from 70% of their artwork sales and 90% from the workshops promoted by them. sometimes, partnerships with well-known designers contribute with private-label products for manicómio’s clients. in this case, the income amount is shared amongst the project and the involved artists. medical clinics are also involved partners for the artists as an income source near the community that provides low-cost medical services in their space. public funding dependency yes. beneficiary involvement level quadrant c: there is co-production from the value achieved. the beneficiaries dedicate their time and knowledge towards the project. business sustainability active since 2019. table 7: manicómio case study. 112 figure 7: manicómio ‘s business model. illustrated by fernando vieira. a avó veio trabalhar is a project that fights senior isolation by providing a communal space for elderly to develop work in sewing workshops, knitting and embroidery. they also participate in video clips and photo sessions. the revenue from sales and other activities goes to the project itself and is allocated to buy experiences for the elderly people, such as travelling or attending cultural events. 113 case g: a avó veio trabalhar business model the project’s goal is to fight against senior isolation by promoting an active senior age. it provides services to trademarks, partners and individuals. the income is reinvested in the project and in the ‘grannies’ community’, offering them travel and other unique experiences. the project management is guaranteed by the two founders. however, the grannies are always consulted before any decision is taken. the grannies’ services are diverse: sewing workshops, knitting and embroidery, they also participate in video clips, photo sessions, develop pieces for trademarks, partners and artists, and develop objects for their mark selling. public funding dependency none. beneficiary involvement level quadrant c: there is co-production of the value achieved by the project. the beneficiaries dedicate their time and knowledge towards the project. business sustainability active since 2014. table 8: a avó veio trabalhar case study. 114 figure 8: a avó veio trabalhar business model. fernando vieira‘s illustration. 115 results and discussion business model the case studies presented in this article reveals distinct levels of complexity in how they plan to earn money or generate value with their product and customer base in a specific market. the lijjat sisters, reklusa, manicómio and refood projects, for example, are those businesses whose models reveal issues of great complexity. the first seems to be the most solid. the success factors involved a debate about where they needed a generalized workforce and affordable production tools. the project is based on an entrepreneurial activity that generates income for all the involved collaborators. this is a flexible way for beneficiaries to constantly achieve financial autonomy. if we compare this action with the remaining sample projects, it seems like how a commercial enterprise works. the second one, reklusa, had a business model like lijjat sisters’. they used human resources in vulnerable scenarios. it is considered social inclusion because it generated an income source for people recruited through a partnership with tires prison that, however, lacked support and consolidation. compared to the lijjat sisters’ case, reklusa had the disadvantage of not owning the production tools. in the lijjat sisters’ case, as thou (2012) claims, the beneficiaries became a crucial factor regarding the project’s sustainability. this is due to their engagement and how they are involved in establishing new strategies, goal metrics and even the total operationalization of the project. these factors contribute towards efficient monitoring and consequently towards the initiative’s sustainability. manicómio has a business model based on the free provision of space where art pieces are created. it acts as an intermediary for art pieces nationally and internationally and is considered to have a complex business model due to the number of agents and partnerships involved. refood’s business model is not easy to understand due to its organization. it has an executive committee that establishes the rules and goals for the existing units. each unit is managed by a person who manages the volunteers, answering to their local beneficiaries’ demands. unlike the other case studies, refood’s business model can be implemented in other regions following its standard model. this approach is considered a success factor. however, their growth may also represent a higher dependence on private patrons, government funds and volunteers, which makes the project’s position more susceptible to political cycles. although its business model is quite complex, it is also financially very vulnerable. this model is not sustained by netto (2013), who claims that a kind of welfare-based model does not contribute to the eradication of inequalities, as it does not solve the structural problem of inequality but rather fights the immediate consequences of hunger. dress for success, word of woman and a avó veio trabalhar are the case studies that present the simplest business model. dress for success’s model depends on private patrons, partnerships and welfare practices. its success factor directly links to an international network with plenty of organizations who provide financial support and partners. this allows the project to develop with few sustainability concerns. compared to the other case studies, dress for success is the only project linked to a worldwide structure. the wow network bases its business model on selling services and merchandising. it is independent of external partners for its activity development, operating only with its team’s knowledge. this can be recognised as a success factor. the wow network similar to dress for success in that the approach level gives autonomy to the beneficiaries through supplying services. dress for success, wow and a avó veio trabalhar, as models based on services, allow free income from outside, which differs to lijjat sisters, where all the resources are invested into the project and not distributed amongst the beneficiaries. 116 in both a avó veio trabalhar and manicómio, one considers a success factor to be hosting the beneficiaries in a structure that develops manual work. involvement level the case studies of lijjat sisters, reklusa, manicomio and a avó veio trabalhar present high levels of beneficiary involvement. lijjat sisters presents the highest involvement level from the projects’ beneficiaries (quadrant d). this project works as a closed group, where entrepreneurs/ beneficiaries are those who decide on the business, and their production tools allow more efficient control of the value chain. this involvement level provides higher autonomy and financial sustainability to the beneficiaries involved. within the sample, this is the only project where beneficiaries are autonomous towards the project management. according to manzini (2015), this quadrant shows intense involvement from beneficiaries. quadrant c is found in the reklusa, manicómio and a avó veio trabalhar case studies, where the beneficiaries participate actively. from this group, a avó veio trabalhar is the only one where people co-produce value within the project, but they do not receive any financial income. curiously, those cases which present the highest involvement level frequently have their beneficiaries doing manual work, such as artwork, sewing, embroidery or cooking. the cases with the lowest involvement level are refood, dress for success and word of woman. refood’s beneficiaries have a low involvement level towards the initiative. they only serve and work as a consultant regarding the project’s implementation. in this case, the involvement quadrant is between a and b. dress for success represents an involvement condition from quadrant a, i.e. low beneficiary participation in the project. this may be due to the level of fashion expertise and knowledge needed for managing and operating within the initiative. quadrant a represents the lowest involvement level from the beneficiary perspective. dress for success and refood provide a service that contributes directly to the beneficiaries’ wellbeing and autonomy. the word of woman project also reveals a similar scenario to dress for success: both depend on expertise for the mission’s development. public funding from the studied sample, refood and manicómio are those with the highest dependence on public funding. refood depends on public funding for its ongoing initiatives. therefore, this project is more vulnerable to political and economic cycles that may put at risk the beneficiaries who depend on the project. this approach reinforces the importance of choosing strategies that better involve beneficiaries’ life situations instead of following welfare practices (thou, 2012). manicómio depends on public funding for its development, which is justified by its target public – people diagnosed with mental illness. from the case studies presented, this is the only one where public funds focus only on the beneficiaries, who receive an income from their activities. with no reliance on public funds, word of woman, a avó veio trabalhar and lijjat sisters follow a different strategy. the wow network and a avó veio trabalhar are determined only by the services they provide. lijjat sisters does not need any public funding, as the whole operation depends on the production and sale of papad snacks. their independence in relation to the obtained incomes is suitable for a less vulnerable project. 117 from the studied sample, two cases differ from the remaining ones: dress for success and reklusa. dress for success does not depend on public funding, as it belongs to a worldwide organization, thus ensuring the project’s subsistence. reklusa did not depend on public funding but depended on a partnership with a public institution, tires prison. this is why the project ended. business sustainability/longevity the previously analysed parameters directly influence the project’s longevity. from the studied sample, lijjat sisters, refood, dress for success, wow, manicómio, and a avó veio trabalhar are still active. lijjat sisters’ business model is the most robust, since this initiative has been active since 1959. refood has been working and growing since 2010. during the covid-19 pandemic, they were closed. their dependence on restaurant network partnerships puts them at serious risk. nevertheless, refood is still active. dress for success (portuguese branch) has the highest financial support, as the connection to the dress for success headquarters strengthens its longevity (table 4). wow has been active since 2013, and like lijjat sisters has its production tools. both are cases with specialized knowledge that contributes towards more autonomy. manicómio and a avó veio trabalhar are the most recent cases. they have been active since, 2019 and 2014, respectively. 118 figure 9: case study comparative analysis 1/2. image credit: fernando vieira. 119 figure 10: case study comparative analysis 2/2. image credit: fernando vieira. 120 conclusions the current context, particularly affected by the covid-19 pandemic, has left exposed a set of communities disadvantaged in relation to health care access, food and housing, amongst others. this scenario has aggravated the overcharging of tools that assure a country’s welfare state. the subjects of management and entrepreneurship have become imperative to operate those tools more efficiently to fight against social inequalities. in answer to the question, what is the role of the beneficiary’s involvement as a critical success factor in the development of social innovation projects?, the literature review demonstrated the urgency in developing new intervention strategies without involving welfare practices. otherwise, stimulating beneficiaries’ autonomy and financial independence lead us to conclude that beneficiary involvement is a key factor establishing efficient and long-term strategies (foley et al., n.d). considering that, and reinforced by netto (2013), the case studies demonstrated the importance of beneficiary involvement as a contribution towards decreasing social inequalities. however, according to the analysis of the sample, it is notable that in some initiatives, beneficiaries’ high involvement did not achieve the result of a planned social impact or even a situational change for the beneficiaries. lijjat sisters is the only studied initiative where the beneficiary is involved in the project and generates income directly for herself. in reklusa and manicómio, for example, there is also that possibility, although the generated incomes may not be enough for an individual to achieve financial autonomy. interestingly, the a avó veio trabalhar project has an intense involvement level (quadrant c), and its sustainability is assured by the active participation of the beneficiaries. they do not receive any sort of financial income, leading us to assume their financial situation allows that context. in this case, the social initiative aims to fight against elderly loneliness and social exclusion, and the beneficiaries’ financial situation is not an issue. in the case of manicómio, although the beneficiaries have an income, they depend on sponsorship enabling them to focus on their artistic work. once again, the involvement level is high and the beneficiaries co-produce value in the project. all of them depend on the welfare state mechanism to participate in the project. manzini’s involvement framework assumes high importance in this study. he argues that an intense level of involvement shows greater benefits for social impact projects and therefore for beneficiaries (manzini, 2015). for the authors of this article, manzini’s premise is not so linear, however. as seen in some of the case studies, such as manicómio, a avó veio trabalhar and reklusa, a higher involvement level of the beneficiary does not result in a life-changing situation for the beneficiaries. manicómio and reklusa still rely on public funding to fight against social inequalities. a avó veio trabalhar allows an intense level of involvement because there are socio-economic factors that contribute to this situation. this means that the articulation between intensive involvement where value to the project is co-produced and public funding supporting the cost of the projects allows their self-sufficiency and results in great benefit for the beneficiaries. the opposite scenario of manzini’s discourse is apparent in the refood initiative, which presents a very low level of involvement from the beneficiaries, which is not advocated by manzini (2015) or netto (2013). it entails welfare, which according to netto (2013) is a practice that does not contribute to the eradication of the social problem. however, the work they do is pertinent and urgent, due to the beneficiaries’ precarious situation. these two cases demonstrate that a more intense involvement level may not always occur. autonomy and financial independence may not always happen, no matter the involvement level. 121 the welfare state is a way of protecting beneficiaries. they do not have any financial subsistence in an assumption labelled by market economies. lijjat sisters refers to fighting social inequalities. however, it is focused on an enterprise initiative or cooperative entrepreneurship. the social impact occurs during business development. the reklusa case study demonstrated a business model based on a public partnership, intending to integrate and educate inmates. the literature review showed that the taxes which are tools of a welfare state demand the adoption of new approaches since welfare practices do not work (netto, 2013). initiatives like manicómio show that beneficiaries’ autonomy can be achieved, starting from a point of view where financial independence exists through sponsorship income, demonstrating that in some cases it is necessary to adopt welfare practices. the reflections in this conclusion lead to the following questions: the first relatesto the beneficiaries’ involvement and the second to model development to effectively integrate different actors in a successful social initiative: 1) how can one profit better from beneficiaries’ competencies and capacity contributing positively towards a more successful social impact project? 2) what characteristics must a social entrepreneurship model have to effectively identify beneficiaries’ needs, involved contexts and their development models? this last question comes as a clue for future thinking/development, hoping to contribute towards successful social initiatives and respective beneficiaries. references bahmani, s., galindo, m., & méndez, m.t. (2012). non-profit organizations, entrepreneurship, social capital, and economic growth. small bus econ, 38, 271–281. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-010-9274-7 dress for success (2021). https://lisbon.dressforsuccess.org foley, e., lithur, n. o., nimoampredu, c., & abbey, w. (n.d.). beneficiary participation and its impact on effective social protection programming. ghana inclusive development research network. https://www.gidrn.com/docs/girdn_report_09.pdf franco, r. c. (2015). diagnóstico das organizações não governamentais em portugal. universidade católica portuguesa; fundação calouste gulbenkian. kinyata, g. s., & abiodun, n. l. (2020). the impact of community participation on projects’ success in africa: a bottom up approach. international journal of research in sociology and anthropology, 6(3), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.20431/2454-8677.0603001 manzini, e. (2015). design, when everybody designs: an introduction to design for social innovation. the mit press. mapa de inovação e empreendedorismo social (n.d.), mapa de inovação e empreendedorismo social interativo. https://e-social.pt netto, j. p. (2013). assistencialismo e regressividade profissional no serviço social. intervenção social, 41, 11–35. http://hdl.handle.net/11067/1075 patel, s., & mehta, k. (2011). life’s principles as a framework for designing successful social enterprises. journal of social entrepreneurship, 2 (1), 218–230. re-food (2021). http://www.re-food.org/pt https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-010-9274-7 https://lisbon.dressforsuccess.org/ https://doi.org/10.20431/2454-8677.0603001 http://www.re-food.org/pt 122 tomás, a. (2020). manicómio o projeto português onde a arte desconstrói a doença mental. contacto online, feb. https://www.wort.lu/pt/portugal/manic-mio-o-projeto-portugues-onde-a-arte-desconstr-i-adoenca-mental-5e50237fda2cc1784e356acc thou, agatha w. (2012). the effect of beneficiary participation on project monitoring and evaluation: the case of kenya agricultural productivity project, nyandarua district. [master’s thesis, department of business administration, kenyatta university, kenya. pedro sancho, rute gomes, cláudia pernencar published online: october 2021 pedro sanchoa, rute gomesb, cláudia pernencar c, d abstract social inequalities are increasing the initiatives in which the provident state is requested to find solutions and tools to improve the social impact. in this perspective, the management and entrepreneurship fields assume a huge relevance in ... abstract social inequalities are increasing the initiatives in which the provident state is requested to find solutions and tools to improve the social impact. in this perspective, the management and entrepreneurship fields assume a huge relevance in ... keywords: beneficiaries’ involvement, design for social change, social entrepreneurship, social inequalities, sustainable development keywords: beneficiaries’ involvement, design for social change, social entrepreneurship, social inequalities, sustainable development literature review figure 1: beneficiaries’ involvement quadrants in social innovation projects. source: manzini (2015, p. 107), fernando vieira’s illustration. methods and materials tool case studies comparative table sample selection table 1: selected case study projects. case study analysis table 2: case study a – lijjat sisters. table 3: case study b – refood. table 4: case study c dress for success. figure 4: dress for success business’ model. image credit: fernando vieira. table 5: case study d – wow figure 5: wow’s business model. image credit: fernando vieira. table 6: case study e – reklusa. figure 6: reklusa’s business model. image credit: fernando vieira. manicómio provides a space for individuals with diagnosed mental illness to express themselves through art. manicómio offers a scholarship for the beneficiaries and acts as an intermediary with national and international art dealers. a percentage of t... table 7: manicómio case study. table 8: a avó veio trabalhar case study. results and discussion business model involvement level public funding business sustainability/longevity conclusions references 29 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. understanding single-use plastic (sup) during the covid-19 lockdown through digital ethnographic research erika cortés, pamela garduño, david molina, ricardo serrano published online: april 2021. to cite this article: cortés, e., garduño, p., molina, d., & serrano, r. (2021). understanding single-use plastic (sup) during the covid-19 lockdown through digital ethnographic research. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(1), 29-45. 30 understanding single-use plastic (sup) during the covid-19 lockdown through digital ethnographic research erika cortésa, pamela garduñob, david molinac, ricardo serranod, aposgrado de diseño industrial, unam, cdmx, 04510, méxico. erika.cortes@fa.unam.mx bposgrado de diseño industrial, unam, cdmx, 04510, méxico. pamelagardunolara@gmail.com cposgrado de diseño industrial, unam, cdmx, 04510, méxico. di.davidmolina@gmail.com dposgrado de diseño industrial, unam, cdmx, 04510, méxico. ricardoserranoayvar@gmail.com abstract how do people’s interaction and behaviour change in a world where social contact is suddenly limited? how does ethnographic research change and adapt to new interaction rules? what can we discover through it? during the covid-19 lockdown, we identified an extensive opportunity for digital ethnography (de) to explore the evolving social worlds. as the starting point, this research aimed to inquire into the daily use of single-use plastics (sup) consumption and disposal amongst the community that occupies unam’s posgraduate unit through the design and application of a set of ethnographic analogic and participative tools. however, the covid-19 world pandemic detoured our initial research plan and turned it into de research. this shift required a change of theoretical contents into the comprehension and implementation of de to rethink the field research. this article registers the adaptation of an ongoing project because of a disruptive event like a pandemic; through it, we want to share our experiences of using de as a qualitative approach, insights about our project process and our predictive perspective about the growing problem we are facing with sup. keywords: digital ethnography, ethnographic research, lockdown, single-use plastics, design ethnographic futures introduction we live in a world where digital interaction is a frequent activity in which we spend many hours, from sending a short text message to controlling smart objects. the most immediate example is the assembly of this article, quoting from digital sources, using digital tools for the study and analysis of the results, the collaborative writing and submission, as well as the contributions that came from different authors interacting behind a screen. this article was written because of a project developed at the ethnographic research seminar in the industrial design graduate school, and it was planned initially as a traditional ethnography approach but evolved into a digital ethnography study, which was fully developed during the covid-19 lockdown. for a better understanding of what digital ethnography (de) means and encompasses, at the beginning of the semester we were familiarised with its predecessor, traditional ethnography. it is important to remark that in this paper, we agree on defining ethnography as “a way of practising research” (pink et al., 2016, p. 21) in which data come from primary sources (people). de relies on mediated contact with participants rather than an indirect presence. in fact, this approach “emerged as a response to the study of digital, mobile and networked media in everyday life, and it can be applied in different ways depending on the objective of the study” (hsu, 2017, p. 41). we faced an opportunity because of the covid-19 pandemic and used as inspiration the previous work and tools of de researchers, such as “participant observation in digital contexts; delivering and communicating discoveries and research; or creating ethnographic databases” (hsu, 2017, p. 41). we proved that “digital practices and technologies [...] 31 represent tools that offer a concrete step in the direction of a more participatory and inclusive ethnography, [...] more attentive to the establishment of a dialogue with the viewers” (favero, 2017, p. 285). these ideas supported an alternative to go on with the research. as different proponents of the approach argue, “there is not a unique method for de, this research is methodologically innovative or ‘mixed’, transdisciplinary, empirical, contextual and cross-cultural” (richardson & keogh, 2017, p. 211). we used this quality as an opportunity to develop experimental research. de is a tool for getting a deeper understanding of people’s thoughts and behaviours using digital media as a link between their thoughts and ours. it is a new virtual magnifying glass for the investigator to zoom in on and dissect modern culture; “not limited to virtual ethnography, it focuses on how our engagement with digital media and technological interfaces configure and the ways we attend to communicate and, perceive” (richardson & keogh, 2017, p. 215). the main sections of the article were named after the four types of de practice, which so far have been identified and documented by digital sociologists (lupton, as cited in pink et al., 2016, p.24) and applied to ongoing research developed at the rmit university digital ethnography design centre (derc) and point out the steps we followed along our research process: a. use of digital tools to network and build conversations; b. research into how people are using digital media, technologies and tools; c. use of digital tools for analysis; d. engagement in critical analysis of the use and consequences of digital media. secondary sources research this collaborative research began in january 2020 at the ethnographic research seminar. our group identified that pollution from sup was a common interest amongst us, especially related to the daily practices of waste production and disposal in the postgraduate building. “until the last months of 2019, [global] public discourse was largely focused on environmental matters including climate change and plastic pollution” (kistler and muffett, 2019). mexico was no exception, since on the first day of 2020 the “solid waste law” banned the use of single-use plastics (sup), focusing on plastic bags. however, “sup does not only generate pollution in its disposal but in its production, each year the production, recycling and incineration of plastic items emit about 400 million tonnes of co2” (world economic forum, 2016). to empathise during face-to-face classes, we applied research tools such as self-ethnographic photo diaries and concept maps developed individually and collaboratively. through them, we identified that most of our garbage came from sup, mostly used for food. this was our departure hypothesis, but we needed to open the scope to the postgraduate community to know more about their motivations and habits; therefore, in the way we were framing the topic, it was pertinent to use ethnographic research. field research planning the first step was contextually setting the problem we had previously identified. we realised that the postgraduate building has the particularity of being geographically isolated from the other academic entities. therefore, it does not offer the same amount and variety of food services as the rest of the campus. the postgraduate building has only one cafeteria, which does not always provide a satisfactory service to the members of the community. then we ideated a way to ask the members of the community about the practices mentioned before with a series of analogical and participative tools to understand how 32 the garbage in the building is generated and disposed of, but also to know if the community was conscious about the pollution generated by sup. to get a notion of the sup sources, we discussed the relevance of what and how to ask and agreed on the following questions, listed in table 1, and designed illustrative ways to engage people interactively to collect their responses (see figure 1). questions how many snacks do you consume during the week? (quantity and variety) where does your food come from? how is your food packaged or contained? do you carry a reusable water bottle with you? how many coffees do you buy in a week? what would it take for you to stop using single-use plastic? how do you classify this waste? how could we generate less plastic waste in the postgraduate building? table 1: kick-off questions, before transitioning to de. this yes/no poll would have helped us get an idea about the use of sup liquid containers vs. reusable containers. in this target, participants would have to pin where their daily lunch came from. these would have helped us to get a first idea about the source of food consumption. figure 1: these are two examples of the designed analogic and participative tools. these interactive panels were supposed to be installed outside the cafeteria. adapting to the world’s pandemic “covid-19 was implicated with the outbreak of uncommon pneumonia in the chinese city of wuhan, hubei province. the first cases were reported in late december 2019. since then, the virus has spread to other chinese cities, to other asian countries, europe and the rest of the world. each nation implemented its own health strategies according to its contexts” (samson et al., 2020). in mexico, the first case was 33 confirmed on 29th february (bbc news mundo, 2020), and the voluntary lockdown started on 23rd march 2020 with the countrywide campaign “jornada de sana distancia” (healthy distance campaign) to increase social distancing and reduce the speed of the virus transmission. “this campaign, similar to other countries, included basic prevention measures such as frequent hand-washing and correct coughing, no social contact, suspension of non-essential activities, the reduction of access to public space up to 50% of its capacity and suspension of massive events” (animal político, 2020) besides the national plan to deal with the pandemic, our seminar faced the administrative adaptation announced on 20th march, where “presence-based scholar, academic and administrative procedures and formalities were suspended until further notice, and each academic entity was responsible to adapt and preserve their activities” (grauje, 2020). this situation caused the adjustment of our initial (traditional) ethnographic research, which at that moment was at the end of the planning phase, to a de study. this approach sought “to radically transport, manipulate and reconstitute research materials with ease” (hsu, 2017, p. 41), so all our previous work basis was adapted to the alternative research method. this adaptation had to analyse and take into consideration the contextual particularities of the new (virtual) space within which we as researchers would interact with participants. one of the most important facts to consider was that traditional ethnographers immerse themselves in the world of their studied subjects, sometimes for long periods, to have a full comprehension of the studied phenomenon. the constant presence of the researcher in the subject’s physical space enables trust and comfort between them, giving the subject ease to naturally behave in their context. in this case, it was recommended not to interact personally with our participants because of the situation, so we faced the question of how these spaces transform in de. cultural geographers contend that space and place are constructed culturally, suggesting that spatiality can form online. although “online communities exist as legitimate places and, conversely, place-based communities exist online, such as national publics, regional networks, and local ways of living” (kraemer, 2017, p. 180), both “production and construction of space are mediated by social processes, especially being contested and fought over for economic and ideological reasons” (low, as cited in kraemer, 2017). to avoid the debate aroused among digital context researchers about “the extent social worlds that involve digital elements are reducing, increasing or changing social life and its consequences” (pink et al., 2016, p. 130), in this article we agreed with defining the social world as pink et al. do, namely “a neutral, heuristic concept that invites empirical investigation and comparative analysis. though this definition is highly polysemic, it comes with fewer moral or normative strings attached” (2016, p. 149). this enabled us to discuss the use of social media platforms during the pandemic’s first weeks and identify the proper “space” that would facilitate the path of meaning making (favero, 2017, p. 284). covid-19 and the plastic use context with the growth and evolution of the pandemic, the hierarchisation of plastic use changed from sustainability to self-preservation; inevitably, sup became a major issue. decision-makers turned in favour of the use of sup, and local policies were revoked. there was no time to prevent the urge for using plastics, and this has overtaken any sustainable initiative. the first hint was our seminar discussions on how some of us tried to keep ecologic practices, and food providers limited our options to pre-packed versions of products that a few weeks before you could have bought in bulk. our research participants shared similar 34 experiences, and finally, worldwide news photos of face masks littering beaches and reports on general poor waste management reaffirmed our hypothesis on how the covid-19 emergency left no space to discuss sup control. “this phenomenon was not related to mexico; in europe, stakeholders that have a role in decisionmaking, shifted their perception on environmental care, with concerns related to the covid-19 outbreak …” (grodzińska et al., 2020). “to maintain health safety standards, sanitization sup became a must in everyday life leading to a shift in value hierarchization …” (bardi et al., 2009; homer & kahle, 1988, cited in grodzińska et al., 2020). shifting from analogical to digital ethnographic research. amid the covid-19 pandemic context, all face-to-face classes were suspended, and the application of the interactive research tools that we had designed was cancelled. nonetheless, shifting to digital ethnography was more than a remedial measure, as postill (2017, p. 67) states: “… it is a “second best” choice for [researchers] unable to reach their field sites for reasons of safety, illness, or disability. it often helps us to observe familiar people and things from a different perspective, thereby creating a richer engagement with the worlds of our research participants”. figure 2: research process and tools timeline. use of digital tools to network and build conversations there was no doubt about the potential that the internet has for mediating contact with a community; thus, we decided to overcome this situation. on our first zoom meeting (our alternative workspace), new inquiries and questions related to the initial food packaging waste topic arose, which led us to adapt our objective to inquire about the use of sup, its consumption and disposal practices during the quarantine and to design the remote field study application. 35 an example of how our initial questions from the analogue research evolved to the digital version was, “where does your lunch food come from?” depending on the answers (delivery, dinner, home, restaurant, or street food), we would get insights into how many of these meals produced plastic waste. in the facebook group, we asked how many delivery services our participants had ordered during quarantine time (april 2020), where they were buying their groceries and how they arrived at their homes. in this transition to de, we planned the research process collaboratively through google slides, as figure 3 shows. also, the activities we initially had in march were modified in this process, as shown in table 2. figure 3: collaborative research planning made by the research team in google slides. researching how people are using digital media technologies and tools once the new objective was stated, we evaluated the platforms that could help us. according to favero (2017, p.276), “interactive platforms can function as a tool for generating new multimodal and participatory ways for both displaying and producing ethnography”. facebook groups was the chosen platform because “during quarantine, people were using more than usual social platforms and facebook is still the most used one” (statista, 2020; new york times, 2020). we chose the groups feature, so that we could have a small community answering one question/activity per day, and the posts would remain there for as long as we needed. also, posts would appear in the participants’ feeds, and, if they forgot to answer, we would be able to remind them through private messages. 36 activity / question a1 (google forms). hi! could you help us to know you by filling out this form? a2 (fb poll). since lockdown started, how many delivery services have you ordered? mark you ranswer in the poll and specify in the comments what you ordered. a3 (fb post). could you share on this post a description, photo or video of what you used to prepare your breakfast, lunch or dinner? try to show the product's packaging. thank you! a4 (fb post). could you help us understand how groceries arrive at your home? if possible, share a picture in the comments section of this post (it does not have to be from today; it applies to the day that you ordered or from the day before). tell us, where are you buying your groceries? a5 (fb post). during lockdown, have your food expenses increased or decreased? could you comment on why or how? a6 (fb post). during lockdown, has your online shopping increased or decreased? in what kind of packages were they delivered and what did you do with them? a7 (fb poll). during lockdown, which of these products have you bought? please comment on how many of each. a8 (fb post). what would you do if the garbage truck stopped working? a9 (fb post). during lockdown, have you noticed an increase in your single-use plastic-wrapped food consumption? which ones? if it has not increased, what are the containers or wraps of your food? a10 (fb post). please share with a comment what could you do to decrease single-plastic consumption during a lockdown. table 2: activity planning: the order of the questions and the platform features were decided among the researchers. even though facebook groups, comments, polls and the possibility to upload pictures was helpful, this platform did not allow us to collect all the responses in the same database to make the analysis easier phase, so all responses were captured manually in google sheets (figure 4). 37 figure 4: google sheets database generated from the feedback provided by the participants in the facebook group. using digital tools for analysis as mentioned above, we invited participants from our social circles that we knew were staying at home during the quarantine and had a facebook profile. thus, we had the confidence to remind them to participate if they had not answered activities. de broke the geographic barrier, so we were able to collect answers not only from different states in mexico but also from medellin, colombia. our population turned out to be almost evenly distributed between men and women, with an average age of 35 years. contact with participants, as well as between ourselves, was digitally mediated the whole time. while inviting our participants, we encountered the ethical considerations of making the objective or motives of the investigation clear at the beginning of this study. this made participants trust the research but, at the same time, it could alter the outcome of the research, predisposing participants to respond the way they thought researchers wanted to. in particular in our research, we briefly explained the motives and reasons behind this study to the facebook group members. also, we created a visual image to present the research with proper formality and uniformity (see figure 5). 38 figure 5: banner used to invite people to join the facebook group “plástico en casita” [plastics at home]. de research on facebook included activities like polls, narrative comments, and photographic evidence. these resources, according to favero (2017, p. 276), are multimodal, material, and relational items; the task we had as researchers was to recover ethnographic evidence, awakening the conversation with participants to deepen insights on the material they were sharing with us. at the end of the activities, the information we received from our participants was as follows: • most of them had ordered home delivery 1 to 3 times during the first month in lockdown. • the most consumed product categories were prepared food, groceries and home accessories or toys. all of them were contained in sup packages and wraps. • supermarkets and retail companies were their first point-of-purchase choice, second were local public markets and third the local convenience store. participants who got their groceries in supermarkets declared that they acquired more packaged products than before lockdown. participants who got their groceries in public markets and local convenience stores still used market tote bags. • a significant number of participants reported that their food expenses decreased because they began to eat fewer meals a day and prepare them at home. on the contrary, there were also cases where food expenses increased due to a rise in food prices and food anxiety-related disorders, as mental health was undermined for some. • the most consumed covid-19-related products were facemasks, hand sanitiser and medicines. 39 • the participants considered changing their consumption habits and implementing reuse and recycle practices when asked to imagine a scenario where the garbage recollection truck stopped working. this question caused surprise and some distress in them. • the participants proposed reducing sup use by being a responsible consumer and adopting practices like buying in bulk, avoiding purchases of products contained in sup and the use of market tote bags. at the beginning of the research process, some participants asked for the results. we interpreted this as a sign of interest in the topic and engagement with our research. the research team decided as an ethical principle to share with them not only our findings, but also extra information related to the discoveries on the facebook group, as shown in figure 6. figure 6: insights—visually expressed—shared through the facebook group. it was interesting to witness how a community started to develop among participants who, at the beginning, did not know each other. from their public answers, they started identifying what tips they could share and to inspire each other on different projects like composting or making eco bricks. one of the emergent aspects of this research was the co-evolution of the participants’ responses from their appraisal of others’ comments in the group. then, a participatory experience and construction of common knowledge emerged. we identified that participants might have started to feel insecure about revealing their true practices since they began to reshape their answers as activities went on during the field study application, making each response more detailed and supported by photographs. we also wondered if there were participants who abstained from answering certain activities because they felt embarrassed due to how they handled sup. 40 our interpretation to start envisioning future design opportunities and different scenarios, we mainly reviewed the work of akama, pink and fergusson (2015), who proposed a framework for studying futures that combines ethnographic research with various disciplinary practices like design research, to provide a step sideways and to depart from traditional approaches in de and human-computer interaction (hci) and named it design + ethnography + futures (def). this approach creates a different way to consider design opportunities to trigger change-making initiatives and change behaviour. the def framework has been applied before in workshops, but we adapted it to our research, helping us to explore people’s cultures and the human capacity for improvisation in an emergency state involving the use of sup, as well as to recognise uncertainties that could help us foresee how possible future scenarios might emerge. regarding this, akama et al. (2015) remarked: “our interest as designers and researchers has relied on understanding and creating change, working with emerging qualities and with people with whom we share journeys into the immediate future and that we have always been oriented towards future making and willingly embrace the unexpected”. we combined the def framework (akama et al., 2015) and the previously mentioned four types of practice (pink et al., 2016) to develop the interpretation phase. to accomplish this task, we used the miro app, a collaborative whiteboard that enabled our team to work in real time, organise data and identify design challenges in the immediate future, as shown in figure 7. figure 7: using the def framework in miro to find patterns, make connections, interpret answers, and visualise dynamics or tendencies. 41 engaging in critical analysis of the use and consequences of digital media at the end, we obtained various conclusions: • about design research tools, there were some mistakes while formulating questions; some participants commented that they did not reply to some activities because they did not understand either the question or the instructions. as questions were formulated in language open to participants’ interpretations, they answered according to their understanding. this bias might have led to the loss of some information. • about the research progress, researchers should encourage participants to tell their stories and promote fluid communication. we realised that enriched storytelling from participants reflected the trust they had in the research team or goal. • about replacement of physical interaction, there must be compensation for the limitations of participant observation, not only through the narratives but also with images or photographs that support it. for the photographic analysis, the researchers must develop a trained eye to understand the context, situations, interactions between objects and humans and ways of living reflected in the picture. by asking participants to take a photo of their daily consumption and to tell us about what they bought, we discovered useful insights about plastic consumption, behaviours and future design opportunities. sharing insights with participants so that they could have certainty about how we used the elicited data reinforced their confidence in how their answers were used. one of the most important findings we restate is the importance of empathy as a skill for ethnographic studies to understand people and their relationships with life and their own view of their worlds. amid covid-19, this was important for our remote field research because empathy became a constant reminder to keep a critical point of view about the complexity of timing and situation while research activities were developed. possible future scenarios as an outcome of the def approach, we agree with pink (2020) that to overcome future ecological and health crises, society should adapt and benefit from digital connections to reduce their ecological footprint. under this premise, we worked on the creation of different future scenarios to explore design’s opportunities regarding possible future crises, such as: • new business models for industries, distinct service solutions, new payment options, communications and learning solutions. • business guaranteeing the cleanness-related values people have for sup while reusing, recycling, and reducing its consumption. • how new human interactions emerge and change against the modification of one’s objects. • transformation of public spaces and transportation. we used the hitachi foresight north america 2019 card set, developed by d-lab (2019), which condenses emerging trends in economics, society, technology and politics; this tool was used to provoke conversations—amongst our research group—about the future of sup. for this article, we chose to present only as an example the outcome related to the “plausible scenario” (voros, 2003), where current 42 knowledge could happen, the context remains the same, opportunities are maximised, and threats are minimised. in this scenario, we used the “devastating inequality” (dlab, 2019) trend to think about the sup future consumption problem. the departure point is context, where we observed through de research that household consumption has a strong tendency to use sup to deal with the pandemic problem. this consumption behaviour in the healthcare context has also increased. the opportunities lie in: • new recycling processes, as well as safe disposal programmes that diminish exposition risk to the people that manage the residuals. there is a broad opportunity for design to develop new material alternatives that aid to keep cleaner and healthier practices—this was a common perception about products wrapped in plastic among research participants. the threat we should minimise is longterm responses due to emergency situations, in reference to the gap between knowledge and implementation. • changing consumption habits and reducing sup consumption were also enunciated during the research process. the def framework led us to think about the imperative shift from consumption towards an ethical economy (dlab, 2019), where consumers are no longer blindly loyal to brands but make their purchase decisions based on how a product or service is made of and what it stands for. to achieve this scenario, companies should realign their brand, act with transparency and be empathic to current situations such as the pandemic. a trend to link to new consumption practices and be considered a serious opportunity is “tailored services” (dlab, 2019), which must be regulated to not provoke quick production, delivery and hyper customisation but nonetheless, at the same time, make the shopping process effortless, involving fewer steps. • regarding digital interaction, current evidence shows that mediated contact with people will keep growing, not only during emergencies like the covid-19 pandemic but also to get closer to longdistance communities and thus enrich knowledge through new interactions or even to reduce urban mobility. somehow this will lead to the development of “adaptive cities” (dlab, 2019) where infrastructure will be responsive to resident’s needs and changing conditions. in adaptive cities, change will be anticipated in modular and resilient ways that are modifiable whenever needed. due to the pandemic, we put into practice adaptive conditions; schools and students had quick adaptation to provide personalised on-demand services and promote flexible learning of contents and new skills. this tailored service has been aided by online platforms, apps and teleconferencing, making learning multimodal. conclusion the pandemic triggered a quick migration from the in-person world to the digital one. though digital ethnographic research is a work in progress, it has been in development for at least 20 years, but under lockdown conditions it has represented an important tool to go on with certain research projects. our project adaptation benefited from its virtues (budget friendly, inclusive and facilitating collaboration) and enabled us to establish communication with our participants and with our teammates. research discoveries led us to think about alternatives that could optimise the ongoing dynamic and mitigate negative effects into positive social changes in domestic and commercial sup consumption. but 43 at the same time, the futures approach pointed out the urgency of developing handy waste management systems, which enable users to efficiently separate household waste and promote specialised collection systems. furthermore, regarding sup consumption, we found an opportunity to recycle cardboard and paper produced by courier, package delivery and mail services, which has been intensively used during pandemic lockdown. everything learned during the de project and the obtained findings are currently being used for exploring possibilities to properly conceptualise and design innovative and emergent solutions that use waste materials to face problems such as land degradation and food safety. acknowledgements we thank our partners who participated actively during some phases of this research: mariana águila, aranzazú garcía, alejandro maza, laura ochoa, angélica tule and rubén uvera. references akama, y., pink, s., & fergusson, a. 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(2020). innovating with social justice: anti-oppressive social work design framework. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 1(1), 65-77. 66 innovating with social justice: anti-oppressive social work design framework aakanksha sinhaa adepartment of social work, seattle university, usa. sinhaaa@seattleu.edu abstract the world is experiencing myriad social, economic and political challenges that have exasperated inequities across communities. while there have been significant efforts to respond to the challenges, dwindling funds, hierarchical organizational structures, and an over-reliance on traditional methodologies have impacted the ability to create systemic changes. these limitations have paved the way for social innovation to create novel ideas to address social issues. innovation has predominantly come from the field of business, engineering, design and public policy. surprisingly, social work, with a professional mandate of advocating for social change and uplifting the voices of communities has made limited contributions to the field of social innovation. this paper introduces anti-oppressive social work design (aoswd) framework, which integrates the principles of anti-oppressive social work practice and a design method, humancentred design (hcd). it explains how social workers can use aoswd to develop collaborative power through empathy-building, co-creation and integrated feedback. through the establishment of collaborative power, it explains how the role of hcd can be expanded from an approach to develop userfriendly programs, to a tool for social workers to create a change in thinking in how they view and tackle complex issues. a case example of its implementation in a non-profit organization in seattle, wa has been provided. the paper has implications for social service professionals in the areas of training, organizational design, research and evaluation. keywords: social innovation, human-centred design, social justice, social work, anti-oppressive practice, design thinking background the 21st century has witnessed a myriad social, economic and political challenges that have exasperated the inequities across the world. while governments, corporations, social service organizations, and grassroots movements have been responding to the challenges, dwindling funds, hierarchical organizational structures, and an over-reliance on traditional methodologies have impacted the ability to create systemic changes. these limitations have paved the way for social innovation to create novel ideas and processes that address social issues and improve the quality of human life at the micro and macro levels (pol & ville, 2009). predominantly, the professions of business, engineering, design and public policy have been instrumental in leading the efforts related to social innovation (brock & steiner, 2009; mirabella & young, 2012). as a result, the innovations to challenge societal issues have been influenced by their professional values, skillsets as well as goals. despite a rich history of responding to complex social problems through innovative practices, social work has made limited contributions to the field of social innovation. over the years, the practice of social work has transformed into a medium to deliver individualized services to ensure the well-being of individuals, families and communities rather than confronting social inequities (clifford & burke, 2009). additionally, social work practice overwhelmingly emphasizes the use of evidence-based practices and authority-based models as primary solution mechanisms within the profession. these models are developed with 67 assumptions of a linear path from problem definition to an analysis of options and development of solutions for the client. however, this process is contradictory to the realities of the environment in which social workers and their clients operate, which are often ill-structured and complex. although the traditional and dominant methods gave have aimed to support communities that are marginalized, they have often left them disempowered, and unable to break away from the cycle of oppression and inequities. with the increased acknowledgement of the role of systemic inequities as a determinant of sustained positive social change, social workers across the world have been working towards developing and incorporating new ways of approaching existing problems. anti-oppressive practice (aop) framework has been one of the ways that the social work profession has been actively integrating social justice concepts within the practice, policy and research realms. dominelli (1994; 1996) has defined aop as a framework that addresses the role of social and structural inequities in the problems faced by clients and the solutions developed to address them. this shifts the focus from individualizing problems towards addressing the deep-rooted structural factors. aop embodies a person-centred philosophy; an egalitarian value system concerned with reducing the deleterious effects of structural inequalities upon people’s lives; a methodology focusing on both processes and outcomes; and a way of structuring relationships between individuals that aims to empower users by reducing negative effects of structural hierarchies on their interaction and the work that they do together (dominelli, 1994, p. 3). while many social workers support this approach to incorporate social justice values, there is limited evidence of how it can be tangibly used within their day to day practice. the framework of aop closely aligns with the values of human-centred design (hcd) which is a design and management framework that uses analytic and creative processes to engage people in opportunities to experiment, create and prototype models, gather feedback and redesign (razzouk & shute, 2012). design thinking gives prime importance to the inclusion of citizens or end-users to define the problem, and develop solutions. specifically, it emphasizes the need to work collaboratively and iteratively to ensure that all stakeholders can work together to bridge gaps in each-others learnings and create client-focused solutions (mintrom & luetjens, 2016). the origins of hcd can be traced back to the works of innovative architects, and designers in the early 20th century. herbert a. simon and buckminster fuller were instrumental in introducing the idea of centring the experiences and challenges of service users when developing products and services. simon (1969) in his pioneering work “the sciences of artificial”, emphasized the need for all professions to learn how to iterate, test and incrementally improve design to best meet the needs of the clients as well as experience the world more richly. horst and webber (1973) in their work “dilemmas in a general theory of planning” for the first time introduced the idea of design thinking as a tool to understand and solve social problems. they suggested that the solutions for social problems lie in the use of hcd framework that emphasizes on developing deep empathy with the clients and their context. this not only helps to better define the problem itself but also opens the possibility of finding solutions that are more effective, sustainable and aligns with the needs of the people being impacted. in recent decades, hcd has gained significant momentum in developing creative solutions that focus on a diverse set of social issues through various global and national organizations. for example, ideo, a global design company was one of the first organizations that used hcd to tackle social issues that impacted communities at large. they have created myriad tools and processes that have focused on the importance of client voices in the development of solutions. till date, they have leveraged this model to create clientcentred solutions in areas such as waste, emergency disasters, literacy, and health amongst others (ideo, 2020). united nations children’s fund (unicef), has established an office of innovation that systematically 68 integrates hcd principles in all aspects of country-level work that is done by unicef staff, and grassroots workers. this includes situational analysis, development of insights that inform country programs, designing of inclusive and scalable models across various sectors, and participatory evaluation of the progress of country-level programs (unicef, 2016). this has helped unicef to develop country and community-specific child-centred programming to tackle problems such as malnutrition, illiteracy, pregnancy-related complications, amongst others (malan & newberry, 2019). while this framework has helped larger organizations, it remains largely untapped by local organizations, and social movements that are accountable for responding to individual and community level needs regularly. this can be attributed to being inundated by large caseloads, and limited financial and human resources, social workers are often unable to have the capacity to think innovatively. by having a structured way to enable social innovation and entrepreneurship within their organizational settings, social workers can build on social capital, knowledge and experience of existing organizations as well as leverage the resources within the community. additionally, they can also use these frameworks for efforts that take place outside formal organizations, such as grassroots movements, community advocacy etc. this paper introduces social workers to the anti-oppressive social work design (aoswd) framework, which integrates the values of aop within the three phases of hcd (inspiration, ideation and implementation), and provides an alternative lens that can inform how social workers view and tackle complex social issues. anti-oppressive social work design framework (aoswd) till date, the hcd framework has predominantly been used to create solutions that are focused on efficacy related to aesthetics, composition, usability and other technicalities (buchanan, 2001). the term “humancentred” has therefore been defined to centre clients in the design process to ensure that the programs developed can be easily adapted by the target communities. however, upon using an aop lens, one can interpret “human-centred” to advance human rights and dignity. by doing so, social workers can use hcd to evaluate how the services developed are positively or negatively impacting the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of people that they are designed for. the aoswd framework by integrating aop and hcd approach empowers social workers to explore ways to pave the way for socially-just innovation. here the focus is not only to create user-friendly programs but also dismantling oppressive systems that disproportionately impact marginalized communities. additionally, it contributes towards berzin and pitt-catsouphes (2014) efforts to expand the concept of social innovation to focus on the social justice element within outcomes. it also recognizes that social innovation can take place in multiple ways, including entrepreneurial efforts by individuals, organizational change through intrapreneurship as well as a combination of the two through partnerships between organizations and communities (berzin & pitts-catsouphes, 2014; berzin & camarena, 2018). specifically, the aoswd framework embeds values of critical self-reflection, understanding the socio-cultural political and economic context, and establishing trusting relationships within the three hcd phases of inspiration, ideation and implementation. by doing so, it provides social workers with a way to use their professional values and existent skills to innovate by transforming the way we examine problems, the structure of organizations within which social workers function, and programs that have an objective to uplift the rights and dignity of our clients. 69 figure 1: anti-oppressive social work design framework. figure 1 displays the aoswd framework. this framework operates within the larger hcd process, which includes the 3 phases of inspiration (data gathering), ideation (solution development) and implementation (solution execution). the first phase, inspiration, is primarily focused on developing deep empathy with the clients. the second phase, ideation, is aimed to consolidate and analyse the information gathered from clients, and develop a range of potential solutions for the identified challenge. the third phase, implementation, focuses on two aspects, that is, execution of the prototypes and evaluating their effectiveness. in this phase, a few high-fidelity solutions are implemented cost-effectively and rapidly. also, feedback from all stakeholders is gathered to evaluate the efficacy of the various prototypes. each of these phases is bi-directional and interconnected, thus indicating the fluidity and dynamic nature of hcd framework. additionally, both ideation and implementation phases are mediated through inspiration, thus emphasizing the importance of centring the voices of the clients, and the consistent integration of their experiences in the design process. the aoswd framework hypothesizes that the hcd process can only be an effective way to innovate within the social work profession if collaborative power between the service providers and clients is established in all three phases. collaborative power can be defined as a collective action and mutual support that is developed out of a shared understanding of the reality in which we operate (pinderhughes, 2017). this departs from the predominant way in which power is often understood and used in social service agencies, especially when working with marginalized communities. pinderhughes (2017) highlights that power is commonly defined as having enough control over forces affecting life to meet individual and group needs, secure necessary resources, and bring desired goals. in the social service arena, this power is often used to exert authority and make decisions on behalf of the clients. providers often use top-down measures to protect and provide for communities they serve, thus excluding them from actively participating in their change process. fitzsimons and fuller (2002), pinderhughes (2017), romney (2005), and tew (2006) have emphasized that building power with clients, allows a shift in entrenched identities of the service provider as the controller of resources and the client as the passive recipient. it, therefore, opens opportunities for all participants to be included in the process of social change. the aoswd framework indicates that to 70 build collaborative power between the client and service provider, the process of social change has to include (i) understanding of the socio-political, cultural and economic context of the client, (ii) ability of the social worker to critically self-reflect and (iii) developing trusting relationships between the client and social worker (figure 1). within the hcd framework, this collaborative power between social workers and clients can be established through (i) empathy building at the inspiration phase, (ii) co-creation at the ideation phase and (iii) integrating feedback at the implementation phase. phase 1 inspiration: empathy building “empathy-building” in the aoswd framework is a process imperative to develop deep relationships between the client and service provider, and a way to assess the systematic marginalization of communities that social workers serve (bennett & rosner, 2019; morgaine & capous-desyllus, 2015). typically, empathy can be defined to understand and respond to the emotional state and ideas of another person (barker, 2003). however, within the context of aoswd, empathy-building entails a detailed understanding of not only the individual but also the structural inequities faced by them. according to segal (2011) and berzin and pitt-catsouphes (2014), by understanding the complex social conditions and experiences of others, it promotes innovation that challenges poverty, discrimination and inequity. within this phase, empathy can be developed during (i) rapport building process with the clients, (ii) exploration of client challenges, and (iii) assessment of systemic causes of the identified challenges. the empathy-building process will foster deep relationships between the social worker and client, thus paving the way for collaborative innovation to create social change. cultivating empathy will require social workers to engage in critical self-reflection, and use assessment measures that shift the focus from individual blame to structural inequities. by integrating reflexivity, social workers are less likely to impose their biases and assumptions on the clients. this, in turn, improves their skills to understand client’s experiences and to contextualize it within the socio-political, cultural and economic environment within which the individual, family or community operates. phase 2 ideation: co-creation co-creation within the aoswd framework refers to the process of developing services and programs by dismantling the hierarchical power dynamics between the service provider and clients. this process embraces the values of social workers as being embedded in the community and dedicated to bringing change through the involvement of various stakeholders rather than in an isolated fashion. additionally, it recognizes that to create an effective solution that applies to the target community, the process of program design has to be inclusive of their views right from the time of conceptualization of the problem to the implementation of the solution. this is different from the widely used ebp model, which has been lauded as the gold standard for effective programs, but at the same time has been critiqued for its lack of effectiveness in marginalized communities (sinha et al, 2020). one of the major limitations of the ebp model is that while marginalized communities are included in the feasibility tests, they are often excluded in the conceptualization of the program or intervention, and are therefore not designed to address their unique challenges. martinez et al. (2010) have suggested that for ebp to be effective in a minority or marginalized communities, the knowledge and experiences of community members should be included when designing interventions. the co-creation process through systematic integration of voices of the community departs from the focus on social workers as controllers of resources, and decision-makers on behalf of the clients. it provides clients and social workers a platform to collaborate and develop ideas that contribute to a common mission of social change (sinha, 2020). this not only reduces distrust regarding the social workers and social service 71 agencies but also leads to an increased buy-in from clients to advocate for change for themselves as well as their community. phase 3 implementation: integration of feedback integration of feedback from clients in the aoswd framework is imperative to develop programs that target the complex and dynamic realities of marginalized communities. in most social service settings, the feedback from clients is gathered to evaluate the effectiveness of a program after it has been fully implemented. this method of gathering feedback assumes that the social programs operate in a static environment, and cannot be iterated to meet the changing needs of the clients. additionally, the feedback has been viewed to determine whether a program should be continued or not, rather than assessing how it can be improved to make it more responsive to the needs of the clients (hasenfeld, et al.,2004). the integration of feedback within the aoswd framework, recognizes the dynamic social, political and economic context in which the social workers and their clients operate. it highlights that to create effective programs, there is a need to systematically integrate continuous feedback of clients so that the programs can align with their changing needs and realities. in addition to this, the aoswd framework within the inspiration phase highlights an essential ethical principle of social work, which is to respect the inherent dignity and value of the clients (nasw, 1996). by acknowledging, and incorporating the feedback of the clients as a method to improve services, the social workers and agencies take a step forward to value them as equal partners in the process of social change. the collaborative power in this phase will therefore enable social workers to test the novel ideas, critically assess their effectiveness and iterate programs to align with the complex nature of client realities. the next section provides an example of how aoswd framework was used to develop a community social council, aimed at empowering the voices of residents living in affordable housing units managed by community roots housing (crh) in seattle, wa. aoswd in practice: a case of community roots housing community roots housing is a corporation established in 1976 that owns and manages 48 properties throughout the seattle area (community roots housing, 2020). it currently provides safe and affordable housing to more than 2000 residents from a variety of income levels. the residents include individuals and, families who are transitioning from homelessness, single parents and their children, seniors with limited incomes, and recent immigrants. as a public development authority (pda) and community development corporation (cdc), it is committed to providing programs, services and activities to promote and support community engagement. this service is carried out by the resident services program unit within the organization. to ensure that the services are better aligned with the needs of the residents, a redesign process to develop a community-informed residential services program was conducted. the objective of this process to develop a framework to integrate client voice throughout the process of program design, development and implementation. thus, improving community roots housing’s ability to clearly define the needs clients, and create nuanced solutions that integrate the values of dignity, autonomy, equality and solidarity (mintrom & luietjens, 2016; sarmiento-pelayo, 2015). methods the redesign process utilized the aosdw framework to create deep empathy between the community roots housing staff and the residents, with an ultimate objective of creating a community-informed 72 resident services program. to inform this process, a mixed-methods needs assessment was conducted to gather information regarding their living conditions, challenges and strengths. to gather quantitative data, a survey was sent to residents in all 46 buildings managed by community roots housing. the survey was completed by 373 residents and provided information on (i) demographics, (ii) assessment of the current housing, (iii) assessment of basic needs, (iv) and community residential engagement needs. in addition to this, in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 residents to gather information about residents’ beliefs regarding their wellbeing, living situation, and community engagement. the information gathered increased the understanding of the lived experiences of the residents, which was an imperative step in the empathy-building stage. the research yielded significant insights about the prioritization of needs, barriers in the utilization of resources offered, the importance of community trust and gaps in understanding between service providers and clients. to ensure that the information was systematically integrated into the co-creation process, the research results were used to develop “personas” (figure 2). three personas of residents were developed to highlight the key opportunities and challenges that emerged from the results. in addition to this, a word cloud was also developed to communicate the prioritized needs and challenges of the residents. both tools were used to ensure that the participants in the co-creating process had a holistic understanding of the context of the challenges and strengths of the clients. figure 2: community roots housing resident persona. co-creation process the design team consisted of 14 participants: 5 resident services program staff, 1 research assistant, 1 facilitator, and 7 resident representatives from 5 distinct buildings. they engaged in two 5-hour design sessions to review the needs assessment results and, personas which were direct reflections of the challenges and successes of many residents. the empathy-building phase was therefore focused on discovering the underlying systemic issues within the research results. this helped all participants gain a mutual understanding of the social, political, economic and cultural context in which the residents and community roots housing function. it also prompted the staff to critically reflect on their biases regarding w h at d a sh a n e e d s fo r h e r w ellb e in g . some of the things that dasha believed were crucial to her wellbeing particularly related to her living situation included: 1. feeling of safety 2. better cleanliness of laundry and common areas 3. sense of belonging/ community 4. safe play area for her child h o w d o e s sh e fe e l c r h ca n su p p o rt h er. dasha has a lot going on in her life and feels like she cannot commit to building a community, unless her basic needs are taken care of. she is not particularly interested in events, because she usually has long days and then is taking care of her child. she is thankful for her housing situation, but would like to have a cleaner and safer environment for herself and her child. as a new resident she believes it would be great to know what is going on in the building, and how residents can use their own skills/ strengths to support each other. meet dasha dasha’s experience living in a crh managed building dasha moved to a crh managed building a year ago. she was happy to move to a place that was more spacious and was conveniently located. she says “its not fancy but at least its close to where i work, where i study and its easier to get places with my kid”. dasha indicates that her overall experience has been very positive, however is is never able to meet any one in person because she works or has to be in school during the day. if there was a way to get more “face to face” time it would be helpful, than to send emails and have no personal connection. dasha would love to have more supports available to her and her child. she did not think that was the role of the management property, and was pleasantly surprised to hear about the resident services“i had no idea that a service like this was available. if this is true i would like to meet them and figure out how i can get help for legal concerns and child care”. residential services according to dasha can play a pivotal role as a ”connector” and a “builder of community”. she wishes there was readily available information about the residential services and how it connects to the larger chh management – “i didn’t know the management people are different from the residential services people”. a g e :34 years g e n d e r: female r a ce & e th n icity : african american p ro fe ss io n : mom & student l a n g u a g e s sp o ke n : english, arabic, amharic h o u se h o ld in co m e : <$20,000 l e n g th o f sta y in c r h : 0-2 years 73 the residents, thus assessing the appropriateness of services offered. this phase led to the development of three main criteria that drove the development of potential solutions for the overarching objective of “how might we reimagine the residential services program to empower residents to feel more valued and heard in their living community?”. the three criteria included: 1) programs or services should be directed towards making residents feel included and valued in the community, 2) clear communication between the staff and residents to increase accountability, and 3) resident leadership to integrate community strengths and interests within programs offered. the participants engaged in the co-creation phase by creating a minimum of three actionable ideas that would incorporate all three criteria. to ensure collaboration between staff and residents, the participants were divided into three groups, such that, each included at least 1 staff member and 2 residents. a total of 9 actionable ideas were created. all 9 ideas were presented to the full design team. along with the description of the idea, the residents and staff from each team discussed the feasibility and, impact from an organization and client perspective. each participant was asked to vote for 1-2 ideas that they believed would be the most effective. all participants unanimously chose one idea, that they believed would empower the residents and, bridge the gap between the management and clients. this idea focused on developing a resident council that would integrate resident voices in all decisions regarding types of services needed, effective implementation of programs, and creating community identity. the residents, staff and facilitators collaborated to improvise and finalize the concept. the final prototype “resident leadership council”, was assessed against the three design criteria and the overall objective of the design process, that is, empowering residents to feel more valued and heard in their living community. upon this assessment, three changes were made that integrated the complex realities of the residents and community roots housing. firstly, the name of the council was changed to “resident social council” to ensure that a hierarchical power dynamic does not arise between resident leaders and the larger resident community. second, all council members and staff would be required to attend antibullying, conflict resolution training, to ensure that they can develop skills to successfully navigate challenging conversations with residents and staff. lastly, a list of feasibility criteria was established to ensure that the council had buy-in and financial support from community roots housing. outcomes for community roots housing the use of the aoswd framework ensured that the residents’ voices were centred throughout the process of the needs assessment, analysis of results, and development of the final product, that is, the resident social council. by building empathy with the clients keeping in mind, their social, political, economic and cultural context, staff were able to critically reflect on the efficacy of current programs. additionally, staff recognized their bias as service providers in assuming the needs and wants of residents. on the other hand, clients had an opportunity to learn about the complex realities of organizations and barriers in developing client-centred programs. by developing a sense of trust, both, clients and staff were able to collaborate to develop a program that would not only integrate the opinions of clients but would also be cost-effective and sustainable for the organization itself. implications for the social services profession the aoswd framework, embodying the true essence of the social work profession which is rooted in social justice; attempts to provide social workers with a tangible way in which they can integrate their professional principles with that of innovation. it also attempts to expand the scope of social workers to be innovators, intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs that partner with their clients to develop ideas that meet immediate needs effectively as well as works towards structural reform. this can further strengthen the 74 overall field of innovation, by prioritizing the core values of service to others, advocating for social justice, recognizing the dignity and worth of a person, importance of human relationships, integrity and trustworthiness, and professional competence. it can therefore redefine social innovation to be focused on uplifting human rights and dignity rather than solely developing solutions to meet the immediate needs of their clients. this framework can be integrated by social workers and other social service professionals in three specific areas (i) professional training of professionals, (ii) service delivery and evaluation by small to medium non-profits, and (iii) assessment of needs and assets. to tackle the grand challenges that are being experienced by our society, social workers should be trained in skills that build their capacity to think and act innovatively. currently, social innovation curriculum is mostly housed in management and design schools. recently, some social work programs across the globe have introduced courses to train students in social innovation (e.g. social work programs in boston college, boston university, san diego state university, university of denver, and the university of toronto amongst others). however, they seldom integrate social justice principles within the curriculum and do not apply to the social service settings in which most of the social workers will be placed. the aoswd framework provides an opportunity for educators to expand the training in innovation principles to all social service professionals while prioritizing values of social justice. faculty teaching social work courses can integrate the aoswd framework as a theoretical lens for assessing case studies, conducting needs assessments, and analysing the effectiveness of solutions. additionally, the framework can also be used as a way to develop specific skills, such as (i) assessing client problems within their context, (ii) collaborating to create solutions that are feasible, sustainable and account for the multidimensional nature of human problems, and (iii) critically reflecting on their positionality as service providers and its influence on the programs created. aoswd framework is a beneficial tool for small to medium size non-profits that are often limited in their resource capacity. the aoswd framework can be used as a cost-effective organization tool to help service providers (i) assess the alignment of their programs with values of equity and anti-oppression, (ii) redesign services, programs and policies to ensure that they are reflective of the needs of the clients, and (iii) prioritize services to leverage community strengths thus making it more cost-effective and sustainable. the framework can also be used by social scientists to integrate social justice values in the development and analysis of empirical knowledge. this is particularly useful for community-based researchers and evaluators that are often assessing the needs and assets of communities, as well as the effectiveness of services provided. by using aoswd lens the research process can systematically integrate the recognition of the power of communities, focus on emancipation and can be action-oriented (lather, 1986; parada & wehbi, 2017; strega & brown, 2015); thus, integrating and centring the client’s problems and context. conclusion and way forward social workers and other helping professionals, similar to designers have the power to impact people’s lives in a very significant manner. an oppressive service, policy or product can have a long-lasting negative effect on the lives of the people that use it, as well as the larger community. in the same way, a program or policy that systematically incorporates social justice values can empower communities and improve their overall quality of life. this paper provides one of the first frameworks of how the professional values and skillsets of designers and social workers can be leveraged to create socially just, cost-effective and sustainable solutions for marginalized and vulnerable communities. to ensure that the efficacy of this framework can be measured, it should be implemented in diverse settings, including skill training, organization development, program design and evaluation. by doing so, social workers and other social service professionals can develop flexible ways to use the framework to benefit the communities they work with. 75 references barker, r.l. 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(2006). understanding power and powerlessness: towards a framework for emancipatory practice in social work. journal of social work, 6(1), 33-51. traube, d.e., begun, s., okpych, n., & choy-brown, m. (2017). catalyzing innovation in social work practice. research on social work practice, 27(2), 134-138. unicef (2016). human-centred design: accelerating results for every child by design. retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/innovation/media/5456/file 54 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. emancipation and creativity atlas: participatory art and design, the societal image antónio gorgel pinto published online: april 2021. to cite this article: gorgel pinto, a. (2021). emancipation and creativity atlas: participatory art and design—societal image. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(1), 54-68. 55 emancipation and creativity atlas: participatory art and design, the societal image antónio gorgel pintoa aiade—faculty of design, technology and communication, european university, lisbon, portugal. antonio.gorgel@universidadeeuropeia.pt abstract participatory art and design is an eclectic domain and an increasingly relevant trend. we have been witnessing the profusion of projects of an activist nature, simultaneously informed by ethics, aesthetics and politics, which aim to benefit society. encouraging the social and cultural sustainability of citizens living in disenfranchised residential areas by developing their creativity in a systematised way is the scope of the present research. through an experimental methodology focused on project development, three case studies are presented—netskola, kowork and more south—all of which took place in socially and culturally disenfranchised neighbourhoods of the wider lisbon area, specifically in the cities of amadora and oeiras. then follows a case study evaluation conducted using the delphi method. the research concluded that participatory art and design is a holistic territory that can be understood as interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary and that this understanding can foster the development of alternative and innovative solutions that contribute to the sociocultural sustainability of vulnerable urban areas. recognising the advantage of this expanded field and enhancing the socially engaged art domains is not only important for these areas of knowledge, which can thus develop further, but also for the many situations in society that can benefit from systematic creativity. keywords: participation, co-design, social innovation, societal image, transmedia practice common ground the research starting point is based on the recognition of weak common ground between the various practices of social art and the fact that this shared knowledge is the result of an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary dialectic that could be further developed for the benefit of art, design and society in general. there is also the perception that the development of socially useful hybrid art initiatives is a means of intervention in society, with great potential for the development of social and cultural sustainability. the finding of common social objectives and the use of similar methodologies and methods by different art practices is a phenomenon that touches upon all fields of the arts and has an ethical and political aspect in confronting social concerns. as far as research is concerned, visual arts and design practices take on particular importance. in certain cases, in addition to promoting reflection, representation or the presentation of some answers to a set of problems in society, these practices seek to intervene directly with concrete solutions. contemporary social art practices that are developed within certain communities have as their main goal the emancipation of the people involved so that they feel stimulated by the experience in which they participate (helguera, 2011). in bishop’s (2012) view, this is an expanded field of post-studio practices that have taken over several designations, such as socially engaged art, community-based art, dialogic art, participatory art, collaborative art, activist art and new genre public art, amongst others. mailto:antonio.gorgel@universidadeeuropeia.pt 56 on the other hand, through the creation of services, systems and digital products, design is increasingly interactive and participatory, as well as characterised by a dynamic and co-creative aesthetic, increasingly based on knowledge networks and participants’ qualifications, then restricted to commercial products. these features sometimes result in more ephemeral or immaterial design approaches. within this logic, many artists no longer make a clear distinction between their practice and a user-centred design approach, which is dramatically more political and speculative (holt, 2015). similarly, certain designers are experimenting with methodologies informed by participatory and dialogical aesthetics (kester, as cited in holt, 2015). these are ambivalent art forms, which on the one hand give continuity to their disciplinary language, and on the other hand play a role in social intervention. when focusing on social issues, both disciplinary fields tend to be characterised by a higher degree of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. the question is the extent to which there is a mutual exchange of concepts, methods and methodologies in a complementary process, or even the existence of a disciplinarily more autonomous approach, but which goes beyond conventional limits whenever experimentation in other fields is necessary. parallel to this question, it is important to mention the problem of the means of expression in the development of participatory art and design practices. this overcoming of borders is a sensitive concept because it contributes to the transformation of each discipline, thus surpassing the conventional approaches of each territory. this takes into account that in visual arts one of the most used expressions is participatory art—as well as in design the denomination of participatory design—which is increasingly recurrent. regarding the three case studies discussed further, the designation used to define the developed practice is participatory art and design. regarding the artists and/or designers involved in the process, they are seen as conductors of a participatory project who seek to keep participants during the outlined activities so that they autonomously go ahead exploring knowledge. this is a way of promoting equality in which artists and designers in participatory projects have a role as conductors. according to rancière (2002), this is a necessary quality for social sustainability, which needs agents for its promotion and permanent confirmation. the social axis of the arts historically, the notion of holistic territory is a phenomenon that has its roots in the western classic period, since the use of the teknè concept, in which there were present the notions of art and technique that served as the basis for the varied evolutions of art disciplines. at the end of the twentieth century, galeyev (1991) created an open system to include art practices based on new techniques and technologies. the objective was to demonstrate the unity and systematisation of the existing art forms and to understand how they position themselves within an artistic culture. from this conceptual framework, an approach is made to the system of differentiation between the different arts to further propose the existence of a social axis with two distinct poles, namely the pole of social arts and the pole of self-centred arts (figure 1). this is a way of classifying all the existing art forms, which, regardless of whether they are framed by a particular art discipline, such as painting, sculpture, design, architecture, music, theatre, amongst others, have a greater or lesser degree of social action. according to this understanding, zero degrees of social meaning indicate art forms exclusively focused on questions of expression and technique, from which, according to the position in the referred axis, they may reveal greater social focus. one of the precursors of social art forms that most influenced the territory in question is the artist suzanne lacy through the concept of a new genre of public art that she developed to characterise and deepen the 57 socially engaged art field. according to lacy (1995), the artist imbued with an ethical sense articulates his/her thought and intentions with the ideas manifested by the social body in the public domain. in this sense, lacy analyses different behaviours that an artist can have according to a scale between the public and private, such as the artist as the experimenter, as a reporter, as an analyst and as an activist. parallel to this, lacy develops the issue of public participation in the work of art, which is understood according to different degrees of responsibility, collaboration, proximity and involvement with the work of art. figure 1: social axis z with two poles: the pole of social arts and the pole of self-centred arts. this particular notion of activism is also followed in the sphere of design. authors such as fuad-luke (2009) and disalvo (2012), amongst others, explore a notion of design based on civic reflection and political action with the influence of several areas of knowledge, as well as involving protagonists with different characteristics, such as designers and other professional or non-professional creative agents. this line of thought is a consequence of the criticism that was first offered by papanek (1971) to the design discipline, which he considered to be linked to the consumerist culture that has propelled design culture since the first industrial revolution. within the scope of art and design practices that developed a culture based not just on techniques, technologies and aesthetics, but also underpinned by ethics, other authors were alerted to a set of social and environmental problems since the 1960s. a common feature is a relational and dialogical issue, which is transversal to all forms of social art and design. in the sphere of visual arts, the concept of participation and collaboration led artists to a different understanding of the logic of authorship centred on the artist or on a collective of artists to assume they are authors of events shared with other participants who, with different degrees of commitment, may also be considered as creative agents. in the scope of design, this relationship between various creative sources and protagonists is a situation of diffuse design and expert design, which is fundamental cooperation for the future development of society. a coalition not only focuses on the resolution of concrete problems but also the construction of social values and qualities (manzini, 2015). 58 according to manzini (2019), despite the neoliberal logic in various spheres of society, as well as in human thinking and behaviour, transformative social innovation processes occur in the opposite direction. these modes of action result from creative initiatives from citizens, which are characterised by being both individual and social, driving the creation or rehabilitation of links between people, as well as between people and the places they live in and, consequently, promoting the development of new communities. in this sense, participatory art and design is a significant way to systematise social and cultural innovation and strengthen democracy. social innovation through creative practices and dialogic collaboration, in general, are ways of imagining and experimenting with social alternatives towards sustainability, where local initiatives are particularly meaningful, whose repercussions can generate other forms of development at a global level (escobar, 2018). emancipation through participation in the field of participatory design, a significant aspect is the array of different possibilities, specifically in terms of innovation, collaboration, emancipation and motivation, as well as concerning forms of public or community participation. these determine how the relationship between designer and user occur (lee, 2006). according to manzini (2015), there is now a relatively strong consensus around the idea that design is an activity shared by different players whose initiatives are based on the same principles of creativity and reinvention of forms of interaction with the environment. some designers with scientific knowledge who are more sensitive to this problem have been looking for ways to relate with empirical designers and to collaboratively participate in the creation of products and services that better contribute to society. there are also increasingly design initiatives for social innovation that arise spontaneously and are promoted without the participation of design specialists, by citizens who act in isolation or organised groups, as well as by professionals from other art fields and related areas. in tandem with creating coalitions between people with different forms of knowledge or finding solutions exclusively for human problems, it is important to mention the need for conductors of participatory art and design projects to establish other collaborations with non-human agents. considering that there is active and continuous participation with more-than-human worlds (escobar 2018), holt (2015) argues that the environment should be considered a user and not just something to be explored as a theme or an aesthetic form. in escobar’s (2018) view, this is an understanding based on the effort to reconnect the domains of culture and nature, namely human and non-human agents, through theoretical and practical proposals, such as “visualising networks, assemblages, nature cultures, or socio-natures, or through and analysing the composition of the more-than-human worlds always in the process of being created by all kinds of actors and processes”. the critical issue for understanding participatory art and design lies in the way the respective conductors interact with people and the environment, in the relationship that is established between each art and design area with society in general, as well as the integration of new experiences and concepts within the scope of participation. therefore, it is important to expand the field of participatory art and design to other fields of artistic collaboration and to benefit from the resultant synergies. in the scope of design, lee (2006) argues that the way the designer-user relationship occurs is decisive for the different participatory design manifestations, such as in the cases of innovation, collaboration and emancipation. in the sphere of innovation and collaboration, the interaction is centred around the user. regarding motivation, the difference lies in the fact that design methods are influenced by people's initiative. in the case of emancipation, the main issue lies in the fact that both the designer and the user play an active role 59 in a collaborative design process aimed at finding and implementing better solutions for the valorisation of a given social context. participatory art and design through emancipation, which was the methodology used in the case studies analysed hereafter, is a more user-focused model often sought by users. the relationship between the conductor and the user in this domain occurs horizontally in a creative equitable group, with the common goal of promoting its development. it is a way of encouraging and supporting people through co-creativity, and this usually occurs in small initiatives where the outreach and follow-up work between the conductor and the user is constant. it is from the opinions and experiences of each partner that the whole process is built. an important aspect of this concept is the fact of disseminating the transfer of design knowledge that can be freely used by the user (lee, 2006). according to fuad-luke (2009), the co-design methodology is another significant designation that brings together several practices of contemporary design that are determinants for the development of social innovation. the dynamic of knowledge based on co-design processes is open to the participation of different users, even if the contribution made by the empirical designers is not always helpful. the dialogical relation in which listening is as important as speaking is decisive for the development of participatory art and design. in this context, parallel to critical capacity and creativity, the artist-designer expert must develop his/her relational capacity to interact and enhance the co-design process. the dialogical method should not be used as an instrument to control the co-design process but to stimulate its development and keep it open. mechanism of co-design and societal image also important for the understanding of this common field of participatory art and design and the notion of transdisciplinarity among both territories is the idea of a transmedia practice, which is a concept created by the fluxus artist shiomi mieko. the importance of transdisciplinary logic for understanding this hybrid art domain is related to the fact that it allows a better comprehension of the existing knowledge between disciplines whose boundaries are in constant dynamism as well as concerning spaces between them. this interstitial space is considered to be of greater relevance for the development of each disciplinary field (nicolescu, 2010). the transmedia concept that was introduced by mieko (2013) is a way of demonstrating the nature of her conceptual art projects, which were initially conceived for one specific medium and later assumed other interpretations and art forms by the artist and other fluxus members. according to mieko (2013, pp. 1–2), “… just as people continue their journeys by transferring from one type of transportation to another, an artwork can continue its creative evolution by transferring from one medium to the next”. like mieko’s practice, the participatory art and design projects developed in disenfranchised neighbourhoods of amadora begin by using design as a medium, namely through participation and codesign, to later become signifying objects through the reproduction of the communities involved in creative activities (gorgel pinto, 2017). the representation of communities is what constitutes the emancipation and creativity atlas, which is an archive of photographs and videos produced during each of the projects, namely netskola, kowork and more south. art and design practice is informed by aesthetic and civic questions whose purpose is the development of citizenship and sociocultural sustainability with the disenfranchised target populations. this atlas of images is the last stage of the systematisation of processes involving partners and participants in a continuum. the images and videos cannot be restricted to their form and appearance or as the outcome of only one author. they are also part of the participatory process whose main objective is to question and explore the common space between participatory art and design 60 and simultaneously demonstrate the potential of the arts for the development of social and cultural sustainability (gorgel pinto, 2019). the whole process of participatory art and design—the societal image that was experimented with through the research case studies—is defined by specific objectives and by the systematisation of processes. within the methodology of the three projects, it is important to note the idea of a mechanism for the coordination of all actors and constraints, as well as for system operation and the consequent production of specific contents. this mechanism is titled a co-design machine and has as a starting point the identification of a set of factors, such as the training needs required in the context, the participants' willingness to learn, the material conditions and the experience of the local participants with which the interactions occurred for the development of the project, as well as the perceived latent potentialities. the co-design machine, inspired by meadows and wright’s (2009) systems thinking, is a mechanism to boost, reinforce and generate the growth of existing creativity in individuals and the community, and in turn contributes to the regulation of creativity capital (figure 2). this means that it is a way of promoting the resilience and sustainable development of certain social groups as regards the ability to find different and original solutions to situations of inequality and social vulnerability. figure 2: co-design machine systematisation: a process to boost creativity in the individual and the community. the co-design machine’s main goal is to create a small-scale dynamic that seeks to influence the sociocultural structure of the larger-scale system, which is characterised by slow and stabilising development. it is a socio-technical system (manzini, 2019) focused on developing solutions to real problems, as well as fostering the common good. in wahl's (2016) understanding, this type of smaller system has the advantage of being faster and thus affecting larger systems with more efficiency, either through a chain reaction or through a “transformative (r)evolutionary” development. in this sense, the co-design machine, operating in the local sphere through a practice of participatory art and design with citizens in vulnerable situations, aims foremost at emancipating them, as well as rehabilitating the sociocultural fabric creativity in a broader sense. 61 case studies in disenfranchised neighbourhoods the three participatory art and design projects developed and reproduced in the emancipation and creativity atlas are entitled netskola (image 1), kowork (image 2) and more south (image 3). these case studies took place in the amadora and oeiras municipalities. amongst the most significant phases that are present in all projects are the interaction with local associations with roots in the territories, the existence of facilities and equipment that these organisations have and made available for carrying out each workshop, the voluntary collaboration of residents participating in the activities, the fact that these occurred in places where people live, the choice of themes and educational activities, as well as the definition of purposes related to the people's interests and willingness to participate in learning and creative processes, and the dissemination through an archive of video and photography. image 1: netskola project: ict workshop with adults. the netskola (2013–2015) project was the first intervention to take place. this initiative was developed in disenfranchised neighbourhoods of the city of amadora in partnership with local private social solidarity institutions. in this case, an educational service was created in the field of computer literacy and photography, and it was open to participation by locals, mostly african or afro-descendant. the activities took place in two local associations that people often use for social and educational support. the kowork (2015–2017) project resulted from a collaboration platform between the faculty of architecture of the university of lisbon and the local association moinho da juventude (youth mill in portuguese) in the cova da moura neighbourhood, amadora. the main objective was the creation of a training course focused on the development of skills in design to promote the institution's carpentry. in the context of creative stimulation and critical thinking, the participants of african descent were led 62 to survey latent problems in the neighbourhood and to propose possible solutions. in this sense, pieces of urban furniture were produced and installed in various areas of the neighbourhood, such as garden benches and litter bins built with reused wooden pallets. the more south (2017–2018) project was based on a proposal made by the aga khan foundation in portugal. a collaboration was initiated to implement a socially engaged art project with a group of african immigrants living in different neighbourhoods in a creative and participatory project in which design outcomes were developed. based on the participants’ knowledge, the production of cloth bags with capulana (printed fabric used in some african countries) applications was carried out. visual poems, also created in a participatory manner, appeared on bags. the idea was to develop a survey of expressions from various african languages and creoles informed by the knowledge of those involved and further elaborated through graphic compositions. a common characteristic of the three case studies is the fact that they initially worked through the organisation of workshops and other educational activities and then unfolded into significant objects through the reproduction of the initiatives. this kind of societal image constitutes a photographic testimony through which the spectator metaphorically participates in the project. the observation of these societal reproductions requires a critical perspective of the sociocultural context in question, shaping a political attitude towards public life (azoulay, 2015). through the emancipation and creativity atlas, the viewer becomes a witness of the evidence produced as well as the subject of a reflection around the permanent need for support and requalification of communities living in disenfranchised neighbourhoods (gorgel pinto, 2019). image 2: kowork project: design workshop. 63 a negative aspect was the participants' precarious condition, which generally makes it impossible for them to be more involved in the initiatives. this is something that can be minimised through alternative forms of interaction and by valuing empirical knowledge that can contribute to a greater commitment of the participants and reduce existing inertia. on the other hand, it is possible to promote group cohesion through an involvement adapted to each situation and through the accountability of participants to certain tasks. another concern was the possible lack of interest from the community in the participatory actions, and these can be minimised through the creation of collaborative educational contexts of their interest and by the perseverance of some participants in the project who are more autonomous and proactive. amongst the qualities that can strengthen the experimented participatory art and design practice, what stands out are a) the valorisation of the aesthetic dimension of ethics, b) the use of a transdisciplinary methodology based on several means of expression for the benefit of social objectives to be achieved and c) the level of the relationship between art and social innovation. image 3: more south project: engraving and sewing workshop. the possibility of the adoption of the projects by the communities or by partner institutions is another advantage that can be leveraged, given the evident improvement that these actions bring to the communities in question. through the experimented systematisation of the processes, it was proven to the partners that this kind of collaborative work is a benefit that can be continued and deepened. also, it was demonstrated to the participants that with their will and creativity and these kinds of collaborations, it is possible to aspire to more sustainable sociocultural conditions. establishing consensus through the delphi method the application of the delphi method focused on a set of questions with relevance for the study. the reflection on the issues and topics considered was crucial and resulted from the analysis and exploration of information collected through a questionnaire to reach a consensus. another decisive aspect for 64 common understanding is the fact that there was an eclectic group of experts whose territory of origin corresponds to the various areas that inform the research. designers, artists, theorists in both areas and other experts with experience in public affairs were part of the panel that allowed the application of the delphi method. the delphi method was used because it is an effective way of organising a group communication process, which enabled interaction with a panel of specialists to function in the critical analysis of a complex and subjective problem (graham et al., 2003). in this context, judgements, opinions and convictions were systematically collected and structured, giving priority to the consensus creation, but also considering divergent points of view. among the invited personalities to participate were design theorists such as alastair fuad-luke and maria hellström reimer; artists with a practice marked by the involvement with communities and by participatory art forms, such as jane gilmor, virginia fróis and the wochenklausur collective; designers with an activity focused on participatory design and co-design, such as the collective fermenta; a professional photographer and designer, david van allen; and professionals in public functions, such as ricardo robles and ana isabel ribeiro from the lisbon municipality, as well as mário campos from the almada municipality. the panel was asked a series of questions, and they answered on the main aspects that inform the developed participatory art and design practice. the members of the panel also analysed and justified the resultant different perspectives. the main objective was to test the concepts and the experimented practice from a multitude of disciplinary perspectives. the inquiry process consisted of two multiple-choice questionnaires with several relevant questions for the research. in the first questionnaire, only five questions did not receive the intended result. subsequently, based on the five questions that did not obtain consensus, plus the set of answers that did not reach strong agreement, the study continued with the application of a second questionnaire. this last approach to the expert panel resulted in a consensus on all issues. amongst the expressed thoughts, the appreciation of cultural capital through an emphasis on art, heritage and plurality stands out, as well as the fact that the creative input of specific communities and citizens, in general, should be recognised and supported by professional artists and designers. thus, more and better conditions for artists and designers to develop initiatives to encourage creativity and social innovation are necessary to improve creativity amongst citizens living in vulnerable areas. regarding the methods and methodologies of participatory art and design, the panel highlighted the understanding of common aspects that are informed by both politics and aesthetics. depending on circumstances, this area of knowledge should be seen as a whole and as an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary phenomenon. considering the different targets and forms of expression produced during each project (participants, community, society, art and design specialists), another consensual view was the understanding of different possibilities of interpretation derived from the participatory interventions. the proliferation of participatory art and design initiatives of an activist nature is a relevant way to boost sociocultural transformation, especially the promotion of citizenship issues in a sphere of sustainability, while reacting critically against the political agendas of certain organisations with social responsibility. this kind of practice is thus an artistic phenomenon, informed by ethics, aesthetics and politics and aiming at the involvement and collaboration with citizens for the experimentation and implementation of alternative sustainability models. 65 concerning the dialogue between artists and designers with participants to stimulate interaction and optimise the collaboration process, the panel agreed that this is a core value in the social innovation process for the emancipation of citizens living in disenfranchised neighbourhoods. in this context, the use of participatory creation methodologies, particularly co-design, is a relevant medium for systematising methods of participatory art and design. finally, the expert panel acknowledged that the representation of citizens residing in disenfranchised areas through images of their engagement in creative initiatives for social innovation is a proactive form of representation that goes against the usual reproduction of stigmas. these and other consensual opinions can be better analysed in the questionnaires (appendix 1). conclusions the results obtained in the present research can be verified in several ways. on the one hand, through what was achieved with each social group, and on the other, through the generated intersubjectivity between the areas of knowledge in the fields of design, visual arts, culture, education and social action. regarding the developed initiatives in the disenfranchised neighbourhoods, the outcomes were not only recognised by the participants, but it was also possible to confirm through their interest and constant presence in the development of activities that these types of actions are significant and contribute to the residential areas that engaged. the projects’ implications in society are also revealed by the fact that they lead participants to the production of contents and objects with public interest and utility. also, the outcomes are a testimony of creativity and civic participation in community life. in the netskola case, these aspects were less evident because the project participants produced only small, illustrated texts about cultural references with which they identify themselves. however, both in kowork and more south, through the creation of urban furniture and fabric bags with stamped visual poetry, value and impact were more evident for the local community, society in general and the activists of the established platforms. regarding the intersubjectivity generated in the territories of art and design, as well as in the areas of culture, education and social action, this was measured not only through the involvement with each of these contexts but also through their overlap. within the scope of the design discipline, the understanding of the participatory and transmedia practices in question and the theoretical implicit issues were predominant since the study started from the design discipline. this research characteristic is a relevant aspect that demonstrates the openness of design and the ability to expand to other forms of knowledge. in the areas of culture, education and social action, the generated knowledge resulted from involvement with different organisations within the scope of the completed projects. these associations of social solidarity and non-governmental organisations, with which the intervention platforms have been created, have in general professionals with qualifications in areas such as psychology, sociology, economics and social assistance with whom the knowledge exchange was enriching. it should also be noted that these types of institutions are promoters of educational and cultural activities with experience in using public funding, as well as experience dealing with different local entities. in this context, in the development of the projects, through collaboration with local organisations and established contacts with the heads of public entities in these territories, it was possible to demonstrate the relevance and usefulness of this type of participatory art and design project, as well as discuss and disseminate among those experts some of the main concepts and the modus operandi. 66 among the objectives achieved, it is important to highlight the production of a photography and video archive that represents the developed practice. regardless of the citizenship status of all the case studies, the existence of another form of citizenship emerges, made possible through the imagery in question. this is an archive with images showing a disenfranchised community that lacks social support to unveil the presence of a rich culture. however, what is worth noting is that despite the many adversities in these marginalised places of our society, there are creative citizens full of knowledge and ready to pursue life opportunities (gorgel pinto, 2019). for further research in the same field, the lessons include fostering pluralism, eclecticism and a transdisciplinary approach. considering that this type of socially engaged art initiative is characterised by multiplicity, the coexistence of different aspects and is constituted by elements from several origins, it is pertinent that different artistic approaches of social character seek other possibilities of intervention with similar objectives and without the loss of identity. if the initiative comes from the visual arts or design, for example, and within these with different means of expression and specificities, it is constructive to maintain an attitude that assumes itself by its characteristics and disciplinary context, at the same time that it is informed by other methods and methodologies, whether for their use or simply to better reflect on their condition. references azoulay, a. (2015). the spectator is called do take part. in w. beshty (ed.), ethics: documents of contemporary art (pp. 160–163). london, cambridge, massachusetts: whitechapel gallery, mit press. bishop, c. (2012). artificial hells participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. london: verso books. disalvo, c. (2012). adversarial design. cambridge, massachusetts, london: mit press. escobar, a. (2018). designs for the pluriverse. radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. durham, london: duke university press. fuad-luke, a. (2009). design activism beautiful strangeness for a sustainable world. london: earthscan. galeyev, b. m. (1991). the new ‘laokoon’: a periodic system of the arts. leonardo, 24(4), 453–456. gorgel pinto, a. (2017). socially engaged transmedia practice: co-design machine in amadora neighbourhoods. ud16 proceedings 5th phd in design research meeting. http://ud16.web.ua.pt/atas_ud16.pdf gorgel pinto, a. (2019). emancipation and creativity atlas: the societal image of three disenfranchised neighbourhoods in lisbon. the international journal of the image, 10(3), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.18848/2154-8560/cgp/v10i03/1-9. graham, b., regehr, g., & wright, j. g. (2003). delphi as a method to establish consensus for diagnostic criteria. journal of clinical epidemiology, 56(12), 1150–1156. helguera, p. (2011). education for socially engaged art: a materials and techniques handbook. new york: jorge pinto books. holt, m. (2015). transformation of the aesthetic: art as participatory design. design and culture, 7(2), 143-165. https://doi.org/10.1080/17547075.2015.1051781 67 lacy, s. (1995). cultural pilgrimages and metaphoric journeys. in s. lacy (ed.), mapping the terrain. new genre public art (pp. 19-47). washington: bay press. lee, y. (2006). design participation tactics: redefining user participation in design. wonderground. design research society international conference 2006. retrieved from http://unidcom.iade.pt/drs2006/wonderground/proceedings/fullpapers/drs2006_0174.pdf manzini, e. (2015). design, when everybody designs. an introduction to design for social innovation. cambridge, london: mit press. manzini, e. (2019). politics of the everyday. london, new york: bloomsbury visual arts. meadows, d., & wright, d. (2009). thinking in systems. london, new york: earthscan. mieko, s. (2013, july 13). intermedia/transmedia. moma. retrieved from https://post.moma.org/intermedia-transmedia/ nicolescu, b. (2010). methodology of transdisciplinarity: levels of reality, logic of the included middle and complexity. transdisciplinary journal of engineering & science, 1(1), 19–38. papanek, v. (1971). design for the real world: human ecology and social change. new york: pantheon books. rancière, j. (2002). o mestre ignorante: cinco lições sobre a emancipação intelectual. belo horizonte, são paulo: autêntica. wahl, d. c. (2016). designing regenerative cultures. axminster: triarchy press. appendix selection of questions from the first and second questionnaires: given the existence of several participatory art practices with social groups and communities, namely in the sphere of visual arts and design, how relevant is the fact that these disciplines inform each other concerning the methodologies, methods and means of expression? [75% very relevant] how do you consider social art and social design as disciplinary practices? [75% depending on the project circumstances, an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary phenomenon] how important do you consider the proliferation of social art and design initiatives of an activist nature, whose objective is to boost sociocultural transformation, especially the promotion of citizenship issues and their respective interests and ambitions in a sphere of sustainability, while reacting critically against the political agendas of certain organisations with social responsibility? [75% important] in parallel with the critical and creative sense, how relevant is dialogue between artists and designers with participants to stimulate interaction and improve the collaboration process? [90% very relevant] how important is the use of art and design for social innovation focused on the emancipation of participant citizens? [80% very important] how important do you consider the use of participatory creation methodologies, namely co-design, by other disciplines in the field of social art? [88% relevant] http://unidcom.iade.pt/drs2006/wonderground/proceedings/fullpapers/drs2006_0174.pdf https://post.moma.org/intermedia-transmedia/ 68 do you agree that the representation of groups of citizens living in disenfranchised areas through images of their engagement in creative initiatives for social innovation is a proactive form of representation which goes against the usual reproduction of stigmas? [80% agree] 12 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. it takes a village: community based participatory research as a design research tool dhriti dhaundiyal, richa pant published online: november 2020 to cite this article: dhaundiyal d., & pant r. (2020). it takes a village: community based participatory research as a design research tool. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 1(1), 12-26. 13 it takes a village: community based participatory research as a design research tool dhriti dhaundiyala, richa panta aschool of design, doon university, dehradun, india abstract design has transitioned progressively from a consumer-focused discipline to a human-centred one, with a more complex agenda. design thinking has been successfully deployed as an agent for social change. in this paper, we take a trans-disciplinary approach to social design in remote villages of uttarakhand, india. lack of employment opportunities and tough sustenance in the mountainous regions of india has led to mass migration and ghost villages. recent interventions at the micro-level, born from a participatory approach rather than the top-down structure of government development schemes, have been seen to be more effective in tackling this complex socio-economic issue. community-based participatory research has been deployed previously in areas like public health and primary education successfully. with this paper, we reflect on the viability of using it to identify areas of effective design intervention, not just to address current issues faced by the residents of remote villages in the himalayas but also to encourage future social entrepreneurs. we worked in a group of himalayan villages in collaboration with local government agents as part of a month-long design education module. design students and development professionals teamed up with residents, using methods like transect walks, socio-cultural mapping of health, water and sanitation, education, leadership, mobility, skill and vulnerability and co-design activities. the analysis led to a deeper understanding of the social structure, education, resource equity, power dynamics, the flow of information, drudgery, vulnerability and potential areas for social entrepreneurs. an iterative model of exploration, analysis, design proposition and refinements were followed to identify challenges faced by residents and areas of possible design intervention. keywords: social design, rural india, community-based participatory approach introduction design has transitioned progressively from a consumer-focused discipline to a human-centred one with a more complex agenda, and design education must follow suit, to equip future designers in the skills needed to address new social challenges and forge novel career paths. in the relatively short span that design has existed as a discipline, it has evolved continuously, changing with societal demands. with this constant evolution, skills for future designers have been debated by both professionals and academics. design has moved from a profession that celebrates individuality and exclusivity to one that thrives on diversity and co-designing practices (buchanan, 2001). design methods have traditionally been human-centred and the transition to co-creation practices is an organic progression. the ability to work collaboratively and contribute meaningfully in trans-disciplinary areas may well define future trajectories in design (singh et al., 2018; souleles, 2017). the purpose of this paper is to study the efficacy of using techniques and tools of community-based participatory research (cbpr) as a mechanism for information collection and rapport building with participants in design research. design requires an extensive understanding of the end-user and needs assessment of the user to effectively and efficiently lead the way from brief selection to final deliverables. we employed trans-disciplinary methods to conduct design research to seek and identify opportunities present in himalayan villages that face mass migration, leading to sparse population and ghost villages. 14 government agencies and non-government organisations (ngo’s) have been working to provide opportunities and solve issues that will motivate people to stay and encourage reverse migration, but with low success. the design process that we follow in the project has the defined stages of identifying problems, gathering data, secondary research, making sense of analyzed data, framing the brief, brainstorming ideas and developing a prototype. the objective was to use tools of cbpr in combination with co-design practices to collect exhaustive information for analysis, attempting to identify design interventions that could bring about a positive change in the region. in this paper, we start by reflecting on social design as practised today, in its many forms, and its relevance to current and future design education. we critique the tourist approach that designers sometimes take, partly due to myopic research methods and reflect on the more comprehensive realities that may emerge from relevant social science methods like community-based participatory research. the next section describes the detailed methodology followed, highlighting the hybridized design and development studies approach. we then discuss the findings and conclusions, reflecting on the potential of using cbpr as a design tool in identifying rural design interventions and ways of taking this research further. background design thinking and design methods are effectively used in identifying, framing and solving the complex problems assailing large sections of humanity, sometimes termed wicked problems. these complex challenges often do not have a right or wrong solution (buchanan, 1992) and have inter-linked social, economic, political, environmental and cultural issues at stake. linear strategies are thus not suited to solve them and design methods have the iterative approach needed, giving rise to social design. social design has grown from an amorphous set of ideas to a more developed area of research and practice. threshold concepts of the epistemological dimensions stress ways of thinking and practice over discrete theoretical ideas (souleles, ferreira & savva, 2020). design based strategies towards social outcomes have been successfully deployed in social sectors like healthcare, poverty alleviation as well as environmental challenges like climate change, population growth and improving the lives of people (shea, 2012; thorpe & gamman, 2011). design education and social design armstrong et al. (2014) defined social design as “activities that espouse various and mostly participatory approaches to researching, generating and delivering outputs towards collective and social aims, rather than pursuing an exclusive focus on consumerist objectives”. historically, designers like walter gropius, victor papanek, richard buchanan, john thackara, ezio manzini and bruce mau have engaged with socially useful design and reflected on working for the masses. bonsiepe (2006) wrote of ‘design humanism’ where the needs of the excluded majority are addressed as opposed to niche groups of consumers. the exploration into future visions for designers has presented designers as ‘brave explorers and activists’ (singh et al., 2018). as per the social design futures report by the arts and humanities research council (ahrc, 2014), design activities covered by the umbrella of social design include participatory design or codesign, design activism, critical design and disruptive design. ahrc defines design for social innovation as led by experts who identify, support and develop opportunities for social change. further, socially responsive design involves a basic understanding of the technical and processual elements of design but deep expertise in a sector while design activism involves design interventions that raise political consciousness while implementing design interventions. 15 ahrc (2014) has identified the immense design capability to create positive social impact through new knowledge co-designed solutions to address contemporary concerns. their report also captures the gap between the current student skill sets and those required for social design. the report finds that the research agenda in social design is currently dominated by non-academic organisations with a preponderance of problem-solving agendas. social design research was found to be in service mode, not aiming at building knowledge. higher education institutions in design have a limited approach so far that needs to build trans-disciplinary pathways for future research. souleles (2017) posits that subjectivist epistemologies of conventional design education are insufficient to tackle design for social change and need an infusion of user-centred and evidence-based approaches for effective intervention. social design requires interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches that are essential for social design to deal with complex, multi-layered issues that cannot be addressed by methodology from a single discipline (souleles et al., 2017). academics have endeavoured to create a curriculum that caters to the skill sets required to adopt social design. an analysis of courses offered by thirteen (13) prominent design institutes shows a positive trend of increased social, economic, political and environmental concerns in the curriculum (aryana et al., 2015) with increasing stress on social and humanitarian priorities. an inclusion of participatory methodologies from the social sciences and development studies has benefitted design education. participatory approaches the constructionist paradigm that action research advocates is that knowledge not just describes but also produces the world we want (bradbury, 2020). action researchers posit that interventions for social transformation transcend mere facts and figures whose objectivity belies the subjective truths of the real world (fazey et al., 2018). action research has been described as a balance of action and reflection, with theory and practice, with stakeholder participation, aimed at reaching viable solutions for vexing issues (bradbury, 2020). participatory action research stresses improving living conditions of a community rather than focusing on an artefact driven approach (cohen et al., 2011). the relation between the participants and the researchers is that of equal engagement with involvement at each stage of the project. participatory action research seeks to not just discover but to use the discovery to institute social change in a planned manner (brydon-miller, 2001; kindon et al., 2009). it aims not just to deal with the explicit issues of the respective group of people but goes beyond to identify the root causes of the issues at hand. development studies use a set of research techniques referred to as participatory learning and action (pla). originally called participatory rural appraisal (pra), it consists of interactive methods for analyses, planning, monitoring and evaluation of social development. in the 1990s, it evolved into pla (coghlan and brydon-miller, 2014). some key tools are direct observation, semi-structured interviews and sequences or chains of interviews, focus group discussion, diagramming, mapping and modelling, participatory mapping, social network mapping, transect walk, livelihood analysis, oral histories, group walks, storytelling, portraits etc. although pra is an excellent way of ice-breaking for individuals working in new and unknown territories, it has drawn criticism in the welfare sector for various reasons. mosse (1995) felt that pra was not very useful for understanding the social dynamics of communities or the reasons why marginalized groups might be excluded from decision-making or project benefits. it was also noted that community leaders could direct pra towards their aims or attempt to undermine activities that had no obvious benefit to them. pottier (1997) claimed that whatever the pra advocates say about relaxed settings, participatory workshops are structured encounters marked by hidden agendas and strategic manoeuvres. participatory research started in the 1970s, with stakeholder involvement when objective data-driven research approaches failed (krueger & king, 1998). there was a shift in power in the research process and 16 the under-represented and marginalized voices were given a chance to be heard, their voice placed centre stage (cornwall & jewkes, 1995). in the field of design, sanders and stappers (2008) have characterised participatory design as an approach that questions practices built on hierarchy and control that place authority in the hands of experts. instead, participatory design promotes egalitarian values where the endusers are empowered and become active and equal partners. creative agency is shared by the researchers, designers, and the intended end-users. designers have often been criticized for their ‘tourist’ approach for a superficial understanding of issues resulting in short-sighted solutions. the participatory approach can help overcome this shortcoming placing the end-users at an equal footing with the designers. fuad-luke (2009) praises the process for its diversity and celebration of social networks and communities over hierarchies. participatory approaches to social design have been effective in gaining meaningful insights from the field. community-based participatory research (cbpr), specifically, brings together and involves community members, organizational representatives, researchers, and any other stakeholders in the design process (israel et al., 1998), to build fundamental knowledge about issues before tackling them. studies in himalayan villages cbpr requires collaboration at each stage of research, from problem definition, research, analysis, design of intervention and evaluation of interventions. at its core, cbpr is an iterative process of collaborative research, reflection, and action (wallerstein, 2003). most of the himalayan areas of india consist of small towns and villages spread over vast, difficult-to-access terrain. they are primarily classified as rural for development and administrative purposes. research agendas in the mountainous areas of india have been mostly government-led with some sponsored non-government organisations (ngos). early participatory projects in the villages mostly followed pla and this legacy has continued. in the last two decades, there have been a few studies that used cbpr as a research approach. we came across community based participatory approaches in livestock depredation by snow leopards (jackson & wangchuk, 2004), in village tourism (peaty, 2009), in sustainable watershed development (datta & virgo, 1998), in public service delivery (joshi, 2013) and wildlife management of musk deer (wood, 2008). we did not find any studies or projects that investigated the daily drudgery faced by most villagers in these mountainous areas that have resulted in unchecked mass migration to urban centres in the gangetic plains and beyond. this is where we position our study and attempt to co-identify and co-solve key issues faced by rural communities. methodology our primary research objective was to examine cbpr as an effective design tool for social design. within the scope of this study, we attempted to identify possible areas of design intervention to reduce daily drudgery in remote villages of the himalayan state of uttarakhand in india. the study was part of a onemonth long module called ‘social design’ with sixteen (16) participating design students and two (2) faculty members. the project was preceded by a pilot study in a relatively smaller semi-rural area of maldevta near the city of dehradun. student researchers explored maldevta and grouped to conduct transect walks in the area. transect walks are observatory walks or treks across the countryside and fields to study natural resources, topography, indigenous technology, soil and vegetation, farming practices, and problems and opportunities that are tallied with resource mapping and modelling. through transect walks, one gets insights and information into the nature and complexity of the existing scenario in a way that the traditional approaches do not provide (narayanasamy, 2009). 17 students worked in groups to collect information on education, gender roles, farming, administration, health services, professions, infrastructure, businesses, livelihoods, recreation, and transportation. collected data was collated and put in layers in a map that was studied to identify and discuss viable areas that could potentially be investigated and dealt with through a product, system, service, or graphic design. figure 1: location of study area in india. the main study was carried out near the himalayan village of berinag in uttarakhand (figure 1). out of the many small villages that dotted the area around berinag, student researchers gathered data from six villages viz, jabukathal, tana, puna, kalasila, bajet, and kaneda. the population of these villages collectively as per the census of 2009 is 683 with a total of 162 households. the villages that have road connectivity are jabukathal and bajet and the rest of the villages can only be reached on foot. basic facilities available in these villages include a common healthcare centre (16 km away, in berinag), a common panchayat ghar or meeting hall (kalasila), an anganwadi or child care centre (kalasila), a primary school (kalasila) and an intermediate school (jabukathal). the villages have electricity available in homes, mobile phone connectivity and daily water supply through a pipe. the terrain is mountainous with terraced fields used for farming. traditionally crops like potatoes, kidney beans, rice and finger millet have been grown in this region. majority of the population practised agriculture once but this has reduced significantly due to mass migration. reduction in the cultivation of land is also responsible for increased intrusions by animals like wild boars and monkeys. the month-long project was conducted from 1 october 2018 to 3 november 2018. travel to the village was via train, jeeps and then on foot. due to lack of availability of transportation to these remote areas, travel to and from the villages had to be conducted by privately owned vehicles belonging to the villagers. in the first two days, the student researchers were sensitized to the local climate, people, behaviour and local culture and practices. the main languages spoken by the villagers were kumaoni and garhwali, but most of them understood hindi. berinag (district pitthoragarh) uttarakhand 18 figure 2: flow chart of cbpr methods utilized in design research. student researchers worked in groups and each group conducted structured exercises in participatory mapping and modelling, transect walks, seasonal calendars, timelines, and mobility mapping (figure 2). each group was facilitated by a key resident as a guide. travel between these six villages was on foot due to the absence of motorable roads. the villages were roughly located 3 to 4 kilometres apart and the researchers walked 10-12 kilometres each day on average and covered two villages in a day. extensive transect walks were followed by discussions and participatory mapping with the villagers to validate the data. transect walks included a key individual from the village who walks along with the group of researchers elaborating on everything that they encounter on their path including natural resources like ponds, water sources, trees, plantation, terrain and soil (figure 3). 19 figure 3: digitisation of a transect walk recorded during study. the village residents cross-verified the transect walks with participatory maps they drew on paper and by utilizing locally available materials like branches, twigs, stones. participatory mapping included three key individuals from each group: a team leader responsible for overseeing the event and later documenting it, the designated note-taker who recorded important information and any relevant details during the drawing of the maps and the facilitator who introduced mapping, aided the drawing of maps and moderated the process. to keep the process relaxed and spontaneous, discussions and mapping exercises were conducted in natural settings like fields, homes and the panchayat ghar (local meeting hall). transect walks from all groups were collated and data gathered from all walks was tabulated and used in creating maps using parameters like population, local and natural resources, type of housing, occupations, livestock, etc. a base map of the general geographic region was then superimposed with layers of these parameters for quick observations and discussions. 20 figure 4: village women drawing mobility maps from memory and lived experience. mobility maps were used to explore the movement patterns of individuals in their daily lives and movement and migration patterns of the community (figure 4). other relevant tools that were used in data collection included seasonal-calendar, which helped in understanding how seasons affected the livelihood of those with agriculture and other seasonal occupations. it was also used to gain insight into how individual and community practices and behaviour changed with seasons. timelines were created and studied to understand key events both in the village and in the lives of individuals. interview and dialogue formed a part of every interaction. it was a principal tool used in interaction with the school children of the junior and senior schools highlighting both complementary and contrasting perspectives of children and the older population of the village. during transects, mapping, and conversations with the residents of the village, researchers observed and asked questions, listening and discussing in-depth to co-identify problems and uncover opportunities for design intervention. the participatory exercises also covered local stakeholders from both governmental and non-governmental institutions. students interacted with the village sarpanch (locally elected head), the members of panchayat (locally elected governing body), school teachers, ashas (government healthcare workers) and local business owners. the research activities and findings were shared among groups and augmented with secondary research from multiple sources over the next week based on which they identified key areas to work upon. these areas were further analyzed to unearth specific problems with probable design solutions. data collection on the field was analogue as well as digital, using large charts and notebooks, along with digital videos and photographs. 21 primary source of income crops grown food eaten farthest travel cattle owned labourer bhatt, masoor, wheat rice, pulses, chapati haldwani 4 insurance agent bhatt, masoor, wheat rice, pulses, chapati berinag 3 labourer wheat, rice non-vegetarian berinag 7 labourer wheat, rice, polyhouse vegetables rice, pulses, chapati nearest hospital 2 pradhan (chief) pulses, wheat, rice rice, pulses, chapati haldwani 6 labourer pulses, wheat rice, pulses, chapati berinag 2 small wheat mill pulses, wheat non-vegetarian haldwani 4 labourer pulses, wheat, rice non-vegetarian many places 3 labourer pulses, wheat non-vegetarian bareilly 2 teacher pulses, wheat non-vegetarian char dham 2 table 1: sample table of data collected (group 1). all written data were pooled by all groups and digitised and tabulated at the end of each day. a data framework was established to ascertain feasible ideas to reach viable service solutions, prototypes, and materials. all collected data from six villages was tabulated and differences and commonalities noted (table 1). information collected was superimposed over participatory maps and analyzed to study and gather areas of interest for each group of students. findings and discussion the test project at maldevta, which preceded the pra exercise in the six villages, played a crucial role in ameliorating the apprehensions regarding the mechanisms of conducting the walk. it helped build an understanding of biases like seasonal bias, spatial bias, profession bias and personal biases that may present themselves at times during their visit to the village. a hands-on experience of biases in rural development tourists was key learning wherein the walk brought to fore the gaps in data gathered via observation and prevailing conditions. a cursory walk that did not reveal much of infrastructure in the village was contrasted with the information obtained directly from villagers about the presence of multiple schools with varied mediums of instruction, a health-care centre, the panchayat house, and a recreation center in the village. by comparing this walk with the study in villages of berinag, the student researchers were able to distinguish between the variations that were present in the villages based on seasons, topography, population density and facilities. impact of transect walks transect maps enabled the student researchers to outline the physical research area. resource transects that were used in obtaining information about village resources and locally available materials brought to fore conversations around ‘naulas’ in these villages. a naula is a shallow man-made tank that is built around a groundwater source to collect water (figure 5). diminishing and dried up naulas and conservation efforts and their efficacy was discussed and explored. reduction in agricultural activities owing to migration resulted in drying up of naulas due to lack of maintenance. data on migration was also strengthened by studying the mobility of the villagers through mobility maps. mobility maps were instrumental in studying the daily movement of local people going through their everyday tasks and their commute in and out of the village. drudgery and effort required in moving through terraced fields were also uncovered. they also highlighted migration patterns and the rate of migration every year. using these inputs and coupling them 22 with resource transects, student researchers were able to hypothesize avenues that had the potential to reduce migration. figure 5: naula, a traditional water conservation system to replenish groundwater. research on local wealth figure 6: a game idea based on recognizing the value of local crops and the challenges to cultivation (group 2). 23 resource transects also played a crucial part in discovering the availability of beneficial himalayan herbs in the village. conversations and unstructured interviews supplemented the information of low awareness of the utility and potential marketability of these herbs. the idea of planting information early into the minds of schoolchildren was explored. channels like custom literature, books, and games to improve knowledge on local flora and fauna interactively were explored. later as a part of the project a board game to generate interest in farming and impart information on the benefits of herbs like lemongrass, khas (vetiver), oak, amla (indian gooseberry) and reetha (indian soapberry). this was observed by the student researchers as a future entrepreneurial opportunity for the locals. it led to the development of a board game idea for children based on recognizing the value of local crops and the challenges to cultivation (figure 6). designing systems for easy sustenance figure 7: a hindi devnagri script interface designed to connect local foxtail millet farmers with agricultural experts and buyers (group 3). current farming techniques like sowing and tilling done manually due to unsuitable terrain for mechanized farming presented an opportunity to create lightweight devices to reduce drudgery. transect walks and participatory mapping in the villages brought forward the painful and lengthy process of sowing maduwa (foxtail millet), the local staple grain. participatory mapping identified issues like higher costs and lower availability of essential commodities including foods, consumables, and cooking fuel due to no motorable access in the villages. a model that included a government-aided setup where waste from livestock could be used in creating a biogas system to provide cheap fuel and compost was discussed. the system would utilize a lump sum amount from the government and with the fuel and compost it produces, it would cover its cost in a few years. there were also ideas for modification in farming tools for the specific topographical conditions and requirements of popular crops grown there. an interface designed to connect local foxtail millet farmers with agricultural experts and buyers was prototyped as a solution to several problems being experienced by the millet farmers (figure 7). 24 working with administration figure 8: participatory exercises with students of local school facilitated by the school administration. exercises in plotting personal timelines helped highlight health issues, especially those related to pregnancy and neonatal care by village women. timelines were able to give insights into challenges in getting good healthcare in these remote villages. methods followed by local asha workers (health workers) to track the health and vaccinations of pregnant and lactating mothers and babies were studied to identify lacunae and a system was proposed to reduce lapses and improve self-tracking. besides these project ideas, tools like seasonal calendars and daily schedules contributed to ascertaining patterns in agriculture and related activities. student researchers were able to utilize tools of communitybased participatory research not only for quickly building rapport with the villagers, but they also gathered more data, opinions, and facts and information than they could have via faceless survey questionnaires or formal interviews. ice-breaking exercises with school children led to an understanding of the mindset of the youth who see migration as an inevitability (figure 8). due to the relaxed nature of questioning and discussion, the villagers were more willing and comfortable in discussing their lives and conditions. conclusion this paper presents our findings from an exploratory field study in six remote villages in uttarakhand, india, integrating community based participatory research and design thinking approaches. the main aim was to develop an empathetic framework of research that eases both the student researchers and people of the community into easy dialogue. probing into overt and conspicuous findings along with voicing the ideas and concerns of the local populace was the primary benefit derived from the participatory exercises. student researchers used these tools to find and prioritize problem areas that affected the local people the most. the selected problems needed to reflect the needs, aspirations, and requirements of the community and the village. active participation from the villagers motivated all the stakeholders and propelled them into detailed conversations about the hardships faced living so remotely, obstacles in sustenance, and reasons for migration. it also functioned as a trust-building exercise between the student researchers and the village community. the scope of this research is limited to the application of community-based participatory rural research as a research method in social design. the study series is ongoing and has presented promising results which 25 may open many channels of improved and detailed research methodology and user interaction in settings that students may not have been exposed before. community-based participatory research, with its intense emphasis in human beings and their power to create and recreate, holds distinct promise in being used as a design tool for social good. this paper presents the findings of our first exploratory stage in this direction. future areas of research will involve further exploration into co-designing activities with more tangible and entrepreneurial outcomes. acknowledgements we thank doon university for giving us the freedom to explore trans-disciplinary curricula within the higher education framework. we acknowledge the design students of cohort 2015 as enthusiastic and creative participants in the research. this research would not have seen fruition without the willing and openminded cooperation of the local authorities and residents of the villages of jabukathal, tana, puna, 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(2017). design for social change and design education: social challenges versus teacher-centred pedagogies. the design journal, 20 (sup1), s927–s936. https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2017.1353037 thorpe, a., & gamman, l. (2011). design with society: why socially responsive design is good enough. codesign, 7(3-4), 217–230. https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2011.630477 wallerstein, n., & duran, b. (2003). the conceptual, historical, and practice roots of community based participatory research and related participatory traditions. community-based participatory research for health, 2752. https://doi.org/10.13140/rg.2.2.34282.72648 wood, j., knowler, d., & gurung, o. (2008). assessing the prospects for community-based wildlife management: the himalayan musk deer (moschos chrysogaster) in nepal. human dimensions of wildlife, 13(1), 16-30. https://doi.org/10.1080/10871200701812910 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 3, no. 1 discern wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. their contribution towards the quality of the journal is greatly appreciated. lisa elzey mercer, university of illinois, urbana-champaign alessandro segalini, binghamton university, usa vanessa monna, politecnico di milano, italy thelma flores, miami international university of art and design, usa oxana jeoung-rakova, seoul national university, south korea shriya malhotra, independent researcher, india selin mutdogan, hacettepe university, turkey aakanksha sinha, seattle university, usa reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 3, no. 1 79 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. social design pedagogy and the un sdgs: bridging theory and practice to foster critical agency for sustainable futures melinda gaughwin, sarah ellice-flint published online: october 2021 to cite this article: gaughwin, m., & ellice-flint, s. (2021). social design pedagogy and the un sdgs: bridging theory and practice to foster critical agency for sustainable futures. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(2), 79-94. 80 social design pedagogy and the un sdgs: bridging theory and practice to foster critical agency for sustainable futures melinda gaughwina, sarah ellice-flintb athe university of sydney, design lab, sydney, 2006, australia. melinda.gaughwin@sydney.edu.au bthe university of sydney, design lab, sydney, 2006, australia. sarah.ellice-flint@sydney.edu.au abstract this paper reflects on designing, coordinating and teaching a third-year unit of study, design for social impact, at the university of sydney, australia in 2020 and 2021 during the covid-19 pandemic. it specifically comments on how the united nations 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs) are used to scaffold student projects in social design spaces. what we are interested in extracting from the entire unit of study is how design pedagogy for social change combines design theory and practice to deepen enquiry into what, how and why student social designers design. to do so, we pay specific attention to what constitutes social design and the role of a social designer. we discuss how design theory and practice might underpin a student’s understanding and application of critical agency to their practice of design. further, we draw specific attention to the unique challenges and complexities of the practice of social design for students in the context of covid-19. this paper intends to contribute to the critical discussion of social design pedagogy and offer insights into how the sdgs might frame this pedagogy. keywords: social design, sustainability, un sdgs, pedagogy, criticality introduction to shape sustainable futures, it is imperative to educate the next generation of social designers on the agency of design, given how design acts upon the world and the world acts upon it. the key to these futures is an interrogation of the systems that shape them. the social and the theory and practice of social design is one system that can be examined to help secure sustainable futures. this paper focuses on our approach to bridge such theory with a social design practice in the delivery of a new undergraduate unit of study at the university of sydney, titled design for social impact. we turn to theory from prominent designer scholars such as elizabeth resnick, jennifer ritter, cameron tonkinwise, tony fry and anne-marie willis in our approach. further, we specifically unpack how the united nations (un) sustainable development goals (sdgs) are used to underpin student projects in social design spaces. we touch on how the course and student outcomes were influenced by the challenges of the “next normal” of hybrid and online education. a focus is then brought to the most successful student projects, including a discussion of the role of interdisciplinarity for approaching the complex challenges that the sdgs and social design seek to address. we conclude with an exploration of interrogating systems through practice, how this relates to the sdgs and a reflection on what the next iteration of design for social impact might look like. our intention here is not to dwell on the specificities of curricula or student outcomes but rather to explore how pedagogy can contribute to shaping the future of the social designer and subsequently their shaping of the world. we provide students with a glimpse into what designing beyond the market might look like and what ontologies and epistemologies of social design might underpin this. we argue that the approach taken offers a model of how social design pedagogy can move beyond the interrogation of systems through discussion and towards an interrogation through design action, underpinned by fostering critical agency in students. mailto:melinda.gaughwin@sydney.edu.au mailto:melinda.gaughwin@sydney.edu.au 81 positioning design for social impact design for social impact is an undergraduate third-year, six-point unit of study offered as part of the design major at the design lab, school of architecture, design and planning at the university of sydney. a broad objective of the three-year design major is to equip students from a wide variety of disciplines with critical and theoretical understandings of design and design thinking skills to address and respond to complex problems. for example, the three-year design major combines units of study that focus on design theory (principles of design and design theory and culture) with those that specifically focus on design practice, such as design thinking, innovation design studio and experience and service design. design for social impact seeks to merge the study of design theory and practice. it is a relatively new unit for the design major that was first offered in 2020 and again in 2021 during the covid-19 pandemic. students undertake the unit equipped with practical knowledge of design thinking methodologies and methods of user and human-centred design from previous units of study (tomitsch et al., 2021). design for social impact students are asked to consider the application of these methods to a social design space based on their choice of an sdg and draw on learnings from the unit to strengthen and critically deepen their design practice. students are also explicitly encouraged to develop critical agency over their design thinking process rather than applying by rote design thinking methods learnt previously. key to this directive is an aim to foster critical, future-focused designers who possess the ability and flexibility to respond to the unique needs of contextual social design projects and community-focused problem spaces. design for social impact encompasses 12 weeks of lecture and tutorial content that introduces students to the theory and practice of design for social change (fig. 1). the unit is divided into four interrelated stages: (i) theoretical underpinnings, (ii) positioning practice, (iii) engaging practice and (iv) thinking forward. 82 figure 1: pedagogical framework of design for social impact highlighting the key stages – theoretical underpinnings, positioning practice, engaging practice and thinking forward – of the curricula. student success is measured by their performance across four assessments, as outlined in figure 2. a full breakdown of these assessments can be found in the appendix. 83 figure 2: assessment breakdown for design for social impact. the centre arrows indicate the direction of the assessments; each assessment builds on the next. the dotted lines represent how each assessment likewise speaks to those preceding and following it so that there is movement across the learnings. the un sdgs are introduced in week 1 and scaffold the unit’s lecture and tutorial content and assessments; they offer students a list of actionable, real-world and future-focused targets to base their major design project on. the goals act as a framework for student designers to work towards social outcomes that sustain our world, rather than designing within a delimited market, consumerist frame of reference. for context, the sdgs are a series of objectives ratified in 2015 by the un general assembly to assist in the creation of global sustainable futures by 2030 and beyond. in july 2017, a list of targets and indicators was added to the original goals to provide direction on how each can be achieved. the un explicitly indicates that the goals are interrelated and bound; in other words, action about one goal will facilitate change in another (united nations development programme, n.d). further, the un acknowledges the plurality of sustainable action and that “development must balance social, economic and environmental sustainability” (undp, n.d). the types of problems that the sdgs are designed to address are those that parallel the “wicked” or complex problems that are so often spoken about in design thinking (buchanan, 1992). the theoretical underpinnings of design for social impact design for social impact begins with an explication on what constitutes social design. students are 84 introduced to the idea that social impact design is a term used interchangeably with public-interest design, social design, socially responsive design, transformative design and humanitarian design (resnick, 2019). what underpins the interchangeability of these terms is that, as elizabeth resnick articulates, “social design is the practice of design where the primary motivation is to promote positive social change within society” (resnick, 2019, p. 3). to facilitate this change, social design is concerned with the interrogation of systems – economic, institutional, behavioural, moral/ethical, political, social – that constitute ways of being in and being shaped by the world (rittner, n.d). further, cameron tonkinwise argues that a schema of social design comprises “designing as a social activity […] designing for/with non-commercial contexts […]” and “design in the context of unmet needs” (tonkinwise, 2019, p. 9–16). tonkinwise also indicates that social design is contextual, “directed at the creation of systems and places that support particular kinds of social activities” (p. 11). in other words, resnick, rittner and tonkinwise indicate that social design is systemsfocused, participatory and engages beyond design for market-oriented needs to create change. indeed, fuad-luke argues that “the ability of design (and designers) in bringing different people together to codefine possibilities, cofind problems, coframe challenges and co-create new modes of action lies in participatory processes and tangible aesthetic experiences that create difference.” (fuad-luke, 2021, p. 34) as such, social design encompasses a broad set of motivations, approaches, audiences and stakeholders, and impacts (armstrong et. al., 2014). it is well accepted that design is crucial to how people shape, experience and navigate their worlds (buchanan, 1992; papanek, 1972). as victor margolin posits, design is not a fixed practice but a constantly evolving one (margolin, 1995). design and design practices that exist today are vastly different from those that populate human history. as people engage with the world in different social, technological, environmental and political ways, the designs they choose to make, implement and use reflect this change. to deepen enquiry into a critical discussion of social design, students are introduced to the idea that “design designs us” (stewart, 2015 p. 290). in other words, humans design, and these designs configure people, places, and things into particular ways of being. design scholars tony fry and anne-marie willis refer to this as “ontological design” (fry, 2009, p. 34; willis, 2006). as anne-marie willis suggests: “designing is fundamental to being human – we design, that is to say, we deliberate, plan and scheme in ways which prefigure our actions and makings – in turn, we are designed by our designing and by that which we have designed […] we design our world, while our world acts back on us and designs us.” (willis, 2006, p. 80) further, students are exposed to fry’s idea that design is a “redirective practice” capable of addressing how people, places and things are currently shaped, and redirecting them “towards the future with sustaining ability” (fry, 2011, p. 77). we argue that the benefit of introducing the idea of ontological design and design as a redirective practice to social design students is twofold. students can (i) consider and critique how design exerts a shaping force where it is employed and (ii) examine how what design shapes can be shifted towards sustainable, future-focused outcomes. 85 the social designer in design for social impact, we unpack with students the meaning of the “social designer” as it might exist in opposition to the market-focused designer. as tonkinwise suggests, the practice of social design differs from the practice of design that produces commercial, market-driven outcomes (tonkinwise, 2019). it is well accepted that designers design things for people to consume. following the philosopher pierre bourdieu, “designers” are often referred to as mediators, the “new cultural intermediaries” or “cultural engineers” (bourdieu, 1984; nixon & du gay, 2002; forty, 1986). building on bourdieu’s work, guy julier argues that a designer’s role is that of a “taste creator” involved in “needs production”. designers introduce new things to people and encourage them to think that they need them (julier, 2014, p. 54). the designer’s job is predicated precisely on this manipulation of need. as julier, amongst others, suggests, the designer’s role is also to generate value, both fiduciary value for a company’s shareholders and social value for a consumer (crocker, 2016; heskett, 2005; julier, 2014). recalling tonkinwise’s (2019, p. 15) idea that social design is “design in the context of unmet needs”, students are asked to consider what these needs might be and how a social designer might differ from a designer who designs for the market in finding and addressing these needs. designer, urbanist and spatial justice activist liz ogbu provides an accessible pathway for students to understand what might constitute a social designer. a lecture given early in the semester introduces ogbu’s ted talk (2014), “why i’m an architect that designs for social impact, not buildings”. ogbu proposes that designers are (i) citizen designers working with (ii) citizen experts as (iii) translators and (iii) storytellers. what is made explicit here is that the practice of social design and the social designer is participatory; it is driven by designing with and for people. in other words, ogbu stresses the importance of a designer’s engagement with “expert citizens”, who she explains have “the experience of living and working in a specific community” (ogbu, 2014). as such, we encourage students to conduct research via interviews and focus groups to search for “expert citizens” to work with who can provide critical insights into the complex sdg problem spaces they were addressing. in turn, students are encouraged to position themselves as “citizen designers” (ogbu, 2014). ogbu’s explication on what might constitute a social designer extends students’ pre-existing knowledge of the user and human-centred design methods. here, design practice that focuses on uncovering and responding to the needs of a particular group of people underpins the lifespan of the design thinking process (tomitsch et al., 2021). however, we challenge students to consider the terms ‘user’ or ‘consumer’ in the landscape of social design, suggesting that such nomenclature conflates the complexities and intricacies of being human to that of a person who uses/consumes a particular design. although we suggest that the ‘human’ in human-centred design comes some way to address the view of a person as a ‘user’ or ‘consumer’, the unit encourages students to adopt ogbu’s use of the word ‘citizen’ to describe the people social design projects seek to work with. adopting the word ‘citizen’ rather than ‘user’ or ‘consumer’ also socially and contextually situates the people who student designers design with and for. integrating the un sdgs into curricula: positioning and engaging practice returning to the lens provided by ontological design and design as a redirective practice, students are encouraged to approach the sdgs as a series of objectives that seek to overcome how the world has been designed in unsustainable ways; they offer a series of directions to think about how things could be designed differently. indeed, the sdgs acknowledge a world made unsustainable and provide a series of pathways to facilitate change. however, what this change is and how it will manifest is open to contestation. students are asked to critically interrogate precisely what is meant by change. if designers, as herbert simon indicates (1996, p. 111), “devise courses of action that aim to move existing situations 86 to preferred ones”, we argue that designers must critically consider what underpins these courses of actions and what a preferred situation looks like. it is via this criticality that change might indeed come about, rather than a return of the same conditions the sdgs are seeking to overcome. indeed, fry (2011, p. 76) explicitly argues that design and designers “bonded to the economic status quo […] must break radically with existing and dominant patterns.” when defining the subject matter for their major design projects (assessments 2 and 3, see fig. 2 and appendix), student groups were directed to pick one sdg and explore the various sub-problem spaces associated with this. for example, a group focused on sdg 4: equity & education chose to explore the sub-problem space of gender inequities in australia’s education system. the sdgs chosen by the groups in the 2021 class of 45 students included the following: goal 3: good health & wellbeing – 1 group goal 4: equity & education – 2 groups goal 5: gender equality – 2 group goal 10: reduced inequalities – 1 group goal 11: sustainable cities & communities – 1 group goal 12: responsible consumption & production – 2 groups to reiterate, the sdgs worked to frame students’ understanding of social design as a redirective practice (fry, 2009) in the sense that we encouraged them to use design interventions as a vessel to redirect the status quo towards these goals of sustainability. our pedagogical project of redirection in this unit was to get students to see beyond the frame of reference of purely economic goals in design practice and towards social and environmental goals like the sdgs. we found that the sdgs worked well as common goals for redirective practice given they were ones that all students, no matter which culture or nationality they were from, could understand and were motivated to work towards. indeed, all students had at least one goal that was interesting or personally relevant to them. social design education in the ‘next normal’ the challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic disrupted the planned delivery of this unit of study yet created an opportunity for pedagogical innovation within higher education’s ‘next normal’. that is, the post-covid era of reshaped ways of doing and being and the aftermath of “the great onlining” (bozkurt & sharma, 2020). the unit was first delivered in three months from march 2020, which saw the entirety of teaching transitioned to online due to the state-sanctioned conditions imposed by the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic in australia. the following year, 2021, we faced a new set of circumstances that entailed we delivered the course simultaneously in three modes: in person, online and hybrid. whilst transitioning a course based heavily on community engagement to online and hybrid formats posed novel challenges, an interesting set of opportunities subsequently arose. in response to the conditions imposed by the covid-19 pandemic, virtual communication tools were employed. we used zoom to conduct online lectures and tutorials and miro, an online whiteboard application, to foster teacher-to-student and peer-to-peer collaboration. the latter was particularly useful in the case of hybrid delivery in 2021, as those students participating in person could collaborate in a shared visual space with those online. we used this to foster in-class conversations. likewise, students were able to complete tutorial activities such as system mapping (tomitsch et al., 2021) to foster understanding of cause-and-effect relationships in complex problems (lich et. al., 2017), such as that of the sdgs, in this virtual collaboration and co-learning environment. following these activities, we encouraged 87 students to reflect and review the approach of others on miro. whilst these tools enabled the effective delivery of this unit in parallel formats, there is still a significant opportunity for improvement as these technologies develop. as disalvo et al. (2012) argue, a central pillar of participatory design practice is community engagement. as such, the design of this unit focused heavily on this activity. this presented challenges for students, predominantly because they were often geographically distanced from the communities they were designing for. however, it also enabled students to widen the scope of communities that they could design for, given their new familiarity with virtual communication tools. we were impressed to see, for example, one group of students based in sydney using zoom to conduct semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in the australian northern territory’s indigenous tourism community, who discussed the unique challenges they faced in light of the travel restrictions caused by the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. another group of students from south korea, china and australia chose to focus on the challenge of gender inequality, which they believed to be a shared issue; they were able to learn about this issue in their teammates’ countries. our intentions behind integrating the sdgs into the design for social impact curricula were to broaden students’ outlook and, as kopnina (2020) recommends, emphasise a planetary ethic. it was thus reassuring to see students taking the initiative to engage with communities beyond their everyday sphere of interaction. an advantage of teaching in hybrid and online formats was that we were able to create an international classroom of many nationalities and geographies, whilst still aiding students to ground their design practice in community engagement. this ‘next normal’ of social design education reflects irwin et. al.’s idea of “place-based, globally networked” solutions being central in design for sustainable transitions (2015). what is important to note here is that transition design encompasses a mindset that is at once both communities-focused and globally minded. this dual perspective is something we aimed to integrate into the curricula, specifically through drawing upon the sdgs as a project framework. students were encouraged to (i) select and research one of the 17 sdgs, (ii) consider and choose a specific target of their chosen sdg and (iii) narrow this target to a micro problem space that is place-based and specific to a community that they could connect with. as such, we aimed to connect their locally focused design solutions to globally minded long-term visions. we were thus able to aid students in learning through experience how a designer can play the role of mediator, as highlighted by howard and melles (2011), connecting the local to global transitions. a limitation of this approach is that problems can arise when students, as designers, are abstracted from the communities they are designing for. in particular, groups of students found it difficult to connect with relevant communities due to several constraints, primarily geographical. they were limited in the research methods they could draw upon, including co-design methods and ethnographic methods such as participatory observation, which in many cases involves observing people in physical contexts (clark et al., 2007). for this type of research, such contextual behaviour is important to understand given it can provide students with a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of those they are designing for (prosek & gibson, 2021). whilst some qualitative research may be conducted online, in many cases this gave students a limited window into participants’ lives, leading to designs that were not informed by the complex contexts of communities. the risk here, janzer and weinstein (2014) argue, is that a design practice not informed by these complex contexts may be seen as a form of neocolonialism, where the designer exercises control or a shaping force over a community they are abstracted from. to mitigate this, we ensured that students were aware of this risk and were critically reflective of how they were going 88 about designing and their subsequent outcomes. where possible, we encouraged them to continually engage with and in community-oriented contexts. in summation, this ‘next normal’ – consisting of a learning mode trifecta (in-person, online and hybrid) – is no doubt shaping the future of social design education. opportunity remains for continued iteration. interdisciplinarity for sustainability as menken et. al. (2016) argue, the complex questions and problems of the type that social design practice addresses require an interdisciplinary approach. this unit of study is open not only to students from the design faculty but also any undergraduate student at the university of sydney with assumed prior knowledge in design methodologies and methods. a benefit of this is that the cohort of students is truly interdisciplinary, spanning academic backgrounds such as economics, biology, anthropology, visual arts, psychology and marketing. most student project groups were composed of at least three different disciplines. it was thus interesting to see the variety of perspectives drawn upon when approaching the sdgs. for example, one group designing an experience for train stations drew upon their knowledge of both behavioural psychology and biology to create a biophilic installation that elicited feelings of increased safety when travelling. tonkinwise (2013, p. 219) provides a list of traits for the contemporary designer which include an understanding of histories, anthropologies, psychology and living systems. these, as inspired by buchanan (2001), realign design with the humanities, in addition to techno-scientific disciplines. we too agree that bringing a humanities perspective into design pedagogy is essential given this practice is inherently social. hence, much of our teaching touched on and incorporated ways of knowing through the methodologies of the humanities, so that students could develop a richer understanding of the mechanics of systems, cultures, institutions, and individuals that they were designing for and from. this grounding in the humanities was successful in challenging student designers to mediate between mindsets of making/doing and reflecting/enquiring. such an approach is critical to aiding students in navigating the post-normal times we live in, which sardar (2010) argues is characterised by three cs: complexity, chaos, and contradictions. these times are postnormal in the sense that we find ourselves in a transitional age, in which we are unable to return to a known past and are yet to carve out a known future of the kind that is desirable, valued, attainable or sustainable (sardar, 2010). hence, tonkinwise (2017) argues that design practice in universities must speak outside of its discipline, articulating experiments broadly to stakeholders, and go against the insular tendencies of institutions in light of these post-normal transitions. as such, it is crucial to foster interdisciplinary classrooms and interdisciplinary practices for design pedagogy. interrogating systems through practice a central idea we sought to communicate to students in the delivery of this unit is the relationship between social design practice and the interrogation of systems, as highlighted by rittner (2020). this is not to say that we sought to dismantle in its entirety that which is pre-existing. rather, we actively encouraged students to locate and address through design those systemic forces most problematic in light of their chosen sdgs. it is one thing to talk about interrogating systems by design and another to do it. a challenge we faced in the delivery of this unit of study was creating an effective bridge between theory and practice, one from which students could digest and take actionable steps. in their end-of-semester assessment 4: reflective 89 report, many students reported that “fear of not doing it right” was a significant challenge, as was resilience in the face of navigating complexities. many of these students tried to tackle too much of their sdg at once, rather than focusing on a very specific aspect and stakeholder group to design for. as discussed, those students who were most successful were the ones who were able to be specific and focused in their design efforts, whilst simultaneously connecting to the bigger picture of how their designs would contribute to interrogating broader systemic forces. a way in which we endeavoured to help students address the latter was through educating them about the practice of “design futuring”. the term “design futuring” is attributed to fry (2009) and is a design epistemology he also refers to as “design in the medium of time”. fry suggests that “…to design in time is not to claim an ability to see into the future, rather it involves examining in detail what is likely to, or could shape future positive or negative possibilities and thereafter deciding what should, or should not be factored into design activity on a cautionary basis ...”. (fry, 2009, p. 58) we encouraged students from the ideation phase right through to concept refinement to imagine the future and possible worlds in which their design contributes to social change, envisioning the role that it might play in this narrative. students were introduced to methods of futuring practice from the university of sydney, design lab’s textbook design think make break repeat, 2nd edition (2021). methods included: backcasting (p. 26); design timescapes (p. 62); scenario-based thinking (p. 134); and speculating preferred futures (p. 146) to facilitate their design practice in this space. connecting this practice to their sdg was critical to student success. the most compelling design outcomes were those grounded in the narrative concerning the critical role design would play in re-shaping the future, catalysing transitions and redirecting systems. the students who were most successful in their projects were those who were able to navigate the complexities of their chosen problem with critical depth. most groups conducted semi-structured interviews as a primary method in their qualitative research, which supported the uncovering of “unmet needs” (tonkinwise, 2019, p. 15). successful students were also those who effectively negotiated between an understanding of system-wide forces associated with their sdgs and a narrow definition of the specific aspect of it they sought to design for. for example, many engaged in processes of system mapping introduced at the start of their projects to better understand their sdg problem space and followed this with a narrowing-down through research of the lived experiences of a particular stakeholder group within that system. once a specific research question was defined, they did not let go of an understanding of how that question operates systemically in the space of their sdg. this entailed a negotiation between the systemic/narrow parallels and the global/local focus central to transition design (irwin et. al., 2015), as discussed previously, in addition to the movement between divergent/convergent, constructive/ deconstructive styles of thinking in the design process. we argue that students who are most strongly disposed to the practice of social design are those who can effectively negotiate between broad-based and narrowed-down perspectives on the complex problems they address and switch between the two where necessary in their process. in future iterations of this unit of study, we will seek to continue to develop further methods of teaching that help to foster such negotiation of perspective. we cannot mention the interrogation of systems by design without interrogating the systems through which we design. most students entered this unit with a strong grounding in design thinking methods, taught as one of their core units of study for the design major. as such, we noticed in the 2020 offering 90 of the unit that many students gravitated towards a familiar process of designing without critical thought on why they were employing its methods. concerned that students were not taking agency over their design processes, we sought to inform them of critical perspectives on design thinking, for instance, janzer and weinstein’s (2014) argument that designers must be sensitive to the complex social and cultural cues of systemic problems or they risk contributing to a form of design neocolonialism, as previously discussed. likewise, as rittner (2020) argues, well-branded design frameworks such as that of ideo are taken as gospel and “too often taught with credulity rather than criticality.” this is not to say that these processes are wrong but rather that design education should seek to interrogate those systems through which designers produce and acquire knowledge. as such, the aim here was not dissuasion but rather encouraging critical agency over the students’ design practice. it is a shift from branded methodology to critical pedagogy, as rittner (2020) argues: “… we cannot take this work lightly. the design curriculum frames the designer’s ability not only to apply a set of tools for building things but also a set of principles for applying social values to the things they make. the ‘thingness’ of design does not exist absent of a social construct that is laden with values. design is object and intention. it is our beliefs made manifest ...”. (rittner, 2020, p. 14) the next iteration there are elements of this unit of study which will be iterated upon in its continued delivery in 2022. a significant degree of these stem from the fact that we are still adapting to this ‘next normal’ of hybrid and online social design education, as discussed previously. aside from this, some opportunities for iteration are as follows. first, many students were challenged by the short time frame of their major design projects. despite the unit running for a total of 12 weeks, the bulk of their project work was done in the latter half. this was overwhelming for some, as students have to juggle the commitments of other units of study alongside things like part-time work and study-work-life balance. this meant that some student projects were not as resolved or showing a level of depth that we would have hoped for. some projects suffered from mismanagement of time with the bulk of student effort spent in one phase of their design process rather than another. in the future, we hope to explore ways of extending the time frame of their projects, perhaps by linking this first semester unit of study with a second semester sequel – design for transitions or design for futures, for example. students could continue resolving their design concepts in response to the sdgs whilst simultaneously deepening their engagement with theory. it would also be interesting to explore with students what a future beyond the sdgs (targeted for 2030) might look like. second, we reflect that the title of this unit of study, design for social impact, is no longer fitting. this is because the word ‘impact’ necessitates a force or exertion of power over another, reminiscent of janzer and weinstein‘s critique of design thinking as a neocolonial practice (2014), which is not the frame through which we wish to educate future designers. rather, we propose design for social change or design for social value, the latter as proposed by rittner (2020) as a preferred title for future iterations of this unit. third, the focus on participatory design in this unit resonated with students in theory, but they were often challenged to engage with this in practice. this was both due to the previously discussed issue of time constraints, in addition to students not having access or the courage to connect with relevant ‘citizen experts’ for whom they wished to design with and for. moving forward, we do not seek to dissuade students from designing with and for communities but rather to continuously encourage them to be aware 91 of and navigate the complexities of their positionality as designers. it is necessary to remind students that this unit is simply a taster of what social design in their post-university journeys could look like. fourth, the notion of interrogating systems through practice leads the call for an increasingly interdisciplinary approach. in the next iteration, we seek to further explore and test what the pedagogy of interrogating systems through design practice might look like. we are especially interested in widening the community of design for social impact, for example by engaging with students and academics from other disciplines such as sociology, philosophy and biological science either at the university of sydney or other universities. overall, the unit of study aims to provide students with a glimpse into what designing beyond the market could look like and what ontologies and epistemologies of social design might underpin this. we provide students with the tools to design for the narratives of an ontological, redirective and sustainable future, grounded in the vision of the sdgs and beyond. social design is a vessel through which we can move beyond the interrogation of systems through discussion and towards an interrogation through design action, underpinned by critical agency. we hope that as students venture beyond university and carve their design practice or contribute to the design practice of others, in whatever domain this may be, these lessons will stay with them well into the preferred futures they create. acknowledgements we extend our thanks to dr leigh-anne hepburn for her initial drafting of the themes of the design for social impact curricula. we also extend our thanks to our 2020 and 2021 student cohorts without whom this paper would not be possible. 92 appendix design for social impact assessment breakdown 93 references armstrong, l., bailey, j., julier, g., & kimbell, l. 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(n.d). the sdgs in action. https://www.undp.org/sustainabledevelopment-goals willis, a. m. (2006). ontological designing. design philosophy papers, 4(2), 69–92. 64 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. enabling co-creation for social innovation: the parada do sol project juliana bittencourta, luzia menegotto frick de mourab, ana bergerc, pedro boeckel mendesd published online: october 2021 to cite this article: bittencourt, j., moura, l. m. f. de, berger, a., & mendes, p.b. (2021). enabling co-creation for social innovation: the parada do sol project. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(2), 64-78. 65 enabling co-creation for social innovation: the parada do sol project juliana bittencourta, luzia menegotto frick de mourab, ana bergerc, pedro boeckel mendesd apontifícia universidade católica do rio grande do sul, brazil. juliana.bittencourt@pucrs.br bpontifícia universidade católica do rio grande do sul, brazil. luzia.moura@edu.pucrs.br cpontifícia universidade católica do rio grande do sul, brazil. ana.berger@pucrs.br dpontifícia universidade católica do rio grande do sul, brazil. pedro.boeckel@pucrs.br abstract this article describes a social innovation project coordinated by the tecnopuc creativity laboratory (crialab) from the pontifical catholic university of rio grande do sul (pucrs) that impacted morro da cruz, a neighbourhood in the peripheral region of the city of porto alegre, capital of the state of rio grande do sul in southern brazil. the main objective of the project was to positively impact the environment and the residents of the neighbourhood in question, which led to the development of a technological installation using renewable energy. the method combined the stages of the process for social innovation (murray et al., 2010) with tecnopuc crialab’s authorial user-centred exploratory research approach. using the quadruple helix model for innovation as a framework, a group of diverse stakeholders was involved. the execution of the project followed a participatory process based on co-creation, which is one of the important characteristics of designing for social innovation. the participatory aspect was fundamental to creating an outcome capable of impacting and bringing real benefits to the territory and its community. in addition to the development of a technological installation, the project had a significant impact on the lives of young people, as an opportunity to train and educate the young participants was identified, providing practical learning opportunities that amplified the results and assured the project’s continuity. this article reports the parada do sol as a case study, the results of which show the relevance of involving stakeholders in a participatory design process to create an innovative solution. keywords: social innovation, co-creation, participatory process introduction based on the concept of social innovation (si) as a means of transforming reality, responding to the unmet needs of a group, usually in a socially vulnerable situation, and giving new meaning to processes and flows of authority to generate value for people impacted by innovations (sinclair & baglioni, 2014), the goal of the parada do sol project was to positively impact the environment and the residents of the neighbourhood in question. by relying on partnerships and inputs from multiple stakeholders while adhering to co-creative design methods, it led to the development of a technological installation using renewable energy. historically, peripheral urban regions are spaces seldom covered by formal innovation initiatives, which are usually launched in central regions, thus contributing to strengthening a sense of segregation between social strata. the project’s hypothesis was that a technological installation could transform the neighbourhood environment. for that, the residents’ participation in the definitions regarding the solution was fundamental. innovative and technological initiatives are usually conceived and implemented in topdown procedures, in which external and outsider stakeholders assume what should be done in a specific territory. therefore, the project method and its participatory co-creative approach, which put residents in the spotlight, became very important. 66 the project’s methodology was drawn from references that, amongst other characteristics, put forth three premises: user-centricity, experimentation and co-creation. co-creation is also an important feature of design for si (cipolla, 2017), as involving users in the process of creating a product results in a much more relevant and innovative solution, built through the diversity of views and the real needs of users. furthermore, for young people, participating in a project such as the parada do sol project can influence their choices for the future. most young people born to poor families grow up in an environment that reinforces this situation and tend to follow the same path as their parents (lareau, 2014). when coming into contact with new incentive structures they envision new possibilities and can be inspired to choose a path not previously imagined. the parada do sol project was characterized by environmental sustainability, since its outcome was related to renewable energy by 1) educational activities which arose from its implementation through training opportunities for young people in the community, 2) the understanding that all people have a right to obtain relevant knowledge for their personal growth and, finally, 3) the notion that si should contribute to social-environmental issues. thus, the parada do sol project is aligned with two un sustainable development goals (sdgs): the promotion of clean and accessible energy (sdg 7) and quality education (sdg 4). in addition to the direct involvement of community representatives from morro da cruz, several stakeholders interacted over a period of two years, inspired by the quadruple helix model (carayannis and campbell, 2009), an internationally recognized model for innovation, in which the relationship between the university, business, government and organized civil society is considered. one of the goals of this model is social development. it acknowledges that it is of great importance to bring society and its cultural aspects into the process of innovation and construction (galvão et al., 2017). since the 1990s, the application of the body of knowledge of design and its method has been extended to projects focused on social and environmental problems (oliveira & curtis, 2018). si is inherently multidisciplinary, and the design contribution is of high relevance due to its people-centred and co-creative methods and mindset. this paper aims to discuss the contributions of a design-based method in si projects. the parada do sol case study is presented below as a way to demonstrate aspects of co-creation, si, multidisciplinarity and user-centricity. initially, the theoretical framework that guided the work is presented. afterwards, the method and the achieved results are reported, followed by a brief discussion. design for social innovation a fundamental starting point to situate this case study is to understand the concept of si. si has three features: 1) the content/product, which is generally oriented towards unmet needs; 2) the process, which transforms social relationships so that the logic of the process is changed, bringing greater social participation and hierarchical change and 3) the empowerment of the people involved, strengthening social assets and relationships (sinclair & baglioni, 2014). therefore, si projects need to have a practical impact and generate value for the people affected by the promoted change. si is a collective and creative process that happens in partnership with users, non-users, social movements and organizations (joão-roland & granados, 2020). one aspect to be observed in projects that use a design approach for si is that design must be adapted to reflect participation and co-creation, avoiding superficial approaches or just being a discourse that does not reflect practice (hillgren et al., 2011). according to manzini (2014), design and si have an affinity. while si creatively recombines existing processes and things leading to change, design has the characteristics of creating processes and developing 67 solutions to existing problems. there has been an increasing recognition of users as potential sources of value and as innovators in innovation processes (von hippel, 2005). thus, si seeks to solve social problems by working together with society, and it is complemented by design as a discipline to create projects and solutions focused on people. in this process, there are top-down projects, in which the solution has a large impact on social transformation but lacks in co-participation; bottom-up projects, which are usually initiated by local groups and that result in a more specific or territorialized solution; and hybrid projects, in which there is a mixture of these two modalities (manzini, 2014). what differentiates hybrid projects is that they can start with a territorial focus (bottom-up) and be replicated based on top-down decisions. within the different applications of design within si projects, its particularities stand out when working in a specific geographic territory, such as a neighbourhood or a small town. some important aspects are: 1) valuing products and processes from the territory; 2) promoting the political and aesthetic potential of the territory; 3) dealing with convergences and divergences in the environment; and 4) creating spaces for experimentation (krucken, 2017). in this scope, the designer needs to connect with the people from the territory and its context to be able to propose a solution that will have greater chances of sustainability and continuity. moreover, their work should respect local traditions or the "cultural heritage, that is the practices, representations, knowledge and techniques, associated with the instruments, objects, artifacts and places recognized by local inhabitants as part of their culture” (krucken, 2017, p. 328). thus, si is achieved by respecting the territory’s particularities. another important concept is user-centred design, as si projects focus on people and the resolution of social problems, believing that the problems are solvable. according to ideo (2015), "[…] human-centred design offers problem solvers of any stripe the chance to design with communities, to deeply understand the people they’re looking to serve, to dream up scores of ideas, and to create innovative new solutions rooted in people’s current needs” (p. 9). in user-centred design, one method used is co-creation, which despite being a concept still under debate, is understood in this article as a process of creation in collaboration with the end-user (schuch & hoffmann, 2021). articulating stakeholders for innovation in design for si, it is important to understand and strengthen the interaction between different actors who are somehow involved in the processes (cipolla, 2017). the quadruple helix is the model that best represents the interaction between actors that occurred in the presented case study, as it indicates an evolution in innovation ecosystems, a respect for social and environmental issues, mainly by acknowledging society’s role and interests (galvão et al., 2017). figure 1 shows the correlation of the actors involved in the quadruple helix. 68 figure 1: quadruple helix model (adapted by the authors). in projects focused on specific territories, it is important to take into consideration the interactions between the different stakeholders involved, since these interactions might alter during the project, creating new dynamics in their relationships. thus, it is possible to sum up the aspects that manzini (2014) highlighted about hybrid projects in design for si, as they can start with a territorial focus and be replicated with their widespread performance from top-level decisions. in the context of the case study, it is possible to situate tecnopuc crialab as responsible for managing the co-creation approach and the diverse stakeholders involved in a user-centred hybrid project modality, due to its ability to connect university, business, society and government. the top-down perspective relates mostly to the definition and application of the method used and to the management of the stakeholders involved. the bottom-up perspective relates mostly to the community leader, who envisioned the opportunity to contribute to the development of the territory and reached out to tecnopuc crialab for help. the social innovation process in general, si methods foresee community engagement, stakeholder articulation and co-creation. based on the understanding that innovation is not a matter of luck nor is it restricted to brilliant individuals but that it can and should be shared and managed, the ‘open book of social innovation’ (murray et al., 2010) provides a description of the process for social innovation (psi) which was elaborated on based on various methods and tools for si used around the world and in different sectors. aligned with manzini’s (2014) concept of the hybrid project modality, the parada do sol project highlighted that most social changes do not happen as a result of just one direction, that is, they do not result only from bottom-up or top-down interactions, but they involve the relationship in both directions, bringing together individuals who bring ideas and energy and large organizations with the power to develop and scale ideas. in this sense, tecnopuc crialab’s work as a manager in a hybrid si project indicates that design can fulfil this role by bringing multidisciplinarity, inclusion and social impact towards a cohesive, measurable and applicable result. the psi (murray et al., 2010) comprises six stages to promote social impact, from the conception of the idea to systemic change. the stages are visually represented in a spiral that indicates magnification, shown in the graph below (fig. 2). importantly, this process does not necessarily need to follow the spiral sequence, and the stages can even overlap. the six stages are described in the illustration below. 69 figure 2: the psi (murray et al., 2010 cc by-nc-sa 3.0). combining methods in the parada do sol project combined with the psi by murray et al. (2010), the user-centred exploratory research method (ucer), developed and tested by tecnopuc crialab, was partially applied in the parada do sol project. this method is “directed – but not restricted – to the initial steps of a process of development of a technological product and/or service, from the perspective of user-centred design” (szabluk et al., 2019, p. 4). a unique aspect of this method is the use of low-resolution prototyping (which uses simple materials such as cardboard, pens and adhesive tape) to build the first prototype of a product with low cost and reduced time. this type of prototyping contributes to creating and analyzing a first experience with the product or service, allowing the evaluation of the product ideation, in addition to facilitating changes and alterations to the project, without causing great financial expense (szabluk et al., 2019). figure 3 is the visual representation of the method and its four phases: context, plan, action and analysis. figure 3: user-centred exploratory research method. reprinted with permission from szabluk et al. (2019). the context phase seeks to define the main objectives of the research, in addition to understanding the end-user through different tools. in this method, the user’s understanding is fundamental for defining the hypotheses that will guide the next steps. the plan phase consists of prototyping the scenario and the product or service that will be tested in the next phase. to guide this construction, a narrative of the user’s https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ 70 interaction with the product/service is made and a script for the research is formulated, considering the hypotheses raised in the previous phase. in the action phase, users are prompted to test the product or service that was prototyped. the test is characterized by analyzing the user’s complete experience from their arrival on the scene to their interaction with the product or service under research. finally, the analysis phase is dedicated to analyzing the data collected in the testing experience and compiling the results in the form of design principles that will define the development of the desired solution. although the method presents the phases sequentially and foresees actions that fit from the beginning to the end of the process, the authors highlight that “the method has an iterative character and each step can be revisited, whenever necessary” (szabluk et al., 2019, p. 5). a relevant feature of the method is the intentional and well-planned interaction with the user. it highlights the importance of removing the designer from the role of sole responsibility in the creation process and shows the relevance of co-creating with users. in the following section, we explain how the parada do sol project was developed by combining the si process and the ucer. the case study is described, pointing out its main results along with the method and theoretical framework used and the researchers’ perceptions. case study: the parada do sol project initially without a specific name, the parada do sol project was born from the will of a community leader from morro da cruz to impact the community. this community stands in the são josé neighbourhood located in the peripheral region of porto alegre. the neighbourhood has more than 30,000 inhabitants (observatório poa, 2010), with heterogeneous characteristics in its socioeconomic constitution, but hosts mostly a low-income population and people in a socially vulnerable situation. worried about the environmental issues caused by the lack of education in this community, the community leader thought the neighbourhood could benefit from getting closer to knowledge and innovation generation. he approached the closest university (pucrs) and its science and technology park (tecnopuc) to get help to conceive an installation related to renewable energy that could make a positive impact on the community and its territory. tecnopuc mobilized its creativity and design laboratory (the aforementioned tecnopuc crialab) to participate in this initiative. benefiting from an ecosystem that comprises over 180 companies of several sizes and 7 schools with an academic body of over 3000 professors and researchers, tecnopuc crialab started its involvement by mapping the actors whose activities were related to the topic of renewable energy. thus, the first companies and startups were mobilized to participate in the project. also, based on its regular practice of the user-centred design process, tecnopuc crialab proposed that young people from the community be invited to participate in the project. it was up to the community leader to invite young people between 16 and 25 years old who live in the community to be part of the workgroup. the process was oriented to the co-creation approach and bottom-up modality to capture the community’s needs and wishes. seeking to make the presence of these young people viable during the project, a grant was provided for the duration of the project, sponsored by one of the companies involved. in addition, lessons about basic electricity, photovoltaic installation and curriculum development sought to expand the participants’ skills. this later proved to result in a feeling of belonging to the project amongst the young participants, according to feedback sessions with the participants. 71 therefore, an ecosystem for creating the means for si was articulated. using the quadruple helix model, tecnopuc crialab mapped the stakeholders that were involved in the project (fig. 4). the ‘university’ dimension was represented by pucrs science and technology park (tecnopuc) as host of the project, by the university career office (pucrs) as the support for curriculum development and by the tecnopuc crialab, the laboratory whose team was responsible for coordinating the execution of the project, mobilizing the necessary actors and conducting the co-creation process with everyone involved. the representatives from the ‘society’ dimension of the model were the community leader, the project participants and the morro da cruz community. the community leader recruited and organized the participants, and the community got involved in the in situ co-creation activities. regarding the ‘private sector’ dimension, the representatives were clube watt (a startup that develops photovoltaic panels), sevenia (a company that sells renewable energy solutions), nae (an architecture firm) and metalco (an urban furniture manufacturer). the startup, clube watt, was responsible for filming and photographing the activities, and the sevenia company financed the grants and provided lessons on basic electricity and photovoltaic installation. nae and metalco were responsible for generating technical drawings and for building the structure that was the project outcome. as representatives of the ‘government’ dimension, the public transport and circulation company (eptc) and city hall were contacted to ensure public authorization and licences for the implementation of the project. figure 4: stakeholders of the parada do sol project. from the initial objective of impacting morro da cruz’s community with a technological installation, specific goals were drawn and the method was established. with the guidance of tecnopuc crialab’s team, the group found an opportunity to work on a co-creation process to identify relevant possibilities to benefit the community through the use of this renewable energy. as a project preamble, a series of meetings took place at the tecnopuc and the community centre at morro da cruz. all stakeholders were involved in some or all the meetings, according to the method used and its activities. 72 since the project arose from the preconceived idea ‘to impact morro da cruz with a technological installation’, the stages of identifying problems came together with the effort to think how this idea would be. therefore, regarding the method used in the parada do sol project, stages 1 (commands, inspirations and diagnostics) and 2 (proposals and ideas) of the psi were developed concurrently. the stage 1 activities were aimed at group formation, visiting and exploring the territory in field visits to know the habits of the morro da cruz community and identifying problems that could be minimized or needs that could be addressed with a technological installation using renewable energy a suggestion from the community leader motivated by observing the lack of public lighting in the area. during field visits to morro da cruz, user-centred research techniques were used, such as interviews, observations and field notes. as a result of this stage, it was highlighted that the young identified the area near the community centre as the place the installation would be made, since it is a central area of the neighbourhood where the community and external people meet and also the definition of using solar panels as a visual way of instigating people about the theme of sustainability and renewable energy. it was important to have representatives of the community (the young) in the field exploration to gain the community’s trust. also, the representatives of the university and the companies could not think about the problems of the community with the same gaze as those who live there. young participants visited the sites of the startup and the companies who partnered in the project to learn about their work and meet the professionals. due to the basic level of education of the young participants, the companies got together to offer ways to help them gain knowledge about renewable energy and the realities of the labour market in the technology sector. those initiatives are described below. figure 5: exploratory field visits at morro da cruz and the place defined for the installation. at stage 2, activities aimed at identifying the best place to make the installation and generating ideas in co-creation sessions were undertaken. brainstorming techniques were used in a co-creation session between the community participants and the representatives of the companies and the university involved. from the narrative and previous experiences of the community, it was defined that the best place for the installation of the technological installation would be the bus stop near the community centre (fig. 5). besides generating ideas and designing the installation format in more detail, during co-creation sessions the community named the project. parada do sol is a play on words in portuguese that means ‘sun stop’. the group then brainstormed about its inherent problems and how electricity generated by the solar panels could help. the problems identified were the lack of public lighting (which resulted in insecurity for the population), the small shelter available for the number of people who wait for buses daily and the lack of entertainment possibilities since people spend a lot of time at the bus stop. ideas like having cell phone chargers, plants and seating could improve the space. each participant drew how they envisioned the 73 installation and presented their idea. then, combining ideas and converging them into a single concept, the ideal model of the bus stop was defined (fig. 6). figure 6: co-creation sessions and conceptual drawings of the installation. the stage 3 activities concentrated on conceiving and making the group ideas tangible. tecnopuc crialab’s team (the university representatives) saw the opportunity of using the ucer method, concentrating on the ‘plan’ and ‘action’ phases, as highlighted in figure 7. figure 7: diagram of the ucer method adapted to the psi. adapted with permission from szabluk et al. (2019). in a field visit, the location where the installation developed by the participants of the project would be implemented was studied in detail. therefore, new co-creation sessions at the university premises were facilitated to prototype the ideal installation. once again, the young representatives of the community and the representatives of the companies and the university worked together prototyping in a reflection-inaction process (goldsmith, 1991). from that, a true scale prototype was built. this approach to prototyping allowed the group to keep reflecting on the users’ needs (in the parada do sol project, the users were the community itself) which meets one of the characteristics of the method, that is “constant interactions throughout its application” (szabluk et al., 2019, p. 7). following the proposed ucer method combined with the psi, the technique used was low-resolution prototyping: the installation model was built using cardboard, brown paper, adhesive tape, crepe paper, pens and other simple materials available on site. 74 figure 8: co-creative prototyping process. at stage 4, the stage the project is currently on, the results of the co-creation sessions and prototype were turned into a technical project, led by one of the companies participating in the project. during this stage, the young participants from morro da cruz were not as involved as in previous stages, due to the technical aspect of the activity. until this stage, the participants attended six different training courses given by one of the companies involved in the project, in which the following topics were taught: basic electricity, basic photovoltaic project and installation and maintenance of photovoltaic systems. the training took place in different locations at the university campus, providing opportunities for young people to have contact with the university’s undergraduate environment. at the end of the training, a workshop conducted by pucrs careers (an area of the university that provides career development orientation) provided guidelines for the development of a curriculum and information about the current labour market. figure 9: training courses in basic electricity, photovoltaic projects and installation and maintenance of photovoltaic systems at the university’s premises. still at stage 4 and in preparation for stage 5, a retrospective dynamic session was held with all participants to consolidate group learning. this discussed issues about the project, seeking to understand how participants felt during the process, positive and negative points they identified and what could be improved in the next effort. regarding the positive points, the young participants from morro da cruz mentioned that they were grateful for the opportunity of knowing the innovation ecosystem of the nearest university to their home and that they felt like they had learned a lot about topics their regular school does not cover. they were also enthusiastic about the prototype they built. regarding negative points, they mentioned feeling frustrated with the time it will take to build and install the bus stop they designed and that they wished the project was better communicated to society to inspire other initiatives. the will to keep in touch with the stakeholders involved was also highlighted to find new project opportunities. the results of the parada do sol project until stage 4 and the preparation for stage 5 of the process were presented to the morro da cruz community in a traditional christmas event in december 2020. the young 75 participants received certificates for the training they had attended, and a video about the project was shown to the community. the tecnopuc crialab team is currently in touch and working with the companies who are manufacturing the co-created solution. this aroused in the community high expectations of what could result in their neighbourhood from this project. in the next section of this paper, considerations regarding the method used and the main results achieved so far in the parada do sol project are discussed. discussion this article presented a case study that used the process of social innovation (murray, 2010) as a methodological framework. from the standpoint of co-creation, the quadruple helix (carayannis and campbell, 2009; galvão et al., 2017) helped to understand stakeholder involvement. the steps of the ucer method (szabluk et al., 2019) were indicated as a guide in specific stages of the process, specifically the prompts, proposals and prototype stages. in this process, co-creation was facilitated and its method was proposed by a design team. it was important to have people trained in design to manage the process, the information and the people involved. the facilitation was important not only in the prototyping sessions but also in the field visits and ideations. the user-centredness mindset of the designer was important to ensure that the community perspective was always in focus during the process, despite other stakeholders’ interests. co-creation had an important impact on the stakeholders involved. in relation to the community members involved in the project, treating them as co-designers is a way to promote the culture of innovation (eckhardt et al., 2021), and it also generates a sense of belonging when they are involved in the process of developing solutions in tandem with organizations (academic, private sector and governmental). the community valued having other actors involved in creating something to impact their territory, and the con-creation sessions led to greater integration between the participants. therefore, it is possible to highlight the design and its inherent multidisciplinary, horizontal and co-creative approach as a locus for merging and managing different methods and tools to drive purpose and push through difficulties, encircling expectations and desires to generate measurable, positive outcomes. a real-scale prototype of the bus stop was rapidly developed using the exploratory method of user-centred research. the approach used differs from existing ones due to the low-fidelity experience prototyping procedure and the hybrid modality adopted to convey and engage the multiple actors of the quadruple helix involved in the project. the build of a real scale low-fidelity prototype of the intervention helped participants to perceive the outcome of the co-creative process and also to visualize how their idea could impact their territory. the prototype also brought tangibility to the process the community had gone through along with the other stakeholders who were already more familiar with innovation and product development processes. from an external person’s standpoint, a simple bus stop might not be the choice to start a process of si, but it emerged as a point of reference for the community, where every day many people meet and stop by to go to work, featuring a space of the territory’s identity. this highlights the importance of respecting the cultural heritage of each location (krucken, 2017). this was possible because by bringing the standpoint of the members of the community into the spotlight, it was possible to capture problems, wishes and needs specific to their neighbourhood and the idiosyncratic interactions that happen within it. these grievances might be addressed in future projects complementary to parada do sol, eventually resulting in a virtuous circle of spontaneous improvements in the environment. 76 the government acknowledged the need for improvements in the public security of the area and accompanied and authorized the work to be done. the university and its science and technology park acted with the articulation of the actors and conducted the co-creation sessions, mobilizing knowledge and human resources to spread innovation beyond its campus. the project’s young participants and the community actively participated in efforts to understand their own needs as a community and generate alternatives to overcome difficulties. the parada do sol project is in stage 4 of the psi, and stakeholders are currently fundraising for the construction and installation of the bus stop. an unexpected outcome of the project was the relevance given by the young participants to the training and certificates that they were awarded. in the reality in which they live, education usually presents itself as something distant and difficult (lareau, 2014). reaching a peripheral urban region with innovation initiatives and providing training broke the ‘glass ceiling’ of a socially and educationally segregated community. these are elements that might be explored in a knowledge-based society, creating a path forward to help discontinue the disbelief in the educational system towards the insertion of skilled people in the labour market. these aspects corroborate the concept of si, as the young people have experienced another dynamic of education, accessing relevant knowledge and professionals, developing relevant skills and improving their placement in the current labour market. furthermore, it contributed to objective 4.4 of the sdgs, which is to “substantially increase the number of young people and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and professional skills, for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship” (united nations, 2021). brazil lacks human resources in the information technology labour market due to basic educational gaps. in this sense, the parada do sol project shows a way to insert a socially vulnerable audience into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) area, which is so important for a knowledgebased society. assessing the collaboration between stakeholders based on the quadruple helix model, it was identified that the partnership between universities and companies is extremely relevant for promoting long-term change. the mixing of the academic environment with members of society who do not have access to formal education proved to be a very rich learning experience for the group. however, it is noted that diverse interests from each group of stakeholders could have been better taken into consideration. from the real scale prototype on, the progress of the project was somewhat impaired due to difficulties in the interaction between the companies, the university and government. these difficulties can be exemplified by the protraction and bureaucracy regarding municipal authorizations for the installation and the deprioritization by the companies of the pro bono project due to labour market demands. thus, it is possible to say that from the quadruple helix model perspective, mobilizing stakeholders and creating an innovation ecosystem for the project built from the interaction of these actors brings great results, but it faces some difficulties, especially regarding project management, considering the time it takes for each institution involved to conduct its external and internal processes. it is important to mention the inherent complexity in developing and implementing a project with the characteristics of parada do sol. the expectations generated in the participants, especially in the community involved, needed to be carefully managed. people tend to become emotionally involved with the idea or concept they are creating and prototyping and naturally tend to find it hard to understand the slowness of implementation. another limitation identified relates to the participation and support of the government in medium-term projects such as parada do sol. the periodic election and renewal of the government body needs to be considered in the project timeline due to the fragility of combined agreements. 77 in addition to the practical issues of the parada do sol project, the overlaying of the ucer method to the psi should also be highlighted. its main tools are low-resolution prototyping and the use of narratives to elicit opportunities and to run tests with users, which fit the psi. as indicated, the process’s stages 1 and 2 (respectively, prompts and proposals), correspond to the ‘context’ phase of the ucer method created by tecnopuc crialab, as they are the stages of problem identification, research and raising hypotheses and of generating ideas to solve the identified issue. stage 3 of the psi (prototyping) can be correlated with the ‘plan’ and ‘action’ phases of the ucer method. tecnopuc crialab’s method offers the tools of structured low-resolution prototyping and the use of narratives to build an effective and low-cost prototype. the last overlap identified is between stage 4 of the psi (sustaining) and the ‘analysis’ stage of the ucer method. in both situations, the aim is to identify the feasibility of the created product/process. the main difference between them is that the psi foresees in its process the reproduction and expansion of the carried out initiative, while the ucer method does not foresee this step, although it is not an impediment. thus, the ucer method can support projects focused on si providing tools and process flows. it was noticed that in the parada do sol project, the diagram of the ucer method was not applied to the research of a product to be marketed but to the elaboration of an artefact in a specific social context, which was conceived through and reflects the needs of a community and the territory in question. this demonstrated its viability in contexts other than a market-oriented one. also, the young and the community from morro da cruz represented the end-users, whose collaboration in the creation of the product/installation was essential. this meets the characteristics of si projects. thereby, the viability of applying this method in the design-driven si field was identified. it is believed that the project had a positive impact on the participants. it has already transformed the community by the transfer of knowledge it made possible. even if the solution is not implemented, a spark for a fruitful path has been started, in which the community felt included with the ability to insert themselves in contexts that would not otherwise feel adequate (e.g. the technology area). this way, this case can inspire other initiatives that seek respect for the environment and society, understanding that sustainable development is a reflection of the balance between technology, well-being and respect for differences. as a contribution to the body of knowledge in the area of design, this paper emphasizes the importance of the role of the designer as a facilitator and manager of an si process, the possibilities and limitations of mobilizing different actors to achieve a design goal (society, government, organizations and the university) and the value of using design methods and techniques with non-designers in the pursuit of relevant innovative solutions. references carayannis, e. g., & campbell, d. f. j. 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(2005). democratizing innovation. the mit press. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419109534381 https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/livros/liv101629.pdf https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00248 https://youngfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/the-open-book-of-social-innovationg.pdf https://youngfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/the-open-book-of-social-innovationg.pdf https://periodicos.ufpb.br/index.php/tpa/article/view/57191/33401 https://doi.org/10.1017/s1474746414000086 https://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals 7 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. components of spirituality to safeguard life for the development of an integral design management approach luciana lopes, teresa franqueira, heitor alvelos, cristina parente published online: october 2021 to cite this article: lopes, l., franqueira, t., alvelos, h., & parente, c. (2021). article title components of spirituality to safeguard life to the development of an integral design management approach. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(2), 7-21. 8 components of spirituality to safeguard life for the development of an integral design management approach luciana lopesa, teresa franqueirab, heitor alvelosc, cristina parented afaculty of fine arts of university of porto, porto, 4049-021, portugal. up201902226@edu.fba.up.pt buniversity of aveiro, aveiro, 3810-193, portugal. teresa.franqueira@ua.pt cfaculty of fine arts of university of porto, porto, 4049-021, portugal. halvelos@fba.up.pt dfaculty of arts and humanities of university of porto, porto, portugal. cparente@letras.up.pt abstract the present article is the initial result of fieldwork on design and spirituality in the scope of ongoing doctoral research in design. the research has been developed with lusophone ‘quilombolas’, afrobrazilian and traditional family farming groups and communities from brazil and portugal, which present implicit spiritually driven design management approaches. the project proposes that a spiritual dimension should be a fundamental component of a design management strategy that is intended to be integral. the first learning case was carried out in ethnographic format with the association of women farmers of castelões (associação das mulheres agricultoras de castelões) in portugal. the chosen methodology was the decomposition of the design and spirituality concept from the thoughts of papanek (1971, 1995), schumacher (1974), walker (2011), margolin (2014) and escobar (2018). components of spirituality were identified to guide field data collection. subsequently, these components were identified from the participatory experience and participant observation with the artisans and analysed. in conclusion, it was possible to conceive ‘components’ of a reinvented spirituality for today, 'spirituality to safeguard life'. these may support the development of a spiritually driven design management approach with a lusophone reference, entitled 'integral design management'. it is planned to apply this approach in academic, business, governmental, non-governmental and civil society environments. through its practice, it is intended to promote the implementation of transformative systems with values and paradigm shifts for the recovery, flourishing and continuity of life. keywords: design and spirituality, linen ancestral tradition, transformative social innovation, components of spirituality introduction this study addresses the theme of design and spirituality. it is based on different theoretical lenses, with a special focus on the thought of the anthropologist arturo escobar (2018). the aims of the study are: 1) to present the identification and translation of spirituality components from the thoughts of papanek (1971, 1995), schumacher (1974), walker (2011), margolin (2014) and escobar (2018) to serve as indicators for fieldwork guidance, 2) to identify and analyse the components of spirituality through participative experience and participant observation with the artisans of the association of women farmers of castelões and 3) to present components of a spirituality recreated for today, called 'spirituality to safeguard life', which can support the development of an 'integral design management' approach. the case study is on the association of women farmers of castelões, which was established 20 years ago by a group of women whom we call ‘linen ladies’. they are now in their 80s and come together to keep alive the ancestral tradition of the linen cycle – from sowing to weaving – in the village of castelões, tondela in portugal. 9 since the beginning of the association's project implementation, the artisans aimed to preserve local production with linen, as well as to produce new artefacts, keeping alive the ancestral traditional techniques and the ways of being, knowing and doing of this territory. the ladies are retired; they do not depend on linen production for their financial survival, i.e. they do not work according to a subsistence logic. through manual and agricultural activities with linen, the artisans relate interdependently with presence, care, love and affection, among themselves and with the village, their ancestors, nature and the divine. they meet every tuesday to spin, weave, embroider and crochet the linen and to produce the artefacts that guarantee the continuity of the ancestral knowledge embodied in their lives. the present paper is the initial outcome of ongoing phd research in design. the fieldwork with the linen ladies was and is being conducted in an ethnographic format through participatory experience and participant observation with the artisans (angrosino, 2012; martin & hanington, 2019; pink, 2009). the field study is also being conducted through an online ethnographic approach (ardérvol & goméz-cruz, 2013; pink, 2006) with three ‘quilombolas’ (the descendants and remainders of communities formed by runaway slaves) and afro-brazilian groups and communities in brazil that present implicit spiritually driven design management approaches. the focus of the phd research is design management, an area that does not currently include dimensions of spirituality. the project proposes that a spiritual dimension should be a fundamental component of a design management strategy that is intended to be integral: that is, multidimensional, encompassing spirituality in collaborative, collective, social, design, management and empathy aspects in a design management approach. this is a research gap in that, to date, the present study has not identified the existence of an 'integral design management' approach with a lusophone reference. it is believed that, due to humanitarian and civilisational crisis, it vital to develop and implement strategic actions of design for transitions through transformative social innovation principles (escobar, 2018). therefore, it is essential to think about design guided by spirituality, and as a means, a facilitator of transformative systems that make socioeconomic, environmental, cultural and human rights transformations for recovery, flourishing and continuity of life. to promote such systems, the intention is to propose an ’integral design management’ approach with a lusophone reference, guided by the spiritualities of political, gaia, self-awareness and divine/sacred. it is intended to develop and implement the 'integral design management' approach based on the ancestral traditional knowledge of ‘quilombolas’, afro-brazilian and family farming groups and communities from brazil and portugal that collaborate with the development of the phd research in design. literature review: the dialogue between design and spirituality the subject of design and spirituality was dissected from the thoughts of the authors papanek (1971; 1995), schumacher (1974), walker (2011), margolin (2014) and escobar (2018). we give special focus to escobar's thought that advises us on the importance of the 'ontological and spiritual look to the project' (escobar, 2018). components of spirituality were identified and translated from the thoughts of the referenced authors. such components are common in their thoughts, as well as proven and interpreted from each’s thought (table 1). 10 author components of spirituality only from the author components of spirituality in common among all authors victor papanek (1971, 1995) connection with the inner and spiritual self/being/light; caring for the planet/ecological consciousness; social and ecological responsibility; development of self-awareness; creativity; dignity; confidence; peace; non-violence; sense of social justice; sense of immanence; morals and ethics. connection with the inner and spiritual self/ being/light; caring for the planet/ecological consciousness; social and ecological responsibility; development of selfawareness; creativity; dignity; confidence; peace; non-violence; sense of social justice; sense of immanence; morals and ethics. components of spirituality in common among authors except papanek ernst friedrich schumacher (1974) economy; fraternity; solidarity; dignified and necessary work; encouragement to creation; livelihood and right action; respect for living things; service to others; determination; full attention. presence (in the essence of the present and the sense/the feeling); cosmos, whole, infinity, sense of unity, stardust; connection with the divine/the sacred; divinity with nature/sacred nature; health; well-being; good living; present (the here and now); sense of belonging/identity/rooting; sense of transcendence; the divine/the sacred; collectivity/collective; sense of immanence; fluidity/the flow; community life/communality; contemplation; responsibility; collaboration; participation; celebration; detachment; autonomy; donation; affection; intuition; spirit(s); care; love; faith. stuart walker (2011) right thinking; right being; right doing; right action; living well according to divine law; contemplative life and practices; knowledge of spiritual wisdom; virtue; charity; compassion; devotion and the inner life; the esoteric spiritual path; active and reflective life; creativity as love; selfless service. victor margolin (2014) connection with the divine as a force for personal/interior evolution; struggle; resistance; defence; affirmation; opposition; connection with ancestrality/ancestral wisdom; gaia theory: the earth as a living system; interdependence with all that exists; ecological and communal feminism; economy, fraternity and solidarity; non-violation of nature; engagement and freedom; symbiosis; synergy; relationality. arturo escobar (2018) communal feminism/recommunalisation of social life from communal feminism, communality; cosmovisions of indigenous and afrodescendants from latin america; interdependence on all that exists/radical interdependence; political participation, social movements, public policies; struggle; resistance; defence; affirmation; opposition; diversity/diverse worlds; connection with ancestrality/ancestral wisdom; life, earth as living being/the living system; right, equality, engagement; freedom; horizontal and collective leadership; 11 economy, fraternity and solidarity; relationality/relational ontology; depatriarchisation of societies; derationalisation of societies; territoriality, re-localisation; decolonization of societies; reiteration with the earth; spiritualities of the earth; weft work, webwork; symbiosis and synergy; democracy. table 1: components of spirituality identified and translated from the authors' thought, created by the researchers. victor papanek (1923–1998) austrian designer who emigrated to the usa at the age of 15. he mentions the importance of spiritual values in design for sustainability, which can be decoded in the designer's intention when designing (papanek, 1995). his ideas were based on the designer’s moral and social responsibility, and his unique approach to design pedagogy dramatically inspired the design movements in the 60s and 70s. he also influenced the designer's look in front of a systemic design amplitude in favour of sustainability, in defence of design as a political tool and in favour of democracy (papanek, 1971; 1995). ernst friedrich schumacher (1911–1977) german economist and founder of the intermediate technology group practical action. before the second world war, he went to live in england. he was a precursor thinker about economic, environmental and cultural causes. his thinking became widespread in the 70s, and he relied on spirituality by promoting the debate on the practice of local production for better environmental and social outcomes through the 'buddhist economy', in favour of simplicity and non-violence, the importance of community and dignified work (schumacher, 1974). he was inspired by his life experience when he was an economic advisor to the burmese government from 1955. this experience deeply inspired him, and in opposition to western economies, he fostered the implementation of appropriate, decentralised, human and local technologies. he also encouraged preservation of the environment and care of life and people on the planet (https://www.schumacherinstitute.org.uk/). stuart walker (1955–) stuart walker is an english designer, currently professor of design for sustainability and co-director of the imagination research centre at lancaster university, uk. his research focuses on the aesthetics of sustainable product design and on ‘sustainable aesthetics’ of the product and their resignification from the presentation of his ‘contemplative propositional designs’ (pantaleão & pinheiro, 2018). the author holds the conviction that the environment has been and is being devastated by apathy, disdain and scarcity of meaning due to the materialist-naturalist process introduced in western thought. walker fosters conceptions and practices on the importance of spirituality and preservation of the environment as a current and future worldview. through his thought, the author directs the design and the creative process grounded in cultural, spiritual and religious principles, both eastern and western, to influence ethical and moral foundations and consequently promote sustainability (walker, 2013). walker believes that the legitimate relationship between design projects and sustainability is inherent in the spiritual values of design and in the intrinsic properties of product design (walker, 2011). https://www.schumacherinstitute.org.uk/ 12 victor margolin (1941–2019) margolin is an american educator and filmmaker with a phd in design history and professor emeritus at the school of art and art history at the university of illinois, chicago, usa. his work has always been interdisciplinary across the fields of history, research and design studies. the author investigated and fostered responsible design, and with his wife sylvia margolin, experimented and proposed a social model of design practice in opposition to the dominant market model (margolin & margolin, 2002). margolin emphasises that spirituality needs to be reintroduced into philosophical debates and positioned more centrally in contemporary thinking to support reflections on the artificial, design and technology. in this way, it can support the self-development of designers and ground them to support social welfare. the author mentions the importance of 'spirituality as a metanarrative for design and technology’, from the practices of connecting with the divine through sacred nature and 'the divinity with the nature' with inspiration in the intellectuality and cooperative activities of ecofeminists and the gaia hypothesis (margolin, 2014). arturo escobar (1952–) escobar is a colombian american, an anthropologist and kenan professor of anthropology at the university of north carolina at chapel hill, usa. spirituality is translated in his thought as the ability to redesign the world starting from the ways of being, knowing and doing that happen in collective, collaborative, participative, autonomous and local ways in tune with justice, with the reiteration with the earth and the understanding of the planet as a living being. this redesign must be guided by the ‘earth spiritualities’, identified by the author as '[...] the work that requires a radical shift in our understanding of and in connection with the earth, with non-humans and with each other' (escobar, 2020, as cited in carley, 2020). this work implies reconnection with the spiritual world based on the practices of traditional communities, such as indigenous peoples and afro-descendant communities from latin america and based on the practices and thoughts of communal feminism. it is guided primarily by political participation in the face of 'relationality', 'interdependence on all that exists', territoriality, autonomy, affection, love, care, fight, resistance, 'our work in a weave, in a web', to provide the 'flourishing of the plot of life' (escobar, 2018). methodology and research the chosen methodology was first the breakdown of the topic design and spirituality from the different theoretical lenses mentioned by the authors and researchers above. from this exercise, the components of spirituality identified and translated in the thoughts of the authors were identified (table 1). these components of spirituality were defined as indicators to guide the data collection and the analysis of the participatory experience and participant observation with the linen ladies. the field research started in september 2020, when the researchers met the four ladies from the association of women farmers of castelões. from this first contact with the group, it was agreed with the artisans that the researchers would return to the association's head office to start to learn about the practices related to the linen cycle. since then, we started working together. the field methodology was qualitative and based on an ethnographic approach through participant observation and open and nonsystematic conversations and interviews with the artisans (angrosino, 2012; martin & hanington, 2019; pink, 2009). between september 2020 and august 2021, 15 meetings were held with the artisans. it was possible to learn how to weave, spin, embroider, crochet, sew, grind and scutch the linen and observe the linen ladies with a focus on the approach of design management guided by spirituality. 13 following the definition of the indicators to guide the fieldwork, spirituality components were identified from the participatory experience with the artisans (table 2). it was then possible to analyse the components identified in the field, as will be presented in the case study. finally, it was possible to conceive a preliminary proposal of the 'components of spirituality to safeguard life'. case study: the participatory experience and learning from the the linen cycle’s ancestral knowledge and doings from the participatory experience and learning with the linen ladies, it was possible to recognise an implicit spiritually driven design management process in the group. it was also identified that the agricultural and craft activities, as well as the social and political participation of these ladies, are recognised as principles of transformative social innovation. therefore, that can facilitate the implementation of strategic actions of design for transitions. based on the components of spirituality identified and translated from the thoughts of the referenced authors, three main components were confirmed that act as an umbrella to the others recognised in the artisans’ activities: presence (in the present and the essence of the sense/the feeling), relationality and interdependence on all that exists. these are anchored by three others: love, affection and care. and they are interdependent on other spiritual components, as can be verified in table 2. presence relationality interdependence on all that exists love, affection and care connection with: the divine/the sacred, the divine and spiritual light, intuition and ancestral wisdom; collectivity; collaboration; participation; engagement; freedom; autonomy; creativity; traditions; dignity; sense of transcendence; faith; spirit; celebration; communality/community life; territoriality; sense of social justice; ecological awareness; sense of belonging/identity/rooting; horizontal and collective leadership; reliability; solidarity; no violence; the present/the here and now; development of self-awareness; donation; detachment; synergy; well-being; good living; health; the divine/the sacred; weave work/webwork; fluidity/the flow; struggle; resistance. table 2: components of spirituality identified through the participative experience with the linen ladies, created by the researchers. conceptual interpretation we will briefly interpret the components of the spirituality concepts that were identified through the participative experience with the linen ladies in the field (table 2). relationality/relational ontology; interdependence on all that exists/radical interdependence; synergy escobar presents the concept of relationality or relational ontology as follows: “[...] all of this dense web of interrelationships and materiality [...] a whole world that is updated minute by minute, day by day, through an infinity of practices that link a multiplicity of humans and non-humans. [...] that in which nothing (neither humans nor non-humans) pre-exists the relations that constitute us. we all exist because everything exists”. (escobar, 2016) the author expounds on the concept of interdependence on all that exists or radical interdependence linked with relationality: 'inter-humans and beyond human relations' depend on each other and are 14 interconnected with everything. faced with the principle of relational ontology they are interdependent on all that exists, that is, radically interdependent (escobar, 2018). connection with: ancestrality/ancestral wisdom, the divine/the sacred, the divine and spiritual light, the intuition; fluidity/the flow; faith; spirit; sense of social justice; ecological awareness; non-violence; development of self-awareness; the divine/the sacred; sense of transcendence it is argued that in mystical-religious significations, it is possible to connect with the invisible considered the ancestors (entities known as spirits and/or energies) and the divine/the sacred as god, gods, goddesses, saints, angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim and orixás, which are related to religious traditions, beliefs and philosophies as well as to cosmovisions and spiritual sciences. it is asserted that the religious practices, such as divinity as sacred nature and/or the simple act of worship, feeling the vital energy and witnessing life, promote faith and peace of mind. through these practices, it is possible to connect with what is called the inner self, the self, the core and the heart as well as with the soul, the spiritual self and the spiritual, inner, divine light. it is stated that this connection usually promotes feelings related to morals and ethics, such as a sense of social justice, ecological awareness and non-violence. in addition, it provides reiteration with the earth, connection with the cosmos and perception of the sense of unity, of the whole, the assimilation of infinity and the understanding that humans are stardust (sagan, 2003). it also provides intuition and self-development, |i.e. the development of self-awareness of the human being (chandra, 2009, 2014). within the scope of the spiritual science anthroposophy, in 1962, steiner presented the spirit as the body energy i (ego) and the astral body of a human being. for the author, the astral body is the set of forces known as the soul. the astral body is the body of feelings, sensations and consciousness. the i body (ego) "is the individualized and simple spiritual element which constitutes the centre of the being". the human being has four bodies: the physical, the vital (etheric), the astral and the i (ego). when the human being dies, only the spiritual energy of the i (ego) and astral bodies remains (lanz, 1983). in the psychology sphere, it is considered a person’s personality. in the scope of some religions and spiritual cosmovisions, theories and sciences, it is considered the energy and/or the ancestor that manifests itself in various ways in materials and dimensions (bispo dos santos, 2015; blavatsky, 1980; cohn-sherbok, 1999; elias, 1999; hawkins, 1999; kopenawa & albert, 2015; krenak, 2019, 2020; lanz, 1983; lovelock, 2014, 2020; moreira costa, 2002; sagan, 2003; shattuck, 1999; margulis, 2014; wilson, 1999). through religious practices and esoteric experiences, it is argued that some can experience the sense of transcendence. in religions, philosophies, cosmovisions and spiritual sciences, transcendence as experienced is verified in physical and mental states that occur outside the material world, where the divine/the sacred is identified as being outside the mundane environment (bispo dos santos, 2015; blavatsky, 1980; cohn-sherbok, 1999; elias, 1999; hawkins, 1999; kopenawa & albert, 2015; krenak, 2019, 2020; lanz, 1983; moreira costa, 2002; shattuck, 1999; wilson, 1999). communality/community life; collectivity; participation; collaboration; engagement; solidarity; traditions; creativity; sense of belonging/rooting/identity; dignity; struggle; resistance; participation; donation; detachment; horizontal and collective leadership; territoriality, re-localisation; freedom; autonomy; well-being; good living; health; celebration; webwork/weave work it is asserted that feminine and matriarchal care for a community recovers and preserves life and life flourishes. this can be noticed by attitudes of engagement, detachment and respect for oneself, for the 15 other, for nature and for the planet as well as by actions that take responsibility, participation, collectivity, donation and communality in a solid matriarchal format. it is stated that this matriarchal care is genuine and has affection, love and robustness. it also strengthens and encourages fraternal economies, culture, art, traditions, creativity and equal rights. it promotes feelings of community and territory rooting, pride, dignity and identity and also identification with the communal way of life. it is argued that it takes place in defence of the territory, that it ensures that the local prevails and that it resists individualism. moreover, this way of life is democratic, since it dialogues, understands, believes, encourages, cares for and protects social, environmental, human and non-human relationships as well as diversity. it also operates in the mode where leadership is horizontal and collective, i.e. the collective acts and dialogues horizontally. there are no hierarchies, and everyone has the knowledge that supports, builds with, complements and is interdependent on the other. escobar signals the importance of "re-localization as an active role of inhabiting, eating, education and health" (escobar, 2018). this can be understood by the defence of local life, land and territory, known as territoriality, and the safeguarding of local freedom and autonomy that defend and promote health, housing, education, healthy food for living well and well-being. groups and communities that work according to the principles of communal feminism, territoriality, autonomy, freedom, creativity and celebration of life, are those that care for, love, witness and derationalise life. they experience relationality and radical interdependence, in opposition to the dualistic ontology of the globalised world. they “work in a web, in a weave” and provide the “flourishing of the plot of life” (escobar, 2018). the weaving work, i.e. the web work, is exercised in a collective, matriarchal, communal life. together, and interdependent on humans and non-humans, respect, care, love, affection, struggle and resistance occur for the recovery, flourishing and continuity of life. love; care; affection; presence (in the essence of the present and the sense/the feeling); present (the here and now) in 1995, comte-sponville translated love into various feelings and meanings: joy, fulfilment, warmth, cosiness, passion, devotion, donation, desire, pleasure, energy, potency, enjoyment of presence and existence, happiness, hope, gratitude, generosity, kindness, friendship, benevolence, sadness, anguish, grief, failure, greed, selfishness, misery, absence and madness (comte-sponville, 2004). it is attested that love and care coexist in the presence of one another, and that affection emerges from the existence of care. ergo, love, care and affection are mutually interdependent and complementary. in addition, affection is tenderness and dedication which turns into friendship and love, completing a full circle. as boff wrote: “caring is more than an act, it is an attitude. therefore, it encompasses more than a moment and attention of zeal and diligence. it represents an attitude of occupation, concern, liability and affective engagement with the other”. (boff, 1999) it is noticed that presence exists where there is a manifestation of love, care and affection. the authentic presence is understood as attendance and perceived through the existence of a life of being that is genuine and occurs in the present. 16 analysis of the components of spirituality identified in the field in this section, we briefly analyse the components of spirituality that were identified in the field. the divine and its relationship with some spiritual components the divine was identified by the researchers through the participant experience and observation in a common and collective ritual of a religious nature. the linen ladies always pray while they are working at their handicraft activities. it could be observed that the prayers and handicraft activities are performed through altruistic love, detachment, donation and synergy among the artisans, in tune with nature and the divine. these practices are interconnected with the sense of transcendence, social justice and ecological awareness through affection and care for themselves, for others, for nature, for the land, for the community and for the village. the researchers also identified that these practices are interdependent on the faith and the intuition that the ladies possess. connection with ancestors interdependent on other components of spirituality ancestry was observed from spontaneous conversations and unsystematic interviews of the artisans with the researchers. the linen ladies always mention with honour the value of their ancestors. it could be observed that their ancestors are their references and that ancestral wisdom is passed on by their presence through the lived life they had with them and through the invisible life they have with them. the experience with their ancestors provides pride of identity for the territory of ancestral tradition based on agriculture and the production of textiles and embroidery work made of linen. one perceives the rootedness, the identity and the feeling of belonging to the local as well as the feeling of dignity for the valuable and noble linen work that has soul, spirit and life. the researchers also observed that the relationship with their ancestors, between them and with the community, works as a web and promotes care, affection, love, communality (community life) as well as the feeling of harmony, well-being, good living, health and meaning of life. struggle, resistance and creativity: relationality and interdependence for conservation and continuity of the linen life cycle the researchers identified that the linen ladies struggle and resist to preserve and keep alive the ancestral tradition of the linen cycle in the village of castelões. this happens with affection, love and care in synergy and non-violence with themselves, with each other, with their neighbours and relatives, with the land, with the planet, with the animals and with the village. the linen ladies’ presence and creativity could be observed through the implementation and management of the association as well as through the artisans’ ideas for new projects. this commitment was also identified when the artisans call attention to the importance of work on the land and of the continuity of portuguese agriculture, not only of linen but of the family agriculture of organic/biological vegetables, greenery and fruits; the significance of caring for the animals and the family production of food for subsistence; and the dignified and noble handicraft work that cares and beautifies. it was noticed that they practise everything they talk about, and through their actions it was possible to recognise their connection with the forces of life, with the energies of nature, the sacred and the cosmos, which are interconnected with the health and the well-being that they have. one could observe their autonomy, freedom, fluidity, ecological awareness, sense of social justice and communal conviviality in this territory. celebration, collaboration and solidarity interconnected with some spiritual components every tuesday evening, the ladies joyfully celebrate the end of the working day. with coffee, tea, ‘jeropiga’ (traditional portuguese alcoholic drink made from grapes), portuguese chestnuts from the 17 village, cheeses, ‘rabanadas’ (traditional butter-fried portuguese bread soaked in milk, eggs, cinnamon and sugar) and delicious cakes they made, they celebrate their life, friendship and love. in addition, it could be observed that the ladies’ work is carried out in a dignified, simple, collaborative and participative way, with commitment, presence, solidarity and mutual trust. each lady has a function, and they all have their value. it was noticed that there is no hierarchy, since their leadership is horizontal and collective. one supports and complements the other, and they are interdependent. they always act intuitively, with affection and care for themselves, for each other and the community. they always think of each other, there is no selfishness and their heart is open. relational ontology and radical interdependence on the scene the principle of relationality and the interdependence of all that exists were observed in a scene often witnessed by the researchers. a lady is spinning linen and working with the spinner in her hands while another lady weaves on the loom. at the same time, two other ladies embroider linen cloths spun and woven by the artisans. when one looks at this scene with other eyes, that is, with the eyes of relational ontology and radical interdependence, it is possible to see a world, indeed several worlds, since the linen transformed into thread and cloth has passed through a process of visible and invisible interrelations before reaching the artisans’ hands, mouths and fingers. first is the preparation of the land, and then there is the sowing, the watering, the weeding, the grubbing up, the ripping, the tanning in the river, the drying, the grinding, the scutching and the threshing of the linen. afterwards comes the spinning, which then goes on to the ‘sarilhar’ (forming the skeins), then making the ‘barrela’ (a kind of broth made from the ashes from burning the linen plant), the boiling, the washing, the colouring, the drying of the skeins and the warping to ‘impeirar’ (placed on the loom). once the thread has been ‘impeirado’ (placed on the loom), it is woven and finally embroidered (veiga de oliveira et al., 1991). the preparation of the land, the sowing, the watering, the weeding and the grubbing up involves the compost, the humus, which is interrelated with minerals, microorganisms, fungi and animals such as insects, birds and those who produce manure (cows, for instance) to strengthen the soil. it could be noticed that this knowledge, added to that of the rest of the process as well as the use of tools to work with the linen, involves ways of being, doing and knowledge learned through the ancestors of these ladies and the community of this territory. there is also the interrelation with other invisible worlds, such as the beings who protect and bless the plantation, the work, the animals, the neighbours and the community life. it could be observed that those invisible relations refer to these ladies' relationships with the divine, whom the artisans believe guide and bless them, as well as their connection with the cosmos, with the moon and the sun that guide planting and also protect the farming. conclusion the components of spirituality identified in the field, analysed and described in the last part of this article, can be integrated into a more extensive inventory that is in progress and prospective and which will be finalised in the future. from the analysis of the participative experience with the linen ladies and the identification and translation of the components of spirituality through the thought of the referenced authors, it was possible to develop a preliminary proposal of this list, the ‘components’ of a spirituality 18 recreated for today, called 'spirituality to safeguard life'. this reinvented spirituality has four subnominations of spiritualities: political spirituality, spirituality of self-awareness, gaia spirituality and divine/sacred spirituality. the 'components of spirituality to safeguard life' are associated with peace of mind, joy, well-being, a sense of transcendence, the divine/the sacred, a sense of immanence, connection with the spiritual self and the intuition, a sense of unity and development of self-awareness. they are correlated to social justice, ecological awareness, human rights, political participation from communal feminism and matriarchy in defence of health, education, housing, land, diversity, autonomy, local, well-being, good living, relations and life. they are inspired by the cosmovisions of indigenous and afro-descendant communities from latin america and secular religiosity. they are related to care, affection, love and presence (in the essence of the present and the sense/the feeling). they are also linked to the relationality and radical interdependence between humans and non-humans as well as to the reiteration with the earth. the 'components of spirituality to safeguard life' are interconnected and occur as a web and a weave. they are interrelated with one another and are interdependent (figure 1). figure 1: web of the 'components of spirituality to safeguard life', created by the researchers. it is intended to dissect and integrate the 'components of spirituality to safeguard life' in the fieldwork with the other ‘quilombolas’ and afro-brazilian case studies from brazil that collaborate with the development of the phd research in design and identify further components in this field and integrate them into the more extensive inventory that is under way. we believe that it is essential to promote dialogue between design and spirituality, especially in contexts of humanitarian and civilisation crisis on a large scale, as in the current one with the covid-19 pandemic. it is essential to think of spirituality-oriented design and as a means to facilitate transformative systems that bring about socio-economic, environmental, cultural and human rights transformations. the design for 19 transitions based on principles of transformative social innovation is vital so that one can recover, flourish and continue life. the intention is to carry out the final design of the 'components of spirituality to safeguard life' based on the ancestral traditional knowledge of the ‘quilombolas’, afro-brazilian and family farming learning references from brazil and portugal. it is believed that these ‘components’ can support the development of a spiritually driven design management approach with lusophone reference, entitled 'integral design management'. it is planned to apply this approach in academic, business, governmental, nongovernmental and civil society environments. through its practice, it is intended to promote the implementation of 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(2022). social impact measurement in cyprus and other european countries. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(1), 83-94. 84 social impact measurement in cyprus and other european countries eleni zenonos a acenter for social innovation, nicosia 1010, cyprus. eleni.zenonos@csicy.com abstract although non-profit and other organisations related to social issues in europe have increased, there is currently a gap when it comes to measuring their performance and social impact. this can cause mistrust and may have negative implications on their efficiency and sustainability. as part of the erasmus+ project social impact measurement for civil society organizations (sim4csos), which aims to create a common methodology and approach civil society organisations can apply to measure their social impact (in the form of a methodological manual and online resources), a survey and focus groups were conducted with representatives of civil organisations, corporate social responsibility departments and policymakers to identify existing skill gaps and training needs. the research took place in croatia, cyprus, greece, italy, norway and portugal. the results showed that social change practitioners, whether they work for nonprofit organisations or the private sector, are keenly aware of the benefits of impact measurement. however, they expressed a need for buy-in and participation from organisational management, as well as identifying the main stakeholders who benefit from their activities. additionally, many organisations indicated a lack of resources (financial and technical) to carry out a full-impact measurement process and evaluation. finally, there was a clear need to consider the skill levels of practitioners, which varied. therefore, most organisations suggested that the methodology developed should be practical, adaptable and non-time-consuming and that any platform used should be accessible and easy to use. keywords: social impact measurement, civil society organisations introduction the social impact measurement for civil society organisations (sim4csos) is an erasmus+ funded programme which aims to empower non-profit and other civil society organisations by creating a set of tools and methodologies they can use to assess their social impact. the programme is led by higher incubator giving growth and sustainability from greece, a non-profit organisation that aims to reinforce non-profit organisations through educational and supportive programmes. the other consortium members are nova institute, which is part of oslo metropolitan university in norway, the center for social innovation in cyprus, act group from croatia, cesie in italy, inova+ in portugal and midot in israel. all participating organisations have experience in social research and social science, and their collective knowledge and experience have been instrumental to the success of this project. the aims of the sim4csos project are: “…to improve the effectiveness of the third sector, increase the fundraising possibilities of civil society organisations (csos), enhance the overall sector and the protection of the reputation of csos from bad practice cases, create synergies with organisations active in the social field and equip adult staff members with strategic planning of their professional development.” (sim4csos consortium, 2022) 85 as part of the project, several best practices concerning social impact measurement were collected from each partner country. furthermore, to explore and assess the state of the art of social impact measurement of csos in each partner country, desk and field research was conducted, including a survey and focus groups. in this paper, the results of the research in cyprus and the sim4csos partner countries will be presented as well as contextual information about cyprus and brief information about the other countries. current state of art in cyprus there are currently 6,300 registered associations, although most of them are inactive, which gives a false impression of the size of civil society in cyprus, 330 registered non-profit organisations, more than 400 charity foundations (office of the commissioner for volunteering and ngos et al., 2019) and about 190 social enterprises (isaias, 2019) which operate in a range of areas – from the environment, gender, education and culture to disabilities and health. nevertheless, reports and studies indicate that organised civil society in cyprus still has weak foundations for a variety of reasons, including limited participation. in july 2017, progressive amendments to the law on associations, foundations and clubs to improve the regulation of csos in cyprus were approved by the parliament, but there are still obstacles to overcome. for example, the legislation does not have specific provisions for the legal sources of income or property for any type of ngo, nor does it set any prerequisites regulating their immediate involvement in financial operations, which hinders the need for transparency. based on the most recent assessment of civil society nationally (civicus, 2011): “accountability and transparency rates of csos need to be encouraged and enhanced, particularly for the ones receiving public funding. this will help to create a culture of openness and transparency and will help to counter abuses and corruption in the long run.” this highlights the importance of measuring social impact, which can enhance accountability and transparency of csos. current state of the art in other european countries based on the comprehensive report published by the sim4csos consortium (2021), research conducted in partner countries, namely greece, portugal, croatia, norway, italy and poland, only a few had established policies or regulations in place regarding the definition of national standards for impact measurement. in italy, social impact measurement became more relevant with the reform of the third sector (law 106, 2016), in which social impact measurement was introduced and presented as a “key element for the legal recognition of social enterprises”. despite the lack of formal governmental guidance and official regulations regarding social impact measurement in most partner countries, it is evident that the situation has started changing, as csos, social enterprises and even private companies, including their corporate social responsibility (csr) departments, from all partner countries have indicated that they realised the importance of social impact measurement and identified several external and internal drivers which further stress the crucial role social impact measurement plays in their sector. methodology to explore and assess the state of the art of social impact measurement of csos in cyprus, first, several best practices were collected from each partner country, which consisted of examples of organisations 86 or projects which successfully implemented social impact measurement. second, a survey developed by the sim4csos consortium and set up on google forms was sent to over 160 non-governmental non-profit organisations, social enterprises and corporate responsibility departments in cyprus in february 2021. a total of 32 organisations from cyprus responded to the survey (215 responses came from the other consortium countries, 247 responses in total). finally, to further explore the topic of social impact measurement and the training needs related to it by civil society representatives, two focus groups were conducted in each partner country. the participants were recruited through email contact or had already expressed interest to take part in the focus groups via the survey. twelve participants took part in the cyprus focus groups, from a variety of non-governmental organisations in cyprus, csr departments and policymakers. cyprus research results demographics most survey respondents 78% (25) worked for non-profit organisations but participants from other types of organisations also took part, including a private company (1), higher education institutions (2), a public organisation dealing with social issues (1), a company limited by guarantee (1), a grassroots initiative (1) and an informal network (1). the respondents worked in a variety of areas: youth development (7), arts, culture and humanities (5), environmental and animal (3), environmental, climate and social justice (1), educational institutions (3), health and human services (1), intercommunal communication (1), hospitals and care (1), community capacity (1), business incubator (1), gender issues and human rights research (1), gender and women’s rights inequality (1), accounting (1), advocacy for civic space (1), business network (1), sustainable development goals (1), social care (1) and economics and public policy (1). figure 1: type of organisation the respondents worked for. 87 in addition, most participants had more than three years of experience in the non-profit sector (22, 69%) and only one had less than one year of experience. figure 2. years of work experience in the non-profit sector. figure 2: years of experience in the non-profit sector. the main funding channels for most of the organisations were eu funds (9), government grants (8), corporate donations (4) and individual donations (3). other sources of funding reported were a combination of the ones mentioned (1), membership fees (1) and sales of products (1). three (3) organisations reported they received no funding. figure 3: main funding channel of organisations. regarding the focus groups, 12 representatives of ngos, policymakers and csr departments in cyprus took part. most participants were 40–50 years old (5) and had a master's degree (9/12). the rest were 20–30 (3), 30–40 (2) and 50–60 (2) years old. also, two participants had a ba and one had a phd. measuring social impact when asked how measuring social impact could help their organisations, 8 participants stated that it could help improve their current processes and their organisation in general (e.g. “it is an important element of understanding the role and importance of our activities. this allows us to better understand how to improve 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 28% 69% 3% 1-3 years above 3 years less than 1 year 88 our activities in a way that will hopefully achieve the desired impact”). in addition, 6 participants believed that measuring their social impact could assist in their planning and strategy (e.g. “it will help with formulating future activities based on the impact, feedback and needs of our target group.”) other ways in which measuring social impact could help their organisations that were mentioned were assessing their efficiency (5 responses, e.g. “it can help us make sure we are creating the change that the community needs”), securing funding (4 responses, e.g. “to secure more funding, more collaboration with other csos, better public awareness of our work”), proving their effectiveness (2 responses, e.g. “…people respond/understand better when you present your impact instead of anything else…”) and raising awareness (2 responses, e.g. “promote the identity and values of the organisation. raise brand awareness”). furthermore, 41% (13) of the respondents reported that they measured their impact, with most measuring both qualitative and quantitative data (92%, 12) and one participant only measuring quantitative data. figure 4: percentage of organisations measuring their social impact. the reasons the participants measured their impact were to improve the services they provide (10), due to internal process requirements (7), donor requirements (5) and to reach more people (1). regarding the methods used to measure their impact, most used records/files (9), questionnaires (7) and interviews (6), followed by focus groups (4) and a combination of social media, emails and face-to-face conversations (1). figure 5: reasons for measuring social impact. 89 just over half (53%, 7) of the respondents used a logical model for these measures. the logical models used varied. some of the models mentioned were based on the organisation’s inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes, their goals (1), the organisation’s rules (1) and according to european criteria (1). of those who did not use a logical model, the main reason was lack of knowledge (1), lack of structured activities (1) and use of a theory (theory of change) similar to a logic model. in addition, 10 of the 13 organisations that measure their social impact had defined success metrics. some of those metrics were the satisfaction of employees and volunteers, financial income, quality of services activities provided and/or implemented, participation in activities, an annual target set by their council, the organisation’s projects and day-to-day actions, annual improvement, achievement of goals of projects and specific targets set and measured by the organisation. of those not using defined success metrics, the reason was lack of data. regarding the frequency of social impact reporting, most participants (5/13) report about it annually, every six months (2/13) or after each activity/project (2). figure 6. frequency of social impact reporting. the organisations that did not measure their impact reported that it was due to a lack of human resources (11/19), lack of financial resources (10/19), lack of time (10/19) and lack of knowledge (9/19). figure 7: reasons for not measuring social impact. 90 the most common reasons they reported they would like to start measuring their impact were to be able to improve their services (16, 84%) and due to internal process requirements (6, 32%) or donor requirements (2, 11%). figure 8: reasons organisations would like to start measuring their impact. obstacles in measuring impact the main obstacles to measuring impact that the participants responded with were lack of human resources (19, 59%), lack of an established system (17, 53%), lack of trained personnel (13, 41%), lack of know-how (12, 37%) and difficulty accessing data (11, 34%). figure 9: obstacles in measuring social impact. when asked how many hours a month they could allocate to measuring social impact, most participants stated that they could dedicate up to 5 hours (14, 44%), followed by up to 10 hours (8, 25%) and up to 20 hours (3, 9%). in terms of the amount of money they could give, most stated that they could spend up to 100 euros (10, 31%), followed by up to 500 euros (5, 16%) and up to 1000 euros (2, 6%). seven participants said they had no funds available to allocate for measuring their social impact. eighteen respondents claimed that they would also like to measure other aspects of their work, e.g. indirect impact on society in general (3 respondents), not just the immediate target group, people’s opinions/general public opinions (3 participants), comparing their impact with their stakeholders versus people who do not take part in the organisation’s programmes, the impact of scientific and cultural events and the impact of csr actions. 91 most respondents (27) agreed (agree and mostly agree combined) that social impact measurement influences donors’ decisions. they also agreed (25) that social impact measurement is an advantage for large-scale organisations and that in the long term these can lead to better, more informed decisions and become a management tool for the organisation (29). most participants also agreed that (29) social impact is more than numbers and that it has a long-term impact on the organisation (22). figure 10: the number of hours organisations could allocate to social impact measurement. skills analysis most participants (combined scores of 3 and 4) felt confident in their ability to apply questionnaire research techniques to a target audience (23), present the results on the monitoring plan (22), compile a report with the results of the monitoring plan (21) and successfully research target audiences (20), but felt less confident in their ability to set/define key performance indicators (kpis) (17), measure those indicators (16), apply focus group and interview techniques (16), design a monitoring plan (14), and apply social return on investment (sroi) methodology (5). finally, in terms of their training needs, most respondents reported that they need training in applying sroi methodology (26), applying focus groups research techniques (24), interview research techniques (23), questionnaire research techniques for a target audience (20), successfully reaching target audiences (24), setting/defining kpis (23), measuring those kpis (24), designing a monitoring plan to measure kpis (26), compiling a report on the monitoring plan (23) and presenting the results of that monitoring plan (21). focus groups the groups were asked about their experience in social impact measurement (if any), its importance for them, challenges they might face in implementing such methodology, what a good methodological tool would look like and what training or other needs they may have related to this area. all the participants agreed that measuring social impact was of high importance for them, but most participants either did not measure social impact or measured it occasionally with no specific methodology. the csr representatives and the commissioner of volunteering in cyprus emphasised how vital it is for ngos to be transparent and be able to measure and report their social impact, as funders will trust them more and will be more willing to donate. 3%3%3% 3% 3% 25% 3% 10% 44% 3% 2 hours per month can't estimate it depends see answer above. surely more than 20 but do not know how many up to 10 hours up to 2 hours up to 20 hours 92 in terms of the main difficulties faced in measuring social impact, most respondents replied, similarly to the survey, that lack of time, money and professional staff were the main reasons. furthermore, for a tool to work for them, it must be easy to use, user-friendly, with minimal resources needed and should be adaptable to their organisational needs. all the participants agreed that some form of training will be necessary for them to be able to use such a methodological tool. results in other european countries the results of the research conducted in the other partner countries were strikingly like the cyprus results for both the survey and the focus groups. conclusions social change practitioners in cyprus and the other consortium countries are aware of the benefits of impact measurement, the fact that it provides organisational infrastructure and is a way to attract and communicate with funders etc., but they also recognise the lack of impact measurement and the need for a more methodological approach. it is also obvious that buy-in and participation from organisational management are crucial to the implementation of social impact measurement. however, there was some ambiguity about how the organisations should measure social impact. there was also a strong desire for professional support concerning the methods and skills necessary to conduct impact measurement. considering basic skills levels and limited resources, most, if not all, organisations suggested that the methods developed should be practical, adaptable, not time-consuming and that any platform should be accessible and easy to use. next steps the next stage of the project is the development of a methodological manual and an online platform that will supply information and resources to csos about impact measurement. based on the conclusions above: “…this tool would be developed to help practitioners of all skill levels achieve a common baseline. specifically, it would provide guidance on how to create a logic model, identify impact kpis, and develop a logic-driven measurement plan which includes clear steps and phases. more advanced content might include links to measurement tools specific to certain target groups and intervention types. it might also link up with national and regional indicators and longitudinal data and would help organizations understand how to incorporate country or region-level data into their impact assessments” (sim4csos consortium, 2022) find out more about this project and the tool that will soon be developed on our website www.measuringimpact.eu references civicus (2011). the assessment of civil society in cyprus. a map for the future-2011. civicus https://tinyurl.com/2p9cav4f isaias, g. (2019). social enterprises and their ecosystems in europe. country report: cyprus. luxembourg: publications office of the european union. https://tinyurl.com/4furvfpx https://measuringimpact.eu/ https://tinyurl.com/2p9cav4f https://tinyurl.com/4furvfpx 93 office of the commissioner for volunteering and ngos, expert council for the legislation on nongovernmental organizations (ngo) of the conference of international ngos of the council of europe, ngo initiative group (2019). the organized civil society in cyprus. press and information office. sim4csos consortium (2021). comprehensive report. best practices and needs regarding social impact measurement in csos. sim4csos consortium. https://measuringimpact.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/sim4csos-io1-comprehensive-report_en.pdf sim4csos consortium (2022). the contributions of the project. sim4csos consortium. https://measuringimpact.eu/ https://measuringimpact.eu/ 123 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. rethinking social and sustainable innovations through prospective co-design and project-grounded research marie-julie catoir-brisson, thomas watkin published online: october 2021 to cite this article: catoir-brisson, m-j., & watkin, t. (2021). rethinking social and sustainable innovations through prospective co-design and project-grounded research. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(2), 123-137. 124 rethinking social and sustainable innovations through prospective co-design and project-grounded research marie-julie catoir-brisson a,c, thomas watkinb,c aaudencia business school, nantes, 44000, france. mjcatoirbrisson@audencia.com buniversity of nîmes, 30000, france. thomas.watkin@unimes.fr c projekt lab, university of nîmes abstract how can project-grounded research in social design make it possible to question the creation of social relations and the emergence of forms of solidarity? our article aims to articulate in social and sustainable innovation the contribution of prospective co-design, foresight and societal fiction to offer new imaginaries of territories. we also explain how the evolution of project-grounded research (pgr) in social design can widen through design fiction by solidarity economy. we develop our subject in five parts to explain how social design could invest in sustainable development and the social and solidarity economy (sse). first, we present pgr in social design to precisely delineate its theoretical roots. second, we explain how we can cross design fiction and social design through a reflexive analysis of pgr in social design, focusing on two different topics that are both related to comparative and comparable purposes for mobilizing prospectively for sustainability issues. third, we present a synthesis of the reflective analysis on relating participatory and prospective design. this leads us to reframe the sse, communities and commons prospectively in the fourth part. finally, we open the reflection on the necessity of third places and actions and propose our approach as a prospective solidarity design. keywords: social design, project-grounded research (pgr), prospective co-design, sustainability, social and solidarity economy (sse) introduction project-grounded research (pgr) in social design is presented as a form of research at the crossroads of action research, participatory research and research and development, driven by the desire to transform society and promote social change (catoir-brisson & watkin, 2021; findeli, 2003). this research approach questions through social design the economic forms and social relations of social innovation embedded in the social and solidarity economy (sse). shaken by the imperatives of sustainability, social innovations seek through social design a more harmonious and ecological relationship with the environment. the participatory dynamic of social design becomes a vector of social innovation and sustainable development. how can pgr in social design and prospective co-design make social and sustainable innovations possible? how can prospective and future-focused fiction help redefine innovation in social design for sustainability? several themes can be considered to deal with this issue, such as sustainability and project timeframes on the one hand and user appropriation modes on the other. we propose to question how pgr in social design makes it possible to question the creation of social relations and the emergence of forms of solidarity by relying on collaboration and participation. thus, it questions “the habitability of the world” from a theoretical perspective aiming to study “generalized human ecology” (findeli, 2015). social design is also close to social innovation through design, which concerns “everything that designers can do to activate and support processes of social change” (manzini, 2015). it makes it possible to study, propose and put into action not only intentions and desires but also diverging points of view to create a debate to better understand the needs concerning our environment. 125 social design and innovations raise topical issues of sustainability and development to imagine different ways of living and inhabiting the world. indeed, innovation in itself is a paradox because it does not exist over time (schumpeter & fain, 1951) despite the desire to pursue a social aim. what kind of role should be given to research and the researcher in the project-driven process to move the lines and paradigms of society and trace new ones over the long term? our article aims to articulate in social and sustainable innovation the contribution of prospective co-design, foresight and societal fiction, to offer new imaginaries of the territories. we propose to develop our subject in five parts. first, we present pgr in social design to precisely define our theoretical roots. second, we explain how we can cross design fiction and social design through the reflexive analysis of two pgr actions in social design, focusing on two different topics and both related to comparative and comparable purposes on mobilizing prospectively for sustainability issues. third, we present a synthesis of the reflective analysis on relating participatory and prospective design. this leads us to reframe the sse, communities and commons prospectively in the fourth part. finally, we open the reflection on the necessity of third places and actions and propose our approach as a prospective solidarity design. project-grounded research in social design pgr (findeli, 2003, 2005, 2015) is an extension of action research that follows some principles of grounded theory (strauss & corbin, 1994). it is also an updated form of participatory research through the improvement of the research participants’ experience (findeli, 2005). the participants are involved in finding the solutions that best suit their needs and aspirations. the scientific knowledge principle of producing through action is the basis of pgr. as research through design is “active, situated and engaged in the field of a design project” (findeli, 2015), the designer-researcher must “draw methodological rigour” from the many theories resulting from the human and social sciences. a double problem leads the designer-researcher to ask a research question as a question of design. beyond a singular experience and a problem of use, design focuses on "fundamental questions relating to the human experience in the world” (findeli, 2015). the contribution of pgr in action research implies an iterative, process-based approach, which involves action about a research question. the creative methods coming from design renew both project practice and traditional project management methods but also action research, since design contributes to developing new methods of producing, collecting and processing ethnographic data. these deliverables produced through the various project iterations are also research evidence. pgr is also an approach to innovation open to exploration, prototyping of ideas and iterative learning. this form of abductive research makes it possible for the actors themselves to bring out societal issues as they carry these issues throughout the participatory design process. to innovate is to start from the tensions that appear between the actors and make them express themselves during the co-design process to identify them and imagine solutions to resolve them. this specific pgr approach leads us to take an interest in social innovation through design in public policies. this line of research integrates social design more than other design practices because it has participatory techniques. other design strategies such as speculative design, critical design and strategic design engage participants with others in various participatory forms. nevertheless, social design is essential in this paradigm offered by pgr, because it adds to the act of projecting design in a context of interaction of plural communication between actors, partners, stakeholders in the project. therefore, it renews research in human and social sciences by providing researchers with tools for their investigations (catoir-brisson 126 & watkin, 2021). this relationship between the researcher and the social design approach foreshadows innovative and experimental forms of ways of working, producing and interacting with others. in this way, carrying out pgr stimulates for research or the project an interest in forms of cooperation and collaboration. pgr involving social design ultimately questions the project’s sustainability. this sustainability, through its social dimension, grows through participatory techniques, and the emerging forms of social and economic organizations (the sse for instance) are the basis for sustainable societal and environmental development. it is also interesting to observe the links between the purposes and values of pgr in social design and action research in the sse, for example, the topics of social transformation’s sustainability at different scales of a territory, the posture of the researcher engaged in forms of co-construction of knowledge with this territory’s local actors and building the complex ecosystem of skills, expertise and knowledge that need to be articulated in a project situation. co-construction is based on the co-production of data and contents able to engage participants to revisit their role and posture in contact with others. it is organized “with the intention of neutralizing social hierarchies and power regimes between actors; co-production and the collective intelligence can reverse established roles. playful dynamics, the use of emotion, and collective communication devices participate in these modifications” (catoir-brisson & watkin, 2021). in addition, we can specify how social design and the sse mobilize forward-looking approaches, such as prospective co-design (lavoie et al., 2018), to imagine alternative solutions to existing ones in terms of social innovation. indeed, the common trajectories of design and the sse have already been considered based on the capacity of design to materialize utopias (béchet et al., 2015). design fiction seems able “to promote the expression of a pluralism of visions which is imperative in the design of public policies” (kerspern et al., 2017). we rely on two reflexive analyses of participatory and forward-looking design mobilized in the field of public policies at the level of a metropolis and the field of heatwave risk at the department level. these two projects were designed for comparative and comparable purposes as prospective devices to imagine solutions with the inhabitants of a territory. they are analyzed to explain how social design in project research is participatory and forward-looking. crossing fiction and social design: reflexive analysis in social design how can pgr in social design and prospective co-design make social and sustainable innovations possible? how can prospective and future-focused fiction help to redefine innovation in social design for sustainability? to answer, we propose a reflexive analysis of two pgr actions: the analysis is focused on the collaboration’s mechanisms triggered by fiction within social design. popsu: the frieze of metropolitan futures in this collaborative research observation of projects and the metropolization of montpellier (popsu métropoles), we developed a prospective tool for the territory to better analyze and co-design avenues of reflection, ideas or recommendations. plateforme d’observation des projets et stratégies urbaines (popsu) is a major national research effort financed by the plan urbanisme construction architecture, involving more than 100 researchers nationally. this programme bridges and coordinates universities and local governments of each metropolis to facilitate collaboration to study metropolitan urban projects and processes. each metropolis, such as montpellier, constitutes its own network and partnership. this 127 forward-looking tool aimed at thinking about and stimulating collective reflection on territories has been the subject of several iterations while adapting to contexts and situations. first initiated during the popsu pgr research during a large workshop with multiple stakeholders in the metropolis (watkin & redondo, 2019), this prospective tool was later applied and improved during other workshops, including the conference of the opde (tools for deciding together) and psdr (for and on regional development) network in october 2019 (redondo & watkin, 2020) and one for a more project-driven initiative with a mexican private design firm designing the future of the public space strip along the seashore of tulum (a major somehow hidden tourist site on the yucatan peninsula) (watkin et al., 2019). this first popsu workshop initiated a triple helix relationship between actors of the metropolis by integrating non-for-profit organizations and private companies involved in social entrepreneurship amongst the public agents from the municipalities and the academics of the montpellier local universities. the sse was at this stage suggested by this interrelation between actors. the other two workshops mentioned also considered this third sector part of collaborative experience to seek another viewpoint on future scenarios. in this context, it was intended in the case of the workshop of the opde conference to invite local actors of grand clermont and the pnr livradois-forez to use this design assistance tool to make visible and broaden the spectrum of possibilities in the clermont-ferrand region through a participatory approach on visual representations. here, the prospective tool is part of design practice in the sense that it materializes in a tangible medium prepared and then creatively manipulated by the participants. in that sense, it is assimilated to social design because it responds to its own social and territorial dynamics. it borrows and draws inspiration from speculative design and more specifically from the scheme popularized by what the designers dunne and raby (2013) call the “cone of speculative futures”. the diagram illustrates the amplitude between feasible, possible and probable futures (fig. 1). this dialectic perspective for thinking and imagining territories by and with the actors articulates the participatory approach of social design with the more strategic aim of foresight (abrassart et al., 2017). finally, the sustainability dimension of this frieze is not reduced to its participatory, engaging and communication dynamic by proposing for its realization to consider the three pillars of sustainable development to structure collective reflection and proposals. the frieze consists of a triptych corresponding to the proposed futures. figure 1: frieze of territorial futures: co-designing prospective scenarios in clermont. 128 images and visual representations of each chosen territory are prepared and selected in advance to constitute a database used during the workshop to make the visual frieze for a collective and discussed narrative. the participants undertake to debate and choose images catalogued and preselected by the organizers adapted to the problem and the territory. this contextual visual database constitutes the main material to build this collective debate and narrative. the participatory dynamic is organized in the form of ‘turning tables’. discussion is also activated by organizing the composition of the participants at each table. distributing diversity and anticipating representation is therefore, necessary to boost discussion, friction, empathy and power relations. the result is a visual frieze for discussing the future of the territory and making people understand the importance of the probable future and lead to a cross-examination based on the pillars of sustainable development. this experience and prototype in making this visual tool for prospective views on territory is intended to be produced in third spaces to favour the presence of third actors. in this case, the sse presents a diversity of actors. we think it can enhance the objective of and capacity given to such a visual tool of the frieze of territorial futures. opric: a helmet for a prospective journey facing a heatwave risk opric is part of the national programme anr inplic (initiatives des populations locales et intégration dans la conduite de crise) carried out by the dicen laboratory of cnam paris, utt-icd (the university of technology of troyes charles delaunay institute) and the projekt laboratory of the university of nîmes and financed by the national research agency (anr). in 2020, it gave rise to a heatwave risk observatory, opric. in the context of climate change, the aims of the project are as follows: 1) to sustain the development of a risk culture by gathering and making visible inhabitants’ initiatives to cope with heatwaves; 2) to build collective and individual memories to be able to use it in a crisis context; 3) to co-design some solutions with participants by opening the collective imaginaries. this research is based on social design pgr, especially to sustain the inhabitants’ initiatives. however, from the very beginning of the project, we decided to mobilize fiction to prototype future situations related to natural risks and help participants plan and act by experimenting with solutions. the need to develop forward-looking approaches in the field of risks has led us to take an interest in the contribution of fiction to design to urgently respond to an imperative of broadening imaginaries and design paradigms in the face of the environmental crisis. we can underline the importance of working with fiction when we deal with situations that do not exist yet: fiction is useful to project the participants into some crisis situations to stimulate their creativity in a collective and collaborative mode. the first step consisted of carrying out field trips with residents of nîmes and nearby (may–june 2020). at the same time, interviews were carried out with professionals (firefighters, local authorities and the prefecture), and a synthesis of initiatives related to risk was carried out. given the spring 2020 period (pandemic context and lockdowns), digital networks were used in a logic of participatory sciences based on contributory platforms (chupin, 2016; severo & filipponi, 2021) for collecting information and exchanging information with residents and interested persons. the second step was the organization of three workshops (in september 2020, april 2021 and august 2021) with different participants depending on each one’s objectives. to explain how fiction has been used in social design, we focus on a specific activity we proposed in the first workshop with the inhabitants, “heatwave and collective imaginaries” (zacklad et al, 2020). the workshop was organized in a third place, to be more precise in a local fablab. we decided to create and test a specific device, close to prospective co-design, to imagine solutions to the risk of heatwaves located in the 129 occitan region, in particular the gard department, by projecting oneself into a possible future over 20 years away, “like an imaginary detour to then think differently about the present” (abrassart et al., 2017). the purpose of the device designed for the workshop was to respond to scenarios of crises through design fiction. to do this, a forward-looking travel helmet was used in a dedicated workshop to help participants in this collaborative activity shortly project themselves into an unknown situation (fig. 2). the participants, accompanied by a facilitator, could play four roles: traveller (who wears the helmet), shaman (who guides the trip), scribe (who takes note of the exchanges on a dedicated board) and journalist (who asks questions). figure 2: the forward-looking travel helmet experience to co-design the future. the result of this workshop was a series of co-creation sessions on diverse themes, such as cooling fabrics by a group of makers and engineers at the service of the common good or even support systems for the homes of elderly or isolated people in a heatwave situation, etc. this entertaining and forward-looking device is particularly suited to the question of risk, which requires planning to anticipate and imagine alternatives to the existing one. in a context of tangled domino-effect crises, anticipation, co-construction and agility are useful for questioning paradigms of thought and accepting life with uncertainties (lagadec, 2015). design seems to be a relevant avenue to explore, in dialogue with the other disciplines called upon by each risk, in a transversal manner to adopt a different perspective and experiment with exploratory methods engaged in participatory research. an invitation to social innovation through design makes it less possible to apply tools or a list of recommendations than to develop a management capacity to quickly redefine an organizational vision, identify the best initiatives, anticipate and practise creativity (lagadec, 2015). relating participatory with prospective design these two forward-looking devices are examples that demonstrate the relevance of mobilizing forwardlooking co-design as a process of co-creation of forward-looking solutions with the inhabitants to embody situations in stories in which we can project ourselves thanks to the force of the story and storytelling. these two examples demonstrate the desire to include the prospective approach in a social design approach so that the solutions imagined contribute to the support of the local initiatives of the inhabitants by coordinating them with other actors of the territory. 130 it is in this perspective that participatory and forward-looking design can encompass dimensions of sustainable development and the sse. in particular, it makes it possible to project oneself into imaginaries of the resilience of territories in a forward-looking dynamic and to support sustainable transformations at three levels (ethical, social and environmental). thus, the prospective design complements the participatory, socializing and socialized approach of social design because it mobilizes imaginaries and summons both dystopia and utopia to project oneself towards an ideal of habitability, which encompasses the dimensions of sustainable development and the sse in addition to social innovation. to deepen the reflexive analysis of our two projects, we can explain the link between prospective and participatory design. the commitment of stakeholders, beneficiaries, users and all participants in creative dynamics is stimulated when the objective or question of the project goes beyond the strategic or anticipatory dimension. the prospective aim of design through speculative and fictional dimensions enriches the participatory process. our approach is close to the co-design approach (abrassart et al., 2017), mobilized in different fields of intervention, those of social action and public policies (kerspern et al., 2017). this approach “is based on several principles, at the intersection of design, participation, and foresight: the mobilization of scenarios of uses and unknown prototypes as vehicles of discovery and exploration (the ‘ design’ dimension); a collective creativity process with participants from local communities and various experts” (abrassart et al., 2017). it thus renews the dimension and the tools of classic foresight usually engaged in a strategic perspective, using creative and participatory activities mobilizing stakeholders’ imaginaries. design fiction can be a tool for the representation of futures at the same time as science fiction authors have influenced collective imaginaries and forward-thinking (minvielle & wathelet, 2017). through the project practice and relying on user experience and prospective storytelling, social design can help participants project in a diegetic space with a view to sustainability. in this perspective, social design mobilizes representations of the future through fiction. in addition, these representations can be supports for participatory design and support the capacity of participants to act. the view given by speculative design and fiction proposes a post-modern perspective of future actions and prospective by offering a narrative of opposition. speculation in design needs in-between steps to get to this stage from a traditional design perspective by engaging and integrating discursive and critical design practice (mitrovic, 2015). these in-between practices participate in structuring scenarios to fictions and discourses to speculations. speculative design can therefore push forward participatory methods and engagement in this array of experiences given and proposed to participants and any stakeholders. for this reason, our interest in prospective co-design, as developed by christophe abrassart (2017), can be enriched through the lens of speculative design. it becomes as much a useful tool as a critical mindset on social and sustainable ideas, leading to innovations. rethinking social solidarity economy, communities and commons through prospective design our experience in foresight through participatory design leads us to reconceive the collaborations and solidarities between actors and participants driven by a social aim and project. in this respect, we would like to argue in this section how prospective co-design can reshape our understanding of the sse as a major element of social innovation. for this, we will explain first how social design participates in building commons and activating the sse. social design offers an alternative path to the project for the implementation of this ideal and societal aspiration activated by the values of the sse. the sense of community identity is the result of a subjective 131 feeling of belonging or the object of a structured relation made through an organization, such as a community of interest. the notion of creative communities developed in the field of design (manzini, 2015; meroni, 2007) thus joins the notion of the creative city (florida, 2005; vivant, 2009) to the emergence of communities. without defining the notion of creativity, this notion is seen as a solution that participates in the collective imagination and is illustrated by a multiplicity of projects, initiatives and social and solidarity actions. social innovation led by local communities takes off through these creative communities as well as through collaborative networks, local action and tools of governance and collective decision-making (manzini, 2015). these communities are therefore the subject and object of social design. sometimes, they can also be activated by new economies (collaborative, self-initiated or even self-managed) for which design is also mobilized to guarantee their sustainability. forms of communities linked to sustainable consumption evoke these initiatives of social and solidarity economies through the creation of cooperatives, systems of goods exchange and services such as community-supported agriculture sharing and/or repair of goods within a local territory. social design participates in the creation of these new services and in the establishment of the communities associated with them, whose objectives direct collective action towards a committed and protesting horizon (dubuisson-quellier, 2009). in itself, it joins utopia and the societal ideal by putting forward the social economy and associationism. this economy and social organization of collective organization constitutes a founding element of social innovation and a vector of new economic and social practices, regulated and emancipatory (laville, 2016). design also intervenes to rebuild capitalism through the collaborative economy or social and economic innovations by responding to the imperatives of sustainability. community construction then takes shape through these economic exchanges of local and decentralized capital (resilient and resistant) stimulated by design practices (service design and strategic design) and supported by social design (bauwens, 2015). the social relations created by this action indicate the aim of disseminating common use value and distributing exchange value. it is illustrated by the social and solidarity systems of good economic practices, such as sharing land and implementation of commons. the collective imagination and the participatory project help through social design to make these collaborations a reality. beyond social design, support for the creation of communities is also manifested by the articulation between different scales of action, both local and global levels. this articulation between these two scales can contribute to the sustainability of the initiatives put in place by perpetuating them in one territory or by deploying them in other territories with similar social, cultural and political issues. indeed, this articulation of local and global scales, as well as the value of communities and their power of action, are also at the heart of the six principles of systemic design (design council, 2021). one of them is precisely the back and forth between the micro and macro analysis, referred to as “zoom in and out”. the other three involve inclusion and the building of collaborative, connected, circular and regenerative communities that involve humans but also the planetary environment, as shown in the diagram below (fig. 3). 132 figure 3: six principles for systemic design. reproduced with permission from design council (2021, p. 43), www.designcouncil.org.uk design methods, skills and tools can be used to sustain social and sustainable innovations. durability also challenges design to find assets instead of problems to face the situation to cope with. asset-based community development (also called abcd) argues for a renewed perspective of community development (kretzmann & mcknight, 1993). instead, abcd offers an asset-driven action as a strategy for community development usually driven by issues and problems. this community-building approach can inspire social design action and discourse. the focus moves from problem-solving to solutions generated with the participants as well as sustainability, which implies combining strategic design and design fiction. the current development of the sse and durability engages design in other orientations and narratives, especially fiction. the communities organized and supported by the approaches of social innovation through design have common characteristics with those initiated in the field of communication for social change (gumuciodragon & tufte, 2006), in which the role of communication is to “solve collective social problems” by considering it as a praxis, i.e. “a reflection in the action of human beings on the world to transform it” (freire, 1970). in this perspective, communities are at the heart of communication for social change with the objective of “stimulating processes of transformation, in which, from the articulation between citizenship and social networks, communication strategies based on more horizontal and participatory models and styles are carried out to anticipate other ways of living and lead to the transformation of dominant economic and political structures” (tufte, 2015). then, communities can have a power of action and design in the co-creation of counter-hegemonic media supports that give visibility and legitimacy to 133 these communities. the production and dissemination of communication devices also participate in the creation of social ties and the involvement of participants in the communities of interest created. communication for social change and co-design approaches have in common this role attributed to communities to transform their environment by stimulating action at local and global levels. this also refers to cosmopolitan localism (manzini, 2015) and to a design that takes a systemic interest in the relationships between humans and their environments by integrating ethical, social and environmental imperatives: “ […] it is possible to sketch out a design scenario to build a culture uniting the local and global (cosmopolitan localism) and a resilient infrastructure capable of requalifying work and bringing production and consumption closer together (distributed system)” (manzini, 2015). finally, social design anticipates and rethinks community building by communities, but also by the constitution of commons. forms of cooperative and local economies make it possible to put the commons back at the centre of society's ecological and sustainable proposals. social design through pgr finds in associationism and the structuring of social links a democratic societal and environmental ideal stimulated by the collective and shared resources of the commons. benjamin coriat thus offers fruitful avenues for this construction of the commons which fit in well with the project advanced by social design, in particular by putting nature at the centre as an object of law or even associating goods and services with fundamental goods organized in the form of commons (coriat, 2017). thus, there is an interest in social design in questioning environmental transitions and therefore resources and natural environments. here, so-called participatory and forward-looking design in the service of social design would make it possible to orient design practices towards a new paradigm of action. this design of transitions (transition design) opens up, as we will explain later, new avenues of reflection for research (irwin, 2015). it seems to us favourable to articulate it with a prospective aim based on fiction, which makes it possible to experiment with other ways of building durable territorial solidarities. in this regard, in the following section, we set out avenues for research where prospective design is part of social design to imagine supportive and lasting relationships in the territories. that is why we propose to open the discussion on the links between the sse and social innovation through social design and foresight. as we explained, sustainability in social innovation can take place in third spaces and activities. therefore, prospective solidarity design implies merging social design and design fiction to generate social and sustainable innovation. moreover, this prospective solidarity design-driven research seeks third spaces to open the relation with the sse for the common goods. this new paradigm on design and the sse can be conceptualized with a scheme to visualize how this prospective solidarity design is nourished by other emergent approaches (fig. 4). 134 figure 4: prospective solidarity design at the crossroads of emerging approaches. discussion and conclusion finally, social design is emerging as solidarity design that builds and maintains economic and territorial solidarities. and social sustainability refers to the ability of project actors to maintain the engagement of participants, who create transformations beyond the research project in organizations and territories. this solidarity design would thus constitute a particular dynamic of research aimed at creating and stimulating economic and social actions to activate solidarities and social ties through structured forms of emancipatory organization (escobar, 2020). therefore, social design focuses on sustainable development and the sse and also enters into a dialogue with other approaches such as transition design (irwin, 2015) and autonomous design (escobar, 2020), while re-defining its specificities. emerging approaches in design are raising this topical issue of sustainability (such as transition design), and some research methods are being renewed (such as pgr). findeli (2021) argues for an expansion of pgr by relating it today to these new emerging trends in social design facing uncertainty and the ecological collapse of the world but also the design itself. it is very important to deal with both at the same time with sustainability and social issues instead of opposing them. in this perspective, the emergence of transition design does not invalidate the approaches that have been developed before, such as social design. instead of building walls between humans and non-humans, design can build bridges and be handled with a mix of approaches (co-design, transition design, prospective, etc.) to cope with current issues. thus, it could be useful to deepen the analysis of the way sustainability raises questions for design as practice and research through the diversity of the tools and perspectives combined. this situation is a wonderful opportunity for design to find complementarities and play a significant role in interdisciplinarity with other fields. before identifying the contributions of prospective social design to the fields of sustainable development and the sse, we can identify the limits of this work. on the one hand, it would be relevant to study other 135 research projects in these two disciplinary fields to see how the links between social sustainability and the sse are woven, both semantically and methodologically, in particular through prospective co-design. this reflection on a larger corpus of projects could also extend to an epistemological perspective based on a systematic literature review, which could be the subject of dedicated research. this inspiring horizon of transition in design is also challenging the evolution of the methods and tools in design to cope with emerging sustainability issues, such as risks and instability. however, at the end of this article, we have also shown how pgr in social design could initiate a participatory process in the sse in a united manner. we explained how social design could invest in sustainable development and the sse by taking the example of commons and community building. finally, we opened social design with a sustainable and united aim through the prospective approach illustrated by two case studies engaging prospective co-design for sustainability and, to a lesser extent, sse. pgr in social innovation through design is also redefined by the fields of reflection and intervention relating to transition, such as the design transition (irwin, 2015) which is characterized by a new paradigm of research and design, which pushes the aim of social design and social innovation through design to take into account as many natural ecosystems and environmental parameters as possible to think and produce differently for a more habitable life, living ecologies and sustainable exchange systems. it therefore seems relevant to question the links between the processes of innovation, transformation and transition and how they are mobilized at different, sometimes simultaneous, stages of a pgr in social design. the analysis we have proposed has shown how prospective co-design devices can put research into action with a view to the sustainability of social innovation. references abrassart, c., scherrer, f. lavoie, n., & cyr c., (2017). 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(2019, august 14). repensar el futuro de tulum, [workshop organization] second workshop organized with estudio 3.14, tulum, méxico. zacklad, m. catoir-brisson m-j, gisclard, b. bonet, m. poujol, m., & delatour, g. (2020, september 3rd). heatwave and collective imaginaries, [workshop organization] first workshop, anr inplic, nîmes fablab, france. http://risquecanicule.fr http://risquecanicule.fr/ 36 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. bechange: exploring constitutions of a transformative design practice åsa wikberg nilsson published online: october 2021 to cite this article: wikberg nilsson, å. (2021). bechange: exploring constitutions of a transformative design practice. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(2), 36-50. 37 bechange: exploring constitutions of a transformative design practice åsa wikberg nilssona aluleå university of technology, luleå, sweden. asawi@ltu.se abstract the world is in the middle of a climate crisis. the way we humans live – our lifestyle – is a major contributor, and some individuals and companies feel obliged to take actions to reduce their environmental footprint. in focus in this paper is a design-for-change initiative named ‘bechange’, aiming for long-term positive behavioural change and a sustainable lifestyle. the original project vision was transformative design, to crack the code between mental models, human behaviour and sustainability. the project approach consisted of a number of co-design sprints with different participants and orientations to ensure that a variety of mental models of sustainability and change and preferences for actions and interactions were explored. this resulted in a digital service that helps users cut their carbon emissions while gaining higher levels of hope and lower levels of climate anxiety, resulting in more motivated users and more durable sustainability lifestyle changes. the conclusion of the paper is that important constitutions of a sustainable design-for-change practice are as follows: to not prescribe user behaviour in the design, but to co-create action possibilities; to involve a lot of different stakeholders and explore both mental models and action possibilities co-creatively; to continuously ask how the design could be valuable to both prospective users and to the planet; and to deal with authentic sustainability that addresses social, economic and ecological change simultaneously. keywords: transformative design, co-design, sustainability, behavioural design, design for change introduction the current calls for action aimed at the climate crisis have probably escaped few people. all around the globe, devotees are striving to transform the way humans live – our lifestyles – into more sustainable choices and behaviours. designs and designers may for some not be the first resource that comes to mind for such transformations, as design has generally been associated with developing an idea or solution to be more visually pleasing or with filling the world with more inept things (papanek, 1971). in contrast to such views, this paper focuses on bechange, a one-and-a-half-year mission of co-creating a digital service for companies and organisations that want to inspire customers, employees and future recruits to act more consciously to reduce their environmental footprints. the overall objective of this paper is of furthering knowledge within design for change and the constitutions of the “hows” and the “whos” of a transformative design practice through exploring the motivations, actions and insights of the bechange project. design used to be a subject of visual and material form but has gradually over the years expanded into different practices also tackling previously non-design-related areas and issues. some more recent design approaches are, for example, aimed at a profound purpose, i.e. that “pulls ‘design’ out of the studio and unleashes its disruptive, game-changing potential” (brown & katz, 2011, p. 381). design thinking (e.g. brown, 2008; brown & katz, 2011), service design (e.g. stickdorn et al., 2018) and transformation design (e.g. bruns et al., 2006) are said to address a wider range of issues and areas than previously recognised as falling within the area of design. in these approaches, there seems to be general agreement that creativity and collaboration are good things. however, there is also critique, for example, the notion of tokenism, i.e. that some actors participate in the process simply to justify a human-centred process via 38 minor roles or activities (lee, 2007). there is also a risk of ontological drifts of users’ insights in the process, as the search for feasible technical solutions or financial gains takes the upper hand (robinson & bannon, 1991). as designers in more traditional design approaches “own” the user representation, such user insight drifts may include flip-overs that turn the result into something nobody values. additionally, there has been criticism for new design approaches being employed based on design consultancies’ drive for selling work rather than for driving transformation (kolko, 2017). a challenge for prospective transformative design practices is also the notion of the user, as there are no existing users before the potentially disruptive game-changing solution has been launched. hence, there is a need for transformative design practices to explore how they could cultivate prospective user insights. the designers’ role in a co-creative approach becomes as a process guide or facilitator, who through different means enables participating actors to explore a design situation (ehn, 2008; sanders & stappers, 2008). in such explorations, there is a need to address both prospective user values as such and the user’s mental models to identify important triggers for behaviour change (thaler & sunstein, 2009). to do this, there is also a need to explore with many different prospective users. in striving to foresee future solutions, designers have the responsibility of not occluding, i.e. blocking, hindering or excluding (redström, 2017). hence, it is essential to also address situated design norms (wikberg nilsson, 2021; wikberg nilsson & jahnke, 2018), i.e. not to occlude prospective users by presupposing who they might be or what they might value in the specific design situation. even though some of the aforementioned approaches are somewhat new as concepts, they have a design tradition to build upon. transformative design, for example, has links to action research (lewin, 1947), is a forbear of both participatory and co-design (e.g. schuler & namioka, 1993; ehn, 2008; sanders, 2002) and embraces egalitarian notions of change, innovation and emancipation. bruns et al. (2006) state that transformation design goes beyond problem-solving, as it involves creating solutions for current pressing challenges, such as health issues, impacts of climate change or an ageing population. in this respect, it deals with everyday life choices and organisations aspiring to transform how they connect to individuals. service design, on the other hand, has the prevalent focus centring on value creation, via redesign and the cocreation of resources by customers and other actors (wetter edman et al., 2014; vargo et al., 2015). online services are, on the one hand, seen as a way of cutting costs and adding customer value and on the other hand as a way of making customers co-creators of the services they use (bettencourt et al., 2002). with all this in mind, relevant questions to address are the “hows” and “whos” of a transformative design practice. this paper seeks to expand upon the previous works cited by exploring and proposing new insights of co-design for sustainable change. literature review the aforementioned design approaches generally focus on understanding users’ attitudes and/or behaviour. in this sense, the focus should neither be on who the user is nor on what kind of material or immaterial aspects that they appreciate, but rather on creating interplays and transitions between appreciated actions and through them understand behaviour and create designs (redström, 2017). some thoughts on how to achieve this and what to avoid in practice are outlined in the following sections. human-centricity might for some seem like a rather new design approach. however, the field of action research (ar) embraces several of the now [re-]discovered human-centric principles and practices. one significant contribution in terms of design for change is by one of the ar founders, lewin (1947), who emphasised the relevance of human experience and doing something with, rather than looking at this 39 experience. lewin stressed explorations of both parts and the whole as situated in context. he argued that one can never fully understand a system without trying to change it. the concept of ‘situatedness’ is detailed as awareness of meaning and representation in relation to participating actors, things and contexts (haraway, 1988). in this view, it is vital to embrace a critical perspective about how meanings are created in order to be able to live in meaningful futures. this involves real-life activities, in which many actors exchange knowledge of the situation at hand and take responsibility for nodes and directions in both the material and the immaterial sense (haraway, 1997). such an approach relates to the reflective practice described by schön as indeterminate zones of practice: “actions that function in three ways: [1] to test new understandings […] [2] to explore new phenomena […], and [3] to affirm or negate the moves by which the practitioner tries to change things for the better […].in these instances, we can think of the inquirer moving in the situation, ‘talking back’ to the inquirer, triggering a reframing of the problem, a re-understanding of what is going on.” (schön, 1995, p. 25–26) in relation to material and immaterial meaning, argyris and schön (1975) developed their action theory based on 1) espoused theory that expresses the users’ idea of how they think they should behave and 2) theory in use that controls how they actually behave. the crux of this theory is that it is not enough to ask a user how they should behave in a particular situation. to understand human behaviour, one must understand and observe a larger and wider context than the concrete situation one intends to change. hence, there is a need to know more about how people behave, i.e. intuitively rather than sensibly, and through responsible design of nodes and directions guide people toward what are seen as better actions (thaler & sunstein, 2009). in this view, a good design choice consists of the principles of exploring incentives, understanding mappings, carefully designing action possibilities and defaults, providing feedback, expecting error and structuring complex choices through careful design. humans are always subject to various biases that can inform non-rational decisions. in this sense, a good design choice can support behaviour change. morewedge and kahneman (2010) describe human thinking as linked to system 1, automatically and intuitively generated representations and based on prior knowledge, background, values and norms. the more energy-consuming system 2-thinking in this respect only starts when system 1 cannot process what is happening. usually, human inclination is to rely on system 1 thinking in most situations and only apply a small percentage of system 2. by understanding more about how people usually behave, empathic design can contribute to understanding more of how design can support behavioural change (lidwell et al., 2010). similarly, eyal (2014) states that human behaviour can be changed through design. however, he emphasises that the main question is whether the solution will improve the user’s life. a key question to regularly readdress is hence how will it be valuable for prospective users? lewin (1947) suggested both laboratory and field experiments of change, including both experiments and concrete observations in the actual context to understand the user in the system that is to be changed. jungk (1987) and jungk and mullert (1989) proposed future workshops for understanding the users’ context in both current situations and their dreams of what could be. future workshops are a kind of probe transmitted into the ordinary world to explore users’ experiences and situations. the method can also be seen as design spaces or cooperative learning processes, where actors have the opportunity to both question and explore current understandings and practices (sanders & westerlund, 2011). such generative sessions can involve a variety of stakeholders in co-creation activities that both lead to a greater understanding of the users in the situation and also give the participants a greater commitment to the matter as such (brandt et al., 2008). such generative sessions have the potential of clarifying both the explicit and implicit understanding that participants have (sleeswijk visser, 2009). moreover, the user 40 experience is not limited to the actual interaction but contains the whole experience of representations, aesthetics, layout, interface and/or physical interaction (garrett, 2011). in this sense, it is important to define more than just the actual interaction. traditional design practices have been criticised for focusing on designing for the user rather than with the user (sanders, 2002). the co-design approach is in this respect a change of mindset, considering all people as possible contributors to design, as long as the right tools are given for them to act. the rationale for a human-centric design approach is defined as developing a deep understanding of the user’s needs, desires and values to meet these with design (brown, 2008; brown & katz, 2011; stickdorn et al., 2018). stickdorn et al. propose that the difference in approaches is more in which methods are used than the basic principles themselves: “whatever you design, you must always understand the needs of users, you always work iteratively” (stickdorn et al. 2018, p. 88). whatever approach is chosen, the notion of user insights is critical. robinson and bannon (1991) describe ontological drift as the translation of meaning that occurs between first user insights and goes through different actors’ translation in the process into the final delivered solution that either satisfies user needs or not. the latter is hence an example of user insights drifting away as too many stakeholders re-contextualise the insights into their understandings and belief systems. the reasons for such design drifts may be that designers often conduct activities without involving all stakeholders, hence ending up “owning” the user’s insights. some reasons for this are lack of time and doubts around how end-users might experience interacting with other actors. there is also the risk of an applied “i-methodology”, which akrich (1992, 1995) explains as un-reflected design practices. the designer originates from his/her own understanding and experiences and develops a ‘script’ that guides the user to a certain behaviour, role and interaction. if the designer fails to recognise important user insights, the risk is that some might not subscribe to the design results. in this, it is important to think design after design. latour (1987) developed the actor-network theory (ant) as a critique of designers not taking responsibility for what happens after the design process, in implementation and use. relevant in this context is the concept of services, as service designers usually have to consider what happens in implementation and use and the whole customer journey. services has been defined as intangible and heterogeneous interactions, which are co-produced by receivers/customers and providers and which are predominantly local (gersung & resengren, 1973). digitisation is said to be one way of developing existing services by transforming the explicit and tacit knowledge that both providers and customers have into digital yet tangible interfaces and interactions. in such transformations, different forms of co-design practices are seen as imperative in understanding value and desirability amongst both customers and users to finalise a successful service design solution (steen et al., 2011). the opportunity to develop a service through digitalisation is said to reform the opportunity to create increased value for both receivers and providers and to create outreach beyond the local market (yoo et al., 2010). over the last decades, the service sector has expanded, paving the way for the design field to emerge through creating and formalising practices, processes and tools towards the design of services (stickdorn, et al., 2018). service design can be outlined as a merger of industrial, interaction, graphicand participatory design together with knowledge from e.g. service marketing, innovation, human work science, psychology and system engineering (segelström, 2013; wetter edman, 2011). other approaches focus on value creation, through a redesign and co-creation of resources by customers and other actors (wetter edman et al., 2014). the difference is a reconfiguration of socio-material constellations, as long-term relations between actors necessitate new action patterns and value creations. vargo and lusch (2016) articulate a need for outlining the mechanism of coordination and cooperation involved in the co-creation of value-incontext. the significance lies in creating several levels of value for individuals, organisations and society. a 41 challenge is that service design involves complex combinations of both explicit and implicit knowledge that receivers and providers need to structure and integrate to reach a successful digital service design solution. online services are generally seen as a way of cutting costs and adding customer value but can also be one way of making customers co-producers of the services they use (bettencourt et al., 2002). the bechange project the bechange initiative was initiated as a social innovation start-up in 2017, based on a drive to contribute to efficient lifestyle changes for both companies and individuals. the three founders have different backgrounds as a mental coach, ecologists/environmental scientists and business developers. in sweden and certainly other countries around the world, environmental and climate issues have gone from engaging a few people to becoming something that most people are aware of, whether they act on that awareness or not. the current drive for sustainable development calls for major transformations, both on an individual and societal level, to reach united nations (un) climate goals. goal 13, for example, deals with climate action through improving education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change (un, 2020). how we humans choose to live our lives and the choices we make on an ordinary day affect energy resources. sustainable lifestyles are, however, often depicted as individual sacrifices rather than gains (ilstedt & wangel, 2014). positive future visions are necessary to be able to motivate a change of human behaviour. the bechange founders noticed that the media debate on environmental and climate issues largely focuses on the negative aspects of climate change, i.e. as future disaster scenarios and the negative consequences of having to abandon “all good things in life”. carrying such crude concerns might lead to diminished hope or zeal for engagement and with that the drive to engage in solutions (ojala, 2007, 2013; scheier & carver, 1992). unprocessed climate anxiety and change fatigue might in this sense impede the behavioural changes needed to affect the climate in positive ways. the bechange entrepreneurs explored the idea of delivering a global company service that makes it easier for employees to create a greener and more positive sustainable lifestyle customised to their needs. the overall vision was expressed by one of the founders as “a genuine belief that this is possible, to be the change here on earth” (bechange founder, may 2020). in august 2019, a core design team was formed, consisting of the bechange founders, four design consultants (1 web developer, 1 designer, 1 project manager and 1 business designer) and 1 design researcher. other actors were involved in different phases throughout the process. the vision was initially defined as design for change – to develop a service that contributes to changing human behaviour towards more sustainable lifestyles. the mission was to design an easy-to-use and inspiring digital service concept that tackled both mental models and sustainable lifestyle changes. the overall tactic was iterative co-design sprints, consisting of exploring desirable sustainable lifestyle changes, a viable business model and feasible digital solutions for different platforms in a mix of methods aiming to crack the code between mental models, human behaviour and sustainability. a method, as a simplified representation of a process, seldom accounts for the messiness that often goes on or the values and bias that are assumed. a method “unavoidably produces not only truths and nontruths, realities and non-realities, presence and absence” (law, 2004, p. 143). the co-design sprint approach was seen as both dynamic and flexible. it is a condensed design process, moving forward through iterations, aiming at co-explorative learnings through experimentations, in which failure should happen fast, and prototyping is seen as vital for understanding what the end solutions must accomplish (knapp et al., 2016). such intense processes should in this sense be iterated several times to explore different themes, experiences and concepts to gradually develop an understanding of what values the solution should contribute to. this also associates with the previously mentioned indeterminate zones of practices (schön, 1995), aiming to test new understandings, explore phenomena and affirm or negate thoughts, ideas or concepts through user involvement. 42 in summary, the first design sprint dealt with understanding the scope, developing an understanding of the user experience and use context and through insights developing a first minimally viable prototype. the second design sprint consisted of refining understanding of user experiences and use context through user testing and value propositions to develop a feasible prototype. in the third design sprint, all user insights were gathered into a final desirable, viable and feasible digital service concept. each design sprint involved different actions and actors. project activities were documented in different ways, mostly through the material being developed in the workshops, by taking notes and photos and some additional recordings of users’ interaction with prototypes. activities were analysed through both quantitative and qualitative means. the online surveys and tests for example provided quantitative data as “how many” experienced different things. other activities, for example, the co-creative sessions, provided qualitative data on what values participants had that were jointly analysed in the core co-design team in terms of understanding what was going on. the phases overlapped as many activities were initiated in parallel; however, the core team had regular sessions aiming to define insights and discuss what future actions needed to be taken (image 1). findings the first design sprint was mainly internal, based on the core project team’s activities and insights that the founders brought from previous activities. current services and applications were explored to identify different aspects that participants thought would be good for the final solution. through both material and visual means, user representations, user actions, service features and content, such as goal-setting, feedback and human behaviour in general and detail were explored (image 2). the materials from the generative sessions were seen as important starting points and were used as means for exploring and discussing values in the core team. the practical transition the user would have to make in lifestyle changes, as well as the mental transition into positive future visions, were central in exploring the whole concept and its details. various metaphors for the user journey were discussed and used as a base for developing a graphic profile and a first user interface. image 1: the first design sprint iteration. the second design sprint was more external and focused on understanding user experience and customer value. the prototype was developed with a few additional features and then tested with prospective users (image 3). during the tests, two people were in the room with the users, and others watched the tests on 43 a screen. the reason for this was to share insights with the whole core design project team. this iteration provided insights that the conceptual digital service provided valuable actions to take for reaching a sustainable lifestyle but that it was difficult to understand how to set initial goals, i.e. what actions contribute to a sustainable lifestyle? the activities exposed different and sometimes opposing values and preferences, such as some wanting to being able to set short-term goals for the month or year and then change them and others wanting more long-term goals for the rest of their life. image 2: screen view of user test of prototype 1. parallel sessions with company managers led to insights into the prospective customer being a mediumsized company in low-impact industries. these participants, however, saw the bechange concept primarily as a tool for employees’ well-being rather than as a service for the company’s sustainability performance. this produced the insight that bechange can be valuable both for individuals who want to change their lifestyle and for companies as part of both their human relations (hr) and corporate social responsibility (csr) activities. different self-assessment features were explored through online tests with prospective users. these included reacting to value statements such as “i don’t see conflicts between a sustainable lifestyle and how i live” and “i think humanity will be able to make the changes needed for sustainable development” for the mental model feature. in parallel, the sustainability educational service content was developed further through processing the textual content and developing video content in sessions with instructional designers. the service content was advanced and explored with several potential users and went through a couple of iterations before the final design sprint. based on user insights gathered in the process, the graphic profile was redesigned. a “buddy” was developed as a character who prompts user interaction through nudging. the character was defined to be “serious” yet “friendly” and was created to represent the core values of bechange: positive sustainable lifestyle changes. in addition, it was designed and experienced to mix stereotypical representations of a woman/female and man/male to make all potential users feel included. it was created as an answer to user needs for a feature that gives some kind of feedback. the buddy should care about sustainability in general and support the user in particular. the traditional green climate/nature-connoted colour was in the graphic profile complemented with other colours to also communicate moods such as positivity, well-being, harmony, action and hope (image 3). a new “works-like” prototype was developed. it had limited functionality and did not include all features yet had the central content such as both mental and lifestyle features and the ability to adjust some of the settings. 44 image 3: the bechange graphic profile and user interface v.1. graphic design: laura di fransesco. the final design sprint focused on forming all insights into a final design. this phase involved more colearning of what the concept needed to be to fulfil desirability, viability and feasibility. value propositions were summarised based on the previous insights. the customer was identified to be active in a low-impact industry, e.g. the it or service business with 200–400 employees of equal gender distribution and most employees younger than 45 years. the main pain points for a bechange user would be that climate change is too slow and there is limited time to make a change. the bechange service was seen to add authenticity to the company’s sustainability work, which was understood as crucial for preventing accusations of “greenwashing”, building a strong brand and making employees feel motivated. a summary of the value proposition can be seen in image 4. image 4: the bechange value proposition and a mobile version of the bechange service. interface design: laura di fransesco & patrik juteståhl. 45 subsequently, the content was re-configured into a prototype with both text and video content to satisfy different uses and users. it was also re-arranged to better follow the user journey of an initial weigh-in and gradually developing both insights and actions to take for change of behaviours through educational content and goal-setting for eating, living, consuming and travelling (everyday/vacation trips) (image 5). an additional user test invited users to log in and test the service online and provide feedback. this gave insights that the concept was experienced as playful and interactive and that both prospective customers and users found it valuable and inspiring in terms of contributing to a transformation into sustainable lifestyles. the final test run also provided great results, as the participants reduced their climate footprints by half during the two months and stated a positive outlook on humanity's ability to handle the climate crisis. “the whole concept is inspiring, as it facilitates the need for more sustainable lifestyle changes. it is also inspiring in its colours, animations, illustrations and expressions – and ‘the buddy’! it is different compared to other solutions, and it is so important to realise that sustainability should not be boring, it should be inspiring.” (participant may 2020) image 5: the final online version of bechange — sustainable for you and the climate. graphic design: laura di fransesco. as the bechange project has now been finalised and the service launched, some participants shared their insights of the process, their learning and the results. it seems that all the core co-design team participants, founders and designers, had different ideas of the project before and after and also developed their understanding of design for change as a consequence of all interactions: “an insight is how important it is to test, test, test – not just speculate about ease of use and how things are experienced. it was valuable but complicated with many parties that should be coordinated and all the knowledge that should flow between all activities and actors.” (founder, may 2020) “a key insight is that it is so important to involve users. i knew this beforehand, but it has certainly been manifested in this project. the scope should perhaps have been smaller, but at the same time all of the participating users and all of these tests certainly made the solution into what it is. it has been 46 stressful from time to time, but overall the co-creative sessions contributed to good communication and transparency in the project team, which is important.” (designer, may 2020) the final prototype was launched in septembernovember 2020 in a sort of final “dress rehearsal” with 16 users and the bechange coaches. all in all, the users were satisfied with the learning experience and had great results in terms of decreasing their individual environmental footprints. one participant summarised: “[bechange] made me go from thoughts to actions. i feel better now that i have started the transition to my new clime-smart life.” (participant after final test run, november 2020) discussion the motivation behind the current study was to explore the constitutional aspects of a transformative design practice, the “hows” and “whos” of participation and user involvement in design for sustainability and behavioural change through exploring incentives and insights of the bechange project. the following sections aims to define such insights. the project vision was of a transformative design practice to develop a service that contributes to changing human behaviour towards more sustainable lifestyles in a positive manner. the mission was, however, more of a service design practice to design an easy-to-use and inspiring digital service concept. the overall approach was iterative co-design sprints, consisting of explorations of desirable sustainable lifestyle actions, feasible technical solutions and viable business models, through explorations of user experiences and use contexts. the overall endeavour can hence be seen as drifting back and forth between transformative vision and achievable mission. in hindsight, the constitutional aspect of the design sprint approach supports schön’s (1995) description of indeterminate zones of practices: to test new understandings (need for sustainable lifestyles), to explore new phenomena (through co-creating action possibilities and triggers for a digital service) and to iteratively affirm or negate the moves (iterate the design to develop a deep understanding of both physical and psychological triggers for change). the cocreative design sprint approach is hence seen as a key factor in the design success. the latter refers to both the positive user experiences of interacting with the digital service and their actions taken for a successful reduction of their climate footprint. a vision for a digital service for change of human lifestyles with non-existent current solutions or users imposes a need for a deep understanding of the potential user’s insights and values (brown, 2008; brown & katz, 2011; stickdorn et al., 2018) to be able to meet these with design. the diverse potential stakeholders and users involved in the bechange project thus confirm that a fundamental aspect of a transformative design practice is authentic co-creation. this also resonates with the risk of user insights drifting away during the process as more financial gains take the upper hand (kolko, 2017; lee, 2007; robinson & bannon, 1991). additionally, it resonates with the risk of an “i-methodology” (akrich, 1992, 1995). the current approach was more of a “we methodology”: a will for identifying how we could change behaviours into more sustainable lifestyles. there is thus a need for approaching the mission with a “we methodology”, co-creating iteratively with potential users all the way, providing them with a sense of ownership of the design. some insights are further outlined below. first, i propose that a constitutional aspect of a transformative design practice, however messy it might be, can be the “hows” of simultaneously and co-creatively addressing mental models and human behaviour and social, economic and ecological sustainability. the bechange mission was initiated with the incentive of transforming human behaviour into more sustainable lifestyles. the first motivation was thus purely 47 “eco-logical”, i.e. based on the logic of saving the planet. the incentives were of course also “eco-nomical”; the founders wanted to be able to do this for a living, and the design consultants wanted their bills paid. however, they all had the sheer motivation of realising social, economic and ecological sustainability. the co-creative process contributed to more social “eco-creative” incentives, i.e. explorations of user insights of positive human lifestyle changes through the overall service concept and its interactive platform. in retrospect, the bechange core design team might have anticipated some of the challenges a transformative design practice yields but perhaps did not realise the messiness of sometimes conflicting needs and preferences, many interactions with different actors and a lot of ideas, imperatives and relations they sometimes saw as difficult to manage. this echoes the challenges of current design problems being complex, crossing boundaries of several organisations, stakeholders, producers and user groups and that the design solution must meet diverse demands and expectations (redström, 2017). in relation to lewin (1947), the ambition was to identify triggers for change in human behaviour in more sustainable ways: understanding how people behave and, in line with thaler and sunstein’s (2009) tactics, through design nudge them into what is co-creatively identified as more sustainable actions. second, i propose that a constitutional aspect of transformative design for change is how the prospective customers and users are involved in the process. the iterative co-design sprint approach paved the way for the solution being inclusive and human-centred. however, it became so much more than the design of an online service’s interface and its interactions, as it involved enquiries into what different values of sustainable lifestyles might be and how they might be accomplished through design. this meant realising that it is neither merely a matter of putting people first nor of finding out what technical solutions or business propositions could best fit the concept. rather, it was involving many different actors, exploring all of these factors iteratively through co-creation, that ensured a successful outcome. users were at the centre of the process, it was however not one homogeneous user representation but several diverse perspectives and understandings that contributed to the success. this also included not prescribing user behaviour through the end solutions’ action possibilities but co-creating how people would like to be prescribed into such roles and responsibilities. third, i propose that a constitutional aspect of a transformative design practice is that the outcomes cannot be discussed as “the design” or even “the final result”. we can neither say if the digital service will contribute to sustainable lifestyle changes, nor if it will take one month or 10 years for potential users to make such changes. rather, the bechange service can be seen as what haraway (2004) describes as a cybernetic organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of social fiction. this resonates to the ant (latour, 1987) of not being able to define beforehand what it will become once it’s out there. for this reason, design-for-change practices have to deal with the “hows”, as in taking responsibility for nodes and directions through co-creating and testing material and semiotic meanings rather than prescribing actions. it also deals with the multidimensional connections between the “whos”: the designers, the things, the users and the planet, relating to how human beings and things interact in the world and the meanings they create of the same. the key question, in this case, was asking how this will be valuable to prospective customers, users and the planet and prompting this question repeatedly. the original bechange conceptual idea is now launched as a unique service experience that supports both organisations and individuals to bring about long-term positive behavioural change and sustainable lifestyles. naturally, more research is needed to confirm and identify more constitutions of design-forchange practices. in that respect, papanek’s (1971) now legendary words that designers are a dangerous bread, little more than producers of future garbage, should be seriously considered. in summary and by contrast, i propose that a constitutional aspect of this particular project was its capacity to invite altruistic 48 action, performed to satisfy a worthy issue or demand, through the implementation of a core co-designfor-sustainable-change approach. in short, it dealt with authentic sustainability, achieved through a genuinely transformative co-design practice. references akrich, m. 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(2010). research commentary – the new organization logic of digital innovation: an agenda for information systems research. information systems research, 21(4), 724– 735. 1 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. south african fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and practices of sustainable fashion supply chain operations nailejileji mollel-matodzi, anne mastamet mason, nalini moodley-diar published online: may 2023 to cite this article: mollel-matodzi, n., mastamet mason, a., & moodley-diar, n. (2023). south african fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and practices of sustainable fashion supply chain operations. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 4(1), 1-11. 2 south african fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and practices of sustainable fashion supply chain operations nailejileji mollel-matodzia, anne mastamet masonb, nalini moodley-diarc afaculty of arts & design, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa. nailamollel@gmail.com. bfaculty of arts & design, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa. masona@tut.ac.za cfaculty of arts & design, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa. moodleydiarn@tut.ac.za abstract the textile and clothing industry intensifies pollution through the production of fast fashion clothes. the increase in fast fashion clothes imports in south africa has led to the closure of textile factories and consequent loss of jobs. sustainable development is a pathway to reducing socio-environmental, cultural and economic harm. sustainable processes and products create new employment. fashion design entrepreneurs are often involved and have influence in every supply chain of their business and are thus in one of the best positions to implement sustainable fashion supply chain operations. this qualitative study aimed to investigate south african fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and practices of sustainable fashion supply chain operations. participants were selected purposively, and data was collected through semi-structured interviews. the results indicated that most of the participants were aware of sustainable fabrics through personal research. half of them source and produce sustainable garments on a small scale due to the high price of sustainable fabrics. all the participants had limited knowledge of sustainable design methods. all the participants save their fabric offcuts, and only half of them are motivated by environmental concerns. furthermore, the results indicated a lack of systems to manage the recycling of fabric offcuts. given that there are few sustainable fashion design entrepreneurs in south africa, the study recommends that textile and clothing industry leaders, especially sustainability practitioners, disseminate knowledge and training across the board on sustainable supply chain operations. keywords: fashion design entrepreneurs, sustainable supply chain operations, sustainable fabric sourcing, sustainable garment design, sustainable garment manufacturing introduction entrepreneurship is linked to sustainable development because entrepreneurship contributes to innovation, generates employment, influences economic development, betters social issues and assists in dealing with environmental issues (un, 2015). sustainable operations in businesses entail those businesses integrating sustainable values into the creation of new merchandise (zu, 2014) and reconsider their core processes and productions (fisk, 2010). given the fact that the textile and clothing industry (tci) has contributed to the current socio-environmental challenges, fashion design entrepreneurs cannot afford to have sustainable operations as a separate element in their business. sustainable operations ought to be at the core of their business. the inability to address socio-environmental challenges endangers businesses’ capacity to build wealth and to be viable in the future (zu, 2014,). businesses that incorporate sustainable practices have a competitive advantage (bomgardner, 2018). for the south african textile and clothing industry (satci) to be sustainable and improve its sustainability efforts, sustainable supply chain operations need to be integrated into business practices and processes to ensure and increase the production of sustainable clothes. south african fashion week (safw) is a platform for south african fashion designers 3 to showcase their work. may (2019) reports that safw has a record of 580 fashion designers. however, only a small number of fashion designers are socio-environmentally sustainable. within this research context, this study aimed to investigate south african fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and practices of sustainable fashion supply chain operations. table 1 presents the objectives of this study. table 1: sub-aims of the study. sub-aim 1 explore and describe fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness of sustainable fabrics and garment design methods sub-aim 2 explore and describe how fashion design entrepreneurs balance economical sustainability and socioenvironmental sustainability while sourcing fashion materials, designing garments and manufacturing garment sub-aim 3 explore and describe fashion design entrepreneurs’ current practices while sourcing fashion fabrics and manufacturing garments sub-aim 4 explore and describe fashion design entrepreneurs’ current practices towards economic sustainability in sourcing fashion materials, designing garments and manufacturing garments literature review the emergence of sustainability has led numerous fashion businesses into altering their organisational approaches in their supply chain (choi & li, 2015; shen, 2014). it is worth bearing in mind that altering supply chain operations is a gradual process. this requires fashion design entrepreneurs to evaluate their supply chain operations and identify gaps and opportunities where sustainable supply chain practices and processes can be integrated. this study focused on three stages of fashion supply chain: sourcing, design and manufacturing. sustainable fabric sourcing sustainable sourcing firstly involves sourcing sustainable fabrics and secondly sourcing locally manufactured fabrics. it is important to note that every fabric has its individual socio-environmental threats (fletcher, 2014). sustainable fabrics include organic cotton, recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rpet), wool, linen, hemp, tencel or lyocell and bamboo. some of the sustainable fabrics that can be sourced in south africa (sa) are cotton produced by the sustainable cotton cluster (cotton sa, 2016), rpet, linen hemp (del monte, 2021), wool, cashmere and mohair (twyg, 2020). it is important to note that some of these fabrics are sometimes sourced in sa and processed outside the country and vice versa (del monte, 2021). sourcing locally is reasonably costed and sustainable because it benefits the country’s economy through job creation, reduces shipping costs and reduces carbon emissions (cadigan, 2014; fontes, 2016; ho & choi, 2012; sprague, 2015). over previous years, leading retailers sourced fabrics and clothes from china, and this has negatively affected south african textile manufacturers’ capacity (daniel, 2022). chinese imports 4 have weakened the south african textile, clothing, leather and footwear industries (satclf) (mahlati, 2017). in 1996, the satci had about 1,600 clothing factories. in 2015, the industry had approximately 900 functional clothing factories (reuters, 2015). the drop in the number of factories indicates the urgent need for south african retailers and fashion design entrepreneurs to source and manufacture locally to improve the economic well-being of the industry and society. to date, leading retailers have committed to sourcing locally produced fabrics (daniel, 2022). when large businesses boost the demand of sustainable fabrics, it will help boost production demand from smaller manufacturers and will make sustainable products more reasonably priced and enable customers to purchase more products (lee, 2014). sustainable fashion design entrepreneurs often struggle to find reasonably priced sustainable fabrics (kawana, 2017; may, 2019). given that the satci struggles with adequate mainstream fabric production for its market, it is logical that there would also be a shortage of sustainable fabric production. thus, where sustainable fabrics are not readily available and are beyond the fashion design entrepreneur’s financial capacity, purchasing sturdy polyester should be an alternative. polyester is a controversial fabric because it is harmful to the environment, yet it is one of the two most used fabrics in the world (dehaan, 2016; fletcher, 2014). it is made from non-renewable resources and pollutes the environment (niinimäki, 2013; olajire, 2014). however, polyester manufacturing uses less water than cotton manufacturing (fletcher, 2014), it is durable and has stronger fibres than cotton (norway geographical, 2019). the popularity of polyester, due to its affordability and other characteristics, makes it difficult to stop using this fabric completely. in the fashion supply chain, the sourcing stage is followed by the garment design stage. sustainable garment design sustainable garment design involves careful consideration of the type of fabric and its effects, the manufacturing, the customer-use phase and disposal of garments to reduce harmful global socioenvironmental impacts (zoltkowski, 2022). sustainable garment design must consider, among others, “economic, social, and environmental values” (niinimäki, 2013) and cultural values. fashion design entrepreneurs determine the look of sustainable garments (sherburne, 2009), as well as the processes and practices that the garment will experience. fashion design entrepreneurs can use various methods to design sustainable garments, including, among others, zero-waste design methods, design for multifunctional garment design and design for emotional durability. zero-waste design methods do not separate the design stage from the manufacturing stage. zero-waste design is a method of reducing fabric waste at the design stage by considering the cost of the fabric, balancing garment aesthetics, fit and cost and pattern cutting (rissanen, 2013). zero-waste design methods consist of and are not limited to draping, zero-waste pattern layout or jigsaw puzzle methods and subtraction pattern cutting (the cutting class, 2013; ecochic design award, 2017). the jigsaw puzzle method refers to laying pattern pieces like a jigsaw puzzle to avoid fabric wastage (the cutting class, 2013). the subtraction pattern-cutting method is like the draping method in that both subtraction and draping require the fashion designer to “twist, displace, and feed the fabric back to itself” (the cutting class, 2013). multifunctional garment design – also known as transformable design and convertible design – involves designing a garment that can be reversible, consisting of various elements that can be added or removed by the wearer depending on the occasion or season (li et al., 2018). multifunctional garments provide customers with one garment that can be worn in multiple ways, with each look consisting of a different 5 aesthetic identity and function. it is possible to reduce customers’ purchases of new fashion (lang & wei, 2019), extend the life cycle of a garment and thereby reduce the number of garments in landfills (koo et al., 2014). emotional durability is a design concept that intends to create a long-lasting emotional connection between the garments and the users (chapman, 2015). involving customers at the garment design stage can contribute to creating an emotional bond with the garment (durrani et al., 2016) and tackling consumption behaviour (durrani et al., 2016). the sustainable garment design methods discussed above all focus on reducing fabric waste at either the pre-consumer or post-consumer phase. the garment design stage in the fashion supply chain is followed by the manufacturing stage. sustainable manufacturing in this study, sustainable manufacturing refers to the treatment of fabrics at the pre-consumer phase and of garments at the post-consumer use phase. fashion design entrepreneurs can employ various methods in the treatment of both fabrics and garments at the pre-consumer and post-consumer phases that can contribute to the sustainability of the tci in sa. this study focuses on a closed loop approach consisting of reuse and recycling practices. according to cuc and vidovic (2011) and holm (2013), reuse and recycling have environmental, social and economic benefits. the closed-loop approach, also known as the “circular economy”, refers to the treatment within the clothing factory of fabric offcuts, waste fabrics and merchandise once the garment is no longer useful to the client (niinimäki, 2013; pervez, 2017). given that the closed-loop approach seeks to reduce landfill and extend the life cycle of fabrics (norwich university, 2020), it is important to note that this approach can be applied both to fabrics that are considered sustainable and those that are not considered sustainable. reusing and recycling are approaches conceived to reduce waste and require fashion design entrepreneurs to re-think their entire manufacturing processes and practices. reuse approaches also involve reselling, renting and swapping (hendriksz, 2016). in some cases, before garments can be reused, they need to be repaired, which means providing a repair service to customers. renting clothes enables companies to increase their profit (hendriksz, 2016). recycling means modifying the original attributes of fabrics to make new items (ho & choi, 2012). one of the ways fashion design entrepreneurs can implement a closed-loop system is by encouraging customers to bring back their used and unwanted clothes. in addition, south african fashion design entrepreneurs can also practise product-centric recycling. product-centric recycling means that clothing manufacturers recycle their own textile waste (sherburne, 2009); this approach is intended to generate profit. in sa, the rising cost and limited access to landfill sites indicate the need for the satci to strengthen its reusing and recycling systems (enviroserv, n.d). according to hendriksz (2016), many overseas businesses and manufacturers join forces with their local governments to reduce carbon emissions, energy and water consumption, waste and their general environmental impacts. it is crucial that the south african government aids the satci in obtaining technologically advanced equipment to improve the industry’s recycling capacity. a few fashion design entrepreneurs identify themselves as sustainable. furthermore, the current climate challenges facing the world and the state of the satci denote the need for more fashion design entrepreneurs to adopt sustainable supply chain operations. 6 methodology in this study, qualitative methods were used to explore and describe fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and their current sustainable fashion supply chain practices. the six participants for this study were selected purposively based on the following four criteria: 1. must produce clothes for men or women. 2. must have been in business for at least three years. 3. must have an online and a physical store 4. must not be primarily producing sustainable clothes. the data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews and analysis of documentation found on the participants’ websites or social media pages and was conducted in 2020. due to financial constraints, telephone interviews were conducted. the participants were informed ahead of time that the interview would be recorded. the interviews were recorded using the another call recorder application. the semistructured interviews were transcribed, coded, categorised and arranged for analysis (babbie, 2016). credibility, dependability and confirmability were the categories used to maintain the trustworthiness of this study. credibility was maintained by transcribing the recorded interviews, submitting the transcribed interviews to another researcher and by data triangulation. evaluation of the data collection, data analysis, and interpretation was maintained through continual consultation and discussion with supervisors. this ensured that the dependability and confirmability of the data were maintained. the results and discussion are provided below. results and discussion the findings of this study are discussed based on the sub-aims as shown in table 1. fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness of sustainable fabrics and garment design methods regarding awareness of sustainable practices at the fabric sourcing stage, participant c was the only participant who indicated that she is not aware of sustainable fabrics, stating, “i’m not clued up about sustainable fabrics, and i’ll need to be educated more on their benefits. smal (2016) pointed out that the local tci is in the early stages of addressing sustainable practices, so there is not widespread awareness in the local tci. this may explain why participant c is not knowledgeable about sustainable fabrics. participants a, b, d, e and f indicated that their knowledge on sustainable fabrics and their benefits was based on personal research. these participants revealed that they found sustainable fabrics to be more expensive than other fabrics. may (2019) and kawana (2017) report that sustainable fabrics are indeed expensive. to make sustainable fabrics affordable to micro and small businesses, large retailers must continue to source these fabrics. regarding awareness of sustainable operations at the design stage, all the participants showed minimal awareness of various sustainable design methods. participants b, d and f indicated they are conscious that reducing fabric offcuts is environmentally sustainable. although participants a, c and e save fabric offcuts, they were not aware that this is a sustainable design method, and their motivation for saving fabric offcuts was economic. participant b indicated that he experiments with draping, and this is motivated by the plethora of style options that this method offers. participant is the only participant who uses the design for emotional durability method. however, this participant is unaware of this terminology and that this 7 is a sustainable design method. this participant’s motive for using this method is to increase sales. all the participants were unaware of the other three remaining sustainable design methods: zero-waste pattern layout, subtraction pattern cutting and multifunctional garment design. fashion design entrepreneurs balance economic sustainability and socio-environmental sustainability in sourcing, design and manufacturing regarding balancing environmental sustainability and profitability, participants a, b, d, e and f indicated that environmental sustainability and economic sustainability are connected. participant a indicated that making a profit while disregarding environmental sustainability is counterproductive. according to brubaker (2015), entrepreneurs can fix catastrophes by innovating sustainable business models that can influence customers and increase profit. participant d indicated that a designer must be able to solve problems and produce garments that bring in profit. some of the participants concurred that balancing environmental sustainability and economic sustainability is a process that requires intentional development and time. some of the methods that participants use to balance environmental sustainability and economic sustainability are reducing fabric waste, using waste for sellable products and producing garments based on orders only. participant b stated that profit and environmental sustainability is a process that involves both research and collaboration with other professionals who are knowledgeable about environmental sustainability. with regards to balancing social sustainability and economic sustainability, all the participants indicated that it is possible to balance these. some of the methods that the participants use to balance social sustainability and economic sustainability are as follows: • intentionally producing garments that are affordable to the target market; • developing employees’ skills through training workshops; • providing rent-free space in the retail store for emerging designers’ products; and • providing factory space for employees’ private clients on weekends. regarding balancing employees’ salaries and social sustainability, three participants indicated that they pay their employees based on existing systems such as the basic employment act, the bargaining council, the companies intellectual property commission (cipc) and union regulations. one participant indicated that his employees are paid above the existing minimum wage standard. two participants indicated that they use their standard based on the current cost of living in sa, the daily operational cost of the business, the level of employee work experience and overtime. overall, the various avenues that the participants use to empower their employees demonstrate a value for human life and the services rendered by their employees. fashion design entrepreneurs’ current socio-environmentally sustainable practices at the sourcing and manufacturing stages participants b, d and f source sustainable fabrics such as linen, sustainable cotton and wool on a small scale. these participants manufacture sustainable clothes on a small scale for their upper-class customers because most of their customers cannot afford the clothes. all the participants revealed that they manufacture their garments in-house. as mentioned, all participants in this study save their fabric offcuts. participants a and c reuse their fabric offcuts to make accessories. the remaining four participants indicated that they donate their fabric offcuts to their employees, charity organisations and local 8 communities. participants d and f indicated that there should be better systems to manage fabric offcuts. the participants are not always able to donate their fabric offcuts, which results in unused fabric offcuts filling up their studios, and these may end up in landfills. participant f pointed out that as a small business, it is difficult to prepare fabric offcuts and garments for recycling due to a lack of recycling services in the area they operate in. this may suggest that there is a need for more accessible recycling services to streamline recycling for fashion design entrepreneurs. this study found that garment reuse and renting are not common practice among the participants. participant a reports redesigning and reusing garments that do not sell. participant d reported that they occasionally rented runway garments and found that there is no market for renting clothes. this may suggest that fashion design entrepreneurs can initiate and build a renting culture among customers. fashion design entrepreneurs' current economically sustainable practices at the sourcing, design and manufacturing stages exploring participants’ various economically sustainable practices in fashion supply-chain operations was the fourth sub-aim of this study. economically sustainable practices in this study were threefold, namely sourcing locally manufactured fabrics, businesses making profit consecutively and overall economic contribution to the tci. several international authors cadigan (2014), ho and choi (2012), sprague (n.d.) and fontes (2016) acknowledge that sourcing fabrics in the country where your business is situated is one way of improving the local economy. participant a indicated that they source locally manufactured conventional cotton. participant b indicated that the socio-environmentally friendly cotton and hemp they source are manufactured locally. based on participant c’s website, some of their african print fabrics are produced by south african fabric manufacturers. participant f sources linen and conventional cotton in sa. participants d and f pointed out that the industry needs more textile mills to increase local production. in addition, participant d indicated that they source wool fibres locally, and the fibres are then sent overseas to be woven and finally imported back to sa. thus, more wool and leather mills are needed in sa to increase the local tci production capacity, reduce pollution incurred in shipping and alleviate poverty by providing jobs. participants b, c, d, e and f source their synthetic fabrics from south african wholesalers who stock imported fabrics. these findings suggest that imported fabrics are readily available in sa and that there are not enough fabric factories to cater to local demand. importation of fabrics is not economically friendly because it does not benefit the local tci and the country and impedes the growth of textile and clothing factories. given that the satci has few textile factories, it is understandable that the fabrics that participants source are often imported. although south african fabric wholesalers may employ a few people, the countries that produce these fabrics have greater economic benefits (in terms of fabric production), good production capacity for their tci and employment opportunities for their local communities. with regards to consistently making a profit, participants a, b, c and f revealed that they have been consistently making a profit, and this has allowed them to remain in business. participant f indicated that having multiple businesses in one location is one of the ways he manages financially. this may suggest that for some small and medium enterprises, it may be necessary for them to expand their services to deal with tougher business seasons. participants d and e indicated that they were only able to make a profit after three years, and this was due to assistance from a business rescue specialist. both participants highlighted 9 the importance of business skills in managing a business. this suggests that without the right sets of business skills, it is difficult to remain sustainable and make a positive contribution to the local tci and the country. regarding economic contributions to the tci, all the participants in this study indicated they are making an economic contribution to the tci because they manufacture their garments locally. conclusion and recommendations this study has revealed that fashion design entrepreneurs incorporate minimal sustainable practices in one to two stages of their supply chain operations. the minimal sustainable practices are not solely motivated by the desire to contribute to a sustainable tci and reduce socio-environmental harm. regarding sourcing, the study revealed that there is a need to educate fashion design entrepreneurs on sustainable fabrics and where to source them. sustainable fabric manufacturers and stockists need to be visible in the marketplace, as this will further increase awareness and purchases of the fabrics. the data uncovered the knowledge and skills gap at the garment design stage. it is crucial to empower fashion design entrepreneurs with sustainable garment design knowledge and skills training in the advancement of a sustainable satci. sustainable design methods may increase the quantity and variety of sustainable clothes in the south african retail environment and provide customers with more options. the participants in this study have shown that saving fabric offcuts for reuse and donation is a widespread practice while renting and redesigning garments is rare. garment renting, repair and redesigning are sustainable manufacturing methods that can decrease clothing consumption and the production of new fabric and reduce landfills. the findings of this study reveal that there is a need to promote garment renting and repair among fashion design entrepreneurs and customers. additionally, fashion design entrepreneurs can practise sustainable manufacturing by redesigning garments that do not sell or by donating them to charitable organisations. incorporating minimal sustainable practices and processes in one or two stages of the supply chain operations is a starting point towards building a sustainable tci. for fashion design entrepreneurs to increase their sustainable contribution to the industry, moderate to maximum sustainable practices and processes need to be implemented at every stage of supply chain operations. this study had a limited criterion. first, we suggest that future research should include clear target market criteria (upper class, middle class and lower class). second, future studies should have an equal number of participants who have been operating for the same number of years. participant b stated that sustainability is a journey that takes years to implement. it can be deduced that as a business progresses, there are unique supply-chain operations that must be modified, adapted and preserved accordingly. third, a longitudinal study will provide in-depth insight into methods that fashion design entrepreneurs can use to transform their businesses in a sustainable manner. in conclusion, this study is not representative of the entire south african tci. this study offers valuable insight into the current practice of microto-small businesses of mainstream fashion design 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(2016, november 23-24). shared emotional values in sustainable clothing design approaches. in r. early & k. goldsworthy (eds.), circular transitions proceedings: a mistra future fashion conference on textile design and the circular economy, 23–24 november 2016 ,chelsea college of arts, tate britain, london (pp. 81-91). centre for circular design. https://tinyurl.com/4mfsn7mx ecochic design award. (2014, may 27). reconstruction design technique. the ecochic design award. https://tinyurl.com/yfemtjj4 ecochic design award. (2015). building a sustainable fashion business. the ecochic design award. http://www.ecochicdesignaward.com/s/learn_business_eng_2015.pdf ecochic design award. (2017, june 15). zero-waste design technique. the ecochic design award. https://tinyurl.com/yk8f7zm2 enviroserv. (n.d.), textile, leather and wood. http://www.enviroserv.co.za/industries/textile-leather-wood del monte, c. (2021, january 11). part two: preferred south african plant fibre textiles. twyg. https://twyg.co.za/parttwo-preferred-south-african-plant-fibre-textiles/ fisk, p. (2010). people, planet, profit: how to embrace sustainability for innovation and business growth. kogan page publishers. fletcher, k. (2014). sustainable fashion and textiles: design journeys (2nd ed.). routledge. fontes, j, (2016, january 25). sourcing locally is better: myth or not? pré sustainability. https://tinyurl.com/36xwm2tv gwilt, a. (2014). a practical guide to sustainable fashion. bloomsbury publishing. hendriksz, v. (2016, may 25). (re) defining sustainability: repair, recycle, reuse and reduce. fashion united. https://tinyurl.com/4um9a6xe hill, r. p. (2017, september 5). did you know? non-biodegradable clothes take 20 to 200 years to biodegrade. edge. https://tinyurl.com/5xxs9fez ho, h. p. y., & choi, t. m. (2012). a five-r analysis for sustainable fashion supply chain management in hong kong: a case analysis. journal of fashion marketing and management, 16(2), 161–175. holm, l. s. (2013). innovative fashion concepts and the communication of sustainability. in k. niinimäki (ed.), sustainable fashion: new approaches (pp. 146-159). aalto university. kawana, j. (2017, november 1). eco fashion with four local designers, fashion handbook. fashion handbook. https://fashionhandbook.co.za/eco-fashion/ koo, h. s., dunne, l., & bye, e. (2014). design functions in transformable garments for sustainability. international journal of fashion design, technology and education, 7(1), 10–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/17543266.2013.845250 lang, c., & wei, b. (2019). convert one outfit to more looks: factors influencing young female college consumers’ intention to purchase transformable apparel. fashion and textiles, 6(26),1-19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40691-019-0182-4 lee, j. (2014, february 25). the latest in sustainable textiles. triple pundit. https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2014/latest-sustainable-textiles/58881 li, m. m., chen, y., & wang, y. (2018). modular design in fashion industry. journal of arts & humanities, 7(3), 27-32. http://dx.doi.org/10.18533/journal.v7i3.1271 https://tinyurl.com/4e2stve6 https://doi.org/10.3390/su71115400 https://tinyurl.com/32rvyvbs http://doi.org/10.31387/oscm0100064 https://tinyurl.com/yexakyxk https://tinyurl.com/4425y4zd https://theecoguide.org/fast-fashion-environmental-%20and-social-impact https://tinyurl.com/4mfsn7mx https://tinyurl.com/yfemtjj4 http://www.ecochicdesignaward.com/s/learn_business_eng_2015.pdf https://tinyurl.com/yk8f7zm2 https://tinyurl.com/36xwm2tv https://tinyurl.com/4um9a6xe https://tinyurl.com/5xxs9fez https://fashionhandbook.co.za/eco-fashion/ https://doi.org/10.1080/17543266.2013.845250 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40691-019-0182-4 https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2014/latest-sustainable-textiles/58881 http://dx.doi.org/10.18533/journal.v7i3.1271 11 mahlati, v. (2017, march 16). local textile industry needs support to be safe. independent online. https://tinyurl.com/2mr9vw8e martinko, k. (2017, april 12), which fabrics are most sustainable? treehugger. https://tinyurl.com/ab2fwvur may, j. (2019, april 21). nipped in the waste: why sustainable fashion is a big ask for local designers. timeslive. https://tinyurl.com/w4f23ph niinimäki, k. (ed.). (2013). sustainable fashion: new approaches. aalto university. norway geographical. (2019, july 11). polyester vs cotton: differences and comparison. https://norwaygeographical.com/polyester-vs-cotton/ norwich university. (2020, october 20). how creating a closed-loop supply chain can make businesses greener. https://tinyurl.com/bdc932y3 olajire, a. a. (2014). the petroleum industry and environmental challenges. journal of petroleum & environmental biotechnology, 5(4), 2-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2157-7463.1000186 pervez, w. (2017). design for disassembly a circular approach. [master of fine arts in design dissertation, virginia commonwealth university]. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4773/ reuters. (2015, october 4). clothing retailers eye local supply. independent online. https://tinyurl.com/3tjv2ur2 rissanen, t. (2013). zero–waste fashion design: a study at the intersection of cloth, fashion design and pattern cutting [doctoral thesis, university of technology]. https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/handle/10453/23384 sandin, g., & peters, g. m. (2018). environmental impact of textile reuse and recycling: a review. journal of cleaner production, 184, 353-365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.02.266 shen, b. (2014). sustainable fashion supply chain: lessons from h&m. sustainability, 6(9) 6236–6249. https://doi.org/10.3390/su6096236 sherburne, a. (2009). achieving sustainable textiles: a designer’s perspective. in r. s. blackburn (ed.), sustainable textiles: life cycle and environmental impact (pp. 1-32). woodhead publishing. smal, d. n. (2016). the role of environmental sustainability in a design drive fashion industry: a south african case study [doctoral thesis, cape peninsula university of technology]. https://doi.org/10.13140/rg.2.1.5179.6720 sprague, j. (2015, april 30). why sourcing local can help benefit your business in a big way. american express. https://tinyurl.com/58juv7r7 textile today. (2013, september 11). fashion merchandising: sourcing. https://textiletoday.com.bd/fashionmerchandising-sourcing/ twyg. (2020, november 10). part one: preferred south african animal fibre textiles. https://twyg.co.za/part-onepreferred-south-african-animal-fibre-textiles/ un. (2015). universal declaration of human rights. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ zoltkowski, a. (2022, january 27). what on earth is a clothing supply chain? good on you. https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-a-clothing-supply-chain/ zu, l. (2014). international perspective on sustainable entrepreneurship. in c. weidinger, f. fischler, & r. schmidpeter, (eds.), sustainable entrepreneurship: business success through sustainability (pp. 67-100). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38753-1_6 https://tinyurl.com/2mr9vw8e https://tinyurl.com/ab2fwvur https://tinyurl.com/w4f23ph https://norwaygeographical.com/polyester-vs-cotton/ https://tinyurl.com/bdc932y3 http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2157-7463.1000186 https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4773/ https://tinyurl.com/3tjv2ur2 https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/handle/10453/23384 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.02.266 https://doi.org/10.3390/su6096236 https://doi.org/10.13140/rg.2.1.5179.6720 https://tinyurl.com/58juv7r7 https://textiletoday.com.bd/fashion-merchandising-sourcing/ https://textiletoday.com.bd/fashion-merchandising-sourcing/ https://twyg.co.za/part-one-preferred-south-african-animal-fibre-textiles/ https://twyg.co.za/part-one-preferred-south-african-animal-fibre-textiles/ http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-a-clothing-supply-chain/ https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38753-1_6 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. south african fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and practices of sustainable fashion supply chain operations to cite this article: mollel-matodzi, n., mastamet mason, a., & moodley-diar, n. (2023). south african fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and practices of sustainable fashion supply chain operations. discern: international journal of design for ... south african fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and practices of sustainable fashion supply chain operations nailejileji mollel-matodzia, anne mastamet masonb, nalini moodley-diarc afaculty of arts & design, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa. nailamollel@gmail.com. bfaculty of arts & design, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa. masona@tut.ac.za cfaculty of arts & design, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa. moodleydiarn@tut.ac.za abstract the textile and clothing industry intensifies pollution through the production of fast fashion clothes. the increase in fast fashion clothes imports in south africa has led to the closure of textile factories and consequent loss of jobs. sustainable ... keywords: fashion design entrepreneurs, sustainable supply chain operations, sustainable fabric sourcing, sustainable garment design, sustainable garment manufacturing introduction entrepreneurship is linked to sustainable development because entrepreneurship contributes to innovation, generates employment, influences economic development, betters social issues and assists in dealing with environmental issues (un, 2015). sustain... within this research context, this study aimed to investigate south african fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and practices of sustainable fashion supply chain operations. table 1 presents the objectives of this study. table 1: sub-aims of the study. literature review the emergence of sustainability has led numerous fashion businesses into altering their organisational approaches in their supply chain (choi & li, 2015; shen, 2014). it is worth bearing in mind that altering supply chain operations is a gradual proce... sustainable fabric sourcing sustainable sourcing firstly involves sourcing sustainable fabrics and secondly sourcing locally manufactured fabrics. it is important to note that every fabric has its individual socio-environmental threats (fletcher, 2014). sustainable fabrics inclu... sourcing locally is reasonably costed and sustainable because it benefits the country’s economy through job creation, reduces shipping costs and reduces carbon emissions (cadigan, 2014; fontes, 2016; ho & choi, 2012; sprague, 2015). over previous year... to date, leading retailers have committed to sourcing locally produced fabrics (daniel, 2022). when large businesses boost the demand of sustainable fabrics, it will help boost production demand from smaller manufacturers and will make sustainable pro... sustainable garment design sustainable garment design involves careful consideration of the type of fabric and its effects, the manufacturing, the customer-use phase and disposal of garments to reduce harmful global socio-environmental impacts (zoltkowski, 2022). sustainable ga... zero-waste design methods do not separate the design stage from the manufacturing stage. zero-waste design is a method of reducing fabric waste at the design stage by considering the cost of the fabric, balancing garment aesthetics, fit and cost and p... multifunctional garment design – also known as transformable design and convertible design – involves designing a garment that can be reversible, consisting of various elements that can be added or removed by the wearer depending on the occasion or se... emotional durability is a design concept that intends to create a long-lasting emotional connection between the garments and the users (chapman, 2015). involving customers at the garment design stage can contribute to creating an emotional bond with t... sustainable manufacturing in this study, sustainable manufacturing refers to the treatment of fabrics at the pre-consumer phase and of garments at the post-consumer use phase. fashion design entrepreneurs can employ various methods in the treatment of both fabrics and garment... reusing and recycling are approaches conceived to reduce waste and require fashion design entrepreneurs to re-think their entire manufacturing processes and practices. reuse approaches also involve reselling, renting and swapping (hendriksz, 2016). in... a few fashion design entrepreneurs identify themselves as sustainable. furthermore, the current climate challenges facing the world and the state of the satci denote the need for more fashion design entrepreneurs to adopt sustainable supply chain oper... methodology in this study, qualitative methods were used to explore and describe fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness and their current sustainable fashion supply chain practices. the six participants for this study were selected purposively based on the follo... 1. must produce clothes for men or women. 2. must have been in business for at least three years. 3. must have an online and a physical store 4. must not be primarily producing sustainable clothes. the data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews and analysis of documentation found on the participants’ websites or social media pages and was conducted in 2020. due to financial constraints, telephone interviews were conducted. the parti... credibility, dependability and confirmability were the categories used to maintain the trustworthiness of this study. credibility was maintained by transcribing the recorded interviews, submitting the transcribed interviews to another researcher and b... results and discussion the findings of this study are discussed based on the sub-aims as shown in table 1. fashion design entrepreneurs’ awareness of sustainable fabrics and garment design methods regarding awareness of sustainable practices at the fabric sourcing stage, participant c was the only participant who indicated that she is not aware of sustainable fabrics, stating, “i’m not clued up about sustainable fabrics, and i’ll need to be edu... regarding awareness of sustainable operations at the design stage, all the participants showed minimal awareness of various sustainable design methods. participants b, d and f indicated they are conscious that reducing fabric offcuts is environmentall... fashion design entrepreneurs balance economic sustainability and socio-environmental sustainability in sourcing, design and manufacturing regarding balancing environmental sustainability and profitability, participants a, b, d, e and f indicated that environmental sustainability and economic sustainability are connected. participant a indicated that making a profit while disregarding en... with regards to balancing social sustainability and economic sustainability, all the participants indicated that it is possible to balance these. some of the methods that the participants use to balance social sustainability and economic sustainabilit... • intentionally producing garments that are affordable to the target market; • developing employees’ skills through training workshops; • providing rent-free space in the retail store for emerging designers’ products; and • providing factory space for employees’ private clients on weekends. regarding balancing employees’ salaries and social sustainability, three participants indicated that they pay their employees based on existing systems such as the basic employment act, the bargaining council, the companies intellectual property commi... fashion design entrepreneurs’ current socio-environmentally sustainable practices at the sourcing and manufacturing stages participants b, d and f source sustainable fabrics such as linen, sustainable cotton and wool on a small scale. these participants manufacture sustainable clothes on a small scale for their upper-class customers because most of their customers cannot ... this study found that garment reuse and renting are not common practice among the participants. participant a reports redesigning and reusing garments that do not sell. participant d reported that they occasionally rented runway garments and found tha... fashion design entrepreneurs' current economically sustainable practices at the sourcing, design and manufacturing stages exploring participants’ various economically sustainable practices in fashion supply-chain operations was the fourth sub-aim of this study. economically sustainable practices in this study were threefold, namely sourcing locally manufactured fabrics, ... participants b, c, d, e and f source their synthetic fabrics from south african wholesalers who stock imported fabrics. these findings suggest that imported fabrics are readily available in sa and that there are not enough fabric factories to cater to... with regards to consistently making a profit, participants a, b, c and f revealed that they have been consistently making a profit, and this has allowed them to remain in business. participant f indicated that having multiple businesses in one locatio... conclusion and recommendations this study has revealed that fashion design entrepreneurs incorporate minimal sustainable practices in one to two stages of their supply chain operations. the minimal sustainable practices are not solely motivated by the desire to contribute to a sust... this study had a limited criterion. first, we suggest that future research should include clear target market criteria (upper class, middle class and lower class). second, future studies should have an equal number of participants who have been operat... acknowledgements this paper is based on a thesis from tshwane university of technology, south africa. the financial assistance of the national research foundation (nrf) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. references anson, r. (2012). editorial: can the shift of textile and clothing production to asia be reversed? textile outlook international, 159, 4–9. babbie, e. r. (2016). the basics of social research (7th ed.). cengage learning. bomgardner, m. m. (2018, june 15). these new textile dyeing methods could make fashion more sustainable. chemical & engineering news. https://tinyurl.com/4e2stve6 brubaker, r (2015, september 9). the next big thing for entrepreneurs: sustainability. forbes. https://tinyurl.com/3wazpzmy cadigan, e. (2014). sourcing and selecting textiles for fashion: sourcing and selection. fairchild books. chapman, j. (2015). prospect, seed and activate: advancing design for sustainability in fashion. in k. fletcher & m. tham (eds.), routledge handbook of sustainability and fashion (pp. 74-81). routledge. choi, t. m., & li, y. (2015). sustainability in fashion business operations. sustainability, 7 ,15400-15406. https://doi.org/10.3390/su71115400 cotton sa. (2016, march 10). cotton is making a comeback. https://tinyurl.com/32rvyvbs cuc, s., & vidovic, m. (2011). environmental sustainability through clothing recycling, operations and supply chain management. operations and supply chain management, 4(2), 108-115. http://doi.org/10.31387/oscm0100064 the cutting class. (2013, october 25). subtraction pattern cutting with julian roberts. https://tinyurl.com/yexakyxk daniel, l. (2022, september 1). pick n pay clothing aims for 60% local by 2028 – years of cheap chinese imports make that tough. business insider. https://tinyurl.com/4425y4zd dehaan, e. (2016, july 01). fast fashion: environmental and social impact. the eco guide. https://theecoguide.org/fast-fashion-environmentaland-social-impact durrani, m., ravnløkke, l., & niinimäki, k. (2016, november 23-24). shared emotional values in sustainable clothing design approaches. in r. early & k. goldsworthy (eds.), circular transitions proceedings: a mistra future fashion conference on textile... ecochic design award. (2014, may 27). reconstruction design technique. the ecochic design award. https://tinyurl.com/yfemtjj4 ecochic design award. (2015). building a sustainable fashion business. the ecochic design award. http://www.ecochicdesignaward.com/s/learn_business_eng_2015.pdf ecochic design award. (2017, june 15). zero-waste design technique. the ecochic design award. https://tinyurl.com/yk8f7zm2 enviroserv. (n.d.), textile, leather and wood. http://www.enviroserv.co.za/industries/textile-leather-wood del monte, c. (2021, january 11). part two: preferred south african plant fibre textiles. twyg. https://twyg.co.za/part-two-preferred-south-african-plant-fibre-textiles/ fisk, p. (2010). people, planet, profit: how to embrace sustainability for innovation and business growth. kogan page publishers. fletcher, k. (2014). sustainable fashion and textiles: design journeys (2nd ed.). routledge. fontes, j, (2016, january 25). sourcing locally is better: myth or not? pré sustainability. https://tinyurl.com/36xwm2tv gwilt, a. (2014). a practical guide to sustainable fashion. bloomsbury publishing. hendriksz, v. (2016, may 25). (re) defining sustainability: repair, recycle, reuse and reduce. fashion united. https://tinyurl.com/4um9a6xe hill, r. p. (2017, september 5). did you know? non-biodegradable clothes take 20 to 200 years to biodegrade. edge. https://tinyurl.com/5xxs9fez ho, h. p. y., & choi, t. m. (2012). a five-r analysis for sustainable fashion supply chain management in hong kong: a case analysis. journal of fashion marketing and management, 16(2), 161–175. holm, l. s. (2013). innovative fashion concepts and the communication of sustainability. in k. niinimäki (ed.), sustainable fashion: new approaches (pp. 146-159). aalto university. kawana, j. (2017, november 1). eco fashion with four local designers, fashion handbook. fashion handbook. https://fashionhandbook.co.za/eco-fashion/ koo, h. s., dunne, l., & bye, e. (2014). design functions in transformable garments for sustainability. international journal of fashion design, technology and education, 7(1), 10–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/17543266.2013.845250 lang, c., & wei, b. (2019). convert one outfit to more looks: factors influencing young female college consumers’ intention to purchase transformable apparel. fashion and textiles, 6(26),1-19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40691-019-0182-4 lee, j. (2014, february 25). the latest in sustainable textiles. triple pundit. https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2014/latest-sustainable-textiles/58881 li, m. m., chen, y., & wang, y. (2018). modular design in fashion industry. journal of arts & humanities, 7(3), 27-32. http://dx.doi.org/10.18533/journal.v7i3.1271 mahlati, v. (2017, march 16). local textile industry needs support to be safe. independent online. https://tinyurl.com/2mr9vw8e martinko, k. (2017, april 12), which fabrics are most sustainable? treehugger. https://tinyurl.com/ab2fwvur may, j. (2019, april 21). nipped in the waste: why sustainable fashion is a big ask for local designers. timeslive. https://tinyurl.com/w4f23ph niinimäki, k. (ed.). (2013). sustainable fashion: new approaches. aalto university. norway geographical. (2019, july 11). polyester vs cotton: differences and comparison. https://norwaygeographical.com/polyester-vs-cotton/ norwich university. (2020, october 20). how creating a closed-loop supply chain can make businesses greener. https://tinyurl.com/bdc932y3 olajire, a. a. (2014). the petroleum industry and environmental challenges. journal of petroleum & environmental biotechnology, 5(4), 2-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2157-7463.1000186 pervez, w. (2017). design for disassembly a circular approach. [master of fine arts in design dissertation, virginia commonwealth university]. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4773/ reuters. (2015, october 4). clothing retailers eye local supply. independent online. https://tinyurl.com/3tjv2ur2 rissanen, t. (2013). zero–waste fashion design: a study at the intersection of cloth, fashion design and pattern cutting [doctoral thesis, university of technology]. https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/handle/10453/23384 sandin, g., & peters, g. m. (2018). environmental impact of textile reuse and recycling: a review. journal of cleaner production, 184, 353-365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.02.266 shen, b. (2014). sustainable fashion supply chain: lessons from h&m. sustainability, 6(9) 6236–6249. https://doi.org/10.3390/su6096236 sherburne, a. (2009). achieving sustainable textiles: a designer’s perspective. in r. s. blackburn (ed.), sustainable textiles: life cycle and environmental impact (pp. 1-32). woodhead publishing. smal, d. n. (2016). the role of environmental sustainability in a design drive fashion industry: a south african case study [doctoral thesis, cape peninsula university of technology]. https://doi.org/10.13140/rg.2.1.5179.6720 sprague, j. (2015, april 30). why sourcing local can help benefit your business in a big way. american express. https://tinyurl.com/58juv7r7 textile today. (2013, september 11). fashion merchandising: sourcing. https://textiletoday.com.bd/fashion-merchandising-sourcing/ twyg. (2020, november 10). part one: preferred south african animal fibre textiles. https://twyg.co.za/part-one-preferred-south-african-animal-fibre-textiles/ un. (2015). universal declaration of human rights. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ zoltkowski, a. (2022, january 27). what on earth is a clothing supply chain? good on you. https://goodonyou.eco/what-is-a-clothing-supply-chain/ zu, l. (2014). international perspective on sustainable entrepreneurship. in c. weidinger, f. fischler, & r. schmidpeter, (eds.), sustainable entrepreneurship: business success through sustainability (pp. 67-100). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38... 12 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. connecting female migrants to healthcare systems through smartphone apps: an asset-based design case study translating social capital of community organisations into sociotechnical systems laura niño cáceres, dana valentina rodriguez, diana alarcón, daisy yoo, caroline hummels published online: may 2023 to cite this article: cáceres, n., rodriguez, d.v., alarcón , d., yoo, d. & hummels, c. (2023) discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 4(1), 12-26. 13 connecting female migrants to healthcare systems through smartphone apps: an asset-based design case study translating social capital of community organisations into sociotechnical systems laura niño cáceresa, dana valentina rodrigueza, diana alarcónb, daisy yooa, caroline hummelsa aeindhoven technology university, eindhoven, 5612 ae, the netherlands. l.nino@tue.nl, valenticr98@gmail.com, d.yoo@tue.nl, c.c.m.hummels@tue.nl bmedecins sans frontiers (msf), stockholm se 100 74, sweden. alarcondiana@gmail.com abstract workers in community organisations in amsterdam and bogota daily use smartphones for personal reasons. however, smartphone apps have been outside their organisational reach. thus, our paper explores sociotechnical systems’ opportunities to bridge community organisations and female migrants to macrosystems such as healthcare systems. our selected community organisations, casa migrante in amsterdam and kilombo yumma in bogota, were born out of serving peer migrants from latin american and afro-colombian backgrounds. their services provide support to female migrants who suffer abuse and poverty. built on cultural practices and social structures of their own, these organisations live on the periphery of macrosystems. they struggle to be appreciated and integrated into macrosystems and digital networks. thus, our paper highlights the core of their services, using asset-based design, and translates their social capital into sociotechnical systems such as smartphone apps. this is intended to reveal, consolidate and integrate their efforts into wider systems. keywords: community organisations, female migrants, smartphone apps, asset-based design, sociotechnical systems, sociotechnical capital introduction supporting the harsh realities of newly arrived low-income migrants are community organisations. migrants carry a heavy burden, as they tend to be seen as people taking advantage of opportunities offered by the host countries or cities or as a threat since their presence downgrades the quality of life in neighbourhoods where they settle or brings petty crime to an area (ryu & tuvilla, 2018). this creates a general unwelcoming narrative around low-income migrants. additional burdens include the expectation from hosting systems that these migrants will be able to stand on their own feet with some limited support, such as language courses or subsidies (ryu & tuvilla, 2018). migrants’ abilities to thrive depend on multiple factors, such as strong ties to local networks, institutional entities, labour skills or legal immigration status (biswas et al., 2012). due to these internal and external barriers, migrants suffer from significant vulnerabilities, isolation and mental health issues (hou et al, 2020; standing, 2011; syed, 2016). in the case of female migrants, they fall into the category of ‘inferior’ workers, involving low-skilled and low-wage labour (phizacklea, 1983). their labour conditions impede them from looking for health services in a timely manner. in the netherlands, migrants avoid seeking healthcare services due to fear of deportation or high financial costs (van walsum, 2016). in colombia, although all citizens are entitled to free access to care, the amount of paperwork and complexity of the public healthcare system make women withdraw from using it. in both cases, the lack of timely access to healthcare services increases health inequity. 14 allowing migrants to navigate unfamiliar places occurs with smartphones. these are a lifeline to lowincome migrants in the netherlands, as they help them to stay connected to their loved ones and find their way in new cities. they also allow safety and connectivity, plus sending money to their loved ones in other countries (alencar et al., 2019; mazzucato et al., 2008). the pervasiveness of smartphones, even in low-income populations, has enabled apps such as tarjimly (https://www.tarjimly.org/) and shifra (https://shifra.app/en) to provide healthcare information to migrants and translation services. however, limited smartphone apps exist that connect community organisations, migrants and healthcare systems. this phenomenon can be partially explained as small and underfunded organisations suffering from the “organisational digital divide” (mcnutt, 2008). this phenomenon refers to the lack of limited organisational information communication tools, which hampers their ability to connect to wider systems and to prove their effectiveness in working with migrants in macrosystems (riza et al., 2020). thus, we ask, how are the services and related challenges of our selected community organisations in bogota and amsterdam? how do they establish connections to macrosystems such as the healthcare system? how can smartphones support community organisations in connecting female migrants and healthcare systems? what are the distilled principles for guiding the development of smartphone apps for these community organisations? our main contribution is to characterise the services of our selected community organisations. next, we explore the role of smartphone apps in enhancing those services towards healthcare systems, by distilling principles that respect the sensitivity of female migrants’ situations and the social capital and possibilities of community organisations. theoretical lenses we selected sociotechnical systems, sociotechnical capital and collaborative services theories to support our study. sociotechnical systems the term sociotechnical system alludes to the human–machine intricate components found in small-scale devices such as smartphones or large objects and infrastructure such as public transport, the internet or any other technology-based product. the socio part involves people and users, and the technical part is the machine or technologically based aspects (ropohl, 1999). sociotechnical systems are highly embedded in modern life, and society cannot function any longer without them (edwards, 2003; ropohl, 1999). digital sociotechnical systems have achieved high pervasiveness; thus their absence or failure in functioning creates a significant disruption in work and personal life (amir & kant, 2018). although sociotechnical systems are modelled out of human activities, they impact human relations and interactions permanently. this is because, at the core of sociotechnical systems, the premise is to socialise technology, as well as technical social interactions (ropohl, 1999). thus, the human and societal aspects of sociotechnical systems are to be closely considered. taking sociotechnical systems’ implications into consideration is sociotechnical capital. this concept takes the social capital of communities, understood as social interactions, relations, and motivation to connect https://www.tarjimly.org/ https://shifra.app/en 15 and act together, as the base to transform them into sociotechnical relations. therefore, sociotechnical systems substitute social structures and interactions of users, intending to enhance their social fabric through technology/machine possibilities (robison & siles, 2002). furthermore, sociotechnical capital explicitly challenges the assumption that sociotechnical systems such as information communication technologies (ict) increase people’s abilities to act together by simply having them. instead, sociotechnical capital proposes to use social capital to promote adoption and expected benefits (resnick, 2001). building further on social capital are collaborative services (baek, et al., 2018). where services are built out of the capital of human relations. they address social issues and build on social capital by increasing trust among communities, support and care. this capital contributes not only to the resilience of societies but also to social innovations (manzini, 2007; meroni & sangiorgi, 2011). collaborative services create not only services but collaborative networks (baek & manzini, 2012). these collaborative networks can be explained since capital is something usually implied for high-income segments and yields. however, capital within social capital is the ability of groups to cooperate in horizontal ways within their networks, without hierarchical structures to stop them while creating improved outcomes for them, despite scarce resources (robison & siles, 2002). these collaborative services are usually circumscribed in the culture and social institutions of communities, which makes them invisible to outsiders (blomberg & darrah, 2015). thus, the role of service designers is to carve out those imperceptible services that are ingrained in community discourses and translate them into something new, yet highly recognisable to the community studied, respecting the central human condition, social capital and organicity of their interactions (sangiorgi & prendiville, 2014). to summarise: • opportunities are created by digital sociotechnical systems such as smartphones and apps, which are widely used by migrants and community organisations. • the imperative human and social capital requirements in designing sociotechnical systems, referred to as sociotechnical capital, enhance the capabilities of users such as migrants and community organisations. • the potential of smartphone apps is to increase integration into macrosystems such as healthcare systems. • our role as service designers and design researchers is to carve out those invisible services, coined as collaborative services and next to translate them into smartphone apps to increase appreciation and clarity concerning their contributions to macrosystems and society at large. method we selected three complementary methods for our study. the first is a literature review, which we used to introduce the selected community organisations and frame the problems around them (creswell, 2014). the second is asset-based design (abd), which is used for community design and builds on the cultural and social capital of communities (pei et al., 2022). it differs in particular from human-centred design (hcd), which focuses on mitigating negative aspects of interactions with a focus on momentary functional requirements. hcd is argued to overlook social structures, leading to social and cultural exclusion (vink & oertzen, 2018; wong-villacres et al., 2020). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0142694x17300017?casa_token=kzge2vecja4aaaaa:6ahckpj1f7yq4zk9sqeyzq1urabdfdrknvzsad-yh_htilrsij8pqh8gu4q9zv9i4jarxlfvzq#bib39 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0142694x17300017?casa_token=kzge2vecja4aaaaa:6ahckpj1f7yq4zk9sqeyzq1urabdfdrknvzsad-yh_htilrsij8pqh8gu4q9zv9i4jarxlfvzq#bib41 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0142694x17300017?casa_token=kzge2vecja4aaaaa:6ahckpj1f7yq4zk9sqeyzq1urabdfdrknvzsad-yh_htilrsij8pqh8gu4q9zv9i4jarxlfvzq#bib2 16 particularly in designing digital sociotechnical systems, the focus should be on leveraging existing assets such as social capital and cultural practices, which are crucial assets for effective community digital interventions (pei et al., 2022). thus, abd aligns well with the concept of sociotechnical capital proposed by resnick (2001). moreover, abd seeks the identification of robust practices already developed by communities to be translated into interventions such as digital sociotechnical systems that fully represent those communities (cho et al., 2019). abd proposes focusing on assets such as care, solidarity, social networks and local expertise (wongvillacres et al., 2020), variables selected for answering through our study. the approach is intrinsically participatory, as it intends to work with communities in co-creating their futures and mitigating social and technological inequalities (wong-villacres et al., 2021). in the co-creation of those asset-based futures, we selected paper prototyping techniques as means to represent a service, where its usage and technical aspects become more apparent. paper prototypes are seen as a means to illustrate smartphone app services and to crystallise the capital from community organisations (sanders & stappers, 2014). thus, paper prototypes are a means of inquiry to shape the social technical capital of such community organisations (koskinen et al., 2011). for our data analysis, we selected inductive content analysis (ica). this method abstracts data into groups to answer the research questions using concepts, categories or themes. ica is used when the data collection process is open and follows loosely defined themes (kyngäs 2020). for our inductive analysis, we used the asset variables introduced earlier by abd of care, trust, solidarity and sharing resources to guide us. results responding to the vulnerabilities of female migrants are casa migrante in amsterdam and kilombos in bogota. kilombos were founded by afro-colombian women trained in african ancestral medicine. their midwifery roles came along with leadership traits, which made them community leaders. after being displaced from their territory of origin, they founded ethnomedical organisations called kilombos in bogota. these provide safe health spaces for afro-colombian women and children. reclaiming their bodily traditions through ancestral midwifery became a form of reclaiming their dignity (gutiérrez páez et al., 2017). casa migrante was created by a christian pastor aiming to support spanish-speaking migrants mostly of latin american heritage in amsterdam, who were affected by language and cultural barriers. in brief, women working in prostitution suffered from significant abuse, and societal stigma knocked on their doors. regrettably, female migrants working in prostitution are mostly unaccounted for in migration and diaspora studies (agustín, 2006). the christian tradition encourages people to treat neighbours and foreigners with kindness and generosity, to look after the sick, feed the hungry, etc and devote oneself to the service of people in need (kirillova et al., 2014; laba, 1991) afro-colombian beliefs have two roots: catholic christian tradition, imposed by the spanish colonisers and sub-saharan western african heritage. the latter has as its central premise the “ubuntu spirit”, which means “i am because we are” (hamedani et al., 2012) and is expressed through the ideals of compassion, reciprocity and dignity to build and maintain a community with justice and mutual caring relations. this 17 strong level of collectivism is also perceived in their identity, which mostly comes from kinship and family ties such as “who i know”, and “what family and community i belong to” (nussbaum, 2003). these beliefs are in opposition to protestant ones embedded in dutch society and capitalist systems, in which the sooner a person is removed from the support of a mother, a community and religion, the more independent and self-reliant this person will become (laba, 1991). these beliefs have transcended religion and become part of neoliberal economic and political models in colombia and the netherlands, creating significant contrasts with our selected community organisations, whose beliefs and culture of collective support, care and sacrifice guide their existence, as our next method’s findings illustrate. asset-based design findings in the next paragraphs, we present our findings per organisation, following the selected abd variables of care, trust, solidarity and sharing resources. first, we present in table 1 the summary of the description of co-creation sessions and include two photo collages. table 1: description of the co-creation sessions. casa migrante kilombo yumma number of co-creation sessions 1 1 attendants 7 6 profile female migrants, volunteers and personnel personnel: nurse, community health worker, healer, ancestral midwife, environmental technician and matrona duration 120 minutes 90 minutes consent forms signed by all attendees signed by all attendees raw data post-its, notes, audio recordings, paper prototypes and photographs. all data stored in a secure server of eindhoven university of technology. notes, audio recordings, paper prototypes and photographs. all data stored in a secure server of eindhoven university of technology. attendees’ recruitment carried out by community organisation via social media and whatsapp. carried out by community organisation face-to-face and via whatsapp. casa migrante care: care happens at various levels: 1. pragmatic 2. personal 18 3. emotional 4. healing 1. pragmatic care: language, cultural and process translation personnel and volunteers help female migrants access the healthcare system by making appointments for them, accompanying them to their appointments, translating from spanish to dutch and mediating during the appointment to ensure that the female migrant’s articulation of her health needs is clearly understood by the physician and vice versa. the nurse volunteer mentioned that the translating services that casa migrante provides go beyond language and involve cultural aspects as well. when she joins someone at a healthcare appointment, she supports the migrant to define and voice her needs to the physician in question. physicians in the netherlands tend to ask people “what can i do for you?” which is a foreign concept to latin american communities, who are not used to articulating their health needs assertively. thus, for a female migrant having to do this on the spot with a stranger such as a physician is a difficult task where cultural guidance is required. 2. personal care: own health last latin american female migrants tend to neglect their health. this is because they put the needs of others above theirs or because they lack health education and information or enabling conditions to seek healthcare services, such as flexibility at work or fear of deportation. furthermore, some suffer from emotional and/or physical abuse, which diminishes their selfesteem and agency to act. in supporting these women to understand that they need to put themselves first, look after themselves and seek care, this self-awareness is a significant task of casa migrante. workshops throughout the year take place to provide spaces to speak and discuss these abuse topics. women are usually recruited via a whatsapp message, and announcements are made via facebook. one participant argued that she did not know that she had health issues. she went to the doctor since her boyfriend told her that she was gaining too much weight. it turned out she had thyroid issues. now she takes medicine and supplements to manage it. despite not being with that partner anymore, she has learned to look after herself, especially now that she is by herself in the netherlands. 3. emotional care: overcoming barriers to find own strength psychological, social services and doulas are offered to migrants at casa migrante. these services are provided during weekends and evenings to accommodate the working life of female migrants. however, the notion of mental health is also diluted for these women. it takes time and pondering for them to engage in therapy. domestic violence and general abuse are prevalent subjects addressed by these services. the vulnerability of these women makes it hard for them to act on it. the doula volunteer at casa migrante argued that latin american women that she sees at casa migrante have a lot of trauma and that pregnancy brings significant cultural clashes between dutch and latin american healthcare approaches, which ultimately make women not trust their bodies and themselves. in addition, the baby may not be intentionally conceived, creating greater anxiety in women. thus, a large part of her work is to help these women trust themselves and their bodies. 19 4. healing care: cohabiting together as a repairing act some of these migrants do not have stable homes to live in. this can be due to eviction, because women decide to leave their abusive partners or simply because they cannot find a home. casa migrante provides an open living room six days a week. after their opening time, 2 pm, people and women flock to the living room and lounge of casa migrante. here they find peers in the same situation, they feel safe, and they have a warm place to be and food to eat. the open living room is the place where all the above care forms connect and cement and where warmth is experienced at an emotional repair level. care, therefore, is defined as a journey on which the personnel and volunteers of casa migrante embark with female migrants to teach them self-care. this means identifying their health needs, finding a voice within the healthcare system and larger systems, understanding their rights, meeting peers and acting upon their inner strengths. one female migrant argued that she has learned about the benefits of being part of a macrosystem. currently, she pays for her healthcare insurance, which makes her feel good about herself and secure. trust: next to language support and cultural translation, there is indefinite time and availability to accompany and listen to female migrants. indefinite time is necessary to understand what they need and to build trust. solidarity, sharing resources sharing resources is a natural and embedded activity of casa migrante. these can be information, time, guidance, food, a living room, etc. in the open living room, people can easily connect and extend their network, acquaintances and peers, which leads to more emotional support and living opportunities for them. image 1: photo collage from casa migrante co-creation session. kilombo yumma care: care at kilombo yumma happens at 1. pragmatic 2. physiological and emotional and 3. spiritual levels 1. pragmatic care: accessing health insurance, removing bureaucratic obstacles kilombo yumma helps female migrants realise the services of the national healthcare system for this population. the nurse and community health workers are trained to know how to manoeuvre the bureaucracy to issue health insurance for their population. 20 pragmatic care involves removing the bureaucratic barriers to accessing the national healthcare services in bogota. the personnel also create referrals, book appointments with health units and hospitals and, if necessary, join them in these appointments. 2. physiological and emotional care: complementing western medicine with ancestral midwifery to kilombos yumma’s personnel, western medicine is limited in supporting health since it is only approached from the physiological aspects. in their communities, when a woman gets pregnant, her role within the community varies. having a baby is following an important milestone in the personal and emotional development of a woman, such as getting their period. these milestones also involve an emotional and communal transition that needs to be addressed, which is ignored by western healthcare systems. when women suspect they are pregnant, they consult matrons, midwives or healers to guide them in their process. this process is a journey where chants, massages, and tailor-made pregnancy advice are provided. all of it is aimed at making the woman feel safe, prepared and supported by her community in her transition. however, ancestral midwifery also involves physiological aspects carried out by midwives. they ask questions and examine the pregnant woman. to be sure, they go through a list of risky conditions in pregnancy such as palpitations, beeping ears, headaches etc. through their hands, the size of the belly and the position of the baby are checked. if they notice the baby is breech, they have different techniques to reposition him/her. all these practices provide comfort and safety to the population. as midwives know their limitations, they are very comfortable leaning on nurses’ expertise to complement their examination and to refer women with high-risk conditions in pregnancy to the national healthcare system. women referred by kilombos to the healthcare systems are closely followed up to ensure they are seen and understand the necessary treatment to be followed. they insist that their work goes beyond the symptoms. it is to guide and accompany women at a deeper level. 3. spiritual care: piercing through the soul of everyone in need the matrona from yumma is very explicit about the spiritual care they provide to their population. she describes kilombo’s service as seeing through the eyes of people into their soul to fully understand the person in front of them to best support him/her. spiritual care is understood as taking the time to assess the family situation of that person by asking “who do you live with, who works in the house or earns money, who do you look after, who looks after you and who is your support network?” in this process sometimes, the female migrant is given a plant to look after. kilombo’s personnel intend to assess the well-being and ability of that person to look after herself and others. thus, spiritual care is defined as picking through the soul of the person, revealing and assessing her emotional needs. solidarity: connected to spiritual care is solidarity. a core part of their tradition is to heal through group rituals called “sanación”, which translates as healing. many female migrants who visit kilombo yumma are victims of war, which means they have been displaced by force and terror from their homes. they may have been raped by armed men. they have witnessed and lost relatives in the war. thus, kilombo yumma is a place where literal and figurative healing takes place. kilombo yumma personnel get together around the woman who has been through a very difficult experience. they encircle her and through chants and calling out the inner strength of the person and collective support, they aim to help her to move on. this is accompanied also by active listening, which is a daily activity they carry out at kilombo yumma. 21 the matrona expressed offence at the fact that the secretary of health does not understand nor distinguish between their ritual practices. some are aimed at healing the person and others are aimed at getting the community in sync by holding hands and sharing their collective good intentions, good health and support. sharing of resources: donations or other goods are something found at yumma. this is because they are a central resources hub for the community for information, guidance, medicine and support. many people tend to arrive by lunchtime since they know that the food will be shared. they say: “where one eats, many can eat also”. paper prototype findings casa migrante the participants recognise their daily use of smartphones and selected apps such as uber, maps, whatsapp and calendars. however, they dislike apps with extensive data and complex navigation formats. the main challenge casa migrante identified was the lack of digital tools to connect and coordinate female migrants to volunteers who want to support them. currently, there is much back and forth between the personnel of casa migrante and female migrants before the volunteers get involved. thus, the idea of having an uber service-type app for volunteers and female migrants was defined as essential to increase coordination and the number of female migrants being helped by casa migrante. the app would allow the casa migrante personnel to do less coordination and provide more social, legal, emotional and practical guidance to other female migrants. furthermore, this app would fill upa gap in the dutch healthcare system: the nurse volunteer argued that in the past there were translators in hospitals to support people, which today do not exist anymore. thus, the work of the volunteers becomes even more important to culturally and personally support the female migrant be understood and helped properly. introducing the app would be done by the casa migrante personnel, since the coordinator argued that once the relationship is established with casa migrante, female migrants feel comfortable being helped by any volunteer female to go to the doctor, as long as this person can speak spanish. last but not least, the number of meetups between volunteers and female migrants is captured by the app and can be accessed by casa migrante. in this way, evidencing their effectiveness in connecting female migrants to dutch healthcare would be possible. kilombo yumma all personnel from yumma use smartphones daily. however, few of them are literate in using computers. they find the paper forms that they need to fill in from the secretary of health cumbersome and an extension of racial subordination from macrosystems to them. thus, they want to have an app on their smartphones. the purpose of the app is to support yumma to collect data in easier and more empowering ways. the data variables to be collected need to be defined since they currently see that the paper forms do not represent their ancestral practices in culturally appropriate ways, which subsequently means their lack of representation within the national healthcare system and national data systems. 22 thus, to yumma any sociotechnical app aims to streamline data collection while acknowledging and increasing the representation of their ancestral practices. thus, the opportunities identified are: a. swift data collection instead of cumbersome forms b. representation of medicine and combined approach c. “ubuntu” of health d. impact through referral data a. swift data collection instead of cumbersome forms currently, they use several forms to collect data from the population to characterise them, their living situation and their health issues. these tasks are done by the secretary of health; thus yumma is the data clerks moreover, the forms take a long time to fill in, interrupt their flow of practices and affect the human connection, which aims to establish a “spiritual” connection. b. representation of medicine and combined approach kilombo yumma has a western and ancestral medicine approach, provided by their multidisciplinary team including a senior nurse. regrettably, the secretary of health and its forms undermine their ancestral medicine practices. instead, there are general questions in the forms such as ancestral medicine next to acupuncture. in the eyes of kilombo yumma, this underrepresents them at the local and macrosystem levels. thus, the smartphone app aims to collect their combined ancestral and western medicine practice as presented in table 2 below. a limited selection of data fields was selected for this paper to illustrate the sociotechnical system opportunity. table 2: selection of data fields to be included in their sociotechnical system. ancestral medicine data western medicine data is the baby well positioned in the belly? has the pregnant mother experienced any unusual symptoms? is the baby “boxed” in the belly? does the pregnant mother have pain down under the belly? has the pregnant female received ancestral advice? does the pregnant female have a headache? did the healer advise the pregnant female? does the pregnant female have to bleed? does the pregnant female have beeping sounds in her ears? what is the pregnant female’s foetocardia? does the pregnant female have blurry vision? what is the pregnant female's blood pressure? are the ankles of the pregnant female swollen? what is the pregnant female heart rate? 23 a. ‘ubuntu’ of health to yumma, the support network and living situation of female migrants is essential to understand and capture. in their view, when these aspects are not in place and the woman is pregnant, the outcome of the pregnancy will not be good. lack of good nutrition leads to problems with the baby, to mention one thing. thus, the questions to be included in the app are: • who do you live with? • who is your support health network? • how many people earn an income in your family? • who takes care of you (financially and emotionally)? • who do you look after? b. referrals yumma creates many referrals to the healthcare system and other public instances. thus, they would like to capture the type and number of referrals done monthly, as follows: • national health insurance • subsidy claims • food • ambulance • birth at hospital one of the main takeaways from the prototypes was the significant interest in creating lists of activities or symptoms in a smartphone app to which they could answer yes or no to avoid interrupting their routines and rituals. since they are a large team, their preference is that only one person completes the app, instead of all of them having to enter data, as happens today. image 2: photo collage from kilombo yumma co-creation session. discussion mitigating structural gaps for female migrants to access the healthcare systems in amsterdam and bogota are casa migrante and kilombo yumma community organisations. despite their deep care and significant efforts to help female migrants, the lack of appropriate sociotechnical systems impedes them from being appreciated beyond their communities. due to their type of work and sociotechnical systems’ literacy, it was found important to introduce sociotechnical systems to these organisations and female migrants in smartphone apps. those apps also should follow the features and logic of whatsapp, uber, calendars or anylist, which are familiar to them. 24 however, to ensure that sociotechnical systems are fully adopted and meet the core values and practices of these organisations, they should also follow the sociotechnical capital identified and presented next. sociotechnical capital principles for community organisations 1. jointly defining health needs for appointments to happen: the identification of the health need is something that requires time and personal interaction with female migrants. once the health need has been identified, a series of administrative activities comes to make the appointments happen. these are enabled and registered in the apps. 2. extending relations: the more effectively the community organisations can do their work using the apps, the more relations and support are created for the female migrants. the natural horizontal navigation of their own and extended networks is enhanced through the apps. 3. feeling represented in large networks: naming and capturing their traditions in sociotechnical apps is crucial to create a better understanding and representation of these communities within the society they are part of but invisible to. 4. impact in numbers: finally, through the apps the select community organisations have immediate access to the activities and their total number is summarised. this can be displayed on their social media page, shared with macrosystems, etc. the sociotechnical capital principles distilled through our study are built upon several complementary aspects of the social capital and services of the community organisations selected. this capital involves soft and hard aspects, such as defining a health need through active listening and having data (total number of activities) from their efforts. it is clear that for female migrants and community organisations such soft qualities in place enabled the hard ones to happen. thus, this is replicated and visualised (image 3). without sociotechnical capital, the leap for these organisations to more digital and robust sociotechnical systems is questionable. image 3: sociotechnical capital pillars for community organisations. 25 through abd and paper prototyping, we carved out the imperceptible services of community organisations in amsterdam and bogota. these methods enabled the service designers and design researchers to articulate sociotechnical capital for these organisations. however, these methods have limitations as follow-up is required to assess and further these opportunities for these organisations, which is outside the scope of this paper. these methods created enthusiasm in the community organisations as they opened an invisible door to them. however, without the external support of design and engineering teams, the materialisation of these opportunities continues to be far-fetched to them. conclusion female migrants from latin american origin arriving in a new country such as the netherlands and its capital city, amsterdam or afro-colombian migrants from the pacific coast arriving in bogota experience significant social, cultural and bureaucratic barriers to accessing healthcare services. helping them in navigating this complexity are community organisations. these organisations, however, suffer from a lack of sociotechnical organisational systems to support them in connecting female migrants and the healthcare systems. these organisations also suffer from a lack of visibility and electronic ways to prove their impact on macrosystems. finally, their social capital and assets of care, solidarity and ability to support female 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(2020, october). from needs to strengths: operationalizing an assets-based design of technology. in cscw '20: conference companion publication of the 2020 on computer supported cooperative work and social computing (pp. 527–535). association for computing machinery. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3406865.3418594 https://doi.org/10.1145/3557984 https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8020115 https://doi.org/10.1080/00346760110127074 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-018-0455-z https://tinyurl.com/mt8c6dpk https://ep.liu.se/ecp/150/ecp18150.pdf https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376329 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3479545 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3406865.3418594 27 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. place-making alternative social innovations in a rentier state beatriz itzel cruz megchun published online: may 2023 to cite this article: cruz megchun, b. i. (2023). place-making alternative social innovations in a rentier state. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 4(1), 27-43. 28 place-making alternative social innovations in a rentier state beatriz itzel cruz megchuna auniversity of portland, pamplin school of business, portland, or, 97203, usa. megchun@up.edu abstract this work discusses place-making practices as a possible category of social innovation processes in a rentier state. we aim to document alternative processes that conceptualize different forms of participation and human agency. we want to provide a different discourse where individuals’ representations of their complex system of symbols, rules, and codifications of living in cities prevail. thus, we provide a theoretical framework of the city under capitalism to introduce place, space and practice later. we introduce wachsmuth’s (2014) postulation of the city as a “category of practice” to document one representation of urban processes via alternative visualizations in the emirate of sharjah, uae. we use a case study approach to record the complexity of happenings in place-making and its relation to social innovation processes. the results indicate that social innovations and place-making/practices processes encompass collective and collaborative actions of a specific social group toward satisfying a social need. however, the latter differs in intentions, actions and outcomes, as individuals concentrate on intervening places to deal with their longing for home while creating a sense of belonging through a series of rituals in an urban context. this work provides an opportunity to advance the understanding of social innovations in other contexts while offering frameworks that honour immigrants’ cultures and social realms and thus bring into being other worlds. thus, we require epistemological approaches, theoretical frameworks and a dialectic character that offer an alternative to prevent exclusionary conceptualizations of participation. keywords: social innovation, place-making, practice, city as a category of practice introduction cities display the material processes subsumed in the relationship between humans, the environment and the landscape under capitalism. their design sets urban hierarchies with restrictions and privileges that inhibit or facilitate individuals to struggle or succeed socially and economically. these urban compositions exhibit the fluid reality of material flows of commodities, money, capital and information, which can be transferred and shifted across the globe. capital accumulation and the locations of its division of labour have a distinctive material landscape (as fixed capital) that is produced as a “thing” in place. this spatiality is as integral to its structure and reproduction as its temporality (soja, 1989) and is imbued with meaning in everyday social practices. researchers regard place space as an integral component of social structure and action. they are reconsidering the spatiality of social life, specifically how people act and get attached to the environment (derr, 2002; vorkinn & riese, 2001) and how its changes affect their sensitivity. this reappraisal forces a reflection and reconciliation about how experiences are lived and acted out in place and how they relate to and embed in political and economic practices that are operative over broader spatial scales. for centuries, people have acted and embodied resilience through creativity and ingenuity, to deal with challenges imposed by nature and humans. communities have acquired the ability to reduce the impact of, cope with and recover from the effects of shocks and stresses of crises and disasters without compromising their long-term prospects. there is an increasing number of movements, among those social innovation, 29 across the world where citizens are setting spaces for people to learn a myriad of tools to create, build and devise solutions relevant to their community. social innovation is one of the most recognized disciplines, as ‘it applies new approaches, takes existing processes, and brings new tools to bear in solving the world’s most pressing societal challenges. social innovation seeks to achieve scale by harnessing the power of collaboration to address societal issues in a better and more efficient way’ (mckinsey & company, 2016, p. 1). citizens might have the aid of governments and/or the empowerment of private philanthropists to gain access to resources that give them agency. these resources might provide them with the means to communicate, collaborate, interact, exchange and co-create value in different types of social initiatives. however, this theoretical framework and conceptual approach might differ depending on the economic system where it is used and implemented and on the inhabitants’ migratory status living in that context. this work explores the complexity of place-making and practice as a locus of social innovation processes in a rentier state. this work has four sections. we start with the theoretical framework of the city as a category of practice to later move to the concepts of place, space and practice and social innovation. subsequently, we introduce the case study, where we document a practice, cricket, that is representative of the cultural identity and visual discourse of the urban landscape of the emirate of sharjah. this practice and the act of place-making exhibit the inner realities (interventions) that describe how things interact and coordinate in the micro-scale realm. the third section consists of the discussion between social innovation and place-making practice, specifically their commonalities and differences in their approaches, practices, processes and requirements. we offer a conclusion and a series of future research recommendations to advance the topic. literature review city as a category of practice contemporary urban studies appear to encounter the spectre of universalizing theory, which embodies an extensive line of eurocentric epistemologies that might perpetuate narratives of their embeddedness within social processes. those studies generally explore spatial arrangements and social patterns of particular urban places leading to an all-encompassing, acontextual and neocolonial metanarrative. thus, urban theorists are increasingly questioning and challenging the sites and biases upon which urban studies have been based (davis, 2004; robinson, 2002, 2003; roy, 2009; stren, 2001; wachsmuth, 2014). they argue that universalizing theory might ignore the power-laden realities of differences, place specificity, everyday life, struggles and experiences of inhabitants (brenner, 2018). researchers studying cities of the global south bring relevant, atypical and different analyses since their work manifests a closer consideration of how theory and site interact and how cities are informed. their research provides evidence that the so-called third-world urbanization or underdevelopment urban theory no longer fits the euro-american theoretical approach. they demonstrate that contemporary urban forms of analysis are ill-equipped to describe the conditions they aim to decipher (angelo & wachsmuth, 2015; roy, 2009). they argue that ‘methodological cityism’ projects fail to fully comprehend the varied impacts of urbanization processes because they assume a particular set of social, economic and power relationships endemic to the concept of the city that no longer hold. wachsmuth (2014) postulates that the city ought to be treated as a category of practice, an ideological representation of urban processes, rather than a category of analysis. this view offers the opportunity to observe people’s relationship to urbanization processes rather than a category of analysis adequate to describe these processes. it shifts the explanatory task away from abstracting complex urbanization 30 processes into objective city moments. it centres on mapping how these processes are experienced and interpreted by social actors in everyday life and formed into practical representations (wachsmuth, 2014). the city will look more like a cognitive map (lynch, 1960; mazer & rankin, 2011) that depicts spontaneous representations that arise directly from everyday urban spatial practice. for example, researchers studying the ambiguous and expanding borders of the globalized middle east explore traditionalism, cosmopolitanism and modernity. those examining modernity document the landscapes of malls, gated communities, islamicized public spaces and informal settlements (alawadi, 2014; elsheshtawy, 2010; rab, 2011; singermann & amar, 2006). we mapped objective city moments of spatial practices and representational spaces to observe people’s relationships to urbanization processes in the emirate of sharjah. the objective was to document how social actors experience and interpret these processes in everyday life and form them into practical representations of social action. we studied the united arab emirates (uae) because it is a rentier state, wherein the rental of oil prospects or their exports provides one of the primary incomes. we will attempt to define a rentier state. it is a challenging endeavour as each economy has some elements of rent, and the state of the oil phenomenon’s impact differs on the state’s nature in the arab region. first, a rentier state is thus an economy where wealth is created around a small fraction of the society (beblawi, 1987). the state, the principal rentier in the economy, plays a crucial role in moving economic activity. the rent held in the hands of the government is redistributed to the population. citizenship becomes a source of economic benefit. in 2020, the uae had a population of 9.282 million and 94,7997 were emirati citizens (uae governmental portal, 2021). in this context, noncitizens furnish the managerial and service labour for the country’s day-to-day functioning. nevertheless, the social and cultural aspects of migrant life lie outside emirati society, as migrants are temporary. hence, we researched locations in the emirate of sharjah where practices alter, bend or reflect a distinct way of life. we selected those practices that exhibit the mediation of everyday experiences through inhabitants’ interaction and coordination in the micro-scale realm. our objective is to offer different spatial narratives from the all-encompassing, acontextual and neocolonial metanarratives that might perpetuate narratives of their embeddedness within social processes. we focus on those narratives that unveil the realities of differences, place specificity, everyday life, struggles and experiences of inhabitants (brenner, 2018). place-making scholars have studied place from the viewpoints of anthropology, human geography, sociology, etc., as it is not an abstract entity and influences (and is influenced by) broader social, economic and political processes and developments. place interlinks with an assemblage of elements co-existing in a specific order (de certeau, 1984), has multiple dimensions (entrikin, 1991), qualities (relph, 1976; seamon & sower, 2008), and varying spatial and temporal scales (lefebvre, 1991; soja, 1991). it is the terrain where the consumption of space (capitalist utilizers) and the production of enjoyment (community users) clash, and basic social practices, like tradition, self-identification, solidarity, social support, reproduction, etc., are lived out. these social spaces become a force of production, representing a network of exchange and a flow of commodities, communication, energy and resources. in the opinion of lefebvre (1991), the production of space is the process and the outcome of the process that encompasses the totality of flow and things of the capitalist material geographical landscape. the interaction between place and space is crucial, as the 31 space of the whole takes on meaning through a place, and each part (each place), in its interconnection with other parts (places), engenders the space as a whole. a sophisticated body of theory has explored ‘place’ and the ‘production of space’. both concepts are structured dialectically in the human experience since the comprehension of space is related to the places we inhabit and derive from the meaning itself (relph, 1976). the concept of place is regarded as a location created through human experiences, which requires a space filled with meanings and goals. a place has an unlimited size as it refers to an event (has taken place), a myth (said to have taken place), or a history (authority) that happened in a location. space is more abstract as it is an assembly of coexistent elements in a particular order to spatially focus on human intentions, experiences and actions (seamon and sowers, 2008). lefebvre (1996) argues that the production of space also occurs through representations of the everyday, lived experience of space and the collective meanings of representational spaces (image 1). image 1: constellation of elements of place-making. people undertaking daily rituals – mundane/extraordinary, random/staged – are transforming urban processes and forms while creating places of belonging. in these places, individuals carry out different practices, which are an intrinsic part of the generation of space (lee & ingold, 2006; schatzki, 2001; 32 sheringham, 2006). practices reflect the total nexus of interconnected human practices, including knowledge, meaning, human activity, power, language, social institutions and historical transformation (schatzki, 2001). practices are not just individuals undertaking activities or actions dislocated from a bigger context but are fundamental for understanding the society they are part of (pink, 2012). they display rituals in which individuals repeat a series of actions involving gestures, words and objects performed in a place (aractingi & le pape, 2011). they are also media for individuals to attach cultural depth to their local realities by layering an attachment to a collective and accruing a sense of belonging. in the design of a city, professionals must distinguish between place and space since both are embodied in material processes. professionals need to understand their mode of determination and their mediation, the place construction and transformation and how they forge together in a dialectic unit. studying a place from a political stance could reconcile how experience is lived and acted out in a place and how this relates at different scales. we could question: whose place? what kind of place? which place? professionals are designing for inhabitants. lefebvre (1991) proposes the ‘conceptual triad’ to contemplate other modalities of space within a single theory. the aim is to expose, decode and read space by differentiating their dialectical character of interaction. (i) representation of space refers to the conceptualized space constructed through the discourse of professionals and technocrats. it comprises the various codifications and objectified representations used and produced by these agents. (ii) representational space is the directly lived space experienced through the complex symbols and images of the inhabitants and users. this space overlays the physical space and the symbolic use of its object, unveiling some underground, clandestine side of social life, while (iii) spatial practices are those secret society’s space. these practices are revealed by deciphering spaces through people’s perception of their daily reality concerning space usage. they structure everyday life and a broader urban reality ensuring societal cohesion, continuity and specific spatial competence. social innovation the term social innovation (si) is an active and evolving concept in praxis and theory, which raises debates about its approaches, practices, processes and requirements. its realm has extended from the public and policy level to international academic and scientific study, as its application cuts across all fields and sectors of society, such as civil society, educational institutions and the public/private sector. its theoretical underpinning draws inputs from economics, management, business and technology innovation, human organization, economic diversity, social anthropology, sociology, political studies and governance, among other fields of knowledge. the ecosystems for si actions can be found in socio-technical approaches, sociobehavioural fields and creative arts documented around the world (beham et al., 2009; goldenberg et al., 2009; howaldt & schwarz, 2010; nicholls & murdock, 2012). consequently, its discussion demands integrating the many different and even conflicting meanings of social practices offering a broadness that is crucial for understanding the concept. since the early 19th century, the term si has been associated with social reforms and revolutions in education and work. its meaning has evolved with the advent of new behaviours and practices encompassing all areas of society. recently, the term has served to label any social phenomenon or process of change (bernal & cecchini, 2017). this plethora of vastly divergent subject matter and problem dimensions subsumed under the same heading without making distinctions between meanings, conditions, genesis and diffusions, affect the development of a concept. distinctions are important because they help to understand the concept when it is implemented under specific living conditions experienced by 33 a population. in broad terms, si aims at activating, fostering and utilizing the innovation potential of the whole society to face the neglected, poorly served or unresolved services/actions organized by the state (andrew & klein, 2010; goldenberg, 2004; morales gutiérrez, 2009; mulgan, 2006; neamtan & downin, 2005). it is distinguished from other manifestations of social change, as certain factors drive its initiatives in an intentionally targeted manner to satisfy better or answer needs and problems than is possible based on established practices. si demands a collaborative effort in the learning journey toward developing a social innovation solution. this journey might have different facets depending on the socioeconomic and cultural environment and the institutions of a nation. however, the outcomes aim to satisfy human needs, raise awareness about and open access to human rights, reach a concrete achievement and improvement, create a long-lasting and broad impact and enhance institutional capacity to learn (table 1). its effects lead to the development of social capital, social cohesion, empowerment and democracy and cause necessary changes in the relationship and development of cross-sectoral partnerships. their realm extends from the public and policy level to academic and scientific study, as its application cuts across all fields and sectors of society. these cross-sectoral collaborations among the public sector, civil society and the private sector are crucial to reaping their full potential. table 1: social innovation common factors. have a collective and collaborative action contribute to satisfying human needs that have not been considered or satisfied raise awareness about and open access to human rights enhance human capabilities empower a particular social group reach a concrete achievement and improvement have a long-lasting and broad impact be social by both their means and their end require learning and institutional capacity to learn si relies on the interaction of many actors (civil society, public sector, private sector, government, financing bodies and academic institutions) to achieve different impacts or effects (local, national, global and glocal), using a specific governance model (centralized, multilevel or social network) to address needs. these actors are deemed to give analytical primacy to systems and processes of change that use communities’ knowledge and cultural resources to generate innovation. this type of innovation becomes social when it is accepted and diffused in society or certain societal sub-areas, and later it becomes institutionalized as a new social practice. image 2 conceptualizes the series of stages, stakeholders and actions involved in the si process. in each of the five stages, different actors interact and collaborate by exchanging information and cooperating to deal with the various milestones posed (domanski & monge-iriarte, 2017; murray et al., 2010). for example, citizens are suppliers of information about their needs and contributors to developing and improving the outcomes generated. they are committed to collaborating, learning and trusting others to exchange and gain knowledge that fosters dialogues that allow them to meet their needs. 34 the nature of this process raises questions about who is responsible for leading the efforts to generate, implement and evolve sis and how those who are accountable can contribute to its success. image 2: stages of social innovation. responsible innovation responsible innovation is an instrument that organizations can use to properly embed scientific and technological advances in society without causing more problems than they solve. managers require sophisticated approaches, frameworks and resources to identify and define how their organizations should innovate, where they could innovat, and how they should think about adapting or configuring their innovation process. this implementation calls for a commitment to being anticipatory of those intended and potential unintended impacts, reflective about the underlying purposes, motivation and potential impacts, inclusively deliberate to dialogue, engage and debate with the public and stakeholders and responsive in the inclusive, open and collective process of reflexivity (owen et al., 2013). therefore, managers have to be aware of understanding the norms, laws and standards within a specific society (context) to ensure the avoidance or prevention of impacts and behaviours during the implementation of innovations. above all, they must reflect on the dilemmas and unintended and undesirable economic and social impacts of innovation, such as the undercover value of cheap labour, labour reproduction and ecological externalities. in this case, we regard it to address sis. we used design thinking (dt) and anthropology to introduce responsible innovation to sensitize practitioners about the negative implications of neoliberal capitalism. we argue that anthropology can assist dt in bringing other types of knowledge and kinds of experiences and expertise to understand groups 35 from a cultural perspective (holism) and comprehend behaviour from the participant’s point of view (cultural relativism). postmodern anthropology and interpretative anthropology approaches enable individuals to explore the invisible, silenced others within the cultures and domains they are excluded from (said, 2014) and historically specific processes to express their challenges (coombe, 1991). they provide instruments to depict the social world in ways those in specific positions live, negotiate and define meaning and value in everyday life. this reflective process is relevant to address and inquire more significant systematic questions (image 3). therefore, dt and anthropology contribute to democratizing the si process by addressing power and vulnerability from a plural view. 36 image 3: engagement and participation stage. 37 case study our case study is located in the emirate of sharjah, one of the seven emirates of the uae, which shares a border with the sultanate of oman, the kingdom of saudi arabia, the gulf of oman and the persian gulf. sharjah is the third most populous emirate. its history dates back over 120,000 years since human settlements were found in the mleiha area. it has been a commercial and trade city, a political port and a cultural (identity) hub. in the past three decades, the ruler has invested heavily in regenerating the city’s old town section as a public art and culture site leading to being regarded as “the cultural capital of the arab world” by unesco in 1998 (foreign affairs, 2008). the uae has one of the most significant number of south asian immigrant populations (59.4%), including indian (38.2%), bangladeshi (9.5%), pakistani (9.4%) and others (2.3%). the uae experienced large-scale migration for construction involving mainly male migrants in the 1970s. this asian migration to the uae has become more differentiated over time. for example, many migrants from these nations remain low-skilled labourers, others have semi-skilled and skilled jobs, while others have professional or para-professional qualifications. these migrants are pushed to migrate due to economic and social issues, such as poverty or the incapacity of local economies to generate jobs for them. they are attracted to migrate because it represents an opportunity to send money back home and have better quality of life for their families. these groups have few places to create a sense of community. among those is the intervention of places to play cricket. there is a diaspora of migrants from south asian countries, india, pakistan, bangladesh and indonesia, among others, that intervene in empty spaces, alleys, parking lots and urban voids across the uae. they use these spaces to practise cricket (ritual) every friday from 5:00 am to 9:00 am. in this case, we will describe a synthesis of various groups intervening spaces in the emirate of sharjah. they repurpose the place into a temporary informal and regulated cricket pitch. they use any object available, such as bags with objects, bricks, rocks or lime, to make evident and alive their landmark of practice, the 22-yard cricket pitch. inhabitants bring their wickets, bats and balls to set imaginary geometric boundaries. in some cases, the external boundaries overlap when other groups practise nearby. the practice is masculine-centric, attracting blue-collar, construction and administrative employees. their weekly practices become rituals as members perform a social liturgy in a codified, repetitive and consistent way for decades – meeting in a specific location and bringing along objects, dressing behaviours, norms and rules. these practices show a communal negotiation, resolution and network of exchanges with clear signs of specific diasporas, ethnicity, status and experience. cricket unifies the space and places through the conscious process of structuring values, memories, goals, behaviours and skills relevant to this location. informal pitches exemplify the representational space via complex symbolic and lived experiences. in contrast, the spatial practices unveil the invisible side of immigrants’ social life, creating a collective memory of their identity (image 4). 38 image 4: cricket place-making. this practice-place represents an interesting case of transformative threshold and a locus of potential in si since there is a communal negotiation and resolution of an array of complexities. the place-making practices (cricket) share similarities in the rituals and how cricket is a medium to build trust, security and establish self-identity as a migrant. they use clothing and equipment that represents the visual identity of their team’s notions of craft, aesthetics and identity. it also exhibits clear signs of individuals' diaspora, status and experience. it is inferred that members of different diasporas create trust networks to maintain their practice since their immigrant status pushes them to forge trust. members might have different hierarchies and roles in organizing the games and inviting new members. however, these place-making practices vary depending on the nature of the spaces, as they have unique characteristics in their flexibility of use and negotiation that enable different type of appropriation. 39 we identified two types of typologies in the nature of the si intervention. first, semi-consolidated si, where the space intervened is planned and designed for a specific purpose (e.g. construction or demolished area, etc). even though private or governmental entities regulate the space, members can borrow it to build a formal and regulated playground. this urban space is claimed by residents who do not have the means to become members of a formal space of practice. members are empowered to change or modify the space where they can formally undertake their rituals. membership for this space can be earned through an invitation to work relations or their active participation in continuously improving the place of practice. second is consolidated si, where the space is informal, and members borrow it to transform its real purpose into a temporary informal and regulated playground (e.g. an informal parking area). this urban space is claimed by residents who do not have the means, capabilities or interest in designing a formal space of practice. they use the space unauthorized for a period of time to undertake their rituals (cricket pitch). memberships are obtained through the sporadic discovery of the group, word of mouth or personal invitation. members claim their space and command level through seniority and consensus. discussion this work explores whether place-making and practices are alternative ways of si processes in the uae. to this effect, the work examines the key elements and factors innate in si and its process and placemaking and practice and processes. table 2 shows similarities in the collective and collaborative actions required from a specific social group to satisfy a social need not considered. in both cases, social groups (and other si actors) focus on using social means to develop social outcomes that raise awareness about human needs. indeed, there are differences in their approaches, as si has stakeholders, multiple actors and institutions that might support different endeavours. they rely on cross-sectoral collaborations between the public sector, civil society and the private sector to learn and grow. however, it also means that the institutional agency has a willingness and capacity to learn. their processes aim to enhance human capabilities to empower a particular social group to reach a concrete achievement and improvement that is long-lasting and has a broad impact. in comparison, place-making is an approach initiated by and for social groups as a self-agency activity to deal with their lived experiences as immigrants. the group members create learning through their ritual experiences that are shared formally or informally through verbal narratives, such as events, histories or myths, that are only understood by members experiencing them. place-making is a vehicle to acknowledge and celebrate the invisible side of their social life to create mutual support and shared resources to secure establishing a self-identity. their goal is to preserve their cultural identity by creating a space to recall home and a sense of belonging in the micro-scale realm. table 2: social innovation and place-making: common factors. social innovation place-making have a collective and collaborative action have a collective and collaborative action contribute to satisfying human needs that have not been considered or satisfied contribute to satisfying social needs that have not been considered raise awareness about and open access to human rights raise awareness about the complex symbolic and lived experiences of immigrants 40 enhance human capabilities unveil the invisible side of the social life of immigrants empower a particular social group create mutual support and share resources of a particular social group reach a concrete achievement and improvement reach security by establishing self-identity have a long-lasting and broad impact create local systems of dependency at the microscale realm be social by both their means and their end be social by both their means and their end require learning and institutional capacity to learn embed self-agency and exercise collective learning capacity when we analyse the si process along with the place-making practice process, we observe that despite similarities in the collective and collaborative actions of a specific social group toward satisfying a social need, there are differences in the stages, intentions, actions and outcomes. if we use the case study as a singular example (image 5), we can notice that the first stage starts as an action dealing with longing for a place or situation that might recall home. to start a practice, they must connect with other individuals of a similar social group to create a community. the second stage focuses on creating opportunities through exploring, inquiring and discussing where they can intervene to perform their practice. the third stage consists of intervening in a place to perform a practice for a specific time, leaving the physical area intact after completing it. the fourth stage concentrates on sustaining the practice by securing group members to get involved and participate in the rituals to sustain them and create collective action. finally, the last action concentrates on producing possibilities through creating local systems of interdependency where members of the social group interact and can maintain their language, meaning, knowledge and wisdom and thus create other plural worlds. 41 image 5: stages of social innovation and place-making / practice. the place-making and practice stage differs from the si process, as the objective of the latter is to diagnose a human situation that can be solved, scaled and procured into a systematic change in the context studied. therefore, it requires the active participation of members of social groups, stakeholders and institutions. on the contrary, the case showed how individuals have self-agency to organise interventions that support their social (and cultural) needs. consequently, the results show the need for a new conceptualisation of si that considers different types of systematic change and the roles played by stakeholders. they need to recognise diverse phenomena and how the type of government, economic style and social establishment influence these. to advance si theory, we need to document the realities at other latitudes and decolonise conceptualisations. conclusion the work shows that sis and place-making /practices processes encompass collective and collaborative actions of a specific social group toward satisfying a social need. however, the latter differs in the intentions, actions and outcomes, as the individuals have the self-agency to organize and intervene in places to support their social (and cultural) needs. they do not aim to solve a problem and find a solution that can be scaled and procured into a systematic change. they concentrate on intervening places to deal with their longing for home while creating a sense of belonging through a series of rituals in an urban context. we recognize the need to pursue further research and thus propose to analyse the city as a category of practice, where we can map practices that create temporary spaces of opportunity 42 and plural worlds embedded in the urban context. therefore, we require epistemological approaches, theoretical frameworks and a dialectic character that offer an alternative to prevent exclusionary conceptualizations of participation. we need to listen to and document the perceptions and experiences of people to create concepts that honour their realities. acknowledgement this research was partially funded by a caad grant in 2016 and a butine grant in fall 2020. it was also partly commissioned by the sharjah architecture triennial research initiative for the [forthcoming] publication and exhibition “living continuity”. we also acknowledge the research curator, sharmeen inayat, for opening spaces to discuss, exchange and expand the research. references alawadi, k. (2014). urban redevelopment trauma: the story of a dubai neighbourhood. built environment, 40(3), 357-375. andrew, c., & klein, j. (2010). social innovation: what is it and why is it important to understand it better. ontario ministry of research and innovation. (cahiers du centre de recherche sur les innovations sociales (crises), collection etudes theoriques, no. et1003). angelo, h., & wachsmuth, d. (2015) urbanizing urban political ecology: a critique of methodological cytism, international journal of urban and regional research, 39, 16-27. aractingi, j., & le pape, g. (2011). rituals and catechisms in ecumenical rite in east and west at the crossroads masonics. editions l’harmattan. beblawi, h. (1987). the rentier state in the arab world. arab studies quarterly, 9(4), 383-398. beham, b., drobnic, s., & verwiebe, r. (2009). literature review: theoretical concepts and methodological approaches of quality of life and work. utrecht university. bernal, m. & cecchini, s. (2017). social innovation in latin america and the caribbean. in j. howaldt, c. kaletka, a. schröder, & m. zirngiebl (eds.), atlas of social innovation: new practices for a better future (pp. 128–130). sozialforschungsstelle, tu dortmund university. brenner, n. (2018) debating planetary urbanization: for an engaged pluralism. environment and planning, environmental and planning d: society and space, 36(3), 570–590. coombe, r. (1991) encountering the postmodern: new directions in cultural anthropology. canadian review of sociology, 28(2), 188–205. davis, m. (2004). planet of slums: urban involution and the informal proletariat, new left review, 26, 5-34. de certeau, m. (1984) the practice of everyday life. university of california press. derr, j. r. (2002). the poet’s place in modernity: heidegger, eliot and pound. loyola university chicago. domanski, d., & monge-iriarte (2017). social innovation in chile. j. howaldt, c. kaletka, a. schröder, & m. zirngiebl (eds.), atlas of social innovation: new practices for a better future (pp. 134–136). sozialforschungsstelle, tu dortmund university. elsheshtawy, y. (2010). dubai: behind an urban spectacle. routledge. entrikin, j. n. (1991). the betweenness of place: towards a geography of modernity. johns hopkins university press. foreign affairs. (2008). cultural capital meets industrial prominence: the emirate of sharjah, charging ahead. foreign affairs, 87(5), sponsored section. goldenberg, m. (2004). social innovation in canada: how the non-profit sector serves canadians … and how it can serve them better. canadian policy research networks. goldenberg, m., kamoji, w., orton, l., & williamson, m. (2009). social innovation in canada: an update. canadian policy research networks. howaldt, j., & schwartz, m. (2010). social innovation: concepts, research fields and international trends. report of esf, eu and aachen university. lee, j., & ingold, t. (2006). fieldwork on foot: perceiving, routing, socializing. in s. coleman & p. collins, (eds.), locating the ffeld: space, place and context in anthropology (pp. 67–86). berg. lefebvre, h. (1991). the production of space. basil blackwell. lefebvre, h. (1996). writings on cities (e. kofman & e. lebas, trans.). blackwell. lynch, k. (1960). the image of the city. mit press. mazer, k. m., & rankin, k. n. (2011). the social space of gentrification. environment and planning d: society and space, 29(5), 822-839. 43 mckinsey & company. (2016). social innovation: can fresh thinking solve the world's most intractable problems? mckinsey & company. morales gutiérrez, a. c. (2009). innovación social: un ámbito de interés para los servicios sociales. zerbitzuan: gizarte zerbitzuetarako aldizkaria = revista de servicios sociales, (45), 151–175. mulgan, g. (2006). social innovation: what it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated. skoll centre for social entrepreneurship murray, r., caulier-grice, j., & mulgan, g. (2010). the open book of social innovation. the young foundation; nesta. neamtan, n., & downing, r. (2005). social economy and community economic development in canada: next steps for public policy. issues paper by the chantier del’ èconomie sociale in collaboration with the canadian community economic development network (ccednet) and alliance recherche universités-communautès en économic sociale (aruc-és). nicholls a., & murdock a. (eds.). (2012). the nature of social innovation. palgrave macmillan. owen, r., bessant, j. r., & heintz, m. (eds.). (2013). responsible innovation: managing the responsible emergence of science and innovation in society. john wiley & sons. pink, s. (2012). situating everyday life: practices and places. sage. rab, s. (2011). sharjah: seascape urbanism in a khaliji port city. in a. perez-gomez, a. cormier, & a. pedret, where do you stand: 99th acsa annual meeting, montreal, canada, march 3-7 (pp. 791–800). relph, e. (1976). place and placelessness. pion. robinson, j. (2002). global and world cities: a view from off the map. international journal of urban and regional research, 26(3), 531–554. robinson, j. (2003). postcolonialising geography: tactics and pitfalls, singapore journal of tropical geography, 24(3), 273–289. roy, a. (2009). the 21st century metropolis: new geographies of theory. regional studies, 43(6), 819–830. said, e. w. (2014). orientalism reconsidered. in b. moore-gilbert, g. stanton & w. maley (eds.), postcolonial criticism (pp. 126–44). routledge. schatzki, t. (2001). practice mind-ed orders. in t. schatzki, k. knorr-cetina, & e. von savigny (eds.), the practice turns in contemporary theory (pp. 42–55). routledge. seamon, d., & sowers, j. (2008). place and placelessness, edward relph. in p. hubbard, r. kitchen, & g. vallentine (eds.), key texts in human geography (pp. 43–52). sage. sheringham, m. (2006). everyday life: theories and practices from surrealism to the present. oxford university press. singermann, d., & ammar, p. (eds.). (2006). cairo cosmopolitan: politics, culture, and urban space in the middle east. auc press. soja, e. w. (1989). postmodern geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory. verso. stren, r. (2001). local governance and social diversity in the developing world: new challenges for globalizing city-regions’, in a. j. scott (ed.), global city-regions: trends, theory, policy (pp. 193–213). oxford university press. uae governmental portal. (2021). history and facts. https://u.ae/en#/ vorkinn, m., & riese, h., (2001). environmental concern in a local context: the significance of place attachment. environment and behavior, 33(2), 249–263. wachsmuth, d. (2014). city as ideology: reconciling the explosion of the city form with the tenacity of the city concept. environmental and planning d: society and space, 32(1), 75–90. https://u.ae/en#/ https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. place-making alternative social innovations in a rentier state beatriz itzel cruz megchun published online: may 2023 to cite this article: cruz megchun, b. i. (2023). place-making alternative social innovations in a rentier state. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 4(1), 27-43. place-making alternative social innovations in a rentier state beatriz itzel cruz megchuna auniversity of portland, pamplin school of business, portland, or, 97203, usa. megchun@up.edu abstract this work discusses place-making practices as a possible category of social innovation processes in a rentier state. we aim to document alternative processes that conceptualize different forms of participation and human agency. we want to provide a di... keywords: social innovation, place-making, practice, city as a category of practice introduction cities display the material processes subsumed in the relationship between humans, the environment and the landscape under capitalism. their design sets urban hierarchies with restrictions and privileges that inhibit or facilitate individuals to strug... for centuries, people have acted and embodied resilience through creativity and ingenuity, to deal with challenges imposed by nature and humans. communities have acquired the ability to reduce the impact of, cope with and recover from the effects of s... this work explores the complexity of place-making and practice as a locus of social innovation processes in a rentier state. this work has four sections. we start with the theoretical framework of the city as a category of practice to later move to ... literature review city as a category of practice contemporary urban studies appear to encounter the spectre of universalizing theory, which embodies an extensive line of eurocentric epistemologies that might perpetuate narratives of their embeddedness within social processes. those studies generall... wachsmuth (2014) postulates that the city ought to be treated as a category of practice, an ideological representation of urban processes, rather than a category of analysis. this view offers the opportunity to observe people’s relationship to urbani... we mapped objective city moments of spatial practices and representational spaces to observe people’s relationships to urbanization processes in the emirate of sharjah. the objective was to document how social actors experience and interpret these pro... in this context, noncitizens furnish the managerial and service labour for the country’s day-to-day functioning. nevertheless, the social and cultural aspects of migrant life lie outside emirati society, as migrants are temporary. hence, we researched... place-making scholars have studied place from the viewpoints of anthropology, human geography, sociology, etc., as it is not an abstract entity and influences (and is influenced by) broader social, economic and political processes and developments. place interlin... a sophisticated body of theory has explored ‘place’ and the ‘production of space’. both concepts are structured dialectically in the human experience since the comprehension of space is related to the places we inhabit and derive from the meaning itse... image 1: constellation of elements of place-making. people undertaking daily rituals – mundane/extraordinary, random/staged – are transforming urban processes and forms while creating places of belonging. in these places, individuals carry out different practices, which are an intrinsic part of the gen... in the design of a city, professionals must distinguish between place and space since both are embodied in material processes. professionals need to understand their mode of determination and their mediation, the place construction and transformation ... social innovation the term social innovation (si) is an active and evolving concept in praxis and theory, which raises debates about its approaches, practices, processes and requirements. its realm has extended from the public and policy level to international academic... since the early 19th century, the term si has been associated with social reforms and revolutions in education and work. its meaning has evolved with the advent of new behaviours and practices encompassing all areas of society. recently, the term has ... si demands a collaborative effort in the learning journey toward developing a social innovation solution. this journey might have different facets depending on the socioeconomic and cultural environment and the institutions of a nation. however, the o... table 1: social innovation common factors. si relies on the interaction of many actors (civil society, public sector, private sector, government, financing bodies and academic institutions) to achieve different impacts or effects (local, national, global and glocal), using a specific governan... image 2: stages of social innovation. responsible innovation responsible innovation is an instrument that organizations can use to properly embed scientific and technological advances in society without causing more problems than they solve. managers require sophisticated approaches, frameworks and resources to... we used design thinking (dt) and anthropology to introduce responsible innovation to sensitize practitioners about the negative implications of neoliberal capitalism. we argue that anthropology can assist dt in bringing other types of knowledge and ki... image 3: engagement and participation stage. case study our case study is located in the emirate of sharjah, one of the seven emirates of the uae, which shares a border with the sultanate of oman, the kingdom of saudi arabia, the gulf of oman and the persian gulf. sharjah is the third most populous emirat... the uae has one of the most significant number of south asian immigrant populations (59.4%), including indian (38.2%), bangladeshi (9.5%), pakistani (9.4%) and others (2.3%). the uae experienced large-scale migration for construction involving mainly ... they repurpose the place into a temporary informal and regulated cricket pitch. they use any object available, such as bags with objects, bricks, rocks or lime, to make evident and alive their landmark of practice, the 22-yard cricket pitch. inhabitan... image 4: cricket place-making. this practice-place represents an interesting case of transformative threshold and a locus of potential in si since there is a communal negotiation and resolution of an array of complexities. the place-making practices (cricket) share similarities in... we identified two types of typologies in the nature of the si intervention. first, semi-consolidated si, where the space intervened is planned and designed for a specific purpose (e.g. construction or demolished area, etc). even though private or gove... discussion this work explores whether place-making and practices are alternative ways of si processes in the uae. to this effect, the work examines the key elements and factors innate in si and its process and place-making and practice and processes. table 2 sh... in comparison, place-making is an approach initiated by and for social groups as a self-agency activity to deal with their lived experiences as immigrants. the group members create learning through their ritual experiences that are shared formally or ... table 2: social innovation and place-making: common factors. when we analyse the si process along with the place-making practice process, we observe that despite similarities in the collective and collaborative actions of a specific social group toward satisfying a social need, there are differences in the sta... image 5: stages of social innovation and place-making / practice. the place-making and practice stage differs from the si process, as the objective of the latter is to diagnose a human situation that can be solved, scaled and procured into a systematic change in the context studied. therefore, it requires the active... conclusion the work shows that sis and place-making /practices processes encompass collective and collaborative actions of a specific social group toward satisfying a social need. however, the latter differs in the intentions, actions and outcomes, as the indivi... acknowledgement this research was partially funded by a caad grant in 2016 and a butine grant in fall 2020. it was also partly commissioned by the sharjah architecture triennial research initiative for the [forthcoming] publication and exhibition “living continuity”.... references alawadi, k. (2014). urban redevelopment trauma: the story of a dubai neighbourhood. built environment, 40(3), 357-375. andrew, c., & klein, j. (2010). social innovation: what is it and why is it important to understand it better. ontario ministry of research and innovation. (cahiers du centre de recherche sur les innovations sociales (crises), collection etudes theori... angelo, h., & wachsmuth, d. (2015) urbanizing urban political ecology: a critique of methodological cytism, international journal of urban and regional research, 39, 16-27. aractingi, j., & le pape, g. (2011). rituals and catechisms in ecumenical rite in east and west at the crossroads masonics. editions l’harmattan. beblawi, h. (1987). the rentier state in the arab world. arab studies quarterly, 9(4), 383-398. beham, b., drobnic, s., & verwiebe, r. (2009). literature review: theoretical concepts and methodological approaches of quality of life and work. utrecht university. bernal, m. & cecchini, s. (2017). social innovation in latin america and the caribbean. in j. howaldt, c. kaletka, a. schröder, & m. zirngiebl (eds.), atlas of social innovation: new practices for a better future (pp. 128–130). sozialforschungsstelle... brenner, n. (2018) debating planetary urbanization: for an engaged pluralism. environment and planning, environmental and planning d: society and space, 36(3), 570–590. coombe, r. (1991) encountering the postmodern: new directions in cultural anthropology. canadian review of sociology, 28(2), 188–205. davis, m. (2004). planet of slums: urban involution and the informal proletariat, new left review, 26, 5-34. de certeau, m. (1984) the practice of everyday life. university of california press. derr, j. r. (2002). the poet’s place in modernity: heidegger, eliot and pound. loyola university chicago. domanski, d., & monge-iriarte (2017). social innovation in chile. j. howaldt, c. kaletka, a. schröder, & m. zirngiebl (eds.), atlas of social innovation: new practices for a better future (pp. 134–136). sozialforschungsstelle, tu dortmund university. elsheshtawy, y. (2010). dubai: behind an urban spectacle. routledge. entrikin, j. n. (1991). the betweenness of place: towards a geography of modernity. johns hopkins university press. foreign affairs. (2008). cultural capital meets industrial prominence: the emirate of sharjah, charging ahead. foreign affairs, 87(5), sponsored section. goldenberg, m. (2004). social innovation in canada: how the non-profit sector serves canadians … and how it can serve them better. canadian policy research networks. goldenberg, m., kamoji, w., orton, l., & williamson, m. (2009). social innovation in canada: an update. canadian policy research networks. howaldt, j., & schwartz, m. (2010). social innovation: concepts, research fields and international trends. report of esf, eu and aachen university. lee, j., & ingold, t. (2006). fieldwork on foot: perceiving, routing, socializing. in s. coleman & p. collins, (eds.), locating the ffeld: space, place and context in anthropology (pp. 67–86). berg. lefebvre, h. (1991). the production of space. basil blackwell. lefebvre, h. (1996). writings on cities (e. kofman & e. lebas, trans.). blackwell. lynch, k. (1960). the image of the city. mit press. mazer, k. m., & rankin, k. n. (2011). the social space of gentrification. environment and planning d: society and space, 29(5), 822-839. mckinsey & company. (2016). social innovation: can fresh thinking solve the world's most intractable problems? mckinsey & company. morales gutiérrez, a. c. (2009). innovación social: un ámbito de interés para los servicios sociales. zerbitzuan: gizarte zerbitzuetarako aldizkaria = revista de servicios sociales, (45), 151–175. mulgan, g. (2006). social innovation: what it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated. skoll centre for social entrepreneurship murray, r., caulier-grice, j., & mulgan, g. (2010). the open book of social innovation. the young foundation; nesta. neamtan, n., & downing, r. (2005). social economy and community economic development in canada: next steps for public policy. issues paper by the chantier del’ èconomie sociale in collaboration with the canadian community economic development network... nicholls a., & murdock a. (eds.). (2012). the nature of social innovation. palgrave macmillan. owen, r., bessant, j. r., & heintz, m. (eds.). (2013). responsible innovation: managing the responsible emergence of science and innovation in society. john wiley & sons. pink, s. (2012). situating everyday life: practices and places. sage. rab, s. (2011). sharjah: seascape urbanism in a khaliji port city. in a. perez-gomez, a. cormier, & a. pedret, where do you stand: 99th acsa annual meeting, montreal, canada, march 3-7 (pp. 791–800). relph, e. (1976). place and placelessness. pion. robinson, j. (2002). global and world cities: a view from off the map. international journal of urban and regional research, 26(3), 531–554. robinson, j. (2003). postcolonialising geography: tactics and pitfalls, singapore journal of tropical geography, 24(3), 273–289. roy, a. (2009). the 21st century metropolis: new geographies of theory. regional studies, 43(6), 819–830. said, e. w. (2014). orientalism reconsidered. in b. moore-gilbert, g. stanton & w. maley (eds.), postcolonial criticism (pp. 126–44). routledge. schatzki, t. (2001). practice mind-ed orders. in t. schatzki, k. knorr-cetina, & e. von savigny (eds.), the practice turns in contemporary theory (pp. 42–55). routledge. seamon, d., & sowers, j. (2008). place and placelessness, edward relph. in p. hubbard, r. kitchen, & g. vallentine (eds.), key texts in human geography (pp. 43–52). sage. sheringham, m. (2006). everyday life: theories and practices from surrealism to the present. oxford university press. singermann, d., & ammar, p. (eds.). (2006). cairo cosmopolitan: politics, culture, and urban space in the middle east. auc press. soja, e. w. (1989). postmodern geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory. verso. stren, r. (2001). local governance and social diversity in the developing world: new challenges for globalizing city-regions’, in a. j. scott (ed.), global city-regions: trends, theory, policy (pp. 193–213). oxford university press. uae governmental portal. (2021). history and facts. https://u.ae/en#/ vorkinn, m., & riese, h., (2001). environmental concern in a local context: the significance of place attachment. environment and behavior, 33(2), 249–263. wachsmuth, d. (2014). city as ideology: reconciling the explosion of the city form with the tenacity of the city concept. environmental and planning d: society and space, 32(1), 75–90. 78 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. co-design for social innovation and organisational change: developing horizontal relationships in a social enterprise through walking mirian calvoa, madeleine sclaterb aimaginationlancaster, lancaster university bthe glasgow school of art published online: november 2020 to cite this article: calvo, m., & sclater, m. (2020). co-design for social innovation and organisational change. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 1(1), 78-98. 79 co-design for social innovation and organisational change: developing horizontal relationships in a social enterprise through walking mirian calvoa, madeleine sclaterb aimaginationlancaster, lancaster university, lancaster, la1 4yw, united kingdom. m.calvo@lancaster.ac.uk bthe glasgow school of art, glasgow, g3 6rq, scotland. m.sclater@gsa.ac.uk abstract although an emerging body of literature identifies co-design as a promising approach to addressing the most urgent social challenges, little research has been undertaken about how co-design can support social change within the communities and organisations with which they collaborate. this is important because behavioural and organisational change is usually associated with the emergence of social innovations. these pressing socio-cultural challenges require interdisciplinary expertise, and we argue that the practice of co-design is an approach that provides such expertise. co-design by its nature is collaborative and can respond to the cultural demands of a society eager to participate. these demands require significant research to better understand how the practice of co-design can be a catalyst for social change and social innovation. in this paper, we explore what is meant by co-creation, social design, and co-design within the theoretical context of this study. we present a case study that focuses on a social enterprise committed to sustainability operating within the highlands and islands of scotland. here we examine the transformative process associated with co-design that the social enterprise and its members encountered. participatory action research (par) was implemented as the research approach to this study informed by ethnographic and co-design methods. the analysis suggests that the co-design process empowered the social enterprise and its members, enabling them to co-develop responsive and empathetic attitudes among themselves. codesign supported organisational changes by nurturing collaborative attitudes, expanding perspectives about social issues and releasing latent human abilities and assets. keywords: design for social change, social design, co-design, social innovation, participatory design, mutual learning, co-creation, participatory architecture, community architecture. getting together in the era of participation in the last half-century, there have been calls to consider new design methods (sanders & stappers, 2008). according to cross (1972), traditional design by its nature excludes people from the creative process and so fails to address the complexity of current challenges. the 21st century is witnessing diverse challenges: human migration (ahmed, 2017), environmental sustainability, climate change, cutbacks in public services, increasing social inequality, privatisation of education and healthcare (silverman & patterson, 2015), the current pandemic etc. all of these challenges impact our everyday lives, constraining our possibilities to choose based on our needs. cross (2011, p. 15) observes: “…we are on a journey from an industrial world ruled by certainty, precision, and logic to a natural world characterized by unity, unpredictability, and complexity”. in examining the impact of co-design, methodological frameworks must now be capable of capturing the dynamic processes of social change. the calls for change embrace democratic principles that are embedded in a myriad of practices and which aim to support the increasing demands on participation. practices such as co-creation, social design and design activism, co-design and participatory design are intertwined (bason, 2010). they share the idea that creativity resides in everyone and therefore any creative process should include participants covering the social spectrum – private, public and voluntary sectors, and involving all types of citizens. jungk (1973) envisioned a motivational shift in design which would radically reshape the future of the discipline. this shift has arrived (fuad-luke, 2017); society now 80 requires designers back in the public sphere, with greater involvement in socio-political problems and civil society (swann, 2002). these challenges require interdisciplinary expertise, and we argue that the practice of co-design is an approach that provides such expertise (meroni, selloni & rossi, 2018). in this paper, we examine how the practice of co-design in the voluntary sector, driven by social demands, can support the flourishing of ‘boundary spaces’ where the participants can re-negotiate their interpersonal bonds, and support organisational changes. boundary space is a notion introduced by gutiérrez et al. (1995), with the term ‘third space’, to describe situations where people who have different roles and perspectives encounter each other in power-balanced and horizontal terms, expanding the boundaries of both. it depicts a theoretical space of confluence where individuals approach from their different perspectives (calvo, 2019a). we explore the notions of co-creation, social design, and community-based codesign to describe the theoretical context of this study. we follow this with a case study that focuses on a social enterprise in which we examine how a co-design project functioned as a catalyst for a transformative process of behavioural and organisational changes. participatory action research (par) was implemented as the research approach to this study informed by ethnographic and co-design methods. finally, we discuss the findings of the analysis in terms of: (i) moving from hierarchical to horizontal organisational relationships; (ii) sprouts of behavioural and organisational change; and (iii) interpersonal learning. literature review in this section we investigate the theoretical conceptions about co-creation, the socialisation of design, and community-based co-design, leading us to narrow the scope of this study and reformulate the key focus of research – how co-design can become a catalyst for social innovation and organisational change. co-creation ideas of co-creation can be found in management disciplines (prahalad & ramaswamy, 2004) to explain the shift in business models from a centred to a customised view of products. tseng and piller (2003) illustrate enterprise models adopting mass customisation, rather than mass production. they identify a gap in understanding the impact of integrating users into value-creation processes in knowledge management. they describe the necessity for further research on methods of a customer-centred enterprise a kinship of user-centred design which has yielded benefits relating to consumer products such as value chain, customisable offer and knowledge-transfer (fogliatto, da silveira & borenstein, 2012). sanders and stappers (2008, p. 6) refer to co-creation as "any act of collective creativity", comprising a wide range of processes. bason (2010, p. 144) defines co-creation as the process of “…placing people’s wants, needs and situations at the centre of the creative process as a powerful way to generate the insights that allow us to create with people and not for them”. these are the prime insights influencing the landscapes of design that are expanding its frontiers towards fields such as service design or organisational design. 'design-withpeople' merges a society eager to participate with the principle that everyone is creative hence we all design (manzini, 2015). according to bason (2010), co-creation brings two benefits: divergence and execution. divergence appears when an increase in the number of ideas and inspirations brought about by diversity prompts more appropriate solutions. divergence has a direct relationship to the introduction of different knowledgebased approaches, such as the application of ethnographic research and qualitative data-gathering where researchers become participant-observers. hess and adams (2007) add that divergence enables conversations with a fresh slant on the same issue, hence changing perspectives and inviting new solutions. execution refers to human agency and anchors the participants throughout the whole creative process to ensure success (bason, 2010; halse et al., 2010). further, gillinson, horne and baeck (2010) disclose their 81 'radical efficiency model' after analysing more than one hundred case studies from different contexts which follow co-creation processes with a focus on reshaping public services. in the report, they chronicle ten successful social innovations. the radical efficiency model offers an opportunity for profound transformations in designing and delivering public services through centralised-strategies towards supporting local action and change. like nygaard and bergo’s (1975) local knowledge-production strategy at the dawn of participatory design, gillinson et al. (2010) recommend that governments devolve power to local communities who have the responsiveness and empathy required to enable social innovation. they identify four steps to pursue this: (i) developing 'new insights' through divergence; (ii) 'new customers' – redefining the notion of users; (iii) 'new suppliers', that means paying attention to who does the job – this includes re-contextualising the role of users; and (iv) 'new resources' – releasing latent human abilities, forgotten assets, and strengthening institutional networks. the aim focuses on engendering new perspectives about social issues. this leads to innovative transformations of services – based on the people experiencing them. socialisation of design design research increasingly concentrates on exploring approaches that can foster social innovation, shifting from design driven by the market to design motivated by social demands, promoting meaningful social impact towards sustainability (manzini & meroni, 2014). design methods have been applied in the public sphere (e.g. public services, community-based development, architectural transformations, etc.) aiming to achieve creative solutions that meet the needs and desires of people, going beyond conventional methods (mulgan, 2014). design is ubiquitous in contemporary life (fuad-luke, 2009). this is evident in the spread of rapid urban transformations (e.g. china’s urban development) and manufacturing technologies, which mediate in human interactions – an upward trend in pandemic times. papanek (1972) observes we all design all the time, as design embeds itself with human agency. from this perspective, people can adopt design roles (knowingly or unknowingly) in reshaping their everyday life – blurring the frontiers of design and raising tensions between the distribution of design competences, between professional designers versus non-professionals collaborating in a design process (manzini, 2015). the socialisation of design is a conscious act "…geared to goals, objectives and aims within a broad societal context…” (fuad-luke 2017, p. 281), thereby "…in the intimate interweaving between aesthetics and the political… an interesting answer to the activist nature of design activism is to be found" (markussen, 2013, p. 39). the research literature considers ‘the political’ (mouffe, 2013) dimension of design as the condition of dissent that each individual may experience within a concrete designerly situation. the political dimension of design could be used to re-mould pervasive and conventional structures of power because such dimension embodies activist strategies for transforming community paradigms and values (calvo & de rosa, 2017). design, as social action, has the potential to raise awareness of sustainable ways of living and working together; it assists in renegotiating the relationships we establish within the socio-material culture of human situations – between what we do and how we feel about doing it (markussen, 2013). design aesthetics thus embeds emotional reconfigurations and the allocation of meaning into such socio-material culture. it involves incorporating people’s needs within the designing process to foster alternative forms of inhabiting and reshaping identities, hence eliciting social and behavioural change (calvo & de rosa, 2017). it also requires methodologies able to study human agency and its interactions with the socio-materials of situations, and we argue that co-design is capable of intervening in people’s perceptions and affecting their behaviour. underpinning such a behaviour change is mutual learning which also supports the flourishing of networked communities and interpersonal bonding. building trust, engaging with social conventions, norms of cooperation and partnership, networking and community engagement, as well as formal and informal organisations, play a key role in behavioural change, which can lead to organisational change and social 82 innovation (ostrom & ahn, 2009). that is why, increasingly, design research pursues evidencing about mutual trust and empathetic relationships established with their partners and stakeholders. qualitative inquiry has been gaining relevance in social design as it provides the means to systematically document human interaction and participation. in this sense, ethnographic research used in this study provided a set of methods that enable the design-researchers to gather meaningful data. community-based co-design co-design as a design strategy increasingly resonates in community engagement and the voluntary sector. due to the democratic and open-ended nature of the design process, co-design aims to confront societal issues in the public sphere (fuad-luke, 2009). user-centred design, on the other hand, seems unable to address those challenges as it objectifies people in the design process and serves consumer products. gay and hembrooke (2004, p. xvii) illuminate a "…shift from user-centered design to context-based design... from a focus on human-computer interaction to a focus on human interaction that is mediated by technology in context". this shift emerged in the 1980s and 1990s in the field of interaction design (see kaptelinin and nardi, 2006; spinuzzi, 2005; zahedi, 2011) when its definition expands: from being focused on the computer, moving towards designing the sociocultural (hybrid) spaces of human interaction (winograd, 1996). as kaptelinin and nardi (2006, p. 10) state, our society is increasingly designed, “furnished with technologies at every turn”. these statements recognise the relevance of the social environment in configuring human interactions (‘designerly’ situations); and emphasise the intentionality (emotions, motivations and subjectivities) behind any design outcome. bannon (1991) advocates for a change in the systems design process, from meeting ergonomic specifications (human factors) to foregrounding greater involvement of the people acting with technology (to human actors) on the whole design spectrum. consonant with the insight that the ultimate input is on the users (people) to define their functionality, technology is then understood as an important part of human activity with a mediating role in their development. in user-centred design, social scientists were brought to mediate between designers and users (simonsen & robertson, 2013). over time, as sanders (2002) describes, both disciplines mutually learnt that the most productive designs come from a direct exchange of experiences when the stakeholders come together (gay & hambrooke, 2004; zahedi, 2011). both disciplines found strong allies in their combination (brandt et al., 2013; sanders, 2002). with a focus on participatory experiences, co-design emerges as pledging to address “…the most pressing societal challenges…" (meroni et al., 2018, p. 17). sanders (2002) uses the term post-design, a distinctive attitude to people, who, given appropriate tools to configure a hybrid language (ehn, 2017), become creative contributors to the design process. selloni (2017) illustrates co-design as a form of community engagement to strengthen communities, and as a prior step to co-production. co-design is also associated with social innovation as it can create a 'third space' (muller, 2009) where the multiplicity of expertise and perspectives (divergence) can be disclosed and assembled (manzini, 2015). cruickshank et al. (2012) define innovation as a systemic process requiring collective and creative activities to be performed by interdisciplinary expertise that emphasises knowledgeexchange amongst participants and disciplines (cruickshank, 2010). collier and williams (2013) propose ‘reflective practice’ to solidify such knowledge, out of what we learn and experience in the community. the notion of co-design refers to the act of collective creativity applied throughout the whole design process (sanders & stappers, 2008). this paradigm shift also involves a shift in the role of designers, who move from designer-to-designer to designer-to-public, and more recently, to public-to-public roles. here, designers need to acquire/emphasise social skills to facilitate ‘public designerly engagements’ (lindström & ståhl, 2016). in public-to-public relationships, those 'non-trained-in-design' still contribute to the designing (lee & ho, 2012), thereby democratising (and socialising) the design process. in designerly engagements, 83 designers intervene in public spheres, in a designer-public relationship, where people are perceived as experts, and designers adopt roles of support (ehn, 2008). with grassroots and bottom-up social innovations, communities take the lead and designers serve as triggers for local action (execution), their role is to activate and facilitate civic-collective creativity (lee & ho, 2012), alongside designing the sociomaterials of designerly engagements for ‘the co-articulation of issues’ (lindström & ståhl, 2016). methodology and case study this section presents the methodological approach and the methods deployed in a case study conducted with rural communities in the highlands and islands of scotland and associated with a three-year uk-ahrc funded design research project, called leapfrog. focused on transforming public engagement, leapfrog explored the role of co-design in strengthening communities and involving them in the designing of engagement tools to invigorate public-community engagement. this study adopted a participatory action research (par) approach to develop the methodology because it foregrounds participants and their context as the core of the investigation (whyte, 1991). it also embeds social change as part of the research agenda – aiming to produce a positive social impact on communities (walter, 2009). par stems from lewin (1946), a social psychologist focused on shifting away from the scientific tradition and establishing democratic principles in research, to reshape research itself (chevalier & buckles, 2013). par is an applied research approach oriented to address social issues. it is open to innovations or contributions that may arise from its interaction with other disciplines. par is usually represented by a spiral of stages where each stage informs the next one, once the research-community partnership identifies a focal social issue: (i) initial planning; (ii) action; (iii) observation; (iv) reflectioninformed planning (see walter, 1993, p. 3). par was implemented in this study as the meta-process of a methodological framework developed by the research team with four phases: (i) preparation for co-design; (ii) co-design situations; (iii) follow-up; and (iv) systematising learning. these phases structured the ‘tools for renewal’ research project, a case study where ethnographic and co-design methods were deployed to gather data about how co-design can support interpersonal and organisational changes in social enterprises. case study: tools for renewal ‘tools for renewal’ consisted of a six-month co-design project with the newbold trust, a social enterprise based forres, n-e of scotland. its mission is to consider sustainable ways of living together in the region. the trust had initiated a transformation shifting away from an organic and unstructured community to a social enterprise. this internal shift involved the renewal of both its physical assets and its identity as a social enterprise. the newbold community felt isolated from community life in forres and the region. they wanted to open up the doors of their property to include local communities in the physical transformation and decision-making of their future spatial uses. the participants' reasons to participate in the project were largely related to commitment to sustainable causes, seeking to nurture their personal inner life and curiosity. the flourishing of social connections was the ultimate motive of newbold community’s decision to embrace the project. the research aim was to identify ways to establish long-term community engagement by systematically inviting local communities to participate in the renewal of their facilities, as well as in the reshaping of their identity. after a series of co-design situations, ‘walking’ (careri, 2002; ehrström, 2016) emerged as the principal method by which to engage such communities, and a postcard tool was codesigned to gather the insights of the participants who engaged in the facilitated walks. 84 preparation for co-design this first step comprised three stages: (i) initiation and planning; (ii) historical research; and (iii) interviews. during the initiation and planning stage, conversations were held with the community and public partners – collectively defining the problématique; establishing a bidirectional dialogue for identifying the challenge and focus; co-designing a research plan and timeline, and inviting participants to sign the informed consent agreement and gain ethical approval from the institutions involved. semi-structured interviews and visits were then conducted to build rapport and trust, but also to begin understanding the personal context and motivations of participants. during the visits, we walked around the newbold property (figure 1), a victorian house and approximately seven acres of grounds. focused on seeing at first hand the spatial assets for renewal, design-researchers gathered accounts of the context of research while adopting a participant-observer role. touring around the newbold grounds, the research team and the newbold community began building mutual understanding. figure 1. route and map of the facilitated walk. 85 co-design situations this phase was the most intense and immersive engagement with participatory activities. it comprised several methods: catalysis workshop, co-design workshops, prototyping tests, semi-structured interviews, reflective group sessions, participant-observation, and tool delivery events. catalysis workshop designed to enhance the construction of group dynamics, the catalysis workshop brought participants together to share their personal experiences about the newbold services and spatial assets. twelve participants came from the newbold trust, the findhorn foundation and the forres local community. after introducing the project, the facilitated walk began. here the design-researchers adopted participantobserver roles. they mingled with the small group of people that moved naturally from one spot to another (see figure 1, and steps 1-9). we all walked in small groups, feeling comfortable, observing our surroundings and letting ourselves be embraced by the environment. two members of newbold provided an improvised narrative connecting the physical spaces with the past, present and future desires of newbold. eventually, the participants started imagining possible changes and alterations that could be made as they walked through those spaces; they wrote or drew on the tools that were designed for datagathering and analysis. people continued to organically form small groups. the act of walking closer together functioned as a way to initiate a conversation and the thread of the conversation became the way to connect the group until we reached the next spot (figure 2). walking was a means to break down the hierarchies of power between the members of the newbold community. in the next activity, a group reflective session, participant 1 said: “…i felt freedom when people were walking; we were not in this situation, staring at each other. here it is more difficult to express myself. when we were walking, we were talking at the same time freely.” figure 2. facilitated walk at newbold trust. 86 the catalysis workshop created horizontal group dynamics. the group reached the point where participants started building other types of relationships. working together, in this case, did not mean collaborating. each staff member in charge of each department tended to work independently and autonomously. in their work with the newbold community, the research team also observed a certain degree of intra-personal friction. there was an ideological split between two groups: those who pushed to turn newbold into a sustainable and self-sufficient business and others who resisted the change and longed for the return of a bohemian lifestyle. co-design workshop 1 during this workshop the participants went through four main phases: 1) a reflective session on previous engagements, 2) deepening understanding and reaching a collective agreement, 3) idea-generation and prototyping activities, and 4) presenting concepts/prototypes and selecting proposals. the first co-design workshop aimed to reflect collectively upon the previous walking experience, and, as a collective, to codesign ideas where walking could be adapted as the newbold trust method for engaging local communities in the long-term. there were ten participants. the day began with lunch and an opportunity to analyse the data collected during the catalysis workshop. using string hanging from side to side across the room, the participants began organising the insights according to their collective criteria, shaping a timeline of interventions based on the values of the group (figure 3). this helped them to consider what type of exchange they were looking for in engagement and the methods they might need to use to gather, interpret and act on information accumulated during the exchange. this activity sought to break with the hierarchical dynamics that the participants unconsciously brought to the workshop, an influence that would allow members to behave freely without wondering if they should agree with the ideas of a superior. this enabled participants to collectively identify different approaches to their strategic plan. figure 3. hang-it-up collective activity (priority building). 87 the participants were then divided into groups comprising three people and sent on a ‘discovery journey’ around the creative campus, glasgow school of art, in forres. the participants approached the activities with joy going with the flow and generally feeling comfortable. in turn, they gained the ability to put themselves in the place of their future walkers and built collaborative attitudes towards those they engaged within the co-design process. for instance, unconsciously, participants 3, 4 and 12 realised that they were not able to write their insights, so they used each other’s backs as improvised support to write their thoughts, showing a collaborative attitude (figure 4). figure 4. discovering activity. an interesting insight was the importance of somehow tailoring and planning the route of the walk into the purpose of the engagement. participant 3 commented: “the flow of the walk needs to be tied into how someone who does not know about this place may interact with it and how one feels. the reason why we are doing this is how to interact with the space. that would be also related within the experiences.” this session allowed them to gain a better understanding of their participation in the project. p6 said: “walking around the fields stimulated emotional responses. it is more about qualities. looking at that as a way to imaging the development of newbold”. participant 10 mentioned: “similar to when we were using the tool in newbold, we were imaging how the space could be transformed within the narrative. how do we develop that thing and how do we tell the story right from the entry gate? it is really the narrative, the story that we want to tell people.” 88 the narrative was a crucial component that needed to be addressed. the participants naturally began to imagine possibilities. the sharing of spatial and personal experiences shifted away towards co-producing ideas. the workshop produced three idea-prototypes and the group decided to focus on one. semi-structured interviews the interviews foregrounded how co-design situations were providing new conditions for them to learn more about their team. participant 2 said: “…in these two workshops i think i found the learning at watching us as a group, how the interactions happened, what formed the group dynamic and perspective”. the process was helping them to redefine their interpersonal relationships, an adjustment of behaviour. participant 1 said: “…because we are in a different environment, i am learning how they (staff) approach a problem, how they react when they have something new to build…”. prototype-test in-between co-design workshops, participant 5 facilitated a walk with a group of erasmus students and collected the observations written on the prototype. he brought his insights into the experience to initiate the following co-design workshop. co-design workshop 2 participant 5 outlined the use of walking as the method to offer the students an inclusive and comfortable atmosphere to spark informal conversations and so imagine through stimulating all the channels of learning. participant 5 said: “for me, it was a strong sense of engagement with the people. this was a tool (prototype) that helped me engage in more dialogue as we moved around with the people. the tool gave me a sort of structure to build the narrative.” researchers noticed no hierarchical relationships between the participants. next, participants were split into small groups of two or three people and spent the rest of the workshop co-designing new iterations of the tool (prototype) to enhance it. after collective selection focusing on a new prototype of the tool, the group decided to test it again, in a series of facilitated walks during the harvest festival. participant-observation the harvest festival was the biggest community event newbold organised and included sharing activities with other local communities. two facilitated walks were planned on the agenda of the community event. on average, both walks had around twelve participants, most of the visitors/eco-tourists. like the catalysis workshop, the walk sparked small groups who walked together, having conversations between themselves, asking questions and sharing their ideas about the spatial assets. they engaged with the narratives of the walk-in an informal atmosphere (figure 5). in the end, the participants spent some time writing their reflections about their experience and gave the prototypes back. the research-community team reflected on the activity and concluded that the prototype worked well, although some adjustments needed to be addressed. the design team developed a third version, more flexible and adaptable, according to the needs and purposes of the walk. 89 figure 5. facilitated walk at the harvest festival. tool delivery event the workshop began with a collective and reflective session. an insight emerged: the qualities of physical space and their rotation contributed to the emanation of interpersonal learning. participant 7 said: “when you go out of the house (newbold house) and you have conversations like these with the same people but out of your usual environment, you understand maybe better or from a different way. this becomes a tool to know each other better, differently.” they all agreed that the project helped them to know each other better and hence start working as a team. then they tested the final prototype and reported minor touches. by the end, all the participants had built their tools for renewal, which they took away with them. finally, the research team thanked them for their commitment during the project. this would not have been possible without all of their hospitality, kindness and open-minded approach, and the project drew to an end. follow-up the follow-up phase consisted of revisiting some of the participants once the case study was complete, using (i) participant-observation and conducting (ii) reflective interviews, observing the course and consequences of the co-design situations in perspective; perceiving a potential change in the agency. participant 1 said: “…you have to solve problems every day and sometimes you do not have time to stop and think about how to do things. on this, we learnt that we needed to stop and think and talk and create these conversations.” according to him, the co-design workshops foregrounded the beginning of a unique moment that impacted the way he perceived the other participants, unfolding hidden personal competencies and skills. it activated his learning and this led to reshaping the group dynamic. for 90 participant 3, the co-design project provided a learning outcome: the need to collaborate towards a common goal. he stated: "…going through that process and learning how it is not about roles, it is about the different perspectives that helped us solve problems, create new tools". he understood the relevance of merging different perspectives as a synergy that renegotiated the relational patterns of working together and their feelings about this way of working. the organisation had embedded the walks, held and facilitated regularly with wider communities. yet the tool needed more preparation and planning. they were in an evolving and transformative process. participant 6 expressed surprise about the process, however, he said: "…my only reservation is that it was too quick and i think we needed more time to expand on what we were doing…". he commented that they had embedded the hang-it-up activity in their meetings. he reflected, comparing both experiences and concluded: "…i might consider moving more, getting up and moving as a really important part of decisionmaking." findings this section presents the findings of the analysis phase (systematising learning) where affinity diagramming was adopted, an ethnographic method consisting of arranging pieces of paper-based data on a physical space like a wall and follows a three-phase process (each one illuminating a higher level of abstraction): item, pattern and structural analysis (lecompte & schensul, 1999). the process went through three phases of affinity diagramming, re-arranging the items by affinity, bottom-up, and consolidating theoretical structures. out of this process, three findings were identified: walking enabled changes: from hierarchical to horizontal organisational relationships the use of facilitated walks (ehrström, 2016; kanstrup, bertelsen, & madsen, 2014) animated an engagement process amongst participants. walking proved to be a useful method to read and imagine those physical spaces revealing opportunities and dilemmas through a process that reduced interpersonal conflict and foregrounded the third space (gutiérrez, 2008; muller & druin, 2012; muller 2009). in this, the disruptive aesthetic of design was a key dimension that opened a space between emotions and human agency, leading to consciousness-raising (markussen, 2013; fuad-luke, 2017, 2009; disalvo, 2012; rancière, 2010). the walk aimed to create the space for collective reflection about issues where social and physical dimensions converged. by discussing in small groups and letting the surroundings to embrace the conversations, the walk helped participants to see things differently. participant 11 shared: “the walk was a really good idea and the reasons i am giving are because we saw and spoke to each other about different perspectives. it also was fun to be with you and to understand your ideas both verbally and visually, and critically navigate throughout the space. it sparked loads of ideas. i liked it because it made me slow down, observe, and feel the spaces.” the activity generated an embracing atmosphere for the participants to reflect in situ and contribute to the focus of the project. the walk activated visual and kinaesthetic learning processes. it also broke down the hierarchies that sometimes can be found in traditional environmental conditions, such as round tables indoors. careri (2002) states that walking is an art form which discloses an interpretation of ourselves within the environment, and aesthetic recognition through the experience of understanding (rasmussen & wright, 2001) a production of collective meaning. sprouts of behavioural and organisational change 91 during the follow-up, participant 6 reflected on adopting “…moving as an important part of decisionmaking…”, denoting potential social change. about this, participant 2 said: “…i realised it is so important to have all that design planning before doing. i have just finished a permaculture design certificate. i think this project will help to inform that as well”. other evidence of change was to see that participants adopted walking and the hang-it-up activity in their community meetings. participant 1 shared: “…the process helped to open ourselves up and our relationship is a little different now. we are more comfortable. for instance, we used to have a non-flexible system. every week we had like a business meeting, and we decided, during the process, we would have meetings when we needed them.” the climate created during the workshops stimulated participants to behave differently and feel free to be themselves, acknowledging a change in their attitudes. participant 6 said: “…by the fact of us being a group, i felt like all the stuff of me having to perform or do something, just about me personally and my need to perform well, that just fell apart. that just did not happen, so i was comfortable and enjoyed it.” inter-personal learning this finding draws on 'people skills', comprising skills and competencies such as learning to listen to people, building trust and respect for different perspectives, changing perceptions and expanding mutual understanding towards working together. for example, participant 5 said: "…it taught me a little bit to just be open to other ideas, be able to contribute but be open to other ideas because it is a group". they learnt how to collaborate better by making their attitude more open to listening to others. participant 5 added: "…having the input of many people i realised is much more powerful, because everybody is involved, we can develop something which everybody is comfortable with…", raising awareness of collective ownership. participant 4 shared: "…i am interested in seeing how we are coming together as a team, working together and not just running the place…". participant 2: “…it helped me see that what i think is not always the most appropriate design, whereas with co-design most things are thought of and everyone feels ownership…”. participant 6: “…what i have learnt is the deeper level of trusting of the group process”. on changing perceptions, he added: “…i have learnt about other people, a couple of people who were able to see clearly and that helped me to have a different view of them”. discussions and conclusions this study has investigated the arguments pointing to co-design as a suitable methodology to confront socio-cultural challenges (meroni et al., 2018; fuad-luke, 2017, 2009; ehn, 2017; smith et al., 2016) that threaten and constrain our present and future qualities of life. today we live in turbulent times. the ripples of the recent recession are still spreading, globally re-moulding the socio-cultural and political-economic spheres. economic experts envision another significant recession, as a consequence of the pandemic, which will lead to the post-oil era (ahmed, 2017). the ipcc (2018) reports the socio-cultural need to urgently reshape our lifestyles and consumerist modes. internationally, we are witnessing movements arguing for egalitarian power-relationships (e.g. #blacklivesmatter) and social change that embrace sustainable ways of working and living together (e.g. #extinctionrebellion). the challenges at stake require networked communities and interdisciplinary expertise (meroni et al., 2018) to produce synergies and social innovations capable of adjusting and re-equilibrating the relationship between nature and the built environment, seeking for sustainable ways of inhabiting this world (manzini & meroni, 2014). our literature review has identified how design research approaches are increasingly present in the public sphere (fuad 92 luke, 2009; mulgan, 2014), and geared towards addressing complex social issues (fuad-luke, 2017; 2009). some approaches (see nygaard & bergo, 1975; gillinson et al., 2010) recommend governments to set up centralised strategies that empower and support local community-led initiatives, associating local knowledge-production, empathy, and horizontal relationships as key factors in the emergence of social innovations (ostrom & ahn, 2009). we argue that ‘centralised strategies and local actions’ require a greater understanding on how design can be a catalyst for supporting social change processes, and also the need for policies that create the legal framework of interaction, between local actions and centralised strategies. the challenges society faces are amorphous in their structure and characterised by emergence, nonlinearity, uncertainty, adaptation and constant change (silverman & patterson, 2015). we argue that design features in all these challenges. what we have suggested in this study is that co-design, as a socialisation act, has the means to configure boundary spaces (calvo, 2019a; edwards, 2011; gutiérrez et al., 1995; gutiérrez 2008; lally & sclater, 2013). these spaces have the potential to merge the nascent demands of participation (smith et al., 2017; disalvo, 2012; jenkins, 2006) and the divergence of expertise required to co-articulate the issues, a driving-force that can confront societal challenges. the notion of boundary space is not new in co-design. muller and druin (2012) mention it under the term 'third space', a concept built upon bhabha's (1994) argument that when two or more boundaries (two or more spaces) interact, a boundary space of overlap (a hybrid space) emerges. bhabha (1994), describes this boundary space as a combination of features coming from all the boundaries interacting. muller and druin (2012, p1129) explain that, within this space, "enhanced knowledge exchange is possible". lee (2008) names it the 'realm of collaboration' which describes a power-balanced space of convergence. björgvinsson et al. (2012) refer to 'infrastructuring' as the means to create a space for assembling the multiplicity of expertise and divergence (also in meroni et al., 2018; smith et al., 2016) regarding the need for co-developing a common design language (ehn, 2017). in this study, the notion of boundary space finds inspiration from gutiérrez's (2008) theorisations of the third space, which emerges from differences in the engagement and participation, as well as from the multiple social scenarios that informal situations provide, which are based on egalitarian structures of power-relations. therefore, the conversation flows under inclusive and comfortable social conventions. gutiérrez (2008) aligns with suchman's (2002) association of boundary crossing and mutual learning. the concept of boundary-crossing, developed in the 1990s, reflected the transition of individuals interacting between various practices (suchman, 1994). also considered in situated theories of learning (lave & wenger, 1991) and in communities of practice (wenger, 1998), it was particularly advanced in educational sciences and psychology. this study also argues that design-researchers and practitioners have the means to directly intervene in the social environment, through orchestrating and choreographing design activities, supported by techniques, engagement tools and design games (brandt, binder & sanders, 2013). this subtle yet complex designerly act should consider the aesthetic and the ‘political’ (mouffe, 2013) dimensions of design. it also requires design-researchers and practitioners to gain socio-emotional competencies to understand participants’ ways of feeling and doing (markussen, 2013) understanding and stimulating group dynamics and reading the group mood to reorient the flow of engagements as required. as markussen (2013) points out, the aesthetic dimension of design is disruptive because it opens up a boundary space, a third space, between the social and performative actions of the participants and the production of 'new' emotions. the aesthetics of a design stimulates emotional responses which cause a disruption by raising awareness of people's activities and how they may feel about it. in this regard, the facilitated walks were orchestrated and choreographed design activities. they were prepared, planned, and geared (designerly) social acts that triggered behavioural change among the participants by reducing 93 interpersonal conflict and foregrounding third spaces. about this, kierkegaard and bretall (1947) observe the benefits of walking, an act that frees simultaneously the body and the mind, enabling thinking. anderson (2004) builds upon kierkegaard's reflection on walking, and upon casey's (2001, p. 684) theorisation about the relationship between the self and place as a “constitutive coingredience”, to develop a walking method to harness 'the inherently socio-spatial character of human knowledge" (andreson, 2004, p. 254). he emphasises the relaxing effect that the bodily rhythmic moves have on both body and mind, which encourages the use of imagination and unfolds hidden memories and experiences. kanstrup et al. (2014) review several walking methods and their suitability for participatory and co-design approaches. they identify four key factors to take into account: (i) the relevance of preparing the sociomaterials of the walk to spark designerly interactions; (ii) walking methods are time-efficient regarding the enriched data they unfold; (iii) adaptability of walking methods to absorb spontaneous detours of the planned routes and/or of the conversations; and (iv) the importance of “post-walk activities” (anderson, 2004, p. 59). walking is a natural human activity, and in this case study, it was re-purposed as a design method to place the participants in a social environment with which most of them were familiar. yet the facilitated walks engendered boundary spaces, which disrupted participants' everyday thinking, reconfiguring their relationship with the physical and social attributes of newbold surroundings. the walks enabled the participants to connect in ways they did not connect before. this notion of relational aesthetics aligns with the notion of aesthetics developed by rancière (2010), a dialogic form of interacting (and learning) with the social environment, which "reorients perceptual space, thereby disrupting socioculturally entrenched forms of belonging in and inhabiting the everyday world" (markussen 2013, p. 44). giroux (2020) has recently argued that “hope is the affective and intellectual precondition for individual and social struggle”. emboldened with hope, educators can use theory to address pressing problems. to meet the challenges of social innovation and organisational change we are advocating the use of theorised co-design, drawing upon key theoretical concepts including, for example, boundary spaces. giroux also points out that civic courage is required to transform critique into political practice. co-design, in this sense, is, we think, a form of political practice and can be a catalyst for social change and social innovation. giroux comments: "hope as the desire for a future that offers more than the present becomes most acute when one’s life can no longer be taken for granted. only by holding on to both critique and hope in such contexts will resistance make concrete the possibility for transforming politics into an ethical space and a public act." we think that collective consciousness can be aroused through co-design activities, as evidenced in the case study presented in this paper. when combined with imagination, we contest that such consciousness has the potential to enable people to co-design new forms of community that, according to giroux (2020), "affirm the value of the social, economic equality, the social contract, and democratic values and social relations." references ahmed, n. m. 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(phd), montreal, canada: university of montreal. https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 3, no. 2 discern wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their assistance with peer review of manuscripts for this issue. their contribution towards the quality of the journal is greatly appreciated. deniz ekmekçioğlu, ondokuz mayıs üniversitesi, turkey sarah baker, media design school, new zealand asa wikberg, luleå university of technology, sweden emine koca, ankara hacı bayram veli university, turkey aicha nairi, university of monastir, tunisia georgina twamley, university of the arts london, uk claire pillar, art+design: elearning lab, cyprus melanie levick-parkin, sheffield hallam university, uk reviewer acknowledgements for discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, vol. 3, no. 2 99 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. designers as change agents in the circular economy katja fleischmann published online: november 2020 to cite this article: fleischmann, k. (2020). designers as change agents in the circular economy. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 1(1), 99-118. 100 designers as change agents in the circular economy katja fleischmann griffith university, queensland college of art, southport, qld, australia. k.fleischmann@griffith.edu.au abstract several global reports have concluded that natural resource extraction at its current levels is unsustainable and will lead to the rapid erosion of the environment and tax global economic growth. one of the alternative paradigms to conserve those resources is the circular economy, a system driven by innovation that extends the utility of products as long as possible through a series of strategies that re-use resources. design can act as a bridging tool and a catalyst for the innovation demanded by the circular economy because of its flexibility as a problem-solving discipline. the intermediary role of design can adapt to the complex requirements of circular economy stakeholders who want to shift their way of doing business to a more sustainable model, despite formidable policies, economic, cultural and political obstacles. the author explores the evolution and utility of design from a discipline that shapes objects to one that constructs and facilitates complex systems of interactions among collaborators, which in the circular economy includes consumers, manufacturers, logistics companies, governments, business and science entrepreneurs. several examples of design’s role in this facilitative process are presented that showcase the power of design to drive social and cultural transformations and re-cast industrial and business processes. sustainable innovation is the centrepiece of the circular economy and design has a significant role to play in its adoption, particularly from a human-centred perspective that can address formidable constraints to its implementation. keywords: circular economy, design-led innovation, service design, citizen designer, sustainable innovation, democratisation of design, co-creation introduction – why the circular economy? the strain on natural resources in the world is borne out by alarming trends in unsustainable and accelerating resource extraction. the unwelcome by-products of these practices, which are predicted to double by 2050 (un environment international resource panel, 2019) have been global warming, air and water pollution and a throwaway consumer culture based on cheap credit and products with limited life cycles. the united nations (un) environment international resource panel (2019) paints a dire picture of a global resource collapse unless circular economy practices are employed. other reports such as the circularity gap report (circle economy, 2019) and the finnish innovation fund report (mead, 2018) also conclude that circular economy practices can help halve greenhouse gases by 2050 to meet targets agreed to by signatories to the paris climate accord (united nations, 2015). the 2030 agenda for sustainable development (sdg, 2015) adopted by all united nations member states in 2015, lists responsible consumption and production and climate action as global priorities. circular economy principles are also becoming more imperative during the covid19 pandemic where global supply chain disruptions are slowing down manufacturing, food production, and forcing companies to re-think and reorganise their way of doing business. circular economy advocates see the pandemic fostering opportunities to help local communities source scarce resources like medical equipment, drinking water, and face masks through re-tooling of industrial production lines. sustainability during the pandemic 101 requires re-thinking of whole systems of delivering goods and services given social distancing and supply chain disruptions (blériot, 2020; haigh & bäunker, 2020). the circular economy is part of a sustainable innovation paradigm which is seen as the “next generation of economic development thinking” in which the protection of the environment is coupled with the notion of business innovation (saylor academy, 2012). reversing destructive natural resource consumption trends is the principle aim of the circular economy, a systematic re-framing of resource use based on biomimicry within closed-loop systems. the circular economy model draws on natural cycles where the re-uptake of decaying matter feeds the entire ecosystem (ellen macarthur foundation, 2013); in a balanced ecosystem, nothing goes to waste. in the circular economy, waste in all its forms becomes a feedstock for new industrial processes, product development and energy production. the circular economy extends this idea to products and services through improved product design and moving waste to the top of the supply chain where it can be re-purposed and not dumped in landfills. the circular economy economic system shifts responsibility to achieve its goals to a diverse network of key players: end-users, manufactures, logistics companies, governments, and business and science entrepreneurs–who are interconnected and need to engage jointly in the complex undertaking to drive systemic change. designers have a key role to play in the system-wide economic changes driving the circular economy (wastling, charnley & moreno, 2018) by facilitating the necessary transformations in human interactions, mindsets and relationships. joore and brezet (2015) argue that “change actors like designers play a strategic role in innovation and transition processes towards a sustainable society” (p. 92). designers are already solving complex problems using human-centred approaches that are evidence-based and rely on various forms of user participation when designing for social change (souleles, 2017). robinson (2017) makes a strong case for a social circular economy, where responsibility to help the socially disenfranchised, such as the homeless and unemployed, is part of the business landscape. robinson (2017) sees design uniting “the circular economy and social enterprise concepts to deliver benefits for people, planet and profit” (p. 4). haigh and bäunker (2020) agree that designers can help a circular economy shape “a more resilient, socially just and environmentally safe world” (p. 1), however, the building of a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable economic system faces well known and formidable obstacles. the roadblocks stopping the circular economy: vision versus practicalities for many years, researchers have explored circular economy concepts, such as cradle-to-cradle design, regenerative design, laws of ecology, industrial ecology, biomimicry and the blue economy. since 2010, the ellen macarthur foundation (2013; https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/) has played a leading global role in unifying these concepts and promoting the circular economy model, designed to preserve the inherent value of products as long as is feasible (lewandowski, 2016). the central concept of the circular economy is re-using what is already there and exhausting its utility – a process that by necessity is driven by innovative thinking. design acts as conceptual bridge between the exigencies of business and the drive to minimise waste using innovative methods. the circular economy’s vocabulary reflects this paradigm shift with such terms as ‘reverse logistics’, ‘reuse’, ‘remanufacture’, ‘extraction of biochemical feedstock, ‘regeneration’. all of these terms derive their inspiration from the natural world, where creation and decay form part of a biological cycle that is balanced when healthy and generates waste that is re-incorporated into the ecosystem. 102 productive use of waste in all its forms often requires disruptive, innovative practices throughout the value chain (ritzéna & sandström, 2017). however, there are substantial impediments to making this vision of an ‘ecologically’ balanced economy a reality, chief among them are financial incentives for companies, particularly in manufacturing, to change their way of doing business to fit a circular model. operational logistics have to be restructured in the circular economy and attitudes have to shift to accept that investing in circular practices will help companies maintain a profit. technological barriers also have to be overcome as well as policy challenges prompted by shifts in global politics (imsa amsterdam, 2013; ritzéna & sandström, 2017; van eijk, 2015). there are also significant policy framework barriers experienced by all countries in which governments are not incentivizing businesses and scientist entrepreneurs through tax breaks, grants and significant seed money investment (de jesus & mendonça, 2018; kirchherr et al., 2018; van eijk, 2015). existing policies may inhibit businesses that want to adopt circular economy practices (r2π, 2018). current events amply demonstrate this reality, particularly with developed nations offshoring mixed recycling for processing which is no longer a viable option. china has initiated a new policy rejecting shipments of mixed recycled waste from overseas that does not meet its stringent contamination thresholds. the crackdown has created an economic crisis among the developed world’s recycling businesses (cole, 2017; parker, 2018). countries such as the philippines and malaysia have also rejected overseas shipments of recycled waste from canada and australia (denyer, 2019). some forward-thinking waste managers are now actively searching for industrial processes that can, for example, convert recycled glass into sand for use in roadbeds (fleischmann, 2019). the attitude barrier in a wide-ranging survey among stakeholders and sustainable development experts in the european union (eu), respondents identified ‘cultural barriers’ as the major impediment to circular economy implementation (kirchherr et al., 2018). ‘cultural barriers’ were identified as low consumer interest and awareness of circular economy practices and companies hesitant to collaborate in the value chain because of low virgin material prices, high upfront investment, and regulatory obstructions and limited funding. a lack of urgency and strategic company planning using hard data about the circular economy’s benefits were also cited as obstacles. the authors also suggest that further research and development (r&d) funding will not guarantee the circular economy’s success in the eu. this finding is supported by boer (2005), who predicted it is risky to invest in environmental technologies that customers do not want and which governments are unwilling to support. other authors acknowledge that shifting to a circular economy is as much about the shifting mindset of people, as it is about technological innovation (adrodegari, pashou & saccani, 2017; prendeville & bocken, 2017; teso & walters, 2016). geographic barriers also impede circular economy practices (fleischmann, 2019). many circular economy initiatives are centred in metropolitan areas with high population densities and high innovation indices which attract government funding. regional areas are often geographically isolated, have smaller populations and lower innovation indices. in these areas, circular economy initiatives face a lack of funding and expertise (fleischmann, 2019) and an often ‘risk-averse’ attitude by businesses and regional governments (coronado, acosta & ferñandez, 2008). ironically, according to van eijk (2015), local governments can drive policy changes much faster. van eijk estimates the period for the implementation of regulatory changes on an international level takes about a decade; in the eu policy changes happen in five years and on the local level it takes about a year. 103 with all these formidable obstacles it would seem the prospects for widespread adoption of the circular economy is ultimately unachievable. it is at this point where design can prove its efficacy by helping shift cultural resistance to engagement with the circular economy and by providing the innovative business framework for making it a reality. there are ample examples of how designers can drive these critical transitions to a circular economy which follows the trajectory of how design has evolved to meet social needs. from product to service design: the changing role of design in servitisation and business model innovation design as a discipline has undergone tremendous changes over the past 30 years from being a mere form giving or styling activity to “being able to influence a company’s entire business strategy” (gardien & gilsing, 2013, p. 56). design’s aesthetic function has evolved into a tool to focus on people and technology (user-experience design); as a differentiation tool to support branding; as a business tool for fuelling innovation; and finally as a cultural tool enabling transformation (gardien & gilsing, 2013; hernández, cooper, tether & murphy, 2018). activist designers have also been early adopters of the sustainability discourse initiated through the seminal work of victor papanek with his book “design for the real world: human ecology and social change” published in 1971. since the 1980s, these environmental designers have been instrumental thinkers and practitioners in the green design and eco-design movements. although designers have been involved in a systematic approach to reducing environmental impact through green product design, the emotional or behavioural dimension such as user-product attachment has largely been ignored by manufacturers (ceschin & gaziulusoy, 2016) – a finding which has a direct bearing on ‘cultural resistance’ to the circular economy. years before the circular economy gained currency as a systematic model, van nes and cramer (2005) found that 78% of products still function when they are replaced, evidence of the throwaway economy. products are often discarded due to changing user preference and change in fashion (cooper, 2006). the current so-called ‘linear economy’ is producing products with a limited shelf life often achieved through built-in obsolescence. a prominent example is the electronic waste created by the purchase of new versions of the same product like mobile phones or smart appliances made obsolete by software upgrades that do not work on older products. despite growing secondary markets for purchasing used mobile phones such as the iphone, the consumer-driven economy demands product life spans that are limited and have been decreasing (european environment agency, 2017). van nes and cramer (2005) summed up the disposable product problem this way: “this requires the development of dynamic and flexible products, which implies designing for variability and product attachment and preparing the product for future repair or upgrading”. lewandowski (2016) describes this way forward as a holistic approach where products are designed within an ecosystem of carefully managed and re-used resources where product afterlife is part of the equation. in this system, waste is minimized through extended product lifespans in a closed material loop of multiple users rather than individual consumers. as a result, toxic and polluting materials are better controlled (de los rios & charnley, 2017). there are many examples where product designers are already taking a more holistic approach and designing out waste by increasingly using modular design to lengthen product lifespans (european environment agency, 2017). a good example of modular production is fairphone (https://www.fairphone.com/en/), an entrepreneurial european company employing modular product design to break the cycle of consumers buying new mobile phones every time a new model comes out 104 (figure 1). the amsterdam-based mobile phone manufacturer subscribes to the idea that consumers will opt for mobile phones that are designed to last up to five years, are virtually unbreakable, and can be updated with simple modular replacements that consumers can do themselves. fairphone employs circular economy principles of creating smartphones that can be maintained, repaired and upgraded by end-users, are more robust and last much longer than the average smartphone. next to the modular design, the systems thinking approach extends to ethically sourced materials and supply chains. the self-repair and maintenance of the phone through owners using basic tools and online available repair tutorials (mestre & cooper, 2017) are one of the main drivers for increasing product longevity. fairphone advertises, “if you cannot open it you do not own it”. figure 1: modular design fairphone 3, source (creative commons 4.0). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/file:fairphone_3_modules_on_display.jpg. as fairphone illustrates, business models are no longer following a linear path. disruption and digital technology are re-inventing the way consumers participate in economic activities. designers are also helping businesses re-define new models of ownership and use. several authors have suggested that designers can influence business and consumer behaviour and thus meet circular economy goals. this is clearly illustrated in the concept of servitisation or product service systems (pss), where a product is not bought but essentially leased from a producer who maintains it. the pss concept can apply to anything from office space, to clothing to lighting systems and vehicles. rather than re-design an entire production and distribution system, servitisation allows smaller businesses to take the first steps toward engaging the circular economy without having to make significant financial investments (michelini, et al., 2017; spring & araujo, 2017). in particular, the internet of things (iot) has lowered the barriers of engagement in circular business model innovation by using technology such as sensors, apps and integrated logistics to redefine the relationship between consumers, products and manufacturers (spring & araujo, 2017). various circular business models are making use of the iot, especially services as part of the sharing economy like car and bike-sharing (e.g. bycyclen in copenhagen, 105 citibike in new york, mobike in china). companies such as lime, which advertises “micromobility for all” offers electric scooters in congested urban environments and has essentially monetised transportation using phone apps linked to credit cards. designers are now involved in developing such service ideas around products which include a “network of actors who produce, deliver and manage the pss [product service system]” (ceschin & gaziulusoy, 2016, p. 131). one well-known example of this innovative business model is pay-per-lux, where phillips offers light as a service (arup, 2016). the way it works is that companies receive a state-of-the-art smart lighting system with no upfront investment. the customer then pays only for the light that is used. phillips will update the light system when out of date and will retrieve the original system for secondary use elsewhere. the automotive industry is also experimenting with innovative, circular business models. electric car manufacturer riversimple (https://www.riversimple.com/) is pioneering 'next-generation' electric vehicles by basing its company pricing on an expansive leasing model which includes insurance, repair and maintenance (ceschin & gaziulusoy, 2016). in these comprehensive leasing models, the consumer does not ‘own’ the vehicle; riversimple pays for all the ancillary services motivating the company to design an electric vehicle with minimal energy usage requiring fewer repairs and thus increasing the car’s lifespan. this comprehensive leasing model is an alternative to manufacturers’ dependence on consumers purchasing new model vehicles. many other well-known companies are trialling the ‘access economy’ or socalled ‘on-demand economy’. for example, ikea has just announced plans to rent out furniture instead of selling its do-it-yourself flat box products (pownall, 2019). smaller businesses like rype office has moved beyond the trialling phase and offers three furniture options for customers for lease or purchase that include new, re-made or refreshed furniture with buy-back guarantees (ellen macarthur foundation, 2017b; rype office furniture, n.d.). designers are also creating more circular electronic products by creating a service based on user behaviour. gerrad street (https://gerrardst.nl/), a dutch company, is combining a modular design with servitisation. two alumni from delft university in the netherlands, started the company using the concept of servistising a modular design of headphones which they provide to customers on a subscription basis (looijs, 2017). the business model theoretically creates a cheaper and more sustainable product. in this model, customers pay to use the headphones on a monthly or yearly basis, which entitles them to upgrades and repairs. “the design of their products is modular and no glue is used so they are easy to disassemble, repair or add new hardware” (ellen macarthur foundation, 2017c). gerrard street leases its headphones for less than 10£ per month, which for many users is an attractive financial alternative to buying expensive headphones on the open market. these examples of applying circular economy principles to product design clearly illustrate ideas of holistic innovation by creating mass consumer products as a service rather than an owned object with limited utility. modular design with interchangeable parts that consumers can swap out creates a closed resource loop product system that maximises resources rather than limiting their use. designers are now engaging in extending product lifetime through durable design and design for maintenance as well as increasing utilisation through sharing schemes or pss. 106 human-centred design for a circular economy: the critical role of design-led innovation the manufacturing process is being re-defined by smart product design, which is one aspect of the circular economy. it is an example of design’s innovative capacity. the cox review commissioned in 2005 in the united kingdom (uk) was the first to articulate clearly that design is what links creativity and innovation in industry (hm treasury, 2005). “design has many different definitions, but at its heart, it is about the process of translating ideas into reality, making abstract thoughts tangible and concrete” (hm treasury, 2005, p. 3). the international council societies of industrial design (icsid) describes design as: “…a creative activity whose aim is to establish the multifaceted qualities of objects, processes, services and their systems in whole life cycles. therefore, design is the central factor of innovative humanization of technologies and the crucial factor of cultural and economic exchange.” (drp, 2013) the transformational role of design has not been lost on policymakers in many countries. having identified design and designers as major influential contributors to economies (e.g. design council, 2011; dmi, 2015; designsingapore council, 2009) has led to an increase in government-funded support for design-driven innovation programs in countries such as the uk, denmark and finland. countries like singapore went even further and developed a structured design culture through policy-driven design-led innovation to tackle innovation challenges and economic development. government driven design support programmes have also powered regional innovation and introduced design-led research methods to non-designers, researchers, businesses and educators (gulari, melioranski, er & fremantle, 2017). design-led innovation: the nuts and bolts at its heart, design-led innovation is a human-centred process which makes use of real-time research through user engagement, collaboration and co-creation. design-led innovation is “generally considered whole systems approach providing the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyse and fit solutions to the context” (alexander, 2013). the core principle of design-led innovation as a solutions-based system starts by investigating and tracking the end-users, their motivations and requirements. designers spend time with users of products or services to gauge what they want and to discover unarticulated needs through observation, interviewing, video or photo-ethnography, and customer journey mapping. the findings and developed insights are shared with the stakeholders offering the product or service. the creative process of generating new ideas is done collaboratively by integrating various stakeholder perspectives and then prototyping and trialling ideas in an iterative process to come up with the most effective solutions. “designled innovation offers methods to drive required business model transformation and is recognized as one of the key enablers in the transition to a circular economy” (fleischmann, 2019, p. 382). a well-known application of design-led innovation is design thinking which has been globally adopted in the business world to drive radical innovation, create competitive advantage and change business culture and behaviour (brown, 2009; vianna, et al., 2014). design thinking and other design-led innovation methods can be applied at a strategic, service, product or on an organisational level by facilitating a designdriven culture to change the mindsets of employees and customers (kilian, sarrazin & yeon, 2015; matthews, townsen & wrigley, 2016). designers offer an organic process that allows ideas to rapidly bubble up to the surface, be tested, and then moulded. in very important ways, design-led innovation is a catalyst for ideation between stakeholders along the value chain. 107 as aminoff, valkokari and kettunen (2016) argue, the transition to a circular economy “cannot be achieved if individual organizations advance their own interest independently...[it] requires new value chain partners, or new roles of existing partners and a new kind of collaboration between the participating partners” (p. 629). designers can help to approach problems from a human-centred perspective and design methods are being used to better understand customers through a collaborative process (fraser, 2010; storvang, jensen, christensen & storgaard, 2013). examples of design-led innovation are starting to appear in the old economy, state-run businesses such as the postal service in australia. collaboration is at the heart of an australia post initiative that has identified the circular economy as a way to become a better corporate citizen and implement circular economy strategies. more importantly, australia post (2017) is recognising the role design plays in the process: “…you cannot be at arm’s-length in the circular economy. it is a co-designed system based on synergies and building connections” (p. 4). concretely, australia post cites its collaboration with nespresso, the coffee capsule company and a recycling plant in nowra, new south wales, australia to illustrate the reuse/recycling loop in the circular economy. nespresso customers can order a pre-paid australia post satchel online or at a nespresso store and mail up to 130 capsules to the recycling plant where the coffee grounds are composted and the aluminium capsules are made into other products – part of the ‘re-use’ closed loop system advocated by the circular economy. while australia post illustrates the technical loop of circular economy logistics, the eu is incorporating design-led innovation into the value chain of the circular economy by fostering multidisciplinary scientific collaboration – part of the biological loop. the eu has been at the forefront of making scientific advancements, particularly in chemistry, an integral part of ‘upcycling’ in the circular economy. upcycling is a concept where used materials are converted into something of greater or equal value (loopedworks, 2015). central to this effort is catalysis, a chemical process that has widespread industrial applications in reducing waste on a large scale. examples of the use of ‘green’ catalytic processes in the circular economy context are plentiful in a laboratory setting but there has been little large-scale commercialisation of the processes that are reducing waste and creating new value. as discussed, the reasons for impediments to commercialisation have largely revolved around business scepticism. while the pathways to commercial success are not as straightforward as chemical conversions, the commercialisation phase of catalytic development is benefitting from design-led collaboration, ideation, prototyping and scalability which can map various approaches involving all stakeholders in the process. a company already practicing design-led innovation as a path to large scale commercialisation and moving circular economy practices beyond the prototype stages is bolt threads (2019), a bio-design company in the u.s. the bioeconomy company unifies science with business and design when using biotechnology to develop and promote consumer goods. the company bases its consumer products on engineered yeast to produce a spider silk protein which is spun into yarn and marketed as fast fashion. bolt thread focuses “on the consumer in the messaging and design of its products” (ginsberg & chieza, 2019, p. 4) and is a good example of a start-up with the potential to scale up its production while having a reduced environmental footprint, a primary circular economy goal. designers also help the company to overcome “a widespread public aversion to genetically modified organisms” (ginsberg & chieza, 2019, p. 4) through a design-led innovation process that brings science and business interests together. this unifying characteristic of the design process is clearly producing results in business innovation. 108 helping stakeholders to move forward: circular economy toolkits understanding the circular economy and how to make it work within a business or governmental context presents formidable challenges. bringing so many diverse groups together is being facilitated by circular economy ‘toolkits’ which designers use to help stakeholders map the processes involved in designing circular economy initiatives. toolkits, like those offered by the ellen macarthur foundation and the design consultancy ideo, reveal the key steps needed to implement circular economy principles (ellen macarthur foundation, 2015, 2017a; the circular design guide, 2017). the circular economy toolkits are a relatively new way to address social and economic complexities using a process of interviewing, mapping, iterating solutions, and tools for recording results. toolkits have a variety of ways of translating the circular economy’s new vocabulary into meaningful metrics and graphics that illuminate critical components of the circular economy closed loop value-chain of product design and service innovation. toolkits also employ step-by-step methods for selecting stakeholders and increasing their participation in ideation. some toolkits focus on generating data that helps companies decide on the most sustainable way to source raw materials by comparing 'circularity' of individual products as well as evaluating company-level circularity. still, others suggest financial models encourage entrepreneurial circular economy start-ups (e.g. evans, et al., 2013; zero waste, 2016). there are currently various open-source circular economy toolkits available for companies and policymakers wanting to learn more about how to implement circular economy practices. however, there is limited research into the effectiveness of the design and use of these toolkits. simonchick et al. (2015) highlight that “the choice of a specific toolkit (both visual representation tools and user-research techniques) is highly situation-dependent (e.g. level of access to customer’s organization, level of initial insight, time limitations and the needed level of detail etc.)” (p. 8) hence selecting the appropriate toolkit can already influence the level of success. reigado et al. (2017) explored the circular design guide developed by ellen macarthur foundation and ideo as an alternative to improve the application of product-service-systems methodologies; the researchers reported the toolkit’s strength lies in the process of understanding the problem context and stakeholder engagement, however, the circular design guide lacks practical aspects such as identifying the competitors. as more toolkits are offered to help implement the circular economy, a key question remains underexplored: how effective are the tools inside the toolkit when compared to standard business practices such as due diligence, benchmarking and market scans? it is difficult to measure design’s innovation outcomes and quantify how a company’s design culture contributes to innovation, including circular economy toolkits. work needs to be done to analyse the effectiveness of these toolkits from a design-led innovation standpoint. the citizen designer: co-creating a sustainable future consumers are key stakeholders in achieving the circular economy vision. the role of the citizen designer was foreshadowed by lipson and kurman (2010) who wrote “we will witness a growing amount of consumer-led product development and modification across a wide range of industries that manufacture physical objects” (p. 55). opportunities for user-customized products have increasingly emerged over the past decade. shoe and sportswear manufacturers such as converse, nike, adidas and puma allow their customers to customize products through the use of online services. customers can influence the final design of their shoes by selecting colours for the outsole, sole or laces and can further personalise their 109 product by adding a name or a flag (in case of adidas). some car manufacturers such as toyota or vw leave the final stages of design to their customers through an online configuration tool. customers can configure their car to their needs and unique tastes and ultimately can buy a more satisfying product. this kind of participation in the creation process has seen its latest manifestation in crowdsourcing innovations (howe, 2006; lipson & kurman, 2010). companies or organisations post creative briefs or challenges on the internet seeking input or solutions from their customers, employees, partners or the wider community (hammon, & hippner, 2012; libert, spector & tapscott, 2008; maher, paulini & murty, 2010). this “opensource dialogue” invites the wisdom of crowds to “collective design” and the customer/citizen being able to influence the outcome and drive change (duffy & partners, 2008; maher, paulini & murty, 2010). participatory design as a strategic business tool to develop better products, improve brand communication or services has been utilized in the business world for many years. it is best known for involving customers to participate in value-creating activities, such as user-testing products or prototypes to develop new or improved products. crowdsourcing and co-creation are two newer participatory practices which give a voice to the user and wider public who can add valuable feedback to circular economy practices from a public angle. on a large scale, the city of glasgow, for example, aims to globally crowdsource circular economy innovations and wants to implement the winning solutions that the online challenge generates (university of strathclyde, 2019). co-creation, broadly defined as “any act of collective creativity, i.e. creativity that is shared by two or more people” (sanders & stappers, 2008, p. 6), differs from crowdsourcing as it allows the end-user or customer to become actively involved and an equal partner in the creation process (bason, 2010; sanders & stappers, 2008). therefore, the people who benefit from a service, product or process to be developed or improved are actively participating in the creation process and receive expert status in the creative team (sanders & stappers, 2008). co-creation “is the difference between people creating a great idea for you and people working with you to make a good idea great” (williams, 2013). co-creation has become increasingly popular in the social and public innovation sectors to address complex, global problems from a sustainable perspective (bason, 2010; european commission, 2013; mahy & zahedi, 2010). co-creation is seen by many as a central factor of a circular economy (leube & walcher, 2017) because the “social value of co-creation is fuelled by aspirations for the longer term, humanistic, and more sustainable ways of living” (sanders & simons, 2009). fablabs, for example, provide fruitful ground for shifting the responsibility of creation to the citizen or community groups (fleischmann, hielscher & merritt, 2016). the community-based digital fabrication workshops are often run voluntarily and can generally be freely accessed by the wider public. ideas and initiatives for change can therefore emerge from the bottom-up and can lead to grassroots innovations – thus being more aligned with the needs of the community (chilvers & longhurst, 2013; seyfang & smith, 2013). fablabs can facilitate a creation process that is opposed to the usual top-down approach leading to what hippel (2005) sees as democratizing innovation. although fablabs have been criticised for non-sustainable practices (brown, 2015; fleischmann, hielscher & merritt, 2016) – as part of community-based production such as repair cafes and hacker and maker spaces – they are perceived as convergent with the circular economy (ede, 2016). for example, the great recovery (2016) project which looked at the circular economy from a designer’s perspective (2012-2016) used a fablab to encourage re-use by fixing objects like a broken handle with 3d printing technology 110 instead of buying a new product. here the community-based production challenges the planned obsolescence of products through the ‘right to repair’ credo. fablabs are also seen as “hotspots for arduino and sensor technology development, and circular thinking needs this to help unlock the data flows that accompany our products” (the great recovery, 2016, p. 29). the fab city in barcelona which is seen as “building bridges for circular networks of fabrication” (sicar, 2018, p. 18) recently opened up a fab market to promote distributed manufacturing “where designers can fabricate for low cost and sell their open-source designs globally” (ede, 2016, p. 10). this new way of production follows a paradigm of ‘design global, manufacture local’ which “means the ‘light’ things (bits, information, shared/open source design) travel, but the ‘heavy’ things (atoms, the physical, manufacturing) stay local” (ede, 2016, p. 10). distributed manufacturing systems, such as fab labs, are one way to challenge the mass manufacturing system in a linear economy. these new disruptive business models shorten manufacturing supply chains and are based on low volume, on-demand and bespoke manufacturing. these disruptive models incorporate new modes of interactions via customer-led designs. one such company is disrupt sports (2018) which offers bespoke designed sports gear. customers design their surfboard, skateboard or snowboard. the motto of disrupt sports is: “you design, we create, you shred”. as a result, instead of producing hundreds of similar surfboards, that may or may not sell, disrupt sports produces on-demand, customized products aligned to customer's specifications which guarantee sales and at the same time saves resources instead of manufacturing solely based on marketing. the democratisation of design (fleischmann, 2015), is an important agent in the transition to a circular economy. the rise of the prosumer (proactive consumer) and citizen designer is central to the collaborative design process in the circular economy. the democratisation of design gives people an agency in making the circular economy work. critics of this process, however, fear “the blurring of the boundaries between amateur and professional design practice” (massanari, 2012). advocates see the advantages in co-creation or the user-centred design participation process and welcome the “‘open-source’ dialogue that invites the audience into the creative process” (duffy & partners, 2008). tim brown, ceo of ideo has famously declared “design is everywhere, inevitably everyone is a designer…” (brown, 2014). not everyone agrees; treder (2015), for example, defines the citizen designer more concretely as a “design participant” – he argues, perhaps everyone is a designer… but not everyone should design. conclusion: future trends as a discipline, design is a catalyst for change. designers have always used a flexible, iterative approach to problem-solving, which is an instrumental process in re-imagining the future. the circular economy posits a paradigm of a more sustainable world that saves natural resources using nature’s ecosystems as a roadmap. the circular economy envisions a complete re-ordering of economic and social priorities designed to preserve the world’s dwindling natural resources, increase product longevity, reduce waste and phase out the endless cycle of cheap consumer credit fuelling non-stop consumption. there are still formidable policy and economic obstacles blocking the path of this radical transition to a circular way of doing business. designers and citizen designers as change agents can help remove those obstacles and accelerate the transition to a circular economy. however, it is often difficult to communicate the value of design to stakeholders because of intangible qualities such as facilitating collaboration and strategic planning (bletcher, 2017). there is a lack of understanding about the expansive role designers can take in the transformation to the circular economy (bletcher, 2017). 111 tonkinwise (2015) argues that designers are futurists because they deal in fiction, speculation, provocation and discourse — all elements of successful design practices. it is these disruptive traits that allow designers to shape the way we live and how we act, fundamental to the changes the circular economy demands of its stakeholders. new design disciplines, such as transition design, incorporate these futurist qualities demanded by the circular economy. as an emergent way of addressing large-scale problems, practitioners of transition design play a key role in re-framing global problems (irwin, 2015). the social impact of largescale changes, such as reducing reliance on fossil fuels for energy, is part of the transitional designers’ toolkit. irwin (2015) argues that transitional design is dynamic and by its very nature open-ended and speculative which results in a circular, iterative problem-solving approach. designers have taken on a variety of crucial roles which are demanded by the circular economy: product designers encourage collaboration and co-creation between experts and amateurs to re-define product life cycles and respond to end-user needs; transition designers are facilitators between key stakeholders; fiction designers re-imagine our future and its possibilities; designers marry technology with logistics; and graphic designers help the world visualise the way to a sustainable future by mapping relationships, information and data. all these design roles use systems thinking that lies at the heart of the circular economy where current patterns of consumption and production are supplanted by sustainable business models such as servitisation and modular products that are leased instead of owned. time in this leased world becomes a commodity while manufacturers can focus on sustainable product production. these transitions do not happen in a vacuum but require consumers to take ownership of changes with designers leading the discourse. in the circular economy, designers become co-creators in designing with the people. designers adapt their roles to encompass citizen participation in the iterative process. as fleischmann (2015) predicted, “the democratisation of design will not go away but will allow more ‘nondesigners’ to become involved in idea generation, development and production of products, services or processes” (p. 103). in the circular economy, non-designers are crucial to its large-scale adoption. approaching social challenges and complex problems such as creating a sustainable future has seen the empowerment of the end-user, citizen or community group by engaging them in the problem-solving process. designers can unify stakeholders, including the public, governmental agencies, and the business and scientific communities in a common vision that can realise the goals of the circular economy. educators must also adopt a leading role in training the new generation of designers who will have the future tools, creativity and vision to construct the circular economy. references adrodegari, f., pashou, t., & saccani, n. 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(2016). circular economy business toolkit. retrieved from http://www.nzwc.ca/focus/circulareconomy/toolkit/pages/default.aspx doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.491 http://www.theguardian.com/best-awards/co-creation-is-the-new-crowdsourcing http://www.nzwc.ca/focus/circular-economy/toolkit/pages/default.aspx http://www.nzwc.ca/focus/circular-economy/toolkit/pages/default.aspx designers have a key role to play in the system-wide economic changes driving the circular economy (wastling, charnley & moreno, 2018) by facilitating the necessary transformations in human interactions, mindsets and relationships. joore and brezet (2... the roadblocks stopping the circular economy: vision versus practicalities designers are now involved in developing such service ideas around products which include a “network of actors who produce, deliver and manage the pss [product service system]” (ceschin & gaziulusoy, 2016, p. 131). one well-known example of this innov... human-centred design for a circular economy: the critical role of design-led innovation 69 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. co-creation in circular cities: a design perspective li-ting huang, beatrice villari published online: april 2021. to cite this article: huang, l.t., & villari, b. (2020). co-creation in circular cities: a design perspective. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(1), 69-88. 70 co-creation in circular cities: a design perspective li-ting huanga, beatrice villarib apolitecnico di milano, milan, 20156, italy. liting.huang@polimi.it bpolitecnico di milano, milan, 20156, italy. beatrice.villari@polimi.it abstract the release of the european green deal for the circular economy has made more and more municipal authorities embed circular economy principles into their visions and strategies, fostering the transitions towards a “circular city”. collaborative practices are becoming familiar, and concepts such as co-creation are entering the policymaking vocabulary, indicating that citizens and other actors are being asked to work collaboratively towards a sustainable future. this also means re-designing systems and services in cities with the aim of tackling emerging social and environmental issues and co-creating innovation paths. however, co-creation as an approach for implementing a circular economy at the city level has not yet been thoroughly investigated. the aim of this paper is to outline a framework that can be used by cities to identify new opportunities for co-creation initiatives from a design perspective. using a three-step research process: (i) literature review, (ii) case study analysis and (iii) results interpretation, this paper delineates nine co-creation categories for sustainable development and identifies stakeholders and tools to be adopted by seeing circular economy principles as the ultimate goal. keywords: circular economy, circular city, co-creation framework introduction after the release of the european green deal for the circular economy, more and more municipal authorities are embedding circular economy principles into their visions and strategies, fostering transitions towards a “circular city”. the circular economy concept —popularised by the ellen macarthur foundation (emf) – is not limited to businesses but entails a wide transformation that affects all the systems in which we live and act. in this scenario, cities can play a crucial role in fostering sustainability at all levels, from policies to a single person’s behaviours. many cities, especially in europe, are embedding circular economy principles in their visions and strategies with promotion by the eu. increasingly, the concept of a circular city is becoming familiar. the transition from a linear to a circular connection requires various stakeholders’ participation, discussion and action. the municipal authority is no longer the only body that takes the lead and needs to work with other parties to realise a sustainable urban future. although the concepts of cocreation and co-production are well explored in the literature, particularly in the field of management and service science, co-creation at the city level has not yet been thoroughly investigated. by examining how co-creation activities operate in the current circular city from a design perspective, this paper aims to explore the opportunity of collaborative practices in circular cities. hinging upon qualitative analysis, this research proceeds as follows: (i) literature review, (ii) case study analysis, (iii) results interpretation in a co-creation framework. first, the literature review examines the definition of a circular city and explores the concepts and forms of co-creation. second, by examining six european urban contexts, forms of co-creation activities in frontrunner circular cities are analysed, and remarkable cocreation activities are highlighted. in particular, the research builds upon the “co-creation design framework” proposed by frow, payne and storbacka (2011) and the resolve framework (emf, 2015). the result is an integrative co-creation design framework, proposing nine co-creation initiatives that 71 summarise state-of-the-art circular city operations, including the stakeholders involved and the tools adopted. the research outcomes underline the importance of embedding co-creation practices in a circular city to support strategies, plans and concrete outcomes. also, the research reveals the lack of a widely shared approach in such a transformation process to attain a circular city. overview of the circular economy in cities the concept of the circular economy is introduced by emf (2015): “restorative and regenerative by design and aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times, distinguishing between technical and biological cycles” (p. 19). the notion and principles of the circular economy have been around for a long time. it can be seen as an umbrella concept encompassing various principles (i.e. industrial ecology, biomimicry and cradle to cradle). the circular economy relies on three fundamental principles (emf, 2015): (1) preserve and enhance natural capital; (2) optimise resource yields; and (3) foster system effectiveness. in addition, the circular economy contributes to the delivery of at least 12 sustainable development goals (sdgs) (united nations, 2015) at both the local and global levels. in particular, a circular city relates to goals 11, 12 and 13, which are about making cities safe, resilient and sustainable, as well as taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. for example, helsinki is the first city in the european context to integrate its circular economy strategy into sdgs, representing their ambition to achieve a permanent positive change (city of helsinki, 2019). however, although the definition of a circular city is weak, the objective of the circular economy strategy is clear. “a circular city aims to generate prosperity and economic resilience for itself and its citizens while decoupling value creation from the consumption of finite resources” (emf, 2017, p. 7). a circular city embeds the circular economy’s principles across all its functions, establishing an urban system that is “regenerative and restorative by design” (emf, 2015). prendeville, cherim and bocken (2018) interpret a circular city as an element in the larger goal of developing a future-proof city that practises circular economy principles to close resource loops in partnership with the city's stakeholders. girard and nocca (2019) see a circular city as a metaphor for an ideal space where ecological crises and social inequalities are eliminated. the circular economy provides cities with an excellent opportunity to face tough challenges, as specified by activities that may occur at various scales. considering this, the circular economy should be adopted into policy development and implementation at different scales (emf, 2015; eu, 2020; oecd, 2020). the resolve framework (emf, 2015) turns three key circular economy principles into six practical actions to generate circular strategies and initiatives. however, the resolve framework is outlined from a business perspective and is not entirely suitable when applied to the urban context. the circular city framework (ccf), which is based on the resolve framework delivered by prendeville, cherim and bocken (2018), combined with bottom-up and top-down interventions (krauz, 2016; ghisellini et al., 2016; lieder & rashid, 2016), expands the ways in which the circular economy could be put into practice in an urban environment. inside a circular city, hybrid spaces (panzar & willig, 1981) are needed that connect diversity and create a bridge between different actors as they occur within the arena of public-interest services (selloni, 2017). usually, such hybrid spaces are enabling platforms (jegou & manzini, 2008), namely, virtual or physical spaces where inspiration, exploration and discussion arise. involving a group of citizens and other actors in collaborative processes is crucial to facilitating decision-making and developing solutions. apart from digital platforms, part virtual and part physical spaces provide social and spatial areas for learning and experimenting, which are seen as being convergent with the circular economy (ede, 2016). enabling platforms like urban living labs and fab labs allow stakeholders to team up and build up a strong network that is tightly connected to the city administration. a prominent example is the industrial area in 72 amsterdam, buiksloterham, where the whole district runs as a large-scale living lab, aiming at achieving total self-sufficiency and circularity (steen & van bueren, 2017). a few challenges have arisen in previous research regarding the implementation of the circular economy in cities. one of the barriers claimed by prendeville, cherim and bocken (2018) is that there is an unbalanced way to involve stakeholders. authorities place too much emphasis on leading businesses to guide the civic society. conversely, the term “smart” frequently appears in circular cities’ literature about the use of new technologies such as sensors or digital platforms (girard & nocca, 2019). although digitalisation is crucial for the urban transformation of the great metropolis (i.e. economic restoration and social cohesion), the benefit is maximised only when the social context is considered. even though the implementation of the circular economy in cities is proliferating, research shows that many municipalities identify themselves as a circular city without comprehensive knowledge about it (prendeville et al., 2018). consequently, there is a need to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable urban future with a clear framework. progress towards the future-proof city needs greater participation for sharing the responsibility. human-centred approaches are crucial for such cultural shifts across various government and stakeholder levels. the design’s nature provides positive directionality about the future and proactively contributes to what will come about next (fuad-luke, 2012). from design’s contribution, it is important that best practices, processes and tools can be developed and spread in various contexts. in this scenario, services and systems need to be transformed to meet the main current challenges, and practical methods are required to co-create with different stakeholders. designing co-initiatives in circular cities recently, municipalities have adopted new strategies to involve people in policymaking and public services for people-centred solutions (oecd, 2019). there is an increasing need to develop collaborative knowledge that supports a whole-of-system view and transformational change at multiple scales. this reveals an emerging focus on co-creation in actor networks (åkesson et al., 2016; pinho et al., 2014), where the municipality has a leading role, consisting of coordinating researchers, practitioners, citizens, designers and other stakeholders in the co-creation process. although interest in collaborative practices is gaining momentum, the specific means of co-creation in circular cities remain underexplored. the academic discussion of co-creation is extensive. in design research, sanders and stappers (2008) define co-creation as “any act of collective creativity, i.e. creativity that is shared by two or more people” (p. 6). when applied to varied contexts, the concept of co-creation can underline the systematic principle for business and customers (prahalad & ramaswamy, 2004; grönroos, 2012), the partnerships between public service and citizens (voorberg, bekkers, & tummers, 2015), or the shared responsibility (lelieveldt, 2019). frow, payne and storbacka (2011) argue that the advantage of subdividing co-creation into precise forms is centring innovative co-creation opportunities. with this aim, they put forward 12 forms to improve firms’ capabilities for co-creation. in addition, in their later research, managing co-creation design: a strategic approach to innovation, frow, nenonen, payne and storbacka (2015) propose a framework to help firms identify new co-creation possibilities. on the other hand, oertzen et al. (2018) developed an integrative framework, and a detailed process was formulated to describe the specific forms of co-creating services, containing the five “co-” phases. moreover, from the viewpoints of ramaswamy and ozcan (2018), “co-creation is the enactment of interactional creation across interactive system-environments (afforded by interactive platforms), entailing agency engagements and structuring organisations” (p. 5). the “interactional co-creation framework” developed by ramaswamy and ozcan (2018) stimulates thinking on both the means and the ends of interactive value creation in a broader way. interactive platforms are 73 means where the potential value of participation will be generated in value co-creation, ranging from the perspective of the ends of experienced actors to empower actor networks with resourced capabilities. above all, we witness the growing dynamics of co-creation accompanied in an increasingly interactive way. in the private sector, co-creation influences customer satisfaction and loyalty and helps firms achieve a competitive advantage (grissemann & stokburger-sauer, 2012). in this scenario, users are seen as an interesting source of product and service innovation (prahalad & ramaswamy, 2000; vargo and lusch, 2004). however, when discussing public services, these end users are citizens, namely a more comprehensive community with a wide variety of needs and characteristics. as one of the crucial actors, citizens become increasingly crucial in the public decision-making process (voorberg, bekkers & tummers, 2015). more and more policymakers and decision makers are trying to adopt strategies to involve them as active players for growth and prosperity. voorberg, bekkers and tummers (2015) identify three degrees of citizens’ involvement in the co-creation process (which will be discussed in the upcoming section): (a) citizens as co-implementers (involvement in services, which refers to the transfer of implementing activities previously carried out by the government); (b) citizens as co-designers (involvement regarding the content and process of service delivery); and (c) citizens as initiators (citizens who take up the initiative to formulate specific services). they point out that since both efficiency and satisfaction are raised during the process, the goal of co-creation is the value produced in itself. therefore, policymakers must enhance stakeholders’ trust and acceptance. even though the municipality, businesses and civil society have varying objectives in moving towards the circular economy, it is essential to encompass various levels of stakeholders, build synergies at the correct scale and minimise the future burden for society. for example, the netherlands regards citizens as a major stakeholder in its revised circular economy roadmap due to the considerable contribution that they make in relation to sustainable consumption habits and behaviours (oecd, 2020). hence, design activities embody co-creation that are “typically carried out in groups, with roles involved in complex relationships” (nelson & stolterman, 2012, p. 290) for strengthening creativity, developing innovative solutions, and generating value. while there is a significant difference considering the extent of involvement and actors’ role, value is created collaboratively with people (akoglu, 2015). the adoption of co-creation activities in circular cities can bring different benefits, such as enhancing the awareness of environmental issues and encouraging new habits among a variety of stakeholders (bačová et al., 2016; jonker et al., 2018; paiho et al., 2020). based on these premises, this paper aims to explore the various forms of co-creation that can be adopted to foster circularity at the city level. research process and the first results previous research has already recognised the advantages that co-creation can bring about (barczak, 2012; frow et al., 2011, 2015). however, to better understand how co-creation is adopted in circular cities from a design perspective, a three-step research process has been undertaken: (i) a literature review, (ii) a case study analysis and (iii) results interpretation within the co-creation framework. first, a systematic literature review was carried out to explore the role of design in supporting the transition to a circular economy at the urban level and the increasingly active and interactive role that co-creation plays in the public sector. the objective is to understand the most noticeable co-creation forms inside circular cities and the practices used to support the transition towards circularity. second, we carried out a case study analysis. the aim was to identify co-creation practices in circular cities and understand the explicit or potential contribution of the design in the processes of co-creation to have a wider view towards circular cities implementations. focusing on the european context, the criteria for determining cities to be examined were: (a) defining themselves explicitly as a circular city; (b) implementing a systematised circular city strategy (circular 74 programmes/agendas at city/regional level instead of a single project); (c) engagement, involvement or participation are emphasised in a co-creation process with citizens; and (d) availability of information. according to the oecd (2020), four distinct levels of advancement towards the circular economy transition of cities are labelled, which are advanced, in progress, newcomers and not in place. advanced means cities and regions establishing clear strategies or roadmaps and engaging diverse stakeholders. in progress are those cities and regions that have already applied for specific programmes and/or are starting their implementation towards the circular economy, following impromptu activities. in the cluster of newcomers, cities or regions explore options for implementation by recognising the circular economy’s relevance and potential. the cluster of not in place was excluded in this research because of insufficient data and restricted documents. to increase diversity within these three categories, we selected two cities for each group. eventually, six cases were selected, including (alphabetical order) (1) amsterdam (advanced), (2) brussels (advanced), (3) glasgow (in progress), (4) gothenburg (newcomers), (5) helsinki (newcomers) and (6) ljubljana (in progress). the municipalities mentioned stress the collaborative manner of working with stakeholders to achieve the desired results. these contexts are then examined through the co-creation lenses to better understand how and in which part of the process the collaborative approach has been adopted. the third step consisted of interpreting the data collected through the literature review and case studies. the interpretation led to the development of a descriptive framework for listing co-creation initiatives in circular cities. in particular, this research built on the co-creation design framework defined by frow, payne and storbacka (2011). by examining the evolving co-creation framework against existing literaturebased theory and case studies, we identified nine specific co-creation practices in circular cities. furthermore, this research outlines three additional categories that are not included in previous studies relevant to co-creation in circular cities: co-vision, co-prototyping and co-sense, mainly related to the strategic aspects of the co-creation process. finally, the circular economy actions (i.e. regenerate, share, optimise, loop, virtualise and exchange) and the co-creation practices with actors and tools are integrated into the framework we propose. co-vision, co-prototyping and co-sense as co-creation activity categories: the first research result the case study analysis was carried out first to understand how the co-creation categories that emerged from the literature review are being adopted in circular cities. second, it contributes to understanding how co-creation supports the transition towards circularity at different stages, from the strategic level to the execution level. based on frow, payne and storbacka's framework, we initially considered the following co-creation practices: (1) co-conception of ideas, (2) co-design, (3) co-production, (4) co-promotion, (5) co-maintenance, (6) co-experience, (7) co-pricing, (8) co-distribution, (9) co-outsourcing, (10) co-disposal, (11) co-meaning creation and (12) co-consumption. by analysing the initiatives carried out in these six circular cities, some of the categories proved to be consistent with the urban level, whereas others were limited to business activities. consequently, we streamlined the list of co-creation practices to the following: (1) co-conception of ideas, (2) co-design, (3) co-production, (4) co-promotion, (5) comaintenance and (6) co-consumption. also, another three practices were introduced to describe essential aspects that emerged from the research: co-vision, co-prototyping and co-sense. while they are not explicitly mentioned in the cases that we investigated, we consider them as strategic practices (see table 1) as far as the realisation of a future-proof city is concerned. 75 co-vision initiative in the movement to achieve a future-proof city, co-creating a shared vision becomes crucial. methods include enabling collaborative processes, creating awareness and, at the same time, raising hope amongst people. building on previous research and case studies, it is evident that developing circular economy guidance systems and making the circular economy concepts knowable for citizens and other stakeholders is fundamental. such practices may include showcasing the city’s circular projects online, hosting awareness-boosting green events/festivals and running campaigns to encourage new habits. likewise, creating a collaborative vision means supporting future actions and culture, e.g. reinforcing education and training for future generations to equip them with the necessary skills to act in a circular city (jonker et al., 2018; russell et al., 2020). with consistent goals shared by stakeholders, co-vision is the core of a city’s entire transformational process. moreover, co-vision can activate collective optimism, especially in the co-design process, and visualisation is a powerful means used by designers in this stage. as sangiorgi (2011) points out, designers can work from the outside in, providing future visions and intervening more systematically from a higher level so they are considered essential resources. thus, this research interprets co-vision as a shared vision among civic society and main stakeholders, which can vary from municipality to municipality, depending on the local context. co-prototyping initiative participatory prototyping is one of the main activities carried out through collective co-designing. such a way of prototyping, no matter whether rapid or slow, can stimulate situations and create community awareness (selloni, 2017). when applied to services, prototyping activity is about making services visible, to learn and communicate about services and identify them as a collaborative effort (blomkvist & holmlid, 2010). prototyping is led by designers who possess the capability to design and develop mock-ups, physically or digitally, and can ensure a certain level of aesthetic and/or authentic quality (selloni, 2017). these prototypes can be seen as an artistic intervention (selloni, 2017), allowing people to experiment and communicate efficiently through physical or virtual mock-ups. working as a team for brainstorming and taking decisions together is the typical design intervention type. as selloni (2017) puts it, “creating service prototypes is necessary not only to test solutions but also to reinforce the idea of making services together within a community” (p. 153). co-prototyping initiatives are mainly carried out in a real-world setting. for example, urban living labs, fab labs, and maker spaces gather multiple stakeholders of multiple specialities, interacting as co-innovators for experimenting, creating and prototyping (westerlund & leminen, 2011). building on the research of selloni (2017), co-prototyping in this research is understood as two or more actors jointly collaborating to propose innovative solutions (products or services) and run them in a flexible and co-creative way with mock-ups or service rehearsals (selloni, 2017). co-sense initiative from the case studies, we found that co-sense activity is happening in “advanced” cities, where resources are concentrated, and economic and technology development are relatively thriving. the so-called co-sense activity, built on participatory sensing, has been promoted in recent years because of the widespread use of affordable digital equipment. because of the advancement of information and communication technology and global social networks, participatory sensing has become popular. in the past, institutions benefited from the data collected by citizens by providing them with technological equipment. nonetheless, nowadays, local problems are presented by grassroots initiatives in the community where civic groups actively take solutions and action. considering this, practical skills are required to solve shared problems. these emerging challenges have led to rising interest in using design in participatory sensing technologies and cooperation programmes (tangmunarunkit et al., 2015; lukyanenko et al., 2016). design, in this respect, allows the local community to participate in such a process with little top-down legislation and 76 informal bottom-up initiatives. in addition, knowledge exchange and co-creation are two crucial elements regarding environmental awareness enhancement and action adoption (coulson et al., 2018), which can be done by conducting workshops and meetups to encourage participation and develop learning and knowledge in areas such as sensors, data visualisation and interpretation. as labelled by the authors, co-sense activity refers to two or more actors collaborating on using daily and readily accessible technology to detect and collect data for tackling common issues. co-creation initiatives in circular cities in total, nine types of co-creation practices were identified, which can be divided into two main groups. first, regenerative co-creation (oertzen et al., 2018) relates to new measures and co-creation forms in the early stages (i.e. in the strategic phrase) of the service development process. in this study, regenerative co-creation practices promote circular economy actions and trigger innovation within the circular city. to be specific, regenerative co-creation practices comprise co-vision, co-conception of ideas, co-design, co-prototyping, co-production and co-promotion, and they can foster new cooperation channels among different actors. second, operative co-creation (oertzen et al., 2018) refers to user-specific and servicerelated events that may occur several times, leading to incremental innovation. operative co-creation practices encompass co-maintenance, co-consumption and co-sense. the following section describes the nine types of co-creation practices about the initiatives mapped in the six case studies mentioned above. 1. co-vision depending on regional conditions, co-vision is a vision of the desired future shared by the municipality, civic society and related stakeholders. usually, the city-level roadmap follows its national guideline. taking a leading role in the circular economy transformation movement, the netherlands’ national goal is to be fully circular by 2050 and to cut down half of raw materials by 2030. many community-owned circular economy initiatives in amsterdam adhere to the national strategy. brussels aims at resource efficiency to help stimulate the economy to boost entrepreneurship and create new employment opportunities. the city of glasgow’s vision is to become one of the world’s first circular cities, creating a movement to inspire businesses of all sizes to innovate and become future-proof by adopting circular strategies (eit, 2018). all six cities under investigation show their efforts to support co-vision activity. it is worth mentioning that ljubljana has involved multiple stakeholders facilitating circular economy practices. for instance, open forums, green events and stakeholder engagement conferences are the main media in which municipalities can rely on communicating and sharing the same vision with other stakeholders for a sustainable lifestyle. 2. co-conception of ideas co-conception of ideas refers to two or more actors collaborating on concept innovation. one large-scale crowdsourcing example is circular glasgow, launched by the glasgow chamber of commerce. circular glasgow aims to engage local businesses involved in the production of major city events and conferences. this ongoing project promotes circular economy ideas related to global challenges by inviting individuals and businesses to contribute circular ideas within the events sector online. in the end, the challenge received 60 ideas from 13 countries, and these works are in progress to support the implementation of resultant ideas and solutions. correspondingly, the call from “be circular—be brussels” launched by brussels-capital region aims to support self-employed people and businesses in their creativity and develop economic activities that benefit the environment and local jobs. innovative ideas have been collected from this call, and more than 40 companies and start-ups have been awarded financial and service support. 77 3. co-design co-design refers to two or more actors/designers sharing their design perspectives, respectively, especially in the “fuzzy front-end” phrase. co-design activities take place in all cities examined at various levels of involvement. citizens explore possibilities and gain inspiration by co-design practices related particularly to collaborative workshops. remarkably, the city of helsinki appeared very active in co-design activities focusing on intelligent transportation. in the district of jätkäsaari, designers engaged residents in solving local mobility challenges. jätkäsaari offers a living lab and urban testbed for innovative mobility development in helsinki. numerous pilots, experiments and projects have been conducted in the lab, focusing on innovative mobility services, traffic safety, mobility data, and behaviour change. residents are actively involved in living lab activities and a web-based survey concerning mobility challenges and people’s opinions about the services. the results were elaborated on in four open workshops with the residents and traffic planners involved (forum virium helsinki, 2020). a dedicated website (jatkakokeilee) was created to inform the ongoing process for residents and encourage their participation. 4. co-prototyping building on the research of selloni (2017), co-prototyping in this research means that two or more actors collaborate in proposing innovative solutions and running them in a flexible and co-creative way with mockups or service rehearsals (selloni, 2017). for example, a model in the smart kalasatama district of helsinki—the agile piloting programme—has been developed to experiment with new services and technologies in a co-creative way. this programme engages companies, residents, the public sector and other stakeholders to experiment with new solutions responding to environmental issues in a real-life environment (e.g. city districts, schools, hospitals, etc.). the piloting teams prepared and co-developed their agile pilot within the urban lab. agile pilots are fast experiments of early prototypes running for a maximum of six months. moreover, a facilitated platform is available for collaboration with the whole ecosystem, aiming to learn as much as possible (forum virium helsinki, 2020). 5. co-production co-production emphasises an equal and reciprocal partnership (boyle & harris, 2009) between users while delivering public services. co-production activity occurs in digital or physical spaces (e.g. urban living labs, fab labs, maker spaces, incubators, innovation hubs, etc.), and distributed urban production systems, enabled by new technologies, are necessary to explore the potential for a new dynamic of the city. in the city of amsterdam (the buiksloterham district, where the circular neighbourhood action plan is implemented), a set of resources is available for local residents and developers to translate higher-level goals into everyday activities. here, an entirely circular community called de ceuvel is situated in the city. it is a participatory urban living lab of a self-sufficient community, where designers, enthusiastic citizens and other actors generate synergies and partnerships. 6. co-promotion co-promotion is described as two or more actors collaborating on promotional activities related to a specific product, brand or entity. examples include the municipality of the gothenburg, which aims to strengthen its ability to push, co-operate, communicate and support the transformational work required to achieve the desired results with many stakeholders. on the other hand, helsinki works towards finding, co-creating and demonstrating innovative, practical solutions that are climate-positive, smart with resources and improve people’s wellbeing (eit, 2018). unlike the other five northern european cities in the case study, ljubljana uses a different strategy to achieve a circular city. the title of european green capital has significantly strengthened ljubljana’s recognition worldwide and upgraded the city’s brand. twentyfour ambassadors were appointed to raise awareness among citizens, involving them in the process 78 of making ljubljana more environmentally friendly (city of ljubljana, 2016). it is clear from this case that forming and sharing ideas of the future is crucial for a successful and smooth process of co-creation. 7. co-maintenance in circular cities, co-maintenance is related to two or more actors sharing either the maintenance service or a core product or service. co-maintenance stems from the concept of the repair café, operating within the framework of the reuse centre, which entails the involvement of experts in different professions (e.g. electricians, sewists, carpenters, etc.) and volunteers to help repair and refurbish products. although repair café can be commonly seen in these circular cities, the large-scale alelyckan recycling park in gothenburg provides residents with a platform where they can sell their unwanted items and pick up some bargains amongst things that are judged to be useless or unnecessary by others. 8. co-consumption co-consumption involves collaboration during usage, as actors employ their resources (physical, social or cultural) individually or collectively, when co-consumers determine and enhance their own consumption experiences. it is implemented widely in these six cities to reduce mobility demand by releasing developers from the high parking requirements currently in the area and investing in additional alternatives and shared mobility. to give an example, the city of gothenburg consists of an exciting mix of sharing services (part of the smart map project) initiated by companies and civil society. such services were created as part of an innovative civil-public partnership, which is a tool that maps the sharing economy in gothenburg, including over 100 sharing initiatives, such as bike kitchens, co-working spaces, digital services, a toy library, mobility pools, clothes swapping days, etc. 9. co-sense co-sense activity, as labelled by the authors, refers to two or more actors collaborating on using daily and readily accessible technology to detect and collect data. these types of activities are widespread in the cities of amsterdam, helsinki and glasgow. impressively, in amsterdam, the smart kids lab allows children to observe the environment (e.g. soil, liquid and air) by using small-scale tests and self-made sensors enjoyably. an online platform assists these young citizens to perform tests and helps them compare the results with downloadable materials. on the other hand, over the last few years, glasgow— together with innovate uk—has been developing several initiatives to demonstrate the technology potentiality offered by intelligent technology. in glasgow, open data is utilised from various sources across the city; citizens can create or update their open dashboard from hands-on digital widgets (glasgow city council, 2021). amsterdam brussels glasgow gothenburg helsinki ljubljana co-vision x x x x x x co-conception of ideas x x x x x x co-design x x x x x x co-prototyping x x x x co-production x x x x x x co-promotion x x x x x x co-maintenance x x x x x x co-consumption x x x x x x 79 co-sense x x x x table 1: co-creation activities examined in circular cities. stakeholders and tools as described above, all forms of co-creation initiatives rely on the active participation of two or more actors (frow et al., 2015). it is crucial to have distinct roles, competencies and engaging platforms that make cocreation work effectively (ramaswamy & gouillart, 2010). based on the literature and case studies, seven relevant actors and three leading engagement platforms were identified in the mutually beneficial cocreation practices. seven actor groups were classified, including: (1) municipalities: the authorities act as promoters of integrated initiatives and interconnect resources with other actors. following the scope of their circular economy strategy, government engages the broader society in circular economy activities. it tries to communicate with the public about its activities and environmental impacts (oecd, 2020). (2) business sector: businesses as enablers of new business models for implementing circular economy concepts to advance more inclusive evaluation of their supply chains (world economic forum, 2018); as content providers that foster sharing, reusing or recycling; and provide repair, maintenance and remanufacturing services. (3) knowledge institutes: academia and research centres with specialists are key partners contributing to creating circular economic knowledge to promote educational purposes. (4) non-governmental organisations (ngos): ngos deliver on capacity-building projects and raise awareness of circular economy practices (oecd, 2020), e.g. creating an online circular observatory to share information on the circular economy and monitor citizens’ level of engagement to promote reuse behaviour and raise awareness. (5) citizens: citizens are co-implementers involved in services that used to be carried out by the government; citizens behave as co-designers of the content and process of service delivery; citizens also act as initiators, taking up the initiative to formulate specific services (voorberg, bekkers & tummers, 2015), e.g. residents provide repair, maintenance and remanufacturing services in their community. (6) local experts: accessible experts who are familiar with the local situation can help other actors by providing appropriate information and advice. (7) designers: designers contribute in several ways, from advocating cultural/organisational change to supporting specific collaborative processes, aiming at human-centred solutions. designers’ contributions are crucial for inspiring people and enhancing people’s imagination and visions of a better future (selloni, 2014). on the other hand, the analysis of co-creation practices showed how the initiatives are supported and enabled by different engaging platforms. effective co-creation typically requires an engagement platform (ramaswamy & gouillart, 2010), enabling actors to share their resources and adapt their processes. platform is often used to refer to a complex network that enables innovation (zahra & nambisan, 2011). in some cases, the circular economy co-creation platforms are part of the municipal website itself. for example, the think sustainably digital service of helsinki resembles a regular city guide but puts environmental sustainability as the primary factor (aouf, 2019). in this study, an engagement platform is considered a tool for enabling productive co-creation, intentionally brought to the co-creation context by the leading actor. three clusters of engagement platforms can be identified: 80 (1) digital resources: refers to a digital application for interactions with diverse actors (sawhney, verona, & prandelli, 2005) and coordination of strategies for promoting collaboration between different actors; sharing economy platforms, enabling a new form of co-creation for facilitating economic transaction and creating mutual benefits (e.g. car sharing software); and platforms provided by critical circular economy networks (e.g. emf, c40, iclei, etc.) for co-producing and translating relevant knowledge. (2) physical resources: refers to spaces where collaborators can be brought together to contribute to co-design or co-prototyping activities. physical spaces (e.g. urban living labs, fab labs, maker spaces, incubators, innovation hubs, etc.) play an essential role in stimulating co-creation practices, including the municipality transforming iconic buildings into attractive platforms to facilitate cocreation culture in the metropolitan area. (3) events and festivals: green events and festivals are staged to encourage visitors to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and behaviours, usually financed and organised by local authorities (mair & laing, 2013). green events are defined as a type of event characterised by the integration of sustainability guidelines into their planning, organisation and management processes (tölkes & butzmann, 2018). in conclusion, leading municipalities collaborate with ngos, knowledge institutes, local experts and designers to promote citizens’ and businesses’ acceptance and awareness of the circular economy through proper tools to refine the whole process and boost innovation. additionally, designers can intervene to reduce the gap between top-down and bottom-up actions, playing the role of cultural operators (manzini, 2015) that foster systemic and cultural changes. when involved in participatory projects, the character of designers is shifting from facilitators, translators, interpreters, guides and visualisers to provokers, triggers, change makers and actionists (selloni, 2017). on the other hand, city stakeholders’ concrete interventions need the support of engaging platforms, which are important for gaining insight and proposing ideas to make things come true eventually. engaging platforms work as both physical/digital resources and goaloriented events/festivals dedicated to co-creation activities and prototypying circular solutions in the cities. based on the case studies, it is beneficial to apply co-creation to transformational practices for integrating people and resources. a circular city co-creation design framework this research provides insight from case studies and the literature, coming up with an actionable method to propose a shared co-creation framework for future circular cities. municipalities have acknowledged the importance of cross-chain and cross-sector collaboration and have started to adopt co-creation processes based on regional differences (emf, 2015). however, municipalities lack a shared approach—in terms of process and tools—to systematise the current knowledge. to fill this gap, we propose the circular city cocreation design framework (see figure 1), which includes nine co-creation categories for sustainable development with the stakeholders involved, seeing circular economy principles as the goal. the elements constituting the framework are listed according to the emerging practices revealed from the case studies. the resolve model labelled by the ellen macarthur foundation is regarded as the principle of carrying out a circular city in the circular city co-creation design framework. the resolve framework aims to transfer the circular economy principles (preserve and enhance natural capital, optimise resource yields and foster system effectiveness) into six concrete actions, i.e. regenerate, share, optimise, loop, virtualise and exchange. the framework proposed by the authors includes seven 81 categories of potential actors (i.e. the municipality, businesses, knowledge institutes, ngos, citizens, local experts and designers) that may engage in co-creation practices. additionally, three main engagement platforms are identified and added to the framework—considered as engaging platforms—with the purpose of providing virtual resources, physical resources and green events/festivals for communication, participation, experimentation and further innovation. in the framework we propose (see figure 1), nine practices are included and clustered into two major groups: regenerative co-creation practices (i.e. co-vision, co-conception of ideas, co-design, co-prototyping, co-production and co-promotion) intensify the strategic part of innovation to facilitate the implementation of the resolve framework (emf, 2015); and operative co-creation practices (i.e. co-maintenance, co-consumption, and co-sense) provide implementation strategies, balancing top-down municipal power and bottom-up efforts from the private and public sectors within the regional area. figure 1: circular city co-creation design framework, adapted from the resolve framework (emf, 2015). this framework generates potential circular economy activities, drawing co-creation design methods to inspire further innovation and boost circular economy imaginaries in cities. while previous research and municipal reports stress the importance of a collaborative manner and partnership, a feasible and thorough examination that can be adapted to different geographical scales is overlooked. nine co-creation practices were grouped into two categories. to intensify the strategic part for further implementation, six regenerative co-creation practices were discerned. co-vision refers to a clear vision shared by stakeholders in line with the city’s comprehensive future strategy. as with ljubljana’s experience, multiple stakeholders 82 have been involved in realising a sustainable urban future. co-conception of ideas refers to two or more actors collaborating on concept innovation; two typical examples can be seen from glasgow and brussels. co-design is a creative process that refers to two or more actors sharing their respective design visions when co-creating solutions. an iconic example of large-scale co-design is the district of jätkäsaari in helsinki. co-prototyping describes how two or more actors jointly collaborate to propose innovative solutions (services or technologies) and run in a flexible and co-creative way with physical mock-ups or service rehearsals (selloni, 2017), such as helsinki’s agile piloting programme. co-production describes how two or more actors collaborate jointly in public service delivery. for instance, in the buiksloterham district in amsterdam, where the circular neighbourhood action plan is implemented, a set of resources is available for residents and developers to translate higher-level goals into everyday activities. co-promotion is described as two or more actors collaborating on a specific product or brand’s promotional activities. as a unique example, the title of european green capital has significantly strengthened ljubljana’s recognition worldwide and upgraded the city’s brand. furthermore, three operative co-creation practices provide implementation strategies, balancing top-down municipal and bottom-up efforts from the private and public sector. co-maintenance indicates two or more actors sharing either the maintenance service or a core product or service. repair cafés and other maintenance centres are the most common examples in the cases examined. co-consumption involves collaboration during usage, as actors employ their resources (physical, social or cultural), individually or collectively, when co-consumers determine and enhance their own consumption experiences. for instance, the city of gothenburg consists of an inspiring mix of sharing services (part of the smart map project) initiated by companies and civil society. co-sense practices, which are widespread in amsterdam, helsinki and glasgow, denote two or more actors collaborating on using daily and readily accessible technology to detect and collect data. since these three co-creation practices depend heavily on the contextual resources’ characteristics, it is essential that actors who have deep knowledge and understanding of local resources are included in the discussion. overall, grounded on tangible examples, the circular city co-creation design framework (figure 1) provides city stakeholders (mainly the municipality) with a concrete method of performing co-creation initiatives. concluding remarks this paper describes co-creation as a practical approach in circular cities, focusing on different co-creation initiatives. case studies allow the identification of the implementation of recommended circular economy co-creation practices in urban systems and a selection of actors and tools to take into consideration. the circular city co-creation design framework provides a design approach to apply co-creation activities in circular cities. regenerative co-creation practices (i.e. co-vision, co-conception of ideas, co-design, coprototype, co-production and co-promotion) intensify the strategic part of generating ideas to facilitate the implementation of the resolve framework inside cities. conversely, operative co-creation practices (i.e. co-maintenance, co-consumption and co-sense) provide implementation strategies and balance topdown municipal efforts and bottom-up trials from the private and public sectors. a growing body of research shows the contribution of design towards the implementation of circular economy strategies. frameworks, tools and strategies are developed from the design field to scale up these circular economy initiatives (fleischmann, 2020; mcaloone & pigosso, 2017; wastling et al., 2018) from the local level to regional and national ones. part of the design nature emphasises a participatory manner, since it has widened its practice from co-design with staff and users to collective design by all actors (vink et al., 2020). design approaches, such as systemic design, transformation design and transition design, embed futurist qualities, including transformative capacity (burns et al., 2006; irwin, 2015; jones, 2018; sangiorgi, 83 2011), which are required in the transformation process to realise a future-proof city. this also means that co-creation processes that involve multiple stakeholders at various levels and with diverse competencies are part of such a transformation. in this perspective, designers can contribute to advancing such processes more than facilitating, envisioning and supporting. the framework we proposed provides detailed cocreation forms based on actual initiatives; it helps this transformation process in realising a future-proof city. nevertheless, it could encounter practical issues when applied to various cities. previous research has already pinpointed the difficulty and limitation of collective co-creation work, considering the time and effort devoted. furthermore, when projects are transferred from designers to local communities, it is difficult to maintain the same quality and aesthetics of the artefacts or services. all the above issues reflect the obstacles to putting co-creation into practice. this co-creation circular city framework has been developed to inform what variables and alternatives can be chosen and implemented when applying co-creation methods at the municipality level. however, a few restrictions were identified in this research. first, this co-creation circular city framework remains exploratory, as further validation from policymakers and participants in a broad circular economy discussion is needed. second, the effectiveness of this framework is hard to assess, as the degree of urban sustainability cannot be evaluated. third, the circular economy is still in the developing phase, and the resolve framework that we used as a reference model in this framework does not entirely fit the urban context. it is also unknown whether the circular cities we analysed will become genuinely circular, although they had proven outstanding achievements and grounded long-term plans. besides, while we evenly choose samples from the clusters of advanced, in progress and newcomers cities, these municipal samples are not dynamic enough. they are limited within the european context, including relatively prosperous cities concerning educational, financial and social development. this framework outlines an open scenario in which each of the phases and co-creation categories accompanying the transformation towards circularity needs to be further explored in practice from a design perspective. further research may be conducted on this issue from a systemic view and at the international level. to generate systemic change globally, improved coordination across multiple levels of government is required. innovation in the circular economy requires a systemic approach where authorities must act as key facilitators, stimulating co-creation initiatives with key actors. it is essential to promote new models and integrate alternative sources where people can actively participate in the path towards a sustainable urban future. both capacity building and knowledge sharing are crucial for fostering systemic innovation processes. while there is much work to be done, there is also a clear need to build on existing knowledge developed from design fields. references åkesson, m., skålén, p., edvardsson, b., & stålhammar, a. 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(2022). an ecology of media, technology and design. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(1), 17-30. 18 an ecology of media, technology and design umut tasaa ayildiz technical university, istanbul, 34220, turkey. utasa@yildiz.edu.tr abstract it is a mediated experience through designed artefacts, systems and environments that human beings relate to the earth. the already transformative effect of this mediated existence has accelerated sharply with digitalization. in this research, we take the dichotomies of nature/culture and human/environment and the consequent miscalibration between human intentions and ecological results as the root cause of the current ecology and mind crisis, and we approach the situation as a ‘design failure’. we intend holistically to propose a conceptual design guideline, as a contemplation tool to be able to ‘think like a mountain,’ which proposes a set of common principles that healthy ecosystems are supposed to carry. keywords: mediation, digital technologies, design, systems approach, ecology introduction: a deep and digital media ecology being human comes along with designing media, which in turn designs the way we relate to the world around us. human beings experience the world through mediation and mediated environments, be it language or technologies. this is also the source of the so-called nature/culture dichotomy. through this dualistic epistemology, nature is comprehended as a body of entities to control, manipulate, utilize and liberate from, and technologies mediate this externalization and transformation of nature into industrialized cities, artefacts and culture (stuart 2007, pp. 418-419). david abram invites us to an embodied understanding of the phenomenon: “today our relation to the enfolding earth is filtered through a dense panoply of technologies – from air conditioners that mask the heat, to electric lights that hide the night, from capsuled automobiles that hustle us hither and yon to earbuds and headsets whose self-enclosed sounds eclipse the layered silence of the land, blotting out the hum of bees and the whooshing wind whose voice swells and subsides into the belly of that silence.” (abram, 2010, p. 263) considering our mediated relation to the planet and the members of our species, what we see consequently is a world in ecological crisis. this is not only an environmental, but also a ‘mind’ crisis. it has almost been a century since bateson (2000) took his bold steps towards an understanding of ‘an ecology of mind’, bringing together ecology, anthropology, evolutionary studies, and cybernetics from a ‘systems’ perspective; yet the world seems to be getting further and further away from this vision. what is the role of mediation in this? pioneer ecologist eugene p. odum states that design practices affect the whole of human civilization in the hierarchy of society and environment, and ‘a holistic approach is necessary when dealing with complex systems such as human civilization’ (1997, p. 315). design, however, is a field that is inclined either to exert anthropocentric values or to follow the ‘value-free’ discourse of science and technology. considering the effect range of design practices and assuming that there is a mind and ecology crisis, we focus in this research on the design of mediated environments, the artefacts that mediate our every bit of experience from a normative ecological perspective. 19 every artefact that has come to be invented is an embodiment of technology. the change that technology brings is ecological and thus holistic, as it not only adds a new value to the system but also changes the whole relational structures of the body, mind, society and environment (postman, 1993, p. 18). although this fact encompasses even most ‘primitive’ tools, such as glasses or a cane, the process has accelerated sharply with the advent of digital technologies. over the last decades, digitalization seems to be overtaking life so much so that even most basic daily practices become embedded with them and gain this aspect of interactivity. as of today, we do know that “to design digital artefacts is to design people’s lives” (löwgren & stolterman, 2007, p. 1). these are meta-technologies or meta-media with the capability to change it all (lauria, 2001). the transformations that would take decades and even centuries after the invention of each technology now take place only in years. the boundaries between the body and artefacts have blurred, and digital media, which is ubiquitous and pervasive, has become more than extensions of man (mcluhan, 1962). apple designer jonathan ive, one of the most prominent designers of our age, however, declared during his knighthood ceremony that they ‘don't spend much time thinking about [their] impact’ on the modern world (the guardian, 2012). and this was an argument yet limited within the scope of the human world. in the world of computer technologies and interaction design, environmental impacts are mostly regarded separately from social/physiological/cognitive impacts of design. being one of the prominent causes of environmental crisis, the miscalibration between human intentions and ecological results is a design failure, and the solution is ‘better design’ (orr, 2002, 14). if a better design is the design that is calibrated to ecology, then we need to shift the mindset of designers so that they can think ecologically. the term ecology here refers both to environmental ecologies around planetary ecosystems and to the holistic and inter-related systematics that these ecosystems run. thus, it refers to the law, the logos of such systems from a systems theory perspective. as designers and scholars, we need tools to be utilized right at the design stage, so that we can foresee the vision of the future that our designs contribute to, from an ecological perspective. aldo leopold (1968, p. 129) proposes the statement ‘thinking like a mountain’ as a metaphor for the holistic thought process of ecological view. this research, accordingly, focusing on the strategies that planetary ecologies have brought up from an evolutionary perspective, aims to reveal the characteristics of a healthy (eco)system, be it in a mountain or cybernetics. a guideline will be presented with those characteristics as heuristics, as a tool for ‘thinking like a mountain’ in human terms, for designing interactive media and technologies and for a holistic contemplation of occupational ethics. background: ecological approaches to the design of digitally mediated environments ecological notions approach although the very roots of media technologies can be considered cybernetics, let alone ecological thinking, holistic systems thinking has been a rather recent approach in the design of digitally mediated environments. the earliest ecology-related concept that played a prominent role in the field was gibson’s ecological psychology, with the best-known and most common adoption being the concept of ‘affordances’ (norman, 1988). in the frameworks that have been proposed more recently, complex configurations of people, interactive systems and artefacts (with digital technologies embedded in them) surrounding the environment and practices and values of the people in that context are interpreted as ecology in themselves. some of the notions that these ecological perspectives propose are (1) product/device/artefact 20 ecologies, (2) information/interaction/service ecologies, (3) ubiquitous ambient ecologies and (4) personal/user ecologies. although we can see several technology or process-centered notions, these perspectives can be broadly addressed as either ‘artefact-centered’ or ‘user-centered’. these approaches take ecological notions metaphorically and out of the environmental context, and the common research question behind them is ‘how to adopt ecological notions in settings of human-artefact interactions’ (blevis et al., 2015; raptis et al., 2014). environmental design approach when we shift our focus from the artefacts, humans and their mediated environments to the environmental issues, earth ecologies and a broader selection of design fields, including architectural, industrial and urban design, we come across the fields of sustainability, environmental design, regenerative design and so forth. these eco-design notions, contrary to the previously mentioned ecological approaches, are either eco-centric or still anthropocentric, with the understanding of the human as a species that cannot survive if the planet fails. there is a huge literature and background with distinct perspectives behind these. some of the common and key concerns from our point of view are product life cycle, energy consumption, green materials and community. as for the design of digital and interactive mediated environments and new technologies, just recently a growing community has emerged with environmental concerns and an interest in environmental design. following the fields of environmental informatics or eco-informatics, the common research questions behind these are how to make interaction designers aware of environmental implications of their design decisions to contribute to designing more sustainable products, and/or how informatics can increase our preparedness for ‘future of scarcity’ scenarios (blevis et al., 2015; raptis et al., 2014). bringing together two approaches in this research, we are interested in the world vision, the mindset that our designs contribute. our research question is how an interactive media design product could behave as (part of) a healthy ecosystem itself. our approach is neither human nor artefact-centered; we hold the planet-wise concerns of the eco-design approach. mediated environments are situated on the planet not only physically but also as a part of the interaction network. what kind of interaction, experience and attitude a design artefact or system asks from a user-human is quite interrelated with the behavioral and even spiritual patterns that are exhibited by the user-human as they interact with another species of the planet. ‘an interaction designer takes part in creating a dynamic gestalt’, argue löwgren and stolterman (2007, p. viii), comparing interaction design with performing arts rather than architecture and industrial design. ecology is about relations. our designs not only contribute to the material cycles like product life, energy, waste and feed cycles of the earth, but also behavioral, relational, perceptual and spiritual cycles and transactions in between all. thus, we intend to propose another eco-design guideline for designers, yet focusing on not the materialized discussions but the minds, and along with it we also intend to transfer ecological notions into the design context, yet without losing the ‘earthly’ context of ecology itself. guideline: a humble step to an ecology of a mountain’s mind “…i picked up a vague mystical feeling that we must look for the same sort of processes in all fields of natural phenomena – that we might expect to find the same sort of laws at work in the structure 21 of a crystal as in the structure of society, or that the segmentation of an earthworm might be comparable to the processes by which basalt pillars are formed.” (bateson, 2000, p. 74) to take this step, as an attempt to unearth the thinking patterns of a mountain, we delved into a list of distinct but inter-related fields of nature, poetry, science, philosophy, politics, design and media, all of which have an environmental/ecological stake. we analyzed the proposed ‘solution patterns’ and came up with a conceptual model that first categorizes and then unites all solutions as the requisite principles of a healthy system. in the following section, we summarize our guideline, which consists of six concepts. these can be elaborated as both guiding principles for designing and criteria for evaluating design. each concept has three defining parameters to be used as a list of heuristics. the parameters are presented in the final paragraph of each concept and figure 1. we invite the readers to contemplate these six concepts, the relational structure they constitute and the vision they paint overall. we suggest a simplified visual representation of our principles, their mottos and parameters as in figure 1 to accompany the discussion below. image 1: ecological principles for design. patterns: find and utilize them natural forms, structures, processes, behaviors and interactions are all woven by repetitive patterns and strategies. these prominent patterns speak in mathematics, geometry and rhythm. cycles and spirals are 22 among the most common patterns from plant structures to the activity patterns of animals, a hawk skydiving into its prey for instance, from storms to oceans, from galaxies to nature’s time of seasons. rhythm in terms of self-similarity or modular repetitions are also among the ‘the patterns which connect’ all living beings from a crystal to society (bateson, 2000). fractals (as in tress, mushroom, broccoli etc.) are a specific implementation of this pattern. the mountain asks the designer to begin by asking and observing how nature would solve this. the reason nature displays similar patterns as strategies and why local and traditional cultures have utilized patterns so much in their art and culture, is because ‘these are the ones that have proved successful’ over millions of years of evolution (orr, 2002, p. 38). artificial modern systems, on the other hand, which are mostly linear and hierarchical, represent an unsustainable world vision that is bound to end (orr, 2002, p. 162). what if the first iteration of the macintosh had shipped, lanier asks (2010, p. 13), in which the whole computer experience was designed on a completely contrary metaphor of a singular structure without a hierarchical file/folder system? when we go with nature, not against it, we then realize there is indeed no problem in nature, but only knowledge and solutions. a taproot weed in barren land may not be a problem to be solved by using force and removing it. information about the argillaceous soil whispers the solution that one should first heal the soil, otherwise one can only grow taproot plants here. to integrate the ‘patterns which connect’ in your design, get equipped with the proven wisdom of nature, by tracking the flows in natural processes and relational transactions. specifically, be aware of and utilize cycles, and let your design beat it by rhythms through repetitions and self-similarities. inter-connectedness: connect, complement and integrate the inter-relatedness of all and unity as such is the first principle of ecology. in cybernetics, as in biology and ecology, holistic systems are woven not by singular entities (nodes) but by the relations and interactions (edges) in between them (bateson, 2000, p. 316). how we see the world changes how we relate to it. local and indigenous cultures perceive the world as a network of relations where every living or non-living being is related to each other in a reciprocal responsibility (orr, 2002, p. 10). a summary of this principle is mitákuye oyás’iŋ, the sacred phrase of the indigenous lakota people of north america, which is translated to ‘all my relations’ or ‘all are related’. a law execution practice that embodies this principle, as narrated by the cultural anthropologist michael wesch (2010), is a practice by a remote indigenous culture in the rainforest of papua new guinea, in which ‘the relationships’ are brought to the court instead of individuals, with the intent to restore the relations, not to punish individuals. this indeed is an approach in harmony with ecology, for the unit of survival is not the species in a bloody competition but the common habitat in which species are interdependent with each other (odum, 1997, p. 200; bateson, 2000, p. 332). the predator, for instance, by hunting the old, the sick and the weak, controls the population of the prey animal, prevents over-grazing and maintains the health of the herd. this is part of the knowledge that aldo leopold (1968, p. 129) had read in the eyes of the wolf he killed, part of the wisdom that only those who think like a mountain can hold (odum, 1997, p. 193). the mountain knows that the human is not in the environment but a part of its relational total-field (naess, 1973, p. 95). 23 a permaculture designer does not settle with the observation of individual entities. in accord with gestalt’s ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’ principle, the relations are observed and designed, as in the case of building a coop so that it could also provide heating for the house or planting unions of different vegetables that complement each other’s mineral or water necessities (mollison, 1994, p. 5). the mountain has witnessed that anything is hitched to everything else in the universe (muir, 1997, p. 91). the ecological design begins with the realization of the ubiquitous inter-connectedness around us. in your designs, implement a network of wholeness where parts do not compete but cooperate for integration over fragmentation and for harmony over hegemony (lyle, 1996, p. 39; orr, 2002, p. 29). polyculture: embrace multiplicity and creativity at the margins contrary to the evolutionary procedure that requires the organism to regulate itself according to the environment, human beings organize their environment and create monoculture ecosystems. the disappearance of almost all non-human species in urban environments, fields that grow only one type of crop, bacteria cultures and mice colonies in laboratories and many other monoculture investments are all driven by technological progress. these domestic species, however — controversially argued to include modern humans, too — are not suitable for evolutionary survival (bateson, 2000, pp. 446-453; orr, 2002, pp. 114-115; shiva, 1993). city culture recalls diversity. however, when this diversity is distributed and diffused into the city texture without context, it homogenizes, as in the case ‘when many colors are mixed, in many tiny, scrambled bits and pieces, [and] the overall effect is grey’ (alexander et al., 1977, pp. 42-50). to prevent this homogenization, alexander et al. propose a mosaic distribution with many local centers of sub-cultures (1977, pp. 42-50). as well as preventing assimilation, this is necessary also for the edge-effect to take place, like in a coral reef where two distinct existences intersect, and hallmark ecology emerges out of this synergy (mollison, 1994, pp. 28). large margins for transitions, frontiers and interfaces increase resilience. as for media and technology, one of the two remarkable aspects is the dominance of seeing and visuality in sensory perception. human beings have lost their primitively more inclusive olfactory, auditory, and tactile sensual capabilities mostly to the eye, which, by creating subject/object dichotomy, has externalized the experience of the world (mcluhan, 1962, pp. 28-29). monotechnic is the other underlined problem as in the case of the medium of the car, which does not leave space for other types of transportation, or in the case of smartphones, which, by bringing them together in it, has assimilated many other ‘old’ media (mumford, 1993, pp. 235-239). the mountain is plural. from steep sides to vast highlands, from barren canyons to fertile valleys, from hidden caves to sharp peaks, from meadows to trees and from wolves to bees, the mountain contains so many. for polyculture, aim for diversity in every area from technology to sensual perception, a mosaic of heterogeneous distribution of these varieties and an emphasis on the edge-effect in between. context: internalize your own space and time in cybernetics, the fact that the relation of every node to the larger systems around it is different from the relation of other nodes to the same system, is context (bateson, 2000, pp. 332). a letter in a word, a word in a sentence, a sentence in a text and all other content is meaningful only in a context and ‘context is the precursor to communication’ (bateson, 2000, pp. 408). 24 time and space are two variables of context and, ecologically speaking, every situation or transaction is bound to its own time and space. the biological and social rhythms of beings that think like a mountain are integrated with the cyclic clocks of nature. their time ticks simultaneously with their heartbeats, and their space is the muddy land underneath their feet. both are hardwired in and cannot be comprehended separately from their momentary experience. for local communities, the land is not a commodity but an entity that embodies the souls and the memories of their ancestors, the past and the future of their children, their identity and culture (alexander, 1977, p. 37; orr, 2002, p. 11;). whereas the ethical, political and economic protocols of locality inherently limit and prohibit the damage that a community can cause to their ecosystems, remoteness opens up the way to ‘tyranny’ (odum, 1997, p. 303; orr, 2002). the modern human, on the other hand, perceives time and space as external, linear and quantified concepts and abstracts them through maps, clocks and calendars. from ambient to mobile, contextdependent design in smart systems has been a concept on the rise. with the advent of sensory, biofeedback and location-aware technologies, the spatial, temporal, physiological and/or environmental situation of a user can be tracked very easily. yet, this abstracted and information-processed context paradoxically separates people from the real time and space they inhabit, when the user experiences a place as ‘mere coordinates’, rather than a ‘meaningful existential locale’ (vollrath, 2016). ‘the map is not the territory’, and it can only represent reduced and quantified information about the land, which is why our relationship with the map vs the land must have different ethics (bateson, 2000, p. 408; mollison, 1994, p. 34). in what time does a transaction occur between a human organism that is based on continuous sensorymotor and cognitive processes that have to be synchronized precisely in time and a computer that is based on discrete, asynchronous and timeless events (lanier, 2010, pp. 11-12; varela et al., 1993; lakoff & johnson, 1999)? the remedy to moral, behavioral and economic failures of information technologies may be in the fact that in nature every creative process including evolution is bound to the local context (lanier, 2010, p. 138) and to spatiality and temporality in unity with momentary experience. design for real people in their real context and consider their unique ‘season’ that abounds in the physiological cycles and rhythms of both themselves and the earth and their own ‘place’ in the environment that they are situated in and out. quality, less is more, and you know it defining intrinsic qualities such as intelligence or excellence of phenomena through quantities has been in favor since the dawn of modernity. this has led to the perception that the value or goodness of phenomena increases by numbers. development, progress and acceleration (the more, the faster, the better) have been economic and political reflections of this paradigm shift. however, on a planet with finite resources, no phenomenon can grow infinitely without damaging its environment. and quantities are not proper tools to define organisms and their interactions in ecological, biological or cybernetic systems. form-wise, relational and pattern-wise qualities are prior; ‘sometimes small is beautiful,’ and both biological and social systems have optimum ranges (bateson, 1979). small scale and locality bring virtue by limiting the scale of the damage that humans can do. for instance, not only human beings but also other organisms and processes in nature release toxins. the latter do this, 25 however, in very small numbers and in a closed-circuit system, which is why theirs are ignorable as opposed to the human-driven toxic waste problem. technologies both connect and alienate by scaling up time and space. the automobile, which promised to bring people closer, has wiped the human scale out of urban design by scaling them up in metal bubbles and alienated them from each other, the city texture and the land. high-rise buildings, similarly, have separated habitats from hearing, smelling, experiencing and participating in the street life below (alexander et al., 1977; mumford, 1993, pp. 235-239). as for information technologies, from wisdom to knowledge, to information and to data, the rise of the communication age has freed information from spatial and temporal contexts that are bounded by the human scale. we are exposed daily to a flood of information of which speed is before its content. and its waters are shallow because information under-represents reality (lanier, 2010, p. 132). another bell rings for the myth of crowd wisdom, that enough quantity will turn into quality, and its duality that trolling and intended harm to others are on the rise. if ‘[q]uality is the response of an organism to its environment’ (pirsig, 2000, p. 254), what kind of a response these high-speed new media environments trigger in us is a game-changer. the ‘bigness’ of a mountain comes from its age-old time. indeed, it is so slow that it is as small as its time permits. time and space are abundant in quality and wisdom. even modernists have come to know multum in parvo as ‘less is more’ when it comes to design solutions. carry this motto to a broader context, as sometimes small is beautiful, slow solutions are the resilient ones, and only low-definition channels can convey wisdom. autonomy: self-sufficiency is freedom, be free and free others generated from auto, i.e. ‘self’ and nomos, i.e. ‘law’ in ancient greek, the simplest definition of autonomy is self-governance, which requires decentralization and horizontal reorganization of once unilateral and external power structures. the distribution of control, power, wealth and knowledge is inherent in ecological organizations like local cultures, and in cybernetics no component can exert unilateral power on others as a built-in rule (bateson, 2000, p. 315; lyle, 1996; orr, 2002, pp. 114-115). the natural or cultivated sustenance of all autonomous systems depends on an internal organization of interconnected input and output variables in balance, so as not to become toxic by exceeding threshold values. complex cybernetic systems are homeostatic, i.e. self-corrective through ‘governing loops’ that not only constantly check and keep the variables in between optimum threshold values, but also dynamically prevent habits from occurring due to a variable getting stuck in a static value and becoming hard-programmed (bateson, 2000, p. 511; bateson, 1979, pp. 26-73). the control mechanisms and limits that are intrinsic in small-scale and local systems may have to be introduced specifically in digital systems. in design, limits do not restrict; on the contrary, we need them as they free us (orr, 2002, p. 122). another parameter that increases autonomy is redundancy, which requires every component to have a backup in the system. in permaculture this is formularized in two ways; (1) each element has as many functions as possible, (2) each function is supported by as many elements as possible (mollison, 1994, p. 6). autonomous systems and beings are instantaneous like the sun and do not ‘steal’ from the future. they limit transactions with the environment, and non-renewable resources are only consumed for evolutionary transformations ‘as a chrysalis in metamorphosis must live on its fat’ (bateson, 2000, p. 504). 26 from distributed and decentralized organizations to self-governing loops, these mechanisms are most possible and efficient in a closed-circuit system. because ‘[o]nly the autonomous can plan autonomy, organize for it, create it’ (bey, 1991, p. 102), be like a mountain, as there is no better matching metaphor for autonomy but the mountain. how to use this guideline despite carrying the same ‘patterns which connect’, in nature there are various strategies for incorporating them. it is the same with this guideline. the strategies and methods that would work best depend on the context of the (design) problem. this multiplicity of strategies is supposed to be a polyculture. due to its qualitative nature, we cannot present an objective and fast-proven generic method. that is why we propose ‘contemplation’ as the first method to consider. pattern observance and use of natural patterns in forms, structures and problem solving methods. context socio-cultural, historical or ecological context. tempo-spatial awareness and locality. cycles non-linear, circular, spiral patterns. spatiality intrinsic spatiality, place bound experience. rhythm self-similar, rhythmic, fractal structures. temporality cyclic time (age, season, etc.) intrinsic to experience. solutions long-term and eco-mimetic solutions. locality ecological context and local belonging. polyculture support variety, multiplicity and encounters. quality quality over quantity, small, slow and wise solutions. diversity diversity of languages, media, and culture. small scale smaller and human scale. mosaic non-uniform and heterogeneous distribution of polyculture. slow solutions slower solutions. sensory all-sensory awareness rather than dominance of visuality. low-definition low-definition and contextual information flow. edge effect stress on marginal, edge areas where encounters occur. wisdom consideration of higher systems, wisdom over data. inter-connectedness holistic approach and focus on the relationships between the parts. autonomy self-governing closed systems with distributed/decentralized power structures network weaving relations between system nodes/subjects. decentralization horizontal and decentralized organization of control and power complementation stress on not competitive but complementary relations. self-governance self-regulating control and limit mechanisms. wholeness ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’. closed-circuit a closed-circuit systematization of product / service life cycle. table 1: quick reference card for principles as design heuristics. the concepts are presented one by one due to format issues; however, there is no linearity among them. each one is an autonomous and self-proclaimed characteristic, yet also a part of the guideline as an interconnected network. as an example of this relational structure, observe in figure 2 that there is a balance of ‘singularity vs. plurality’ in the system maintained by two relations. the first is the ‘dependency/inter-dependency balance 27 between interconnectedness and autonomy, and the second is the ‘multiplicity/essentiality’ balance between polyculture and quality. we chose to begin with patterns and cycles and end with autonomy and its cyclic closed circuits so that we could turn back to our starting point and close this cycle. patterns are the beginning of all and context is our base. figure 2: a relational reflection on principles. conclusion, many ecologies “single and free like a tree, and in fraternity-like a forest” (ran, 1966) according to abram, ‘the glimmering stars of the night sky appeared much closer before the invention of the telescope (2010, p. 154). yet, is the telescope to blame? it is a fact that an ever-expanding complex of technology is mediating between our bodies and the earth. contrary to indigenous people who talked ‘to’ the earth, in our mediated world we talk ‘about’ it from a distanced, hygienic and synthetic comfort zone (abram, 2010, p. 188). with the advent of digitalization, which imposes its interaction networks, the 28 interfaces between our bodies and the earth have become pervasively ubiquitous. however, a purist ‘anti-technology’ stance in eco-philosophers ‘seeks to unravel the traditional dualism between nature and society, may contrarily be serving to strengthen this dualistic epistemology’ (stuart, 2007, p. 422). pessimism in the face of media and technologies has roots in overall disappointment with humanity and modernization, beyond media and design. according to horkheimer and adorno (2002), the only thing that man tries to learn from nature is how to use techne to dominate nature and other men. according to the mainstream evolutionary theory as depicted in the dawn of man scene in 2001: a space odyssey (kubrick, 1968), indeed it is. violence and dominion were the first actions of the primate beings that awakened to the use of a tool: a bone as a weapon. yet, a weapon is not always a ‘weapon’; sometimes it is language. depending on the point of view, the telescope does make the glimmering stars much closer to some. depending on how it is designed, in the heideggerian sense, it can reveal a hidden truth like the poiesis of a seed sprouting or a poem being written. the watermill brings forth the flow of the river and utilizes its energy without ever manipulating its course and intensity, contrary to the hydroelectric power plant, which changes the ontology of the river such that the river may stop being a river (heidegger, 1977). as another instance, let us consider the horse. ‘if the horse is your primary mode of transportation, there are some things that you cannot do’ (orr, 2002, pp. 5-6). you cannot farm more than you need, for instance, you cannot desire to take over your neighbour’s land, you cannot blow up a building and escape, you cannot escape the time and space of your land (orr, 2002, pp. 5-6). because the horse limits the size, the speed and the power you can have and control, you have to become an active observer and part of the time and processes of your land. yet the horse is not a human tool but a living being that knows how to think like a mountain. what we need in the bottom line is a design that metaphorically behaves like a horse, as in the case of the watermill or the telescope. each is a perfect example to meet our guiding ecological principles of patterns, interconnectedness, polyculture, context, quality and autonomy. the purpose of this research was to seek an ecological approach for designing interactive media and technologies that contribute not to the cause but the relief of the current mind and ecology crisis. in the guideline we propose, we seek answers that come from ‘the patterns which connect’ and which might naturally answer the problems of much other design and life-related fields. although ‘blue mountains are constantly walking’ among us, they can still be hard to climb (snyder, 2010, pp. 110-111). if we have the telescope or some other poetic media, however, we may get closer to the glimmering stars. acknowledgements i would like to thank özge sevindir and my students for their voluntary contributions in the research phase. i am also grateful to simge esin orhun and âli yurtsever, without whom this work would not be possible. references abram, d. (2010). becoming animal. pantheon books. alexander, c., silverstein, m. & ishikawa, s. (1977). a pattern language: towns, buildings, constructions. oxford university press. bateson, g. (1979). mind and nature: a necessary unity. dutton. 29 bateson, g. (2000). steps to an ecology of mind. the university of chicago press. bey, h. (1991). t.a.z.: the temporary autonomous zone, ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism. autonomedia. blevis, e., bødker, s., flach, j., forlizzi, j., jung, h., kaptelinin, v., nardi, b. & rizzo, a. (2015). ecological perspectives in hci: promise, problems, and potential [conference paper]. 33rd annual acm conference extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems, new york (pp. 2401-2404). the guardian. (2012). apple designer jonathan ive receives knighthood. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/may/23/apple-designer-jonathan-ive-knighthood heidegger, m. (1977). the question concerning technology and other essays. harper. holladay, r. (2013). to hear this music you have to be there [video]. ted conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/ryan_holladay_to_hear_this_music_you_have_to_be_there_literally. horkheimer, m., & adorno, t. w. (2002). dialectic of enlightenment: philosophical fragments. stanford university press. katz, e. (1993). artefacts and functions: a note on the value of nature. environmental values, 2, 223-232. kubrick, s. (director). (1968). 2001: a space odyssey [film]. warner bros. lakoff, g., & johnson, m. (1999). philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. basic books. lanier, j. (2010). you are not a gadget: a manifesto. alfred a. knopf. lauria, r. (2001). in love with our technology: virtual reality. convergence, 7(4), 30-51. leopold, a. (1968). a sand county almanac. oxford university press. light, a., & wallace, a. (2005) ‘not out of the woods: preserving the human in environmental architecture’. environmental values, 14(1), 3-20. löwgren, j., & stolterman, e. 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(2010). learning in new media environments [video]. tedxnyed conference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwycatynyhw. 44 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. nurturing public value for community resilience. a tentative discussion around co-production of narratives through a civic design approach vanessa monna, yasuyuki hayama published online: may 2022 to cite this article: monna, v., & hayama, y. (2022). nurturing public value for community resilience. a tentative discussion around co-production of narratives through a civic design approach. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(1), 44-53. 45 nurturing public value for community resilience. a tentative discussion around co-production of narratives through a civic design approach vanessa monnaa, yasuyuki hayamab apolitecnico di milano, milan, italy. vanessa.monna@polimi.it bpolitecnico di milano, milan, italy. yasuyuki.hayama@polimi.it abstract within a society characterised by growing complexity, communities attempt to address wicked problems (rittel & webber, 1973), which impact how people live together. the concept of community resilience has been discussed in public policy and social-ecological systems studies for communities to be prepared for emergencies. recently, evolutionary resilience (davoudi, 2012) has been proposed in the context of communities facing wicked problems evolving within uncertain worlds. evolutionary resilience highlights the growing need for flexible adaptation towards more dynamic social change. we argue that nurturing public value could be a strategic approach for taming wicked problems beyond resource control and the capacity for communities to achieve resilience in a rapidly changing society. indeed, the broad literature about public value already implies that it can be properly developed as an outcome of collaboration between public institutions and citizens. however, the processes nurturing public value are still under investigation, especially within design studies. we propose that the co-production of common narratives between public institutions and citizens fruitfully produces public value, by linking design narratives to the interpretive approach tightly associated with the concept of evolutionary resilience. moreover, we suggest that the emerging realm of civic design could be a consistent approach for communities and public institutions to produce and reproduce these kinds of common narratives. keywords: public value, community resilience, evolutionary resilience, sustainability, storytelling, design narratives, civic design complexity within liquid society society is changing, and it is changing rapidly due to the liquid nature of the relationships characterising it (bauman, 2000). all human systems are exposed to unexpected risks and fragilities, which trigger hectic and multifaceted transitions that are increasingly more common, profound and dramatic. these transitions generate a growing complexity requiring creative solutions addressing a high degree of situatedness. within this scenario, we argue that design narratives and civic design can effectively engage with this multilevel complexity, resulting in new resilient communities moving towards sustainability at an environmental, social and economic scale. towards community resilience by nurturing public value community resilience beyond conventional approaches while conventional approaches to resilience have been adopted within emergency preparedness and planning, focusing primarily on resource control and capacity (chubb et al., 2021), the resilience of communities has been discussed in public policy and social-ecological systems studies. scholars in these areas of study commonly understand resilience as the capability of a system to absorb disturbance, experience change and preserve its fundamental functions, structure, and identity (resilience alliance, 2010). 46 since communities are composed of people, community resilience hinges on, yet is not limited to, its people’s relational structure (sang baek et al., 2015). within communities, social bonds are not fixed and continuously evolve, led by diverse trajectories and dynamics of interaction, transformation and adaptation. hence, within the context of communities, the notion of resilience is not conceived as a return to “normality”: it is understood as the capacity of complex socio-ecological systems to transform and adapt with or without external catalysts. davoudi (2012, as cited in monna & auricchio, 2020) refers to this conception of resilience as “evolutionary resilience”. this concept shifts beyond conventional approaches to resilience because transformation may be triggered by “…internal stresses with no proportional or linear relationship between the cause and the effects. this means that small-scale changes in systems can amplify and cascade into major shifts (reflecting edward lorenz's idea of "the butterfly effect") while large interventions may have little or no effects”. (davoudi, 2012). this framework requires constant learning of an evolving and uncertain world, where communities moving towards sustainability need to deal with the indeterminacy of wicked problems. communities addressing complex issues although all the issues a community seeking resilience faces are contextual and ever evolving, many of them impact how people live together and how they experience and give shape to their spaces. since these issues are complex and ill-structured, they acquire the nature of “wicked problems” (rittel & webber., 1973). indeed, they are identified by the following qualities: ● there is no definitive formulation of the problem, since it is understood during the development of a possible solution. each potential solution uncovers new facets of the problem, which require further investigation; ● positing that there is no definitive problem, and there is no conclusive neither right nor wrong solution; ● each solution is a “one-shot operation” and has no given alternative solutions; ● every wicked problem is unique and might be the symptom of another problem; ● around every wicked problem, there are conflicts about its values and objectives. choosing to explain a wicked problem in a certain way determines the nature of the solution. communities engage with the explosive combination of centrifugal and centripetal forces surrounding these issues, seeking to redirect self-interest towards the common good and shared responsibility for “our joint world” (landry, 2017). how do communities engage with these wicked problems? how do they determine what they deem as their common good? taming wicked problems beyond resource control and capacity traditionally, the complexity, dimension and scale of situated wicked problems are a prerogative of the polity, which addresses them through resource control and capacity, putting the accent on a deficit-based approach (chubb & jennings, 2021). however, “taming wicked problems requires crisis leadership that addresses challenges and issues [also] through relationships” (chubb & jennings, 2021). indeed, only through relational structures can a community collectively shape and socially govern its commons (basu et al., 2017; ostrom, 1990), intended not only as a “utilitarian concept but [also as] the moral and political condition of human life” (matei, 2011). in this perspective, “the common good is determined by 47 broadly inclusive dialogue and deliberative processes. citizens are seen as co-creators actively engaged in creating what is good for the public” (stenvall et al., 2022) or, in other words, “public value” (moore, 1995). moore (1995) proposed the concept of public value as the counterpart of shareholder value within public management. initially, this notion advocated for public officials to value public services’ benefits and costs not only according to money “but also in terms of how government actions affect important civic and democratic principles such as equity, liberty, responsiveness, transparency, participation, and citizenship” (kavanagh, 2014). despite this, today, the term is not limited to the public sector, but it broadly relates to the contribution to the common good by any kind of organisation (meynhardt, 2009). moore (1995) suggests considering the entire chain of value production, starting from the inputs, moving to the processes and finally focusing on the impact on stakeholders, which eventually spurs the intended social outcome (kavanagh, 2014). moore (1995) explains the entire chain of public value production through what he refers to as the “strategic triangle” (figure 1). “the model consists of three concepts, public value, legitimising environment, and operational capacity” (salemans & budding, 2021). it illustrates that public value is produced when a strategic action is both given democratic legitimacy, (i.e. it has been supported by the involved community) and is endorsed by an authorising environment, such as a governing board and when an institution has the operational capacity to implement the strategic action adequately. moreover, moore (1995) shows a relation of interdependency among the three elements of the strategic triangle: the more public value is created, the more citizens gain trust in the government, the easier it is for elected officials to obtain resources, and, finally, the simpler it becomes for a governing board to endorse new strategic actions, restarting the feedback loop. in a few words, public value is “about delivering a service that is sustainably valuable” (salemans & budding, 2021). figure 1: public value strategic triangle. adapted from moore, 1995. 48 when a governing board takes decisions concerning wicked problems, its choices “reflect local public values” (stenvall et al., 2022). this means that a community’s resilience is highly influenced by its public values and is considerably grounded in situated relationships. hence, how can public value be nurtured? power of narratives to nurture public value for community resilience to nurture public value, we propose that narratives can be powerful drivers to facilitate and coordinate two components of moore’s strategic triangle (1995), namely “legitimacy and support” and “operational capacity”. through promoting collaborative interactions among public institutions and communities consisting of citizens and diverse types of stakeholders, narratives can generate dynamics and trajectories encompassing shared values. hence, public values generated by common narratives between public institutions and communities function as a solid foundation of a resilient community, since the processes and outcomes are negotiated and shared by potentially all the stakeholders. narratives by design as nurturers of public value narratives have increasingly been addressed in design fields due to their essential properties, which comprise both a human cognitive process (polkinghorne, 1988) and a mode of communication (fisher, 1985, 1987). narrative — a plot of sequential and interconnected events with a beginning, a conclusion and a basic structure — allows humans to use it as a sensemaking currency (fisher, 1985; boje, 1991). its essential properties of being a human cognitive process and a mode of communication (bruner, 1986) allow the conceptual use of narratives in many disciplinary contexts, such as sociology, history, psychology, communication, anthropology, philosophy, business management and design studies (rhodes & brown., 2005). in the field of design study, narratives and storytelling have been studied in creative practice (lloyd & oak, 2018) and from broad dimensional aspects, such as “narratives as competency”, “narratives as process”, and “narratives as artefacts” (hayama et al., 2021). especially in the context of communication design, narratives have been underlined as enablers for the inclusion of people in the social innovation process (ciancia et al., 2014). narratives and stories unlock people’s potential and relationships in participatory design processes by collecting stories, expectations and wishes from the community as tiny tales from everyday life (ciancia et al., 2014). in this sense, narratives and stories can play a significant role in developing a common language and building empathy with people in a specific community context. regarding public value, narratives are considered to develop clear goals and legitimisation by stakeholders (salemans & budding, 2021). salemans and budding (2021) argue that using narratives is a fruitful way to communicate ambitions and results in terms of public value. however, they also warn about the potential risk of influencing management and inducing bias, given the capacity of narratives to convince people (brennan & merkl-davies, 2013; beattie, 2014). in these lines of argument, we suggest that narratives can be potential enablers to generate public values, facilitating the co-creation of social commons among public institutions and communities. a designerly approach can perform effectively as a powerful facilitator to generate common narratives among citizens and different social actors through active engagement, a common language and empathy building. any story consists of three essential elements: “a narrative subject in search of an object, a destinator (an extratextual force, the source of the subjects’ ideology) and a set of forces that either help or hinder the subject in acquiring the desired object” (fiol, 1989). following this pattern, community stories might be structured accordingly: the narrative subject as the citizens or the community; the ultimate object or goal 49 of the narrative as sustainable community development and maintenance; and the destinator as the community and societal environment in which the narrative subject operates. in this context, a designerly approach can facilitate collaboration with communities and peers to set a common ground for discussion, engagement and moving people together. performing the double roles of “storylisteners” and “storytellers” (ciancia et al., 2014), designers can collect potential fragmented stories from community members and organise information in a structured manner. as ahmad and thompson (2009) state, “storytelling as a means to sharing knowledge, building trust, and cultivating identity” could allow communities and public institutions to collect shared knowledge, build trust in each other and develop an intersubjective identity through a participatory approach. consequently, a solid basement of trust and an identity shaped by narratives enable a fruitful ground for democratic legitimacy, a fundamental part of public value. not only do narratives facilitate the generation of democratic legitimacy, but public managers can also use narratives’ benefits to build up another important basement of public value creation, which is the support of an authorising environment. indeed, once a specific public matter is democratically legitimised, public managers can easily align their mission with values articulated by citizens. strongly supported by citizendriven legitimacy, public managers can contextualise their mission on the common narratives and position themself in democratic political discourses. in other words, by relying on common narratives, public managers can easily involve essential stakeholders, such as formal authorities (e.g., the governing board), impacted citizens, especially citizens whose voices are commonly unheard, the media and the broader citizenry, as well as influential individuals outside of formal organisations. from the perspective of moore’s strategic triangle, once democratic legitimacy has been built up, it triggers the community to get easier access to the essential support of public authorities (moore, 1995; kavanagh, 2014). then, the managers of the public institutions who have collaborated with the community can easily access inputs (e.g., money, volunteers). hence, a loop of public value production and amplification would be triggered, since the public institutions and citizens would collaboratively achieve two pillars of the strategic triangle of public value: legitimacy and support and operational capacity. focusing on democratic legitimacy building at the beginning of a shared project would enable public institutions and communities to make the most out of the narratives and storytelling produced to generate public value in an interdependent way, activating a feedback loop. a designerly approach to storytelling and narrative creation could potentially trigger public value generation by achieving a firm foundation of democratic legitimacy towards a specific public issue through collaboration, which unlocks the potential of people and the relationship among all the stakeholders of a community. potential roles of narratives towards community resilience public institutions could use the potential roles of narratives to nurture public value and, thus, develop community resilience. as mentioned above, the capability for a community to tackle complex, wicked problems flexibly, in other words, nurturing evolutionary resilience, is becoming increasingly crucial. since evolutionary resilience emphasises “fluidity, reflexivity, contingency, connectivity, multiplicity and polyvocality” (davoudi & strange, 2008), davoudi (2012) proposes that the “interpretive approach” has good parallels with it. indeed, contrasting with the naturalist-positivist approach, the interpretive approach “considers knowledge to be a matter of understanding rather than an explanation” (davoudi, 2012). certainly, social phenomena diverge from natural ones because they hinge on people's meaningful and intentional actions. hence, instead of explaining the causes of behaviours, social sciences seek the meaning of action, making sense of them individually and on a social scale. 50 within this perspective, narrative as a mode of communication and a mode of knowing is endorsed as an original scientific approach based on “narrative rationality” (bruner, 1986; czarniawska, 2004; fisher, 1987). as narratives are intrinsically “interpretative flexible” (pinch & bijker, 1984), they can be shared with diverse audiences, stimulating multiple ways of thinking and enabling individuals to draw inspiration from concepts, ideas and events concerning their understanding and contexts. in this sense, narratives are considered a boundary object (star & griesemer, 1989). indeed, they are both coherent enough to bring together individuals' expression of different facets of communities and pliable enough to let them draw inferences that fit their unique contexts. according to fisher’s (1987) “narrative paradigm”, human beings are storytelling animals that make sense of their world and their own lives through narrative understanding, as their interpretations of the world. consequently, as a solid interpretative artefact, narrative can have strong potential to develop evolutionary resilience within a community through an interpretive approach. then, how can citizens and public institutions generate common narratives which can function as enablers of nurturing public value towards an evolutionary resilient community? we argue that civic design might be the preferable approach. civic design fostering common narratives even if the notion of civic design is yet to be theoretically clarified within design studies, we agree that civic design “is an approach for inclusive and productive conversations” (we who engage mit, 2020), contributing to “new forms of living together” (disalvo & le dantec, 2017). this means that there is the need to consider new modes of encounter — new ways of working with communities, with government and non-government agencies, with all manner of civil society and even (perhaps especially) with those who work beyond the normal conceptions of what is appropriate of civil action (disalvo & le dantec, 2017). this last point is critical when talking about co-producing narratives that actively involve all the impacted stakeholders, which is crucial for the successful creation of public value. indeed, civic design aims to create a space where, even if unanimity is hardly present if treated as a place in common, diverse voices can be heard, enabling a process resulting in negotiated resilience (harris et al., 2017). this space would allow stakeholders to discuss both the symbols and the structures on which society is based, opening the opportunity to create new common narratives around problems, sparking new publics into being (dewey, 1927; marres, 2005). common narratives could challenge and rethink established ideas that citizens have of themselves. this would transform the situated community’s public value which, potentially, could activate the community towards the open-ended remaking of its governance structures. discussion although the literature about public value has been long-standing, it has barely crossed the field of design studies. we propose an original yet quite raw view on how public value might be nurtured through designerly approaches and processes. specifically, we have bridged the concepts and practices of design narratives and civic design with significant debates around public value management and evolutionary resilience concerning communities. our reflection emphasises that a designerly approach to public value generation is meaningful in terms of legitimisation. indeed, both design narratives and civic design generate inclusiveness through engagement, participation and collaborative actions. these actions contribute to the production of public values resulting in a resilient community hinged on inclusiveness. a limitation of the presented contribution is that it does not clarify how civic design builds common narratives. indeed, the operational framework of civic design is yet to be defined, and it is the subject of ongoing phd research. 51 moreover, we consider an empirical study essential. here we propose a reflection to open a discussion about the designerly opportunities nurturing public value, which are yet to be investigated by design scholars. however, we suggest proceeding with an empirical study grounded in real projects within the design narrative and civic design realms. furthermore, we suggest several research avenues regarding public values and community resilience through a design study point of view. for example, among the many, investigating the broader roles and contribution of design to strategic management in governments (moore, 1995), such as design narrative for strategic sensemaking in governments. conclusion within design studies, the processes enabling the production of public value are yet to be clearly described and framed. the presented reflection brings the approaches and processes of design narratives and civic design into public value management and community resilience debates. this reflection critically considers complex relations between community and state, exploring common narratives nurturing public value as a fundamental agenda for democratic governance. references ahmad, a., & thompson, j. 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(2005). la narrazione come dispositivo conoscitivo ed ermeneutico. m@gm@, 3(3). http://www.analisiqualitativa.com/magma/0303/articolo_01.htm we who engage mit. (2020). the civic design framework report. mit department of urban studies and planning. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1srojezmz5jvdbexewnga0a7bomrdva13/view https://doi.org/10.1007/s10997-021-09596-4 1 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consuming new narratives: second order design fictions as transition objects for planet-centric consumption habits anna bertmark published online: may 2022 to cite this article: bertmark, a. (2022). consuming new narratives: second-order design fictions as transition objects for planet-centric consumption habits. discern: international journal of design0 for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(1), 1-16. 2 consuming new narratives: second order design fictions as transition objects for planet-centric consumption habits anna bertmarka auniversity of brighton, uk. annamy.bertmark@gmail.com abstract the current dominant narratives of endless economic growth are contributing to unsustainable conditions that prevent humans from living within planetary boundaries. many present sustainable alternatives fall short of embodying regenerative and equitable principles, casting doubt on the human capacity for mitigating climate change. this highlights the need for options that redirect the future of consumption. second-order design fictions (sodfs) is a method for reframing our relationship with the entrenched fictions that are part of dominant narratives. these half-familiar, tangible artefacts allow for critical sensemaking that playfully provokes questions around the power structures, values and assumptions that uphold the consumption patterns that we engage in daily. sodfs seek to interfere with consensus and allow observation of observations on how to address tensions between structures of thinking and formulate complexity of reality and possibility. the project builds upon work by dulmini perera, ‘superflux, the liminal space’ and ‘do the green thing’. keywords: sustainable design, second-order design fictions, narratives, artefacts introduction my second-order design fictions (sodfs) relate to speculative planet-centric habits of consumption that both incorporate necessary basic needs (healthcare, energy, water, sanitation, clean air) and what can be deemed as luxuries (hot drinks, fashion, cosmetics). the dandelion latte suite (image 1) provides a potentially locally abundant alternative to the unsustainable and fast-declining supply of tea and coffee (kollipara, 2021). as a discursive artefact, dandelion latte integrates the familiar with the unusual, allowing the continuation of a comforting ritual and synthetic caffeine to provide stimulus, while rejecting threads to historical and modern-time extraction and exploitation of the global south. instead, it points to a local commons, culture and place. the spring-harvested taproots have a sweeter taste than fall-harvested ones, which taste more bitter. an accompanying café menu integrates the actual cost of items into the price, tapping into choice editing and nudging literature for voluntarily changing harmful consumption behaviours (vowles, 2019). the advanced interconnectedness meter (image 2) shows real-time data from your household (catapult energy systems, 2021) and compares it to the city resident average, highlighting the energy and co2e consumption, sequestration and production. an integrated cantril scale happiness meter used to measure citizens’ wellbeing (gallup, 2013), allows users to self-anchor themselves according to their mental state. it is inspired by mathilda tham’s work me to we to world to back again (2022) and her quote “here me is the person, we a unit of collaboration, and world our home, consisting of the ecological system and human-made systems”. the meter provides a wider perspective and sense of co-evolution through which a participant may contribute to and follow the collaborative progress to reduce energy and water use. national veterinary service card & council tax bill for co-evolving mutualism (image 3) imagines a future where the effects generated from inter-species symbiosis and co-evolution are granted greater value and 3 therefore converted into abstract financial metrics to possibly justify their decommodification and the existence of these artefacts. browser warning pop-up for added-friction consumption (image 4) is inspired by warning labels on cigarette packets, seatbelt alarms in cars, do the right thing’s amazero campaign, highlighted by popova (2009), and postcards from the future (postcard futurists, n.d.). this voluntarily installed browser pop-up activates when you enter websites that sell high-carbon services and products (such as easyjet, asos, amazon) and that may also harbour obscure traceability of supply chains, enabling agnotologic or unintentionally harmful consumption. adding friction to a sometimes otherwise frictionless transaction, it informs the customer of the potentially harmful repercussions of their purchase and queries whether they can meet their need for the product or service in an alternative way. to add emotion to an otherwise flat and detached experience, an image depicting the local effects of climate change (to the purchaser) is presented and a high-pitch alarm noise plays until you select your answer. the perceived added anxiety from this experience by the viewer (similarly induced by seatbelt alarms and cigarette packet warnings) can be put in context with the possible precarity and stress felt by the most vulnerable stakeholders in the advertised product’s lifecycle. image 1: dandelion latte suite. 4 image 2: advanced interconnectedness meter. image 3: national vet service card & council tax bill for co-evolving mutualism (derived from a brighton & hove city council tax bill). 5 context the project lies within the context of the urgent need to confront ecological overshoot caused by unsustainable consumption habits in the global north (economist intelligence unit, 2021). although the cause for this issue has been attributed to a growing world population attaining a higher quality of life, scientists believe that it is more pressingly caused by the ecological footprint intensity of inhabitants in high-consuming countries and the unequal distribution of resources, according to the global carbon project (our world in data, 2021). ian gough (2017) proposes three carbon-eliminating strategies to reach climate goals: 1) increasing the eco-efficiency of production and reducing energy demand and emissions, 2) by recomposing consumption using low-carbon services and products and 3) by going towards a steady-state economy through reducing and stabilising levels of consumer demand. recomposing consumption refers to a shift from highto low-carbon goods and services without decreasing general consumption expenditure. he states that the first strategy is currently dominating the climate discourse, as this aligns well with the neoliberal capitalist meme that the most desirable way to gain a better life and to save the planet is through “green” consumerism and sustainable business. this will however not be adequate on its own, due to the embedded emissions of carbon-intensive consumption. the other two strategies are yet to capture the imagination of society, although all three are required to meet the agreed-upon climate goals by 2050. according to lorek et al. (2021), each eu citizen emits 8.2 tco2eq on average per year, compared with the global average of 4.8 tco2eq. to keep within the paris agreement target of a 1.5°c average global temperature limit, individual emissions need to be reduced to 2.5 tco2eq by 2030 and 0.7 tco 2eq by 2050. effectively, each person’s greenhouse gas emissions will need to be halved each decade to keep global warming from having challenging effects on ecosystems and human wellbeing. although a carbon footprint is only one responsibility metric with which to quantify the image 4: browser warning pop-up for added-friction consumption. 6 effects of human impacts on ecosystems, it can mitigate the other pressures on the planet, according to engström et al. (2020). hubacek et al. (2017) argue that climate equity is vital for reaching climate neutrality because it will have the largest impact on the most vulnerable, while high-income groups contribute significantly more to climate change through carbon-intensive activities. the well-being of future generations act (future generations wales, 2022), implemented in wales in 2015, shows the possibility of design justice in public procurement and the notion of the “human right not to harm” through consumption. however, according to prys-hansen and klenke (2021), as the recent cop26 conference showed, the collaborative efforts to reach the goals set out at the recent climate summits are driven by the tensions between different countries’ priorities, capabilities and value systems, which in turn form expectations and responsibility acknowledgements. since the current patterns of production and consumption are unsustainable, as they are tied to short-term economic goals and the goal of perpetual gdp growth, alternative planet-centric paradigms are needed to initiate “1.5-degree lifestyles”. highlighting the role and responsibility that designers hold as creators and “experts” in this regard, peters (2019) states, “design creates culture. culture shapes values. values determine the future. design is therefore responsible for the world our children will live in”. artefacts for enhancing our powers and comforts have become increasingly accessible since the great acceleration, primarily for the nations that have benefitted from global extraction and exploitation, according to steffen et al. (2015). johar and raworth (design council, 2021) observe that living within the ecological carrying capacity will require a distinct set of values for governing transactional activities. the challenge then is to design a future that ensures well-being for all and fair allocation of resources. my drawing (image 5) shows a combination of voros’ futures cone and di giulio and fuchs’ consumption corridor model to illustrate the context and the speculative future “corridor space” where my designed artefacts belong. the futures cone provides a simplified model with which to facilitate exploring ideas about the future. the consumption corridor concept describes the space within which people may get their basic needs met and dwell as they wish within planetary boundaries; it is illustrated by lorek et al. (2021) as having the minimum consumption standards as the floor and the maximum ceiling to equally protect others’ ability to live well. while minimum basic consumption standards are present in many countries to mitigate poverty, tham and fletcher observe that the concept of “less” is the largest provocation associated with the transition to sustainability (cfs+, 2020). i believe this may be also true for implementing rather paternalistic consumption ceilings. while the consumption corridor concept provides opportunities for designing much-needed references for planet-centred consumption narratives, this provocation fosters temptations to veer into “techno-fixes”. the belief that we can consume ourselves out of unsustainable consumption is perhaps the greatest tension and cause of cognitive dissonance. in the present absence of consumption corridors and prevailing climate anxiety amongst young people, according to research by crandon et al. (2022), i believe that design plays a critical role in providing positive references for recomposed consumption. 7 the actual cost and agnotology of consumption despite an increasing awareness among citizens about unsustainable consumerism, scholars have identified several barriers to curbing over-consumption. these can be attributed to the increasingly frictionless nature of hyper-consumption by the perceived normalisation of affluent lifestyles and to the value-action gap, which is the contradiction between values and behaviour. anthropologist graeber (2001) defines values as “the way people represent the importance of their actions to themselves”, which highlights the complexity of human behaviour. also, the ideologically condoned social condition of affluenza, according to denniss (2017, p.10) can be increasingly recognised. it refers to socially and economically privileged citizens’ insatiable pursuit for more and their inability to perceive the consequences of their actions. the harmful impacts of our day-to-day activities can easily be ignored, either knowingly or unknowingly, according to anti-slavery international (n.d.) and true price (n.d.), as the concealment of the actual impact of our demands, considering factors such as social and environmental impacts, benefits the economic growth logic, illustrated by tham and fletcher (cfs+, 2020). agnotology describes the study of culturally generated deliberate ignorance. this framing can be applied to the obscurity with which the products and services that we consume daily are produced and disposed of (see image 6). modern consumption is upheld by obscure supply chains and complex geopolitical market forces which sustain considerable vagueness and knottiness around “who is responsible?”. betancourt (2010) argues that this agnotology allows for the prevention of the possibility of dissent to this system in society, where this question does not need to, nor can, be answered. he posits that agnotologic capitalism is a feature, not a bug, in that it “enables the economy to function as it allows the creation of a "bubble economy”. this poses the question: is it humanly possible to (even imperfectly) know through whom and how all the things we consume come to be? efforts to establish transparency within supply chains of products and services through technology are in their infancy and are yet unviable, as current blockchain technology requires all actors involved in a supply chain to have the means to interact with the system to achieve transparency, according to sunny et al. (2020). as the current discourse within sustainable business management now focuses efforts on shifting the narrative from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism, the possibilities, challenges and limitations that the dominant paradigm offers are being examined. as sustainability is not inherently valued image 5: author’s drawing derived from the futures cone by candy (2010) and hancock and bezold (1994), and the consumption corridor by di gulio and fuchs (2020). 8 in western culture, strategies to shift harmful production processes need to align with companies’ purposes and goals, which are predominantly revenue-based. considering this agnotology of production and consumption and the invisible threads that bind the tight knots that keep the sometimes ambiguous violations against human rights, dignity (slavery footprint, n.d.) and ecological collapse in place, according to pinto (2017), does the dominant narrative give consent to consumerism as an indirect act of violence and (eventual) self-harm? (carrington, 2021). the ontological aspects of everyday design objects and the importance of being a good ancestor come to mind. gough’s (2017) need theory helps us to differentiate between needs and wants. what we feel that we need and what we want are often blurred, as our needs are often contextual, and our wants frequently relate to whom we consider our “consumption peers” to be. deranty and breen (2021) link this “new consumerism” to the self-perpetuating work-spend cycle of precarious work lives and hyper-consumption driven by increased inequality, as summarised in a quote by juliet schor (1998): “the more people consume, the more people must work”. blowfield (2013, p.273) suggests three ways to meet future demand for products; “expanding supply, increasing productivity and altering the nature of demand itself”. johar (bristol+bath creative r+d, 2021) believes that the notion of “growth” requires careful handling and the singular word hides a lot of injustices and nuances. he posits that while some parts of the world will need to grow to meet the basic needs of their populations, together with our intangible economy, the richest 20% of the world population needs to “de-grow” and reach a state of regenerative homeostasis. i believe that citizens’ everyday tensions lie in the fact that, although there is an increased demand for sustainable consumption (economist intelligence unit, 2021), the current paradigm does not provide diverse alternatives, according to o’neill et al. (2018), nor many positive references for consuming differently. meeting the required level of dematerialisation of society requires the notion of less to be decoupled from the association with hardship and loss of social status. as kimmerer states (2013, p.111), “in a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires”. i believe that bearing the capacity to stay with, and work from, this understandable resistance, is critical when designing explorations for positive references and alternative ways of meeting our needs. krippendorff (2012, p. 74) suggests that “designers need to question prevailing ontological beliefs”, and that “designers need to explore what it takes to unfreeze cherished habits or convictions, or to get people to learn something new”. a change of narrative kuhnhenn et al. (2020) believe that it is possible to stay within the global carbon budget of 1.5°c warming if today’s consumption levels are reduced, but that this reduction in production and consumption requires figure 6: author’s sketch of the notion of the obscurity and lack of supply transparent information in chains, awareness and understanding, contributing to the agnotology of consumption. 9 a “democratically planned socio-economic transformation with the satisfaction of people’s needs at the centre”. the global carbon budget looks at all nations’ carbon emissions and the amount of reductions that is needed to reach the paris agreement goals (future earth, n.d.). however, riedy (2020) highlights the point that most historical discourse shifts were not planned but were the product of many ideas that aligned and knotted together over time, strengthened by adversity, and that resonated with and benefitted increasing numbers of people. research shows that social tipping points for overriding social norms happen when a minority group, dedicated to a specific cause, reaches a certain size (“critical mass”). this in turn gives rise to wider acceptance of the minority view across the broader population, as research by centola et al. shows (2018). the critical mass of the minority group required to reach the tipping point depends on the cause. in cases such as the uk smoking ban, the minority group grew after scientific papers were published that presented proposals for educating the public and offering options for voluntary shifts, eventually reaching legislation and compulsory compliance. soaring evidence of the negative effects, together with offering options for change, led to further growth of the initial minority group (institute for government, n.d.). mont et al. (2013) argue for a more considered framework for communicating, policymaking and prioritising and placing new ways of generating wellbeing as the primary strategy for recomposing consumption (image 7). could this model be a guide conducive to “consumption corridor” innovation and design? haidt’s (2006, p. 4) simplified model of the “elephant, driver and path” for behaviour change offers a snapshot of the conditions that designers can draw inspiration from. however, riedy (2020) argues that storytelling is recognised to be a powerful driver for social change and can “inspire and persuade people to adopt new practices”.. it is interesting to think about how riedy’s plural discourses and gough’s proposed strategies might affect society, work, leisure, business, production and which new stories we must now tell ourselves? as i believe our habits of consumption shape the narrative of our future(s), by enabling the coexistence of diverse economies, a larger number of alternatives may allow for equitable planet-centred living. putting different limits on the ways we meet our needs may allow us to discover new possibilities of entangled value flows within a planet-centred paradigm. capitalism has worked well for some of the world’s population over a relatively brief period in human history. however, it has proven to be an insufficient model for the pluralistic facets of humanity and life-giving systems that we share and need to consider going forward, taking inspiration from the mitigating impacts generated by the montreal protocol, the smoking ban and the plastic bag charge, to name a few policy changes that have saved lives and shifted narratives. i am interested in how design may renegotiate current values and change the discourse in tangible ways. examples where design has been used to intentionally shape societal shifts include the “acceptera!” manifesto, world expos and media campaigns where preferred future narratives have been curated, although they have often been inevitably paternalistic. some present radical shifts in the dominant work/consumption ontologies are emerging through initiatives such as the “4 day week campaign” (platform london, 2021), “tang ping” [lying flat] (bbc news, 2021) and the “buy nothing” movement, according to telford (2021). ecological economists such as kallis et al. (2012), believe that change cannot happen within the dominant economic model. i believe that rather than dismissing it, new discourses will have to work from the dominant ones to un-tame the wicked problem of overconsumption and shift societal and behavioural patterns of participation. a certain degree of compassion is needed to sit with these tensions. co-participatory storytelling through interaction with new artefacts may help generate previously unexplored possibilities. 10 in bergthaller and mortensen’s work (2018, p.6), the sustainable communications agency futerra states that “we must build a visual and compelling vision of low carbon heaven“. if positive references for dwelling well within planetary boundaries in the global north are lacking, a gentle shaking of the ideological tree may be the most ethical and effective way of shifting the story of our future. let us explore artefacts with which to tangibly play a new story into being. second order design fictions and wicked possibilities oxman (2016) declares that “good design, for example, is good exploration: it questions certain belief systems—physical and immaterial—about the world. then it releases some embodiments of these speculations into the world, contributing to the build-up of what we know as culture”. at the heart of design collective superflux’s (2021) practice lies critical sense-making and speculative storytelling to enable future uncertainty in choices in the present day. their conceptual film the intersection highlights the importance of co-future with humility, a wider consciousness paradigm, and acknowledging the potential and power of agency. i believe that this demonstrates qualities coincident with us as adults of a species, of a deeper way of knowing. however, their featured artefacts may feel far removed from most people’s contexts and other relatable objects, which may hamper their desired impact on their audience. according to tharp and tharp (2019, p. 217), discursive design artefacts “experiment with the relationship between objects and the stories they support and are supported by”. tomorrow's home exhibition by the liminal space (n.d.) showcases how embedding healthcare technology in household objects may shape homes of the future, through translating academic research into tangible and accessible interventions. this aligns with my fascination with how world expos and design manifestos have enabled societal change in the past. seeking to label my work within the design discourse, i would describe it as adversarial, since it concerns the political perspective of agonism, as described by di salvo (2015, p. 2), and highlights the potential positive outcomes of a conflict or tension. going beyond the questioning qualities that define critical design, agonism emphasises the importance of having compassion for the problem in design struggles; image 6: “a suggestion for a consumption hierarchy (in order of priority)” by mont et al. (2013). 11 to celebrate and acknowledge a productive and good struggle. this echoes haraway’s (2016) notion of staying with the trouble; not being paralysed by fear or eager for solutionism. i've designed these artefacts to help make sense of the present and articulate tangible alternatives for positive narratives about the future, both for myself and for others. we must remember that the future does not yet exist, but actively emerges from the basis of a society’s hopes, fears and images of the future. as mouffe states in benhabib’s work (2021, p.255), “conflicts and confrontations, far from being a sign of imperfection, indicate that democracy is alive and inhabited by pluralism”. i initially dubbed my designed artefacts “transition objects”, as they embody a liminal space in the necessary transition we need to make in our consumption habits, bridging the familiar present to an equitable and regenerative future of planet-centred consumption. upon learning about second order design fictions (sodfs) through perera’s (2021) work, i realised that my understanding of my “transition object” aligned better with this concept. perera (2021) sees the methodology of design fictions as a way of interfering and playing around with consensus, as “they go beyond the neo-liberal design logic notions of fact and fiction, blending the familiar and different, and offer a stimulating tactility to facilitate the questioning of complex tensions”. fry (2021, p. 3) states that second-order design fiction can contribute towards "redirective practices” and a renegotiation of values. he posits that second-order design fictions have appropriated “lessons of observations” from second order cybernetics and that “the conceptual essence of second-order design fiction is the observation of observation”. second order cybernetics is used here as a tool to generate the desired effect of change through interaction. these are more than mere artefacts for provoking dialogue but are objects of interrogation that “invite recursive re-engagement”. the household context provides additional context and meaning to the artefacts, and the tangible characteristic of the artefacts is an important aspect. this makes the observation “real” and gives the objects authority, as if this alternative narrative is established and these artefacts make sense in that parallel reality. interacting with these artefacts-as-conversation contributes to the effects of participatory design and puts the participant in the scenario to co-author a new story. krippendorff (2012, p.75) argues that “because design becomes real in communication with others, inquiries into what makes a proposal compelling are inquiries into how people understand and act on narratives pertaining to desirable worlds”. i would argue that this is the desired outcome of my design fictions: a new insight or shift in perspective, generated by the observation from the “conversation" between participant and artefact. the detritus that might be generated by the interaction with an artefact can be taken away and used to build upon existing culture. although these sodfs allow me to research through design, i have not yet developed the resources to measure the potential success of this research. sodfs play with both product semantics and the definition of design as a sense-making activity. inspired by donna haraway’s implosion method of analysis through various value dimensions as described by dumit (2014), i have considered using this methodology for designing artefacts to explore and ensure how these might belong in a planet-centric future. the implosion method highlights the messiness and knottiness of stories and worlds that artefacts hold, analysed through the following dimensions: symbolic, professional, labour, material, technological, political, economic, textual, bodily, educational and historical. this is not to attempt to design “crisis-management models” (perera, 2020) or utopian solutions for problematic everyday objects, nor to merely raise awareness of issues. it is important for the designer to make this implicit information apparent and contextual, as tonkinwise and lorber-kasunic (2006) remind us, “because the knowledge embedded within an artefact is rarely made explicit, it can only be accessed and communicated by those who can interpret it”. 12 the problem of recomposed and post-material consumption is a wicked problem, as it cannot be predicted, nor measured to be solved. by adding to, rather attempting to tame wickedness, designers acknowledge the uncertainty, plurality and diverse paradigms in which all stakeholders dwell and act. people’s needs, values and motivations are contextual, fluid and irrational. tham (2022) also highlights the importance of these tensions and cruxes, positing that “if we don’t encounter this friction, change is not taking place”. these may be a gentle provocation to imagine safe ways of living with both compulsory and voluntary demateriality, low-carbon and overall sufficiency in ways that are not primarily associated with hardship, precarity or loss of status by the participant. i am, however, aware of the subjective notions of these concepts and the ethical consequences of imposing my own beliefs about what is considered safe and precarious. as sodfs are artefacts that belong to a different narrative, encountering and interacting with these may generate new ways of seeing, knowing and valuing. it poses the question “if this object exists, where do i exist within this narrative?”. however, tonkinwise (2015) and tham (2022) remind us why discursive design artefacts need to remain unpolished and open to participation, to avoid merely normalising “a pretentious taste regime”. hence why i have focused on designing artefacts of the mundane. each of my exhibited objects presents a structure for playful exchanges, aiming to engage diverse participants in imagining and making sense of the changes needed to mitigate crises with a less precarious outcome. it suggests a “hopeful continuation” to counter the dominant defuturing (fry, 2021) narrative that has been generated within the cognitive dissonance of capitalism’s failure to provide. according to lorek et al. 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(2011). overshoot. https://tinyurl.com/jhujwd2m https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/s0360835220305829 http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology https://superflux.in/index.php/work/the-intersection/ https://medium.com/@camerontw/just-design-b1f97cb3996f https://trueprice.org/consumer/ https://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/48062 31 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. twelve potluck principles for social design christian nold, patrycja kaszynska, jocelyn bailey, lucy kimbell published online: may 2022 to cite this article: nold, c., kaszynska, p., bailey, j., & kimbell, l. (2022). twleve potluck principles for social design. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(1), 31-43. 32 twelve potluck principles for social design christian nold a, patrycja kaszynska b, jocelyn bailey c, lucy kimbell d a school of engineering & innovation, the open university, milton keynes, uk. christian.nold@open.ac.uk b social design institute, university of the arts london, london, uk. p.kaszynska@arts.ac.uk c social design institute, university of the arts london, london, uk. j.a.bailey@arts.ac.uk d social design institute, university of the arts london, london, uk. l.kimbell@arts.ac.uk abstract the term ‘social design’ is used in a variety of contexts, but—or maybe because of this—it is far from clear what it means. the starting point for this paper is that there is a need for stronger and more critical community discourse to understand and clarify what social design is and what it does. by analyzing key texts, the paper identifies commonalities, disagreements and unresolved questions in relation to social design. drawing on the example of citizen science, the paper argues for a need to develop principles for social design for further inquiry and discipline-building for social design. the paper offers twelve principles that focus on the notion of the social in social design, its methods and practices and its normative intent, as well as its critical reflexivity. these principles are intended as a ‘potluck’ boundary object to kickstart a stronger social design community. the paper reports feedback from two workshops where these principles were discussed and tested with design academics suggesting how the principles can be applied. keywords: social design, design principles, manifesto, boundary objects, design research introduction design skills and knowledge are today used in higher education, business, the public sector and civil society to address social and public policy issues, such as the climate emergency, migration, air pollution and community inequalities. these many instances are being described as social design. indeed, the term has been applied to encompass a diverse range of design work: creating community food projects, gathering pollution data, designing circular textiles, supporting charities and companies, and creating governmental strategies to reduce energy consumption or childhood obesity. contemporary social design spans a gamut of practices, scales and political affinities from proto anti-capitalist, bureaucratic to anarchist, objectto systemand communityto governance-focused (armstrong et al., 2014). what do these practices have in common? this paper provides a short literature review to highlight the contradictory ways ‘the social’ is invoked within the literature that has (markussen, 2017, p. 162) led researchers to question whether there is such a thing as social design (tonkinwise, 2019). markussen (2017) notes that “social design has become a murky concept” (p. 161) and that “the field of social design has become so multifaceted in theory and practice that it seems to deter anyone from trying to say exactly what social design is” (p. 162). we argue that forging social design as a single discipline and field of practice requires a stronger and more critical discourse around the concept of social design, resulting in a more critical, reflective and reflexive social design community. based on observing parallel work that has taken place within citizen science around the creation of a set of shared principles (robinson et al., 2018), we propose that social design should follow a similar collective articulation process. we thus offer twelve potluck principles of social design to kickstart the development of more informed discourse. a ‘potluck’ is a collective meal where people bring dishes in an unplanned way—resulting in surprising combinations. together, these twelve principles offer a broad characterization that both acknowledges the irreducible diversity of social design while aiming to 33 consolidate and simplify commonalities to advance practice and research. what is our motivation? we do not want to discipline practitioners and researchers to adhere to the ‘right’ way of doing and thinking about social design nor do we want to force conformity. we are interested in facilitating sense-making among different and conflicting worldviews to create a transition in social design. we are not proposing a new paradigm for social design but instead aim to facilitate examination of the existing claims about social design. in doing that, we are supporting transition by taking on the role of ‘boundary spanners’ (klerkx et al., 2010) that create principles as a boundary object to drive change, but do so without imposing top-down solutions. these twelve principles are intended as a provocation to practitioners and researchers involved in social design and a contribution towards consolidating a community of practice and inquiry. key texts on social design: commonalities, disagreements and questions what is social design, and how has it been defined in the literature? below, we review a sample of texts to highlight some commonalities, disagreements and unresolved questions in key texts on social design. we identified contributions that were specifically attempting definitional work and that capture the current academic discourse on social design, rather than its long history. these are a mixture of papers, books and blogs. some of these contributions used the term ‘social design’, whereas others used related terms like ‘socially responsive design’ or ‘design for social innovation’. while some authors like manzini attempt to establish a difference between social innovation as focused on social forms and social design as focused on social problems, manzini acknowledges that in practice they are hard to differentiate (2014). we include the range of these texts based on their engagement with the broader social design discourse. commonalities it is widely agreed that social design is done with people as “a social activity” (tonkinwise, 2019, p. 10). chen and colleagues observe that all the social design papers they examined involved situated social activity with people (2016, p. 3). markussen argues that social design is “a collaborative design process where designers involve a specific group of citizens, public and private partners to achieve social change” (2017, p. 169). for manzini, (2015) the participatory nature of social design, where designing is distributed across multiple social actors, raises questions about the specialist role of the designer. thorpe and gamman identify three modes of collaboration within social design: a paternalistic mode where the designer assumes responsibility, a maternalistic one that involves the designer enabling others, and a fraternalistic approach where the designer is one among many in a collaborative process (thorpe & gamman, 2011, p. 221). these discussions show that social design has developed a sensitivity toward the dynamics and power relations involved in participatory processes and infrastructure practices (björgvinsson et al., 2012; hillgren et al., 2011). the literature is also in agreement that design, including social design, operates with and through objects as a material or materializing aesthetic practice. this attention to materiality makes social design different from other disciplinary communities operating on the social: “designers bring to the social a focus on materiality, how things can promote, sustain or obstruct certain types of social life” (tonkinwise, 2019, p. 11). some authors suggest that social design involves socio-material things rather than inert objects (binder et al., 2011, 2015). these discussions highlight the way social design exists as a meeting point between a variety of social and material concepts and practices. 34 disagreements some argue that social design involves regular design skills and practices that are applied to specific kinds of social problems instead of commercial interests (thorpe & gamman, 2011). in this framing, social is a synonym for “particularly problematic situations (such as extreme poverty, illness, or social exclusion, and circumstances after catastrophic events)” (manzini, 2015, p. 64). this framing encompasses graphic designers making public health posters and architects building public housing. in contrast, other authors argue that social design is unique because it involves a distinctive way of designing (chen et al., 2016; kimbell, 2020). what these specificities amount to is, however, disputed. another source of disagreement is whether social design does or does not aim to improve social realities. some authors claim social design is “design with a conscience,” (resnick, 2019, p. xiii) has “a noble ethical nature” (manzini, 2015, p. 65) and has the intention to “improve people’s lives” (del gaudio et al., 2016, p. 53). papanek’s foundational text, design for the real world (1973) is in this tradition, as well as contributions such as victor margolin, who claims: “the ultimate purpose of design is to contribute to the creation of a good society” (2019, p. 19). yet other authors are not convinced by such claims, labelling them as “utopian” (koskinen & hush, 2016), highlighting the inability of designers to control change and protect good intentions from co-option (chen et al., 2016; thorpe & gamman, 2011). koskinen and hush note that sociologically-informed social design struggles to create designed outcomes “equal to its critical ambitions” (2016, p. 68). in practice, the design proposals created by social designers are often not implemented (bailey, 2021) or are intended as speculative future-making (catoir-brisson & watkin, 2021). this presents an issue for people who want to make a strong claim for the positive outcomes of social design and forces us to distinguish between intentions and impacts. controversies persist regarding the actual outcomes versus expectations placed on social design. questions the overview of key social design texts surfaced several questions which spotlight future avenues for inquiry. these include questions of scale, the role of social theory and the significance of politics. some authors distinguish between different kinds of social benefits and scales of impact (markussen, 2017, p. 161). koskinen and hush identify ‘molecular’ social design, which aims to intervene in small-scale social worlds to “do good design work, humbly, close the door and go home” (2016, p. 67) and “sociological social design”, which integrates sociological and critical theory into the design. these discussions highlight that social design has unresolved issues around how to address different scales of social structures and the need for new methods and concepts that can expand beyond the village. some authors suggest that the solution involves a more substantive engagement with social theory, sociology and other disciplines dealing with ideas of the social (kimbell & julier, 2019). tonkinwise emphasizes the need for all designers to be aware of the systems within which their designs exist, and since these are social (not just technical) or even socio-technical, a specific set of concepts is required to grapple with them (tonkinwise, 2019). koskinen and hush speculate that the difference between social design and other kinds of design may be “not so much in the actual design work, but in the conceptual and motivational scaffolding of the work” (2016, p. 65) and suggest that sociology can provide useful conceptual and reflexive tools. similarly, kimbell suggests that what matters more than methods is the conceptual positioning of social design: its “purposes, assumptions, reflexivity, forms of analysis and modes of organization” (2020, p. 5). these observations indicate that social design may be more complex than other domains of design practice, leading several authors to highlight the political ambiguity of social design. markussen points out that social design arose in the middle of “an ongoing ideological debate about democracy, empowerment and civic 35 resistance against systems of power and control” (2017, p. 165). chen and colleagues (2016) identify a variety of political positions and ideas in social design practices and projects: scandinavian marxism, critiques of unsustainable economic and political structures, social and industrial psychology, and – in ‘user-centeredness’ – a rejection of the political content of participatory design. the implication is that social designers “…cannot choose their sides in the manner of early participatory designers. whatever commitments they make, the implications of their choices are not in their control. social design projects have ambiguous ends and articulate several agendas and visions, and their outcomes are ambiguous and unforeseeable.” (chen et al., 2016, p. 3) what emerges from this overview is a plurality of understandings, positions, and practices of social design. while there are commonalities, the discourse around social design encompasses fundamental disagreements and questions about its core objective of the social, with a lack of a shared language and common definition. methodology to develop a framework within which the different approaches to social design can co-exist and support self-definition, we examined some parallel domains. citizen science has some similarities with social design. it involves members of the public working with scientific experts and creating their research (haklay, 2013). in the last decade, it has gained prominence and institutional support and funding and yet lacks a stable theoretical foundation. the role of the citizen has proved difficult to define and has parallels with the elusive quality of the social in social design, while the concept of citizen science is contested between the natural and social sciences as well as activist practitioners. so, while citizen science has taken place for more than a hundred years, the lack of a shared definition has made interdisciplinary collaboration difficult. however, in the last decade citizen science has undergone a significant process of community selfdefinition that offers a useful guide on how to proceed with social design. in the period 2013 to 2015, an independent body called the european citizen science association started a consultative process that led to a document entitled the ten principles of citizen science (robinson et al., 2018). this document was generated by a working group as a long list of potential principles, followed by an iterative two-year public consultation. the resulting principles are written in straightforward language that tried to synthesize academic and practitioner discussions. for example, principle 3 states that: “both the professional scientists and the citizen scientists benefit from taking part” (robinson et al., 2018, p. 29), noting a recurring issue within citizen science around who benefits from the activity. the ten principles document has now been translated into 26 languages and proved useful in reaching out to people who have not been in contact with citizen science before. from the start, another goal had also been to use them as a “common set of core principles to consider when funding, developing or assessing citizen science projects” (robinson et al., 2018, p. 27). the principles thus acquired a coordinating and disciplining function of delimiting what can be considered citizen science. this function has been very successful with the principles being used by funding bodies such as uk research and innovation to adjudicate what should be funded as citizen science (uk research and innovation, 2020). yet within the broader citizen science community, there has been some concern about how well the ten principles function to adjudicate what is citizen science and arguments for curtailing their purpose. in a follow-up piece of work, a group of academics developed a process of community characterization rather than a definition—the difference being a focus on the description of empirical citizen science practice rather than axiomatic concepts (haklay et al., 2020). the process involved generating more than a hundred vignette descriptions of citizen science practice as well as edge cases. the broad community of citizen 36 science was then asked to rank these vignettes in terms of how closely they represent citizen science (haklay et al., 2021). significantly, the result of this effort was a characterization of citizen science that is broader and more diverse than that which was captured by the initial ten principles. other follow-up research analyzed the impact of definitional labelling on the citizen science domain (cooper et al., 2021). in summary, these definitional and anti-definitional efforts are a powerful example of a community of practice working together to articulate and contest the boundaries of its domain. we believe that translating such a process to social design could reap similar community-building benefits and raise critical discussion about the effect such definitions might create for social design. as in citizen science, we propose kickstarting such an effort by creating the twelve principles of social design and then opening them up to the wider community to rewrite and improve them. we consider that the social design principles could function in these ways: • as a series of axiomatic truths, attempting to capture the fundamental nature of social design. while conceptually neat, we are not convinced that such ‘truths’ exist or would be useful for the social design community. • as regulative ideas. in contrast to constitutive ideas which capture how reality is, regulative ideas make proposals for regulating human conduct. rather than expressing truths, regulative ideas do not define notions such as social justice but set attitudes and expectations. this way of understanding principles bridges the axiomatic and the boundary object way of thinking about principles. • as a design prototype to be iterated before reaching a revised or even final set of social design principles that are agreed upon by the whole social design community. given the variety of locations, intersectional positions and perspectives within social design, we question whether such community agreement could ever be achieved and believe it might be more useful to see the principles as a transient process for supporting community building. • as a potluck meal where each guest contributes a different dish to be shared with others without there being a central plan. rather than aiming at creating consistency and uniformity, the goal is for the principles to function as a coordinating mechanism for bringing the community together. social scientists have referred to this as a “boundary object” (star & griesemer, 1989), a device that is adaptable enough to encompass different viewpoints while being robust enough to maintain its identity across them. this means individual principles can use different theoretical and practical assumptions of the social if they can remain distinctive as a whole. while this is a balancing act, we suggest that aiming at social design potluck principles is achievable and helpful for bringing together the traditions of social design that exist in different silos. the principles we offer in this paper were created via team discussions adopting a potluck approach that integrates the different perspectives of the authors. they combine concepts of “the social” from actornetwork theory (latour, 2005), which focuses on including non-humans, as well as humanist ideas of social inclusion and normative change. this fusion represents what the philosopher andrzej nowak has called a “fire and water” synthesis that brings together humanist ethical-political sensitivity with post-humanist ontological insights (2013). nowak suggests it is only by creating such unlikely combinations that it is possible to acquire an ontological imagination for transforming the world. nevertheless, developing this ontological imagination is difficult (nold, 2021a) and the principles are an experimental chimaera that 37 is receptive to further input from other traditions and approaches. the principles have been shared with the social design community since late 2020 in the form of a publicly editable online document, and two participatory workshops in 2021 and 2022 with 20 and 45 participants respectively. the participants included design students, senior design educators running their own social design courses as well as neighborhood design activists, commercial designers and academic design researchers. these events offered up the draft principles for collective discussion and evaluated them against a series of empirical case studies of social design contributed by the workshop participants. principle 1: social design claims that the ‘social’ is made through and with things this principle suggests it is not enough to design for human users and social groups—social designers must wrestle with collectives where people and nonhuman “things” are intermingled (brassett, 2018). this notion of the social is made up of combinations of human and nonhuman entities. arguing that social design can redesign “the social” is a powerful claim because the theoretical literature merely offers tools for analysis, rather than design, of post-human socials. principle 2: social design operates on the relational practice between human and technical systems where human-centred design is inadequate this principle highlights that social design must tackle technical and human problems together and at the same time. dualistic separations between technologies and people such as “human-centred design” have made it hard to engage with notions such as systems in design (nold, 2021b). drawing on postand morethan-human relational perspectives, (bennet, 2010) social design has to recognize the diverse embodied beings, living forms, ecologies and materialities that participate in configuring the social. principle 3: social design extends across an object and planetary scales, domains and sites a socio-material approach demonstrates that social design is not confined to obvious sites of social activity such as community organizations or social services. instead “the social” permeates and extends across scales—even to the planetary scale of climate change (hunt, 2020). this approach allows social design to engage with multi-scalar issues, such as the deployment of artificial intelligence into society and disasterrelated displacement of people. principle 4: social design acknowledges that there are many ways of operating in the social this principle acknowledges that social design takes place in many ways and sites from interpersonal relations to formal institutions, informal organizations and projects. professional communities beyond traditional design such as managers and policymakers have long been “designing” social things. the principle recognizes the diverse logics of acting on the social, which include methods, tools and skills as well as bundles of resources existing within institutional logics (armstrong et al., 2014; kimbell, 2021). principle 5: social design is an anticipatory materializing practice that proceeds through inquiring into and reconfiguring narratives, sites and worlds building on studies that emphasize the situated practices of those involved in designing and using designed things, this principle points to the inventive, generative and creative character of designing. the concept of “anticipation” (miller et al., 2018) highlights the capacity of designing to exceed current possibilities and reconfigure ways of knowing, being and doing in and through social worlds. 38 principle 6: social design engages multiple kinds of knowledge — no single discipline has a privileged methodology for operating on the social this principle emphasizes the synthetic, interdisciplinary character of social design as an assemblage of many epistemic claims and methodologies. one of the key encounters is between actor-network theory and humanist ideas of normativity and reason. social design is thus a place where ethical-political sensitivities and post-humanist ontological insights can meet (nowak, 2013). principle 7: social design is underpinned by normative intent, whether or not deliberate or explicit this principle highlights that the effects of social design can be for good as well as ill; it means that the forms of social designing need to be justified and critiqued. being engaged in social design means participating in an activity that is subject to personal and collective judgement as well as public evaluation. principle 8: social design forms issue-publics by creating collaborative endeavours with communities through discussion about purposes, needs, values, agency and consequences this principle captures the nature of social design as not just socially embedded but also capable of generating new social formations. the point emphasizes that collectively constituted design processes can create issue-publics that are (re)formed in and through the process of social design (marres, 2012). this raises questions about what binds those communities of inquiry and practice together and how long those collectives last. principle 9: social design builds new democratic relations between places, living beings and things this principle attends to the political character of social design and its consequences and implications. it outlines an intention to achieve equitable relations between living beings, things and ecologies that can be represented and have agency. here design expertise and traditions are in dialogue with understandings of co-production and democracy (durose & richardson, 2015; saward, 2021). principle 10: social design is critically aware of its political, systemic, institutional, and environmental situatedness this principle builds on observations about the socio-technical embeddedness of designing but recognizes that, in the case of social design, the systemic context is more-than-technical. this means asking critical and reflexive questions (alvesson & skoldburg, 2000) about design practice: “whose interests does this serve?” and “is this the appropriate scale for intervention?”, as well as about the designer as a person: “how is my understanding influenced by my standpoint?” and “what other perspectives might help me?” principle 11: social design problematizes the history and modes of professional design, its inequalities, absences and exclusions, such as its eurocentric assumption, and racialized and gendered outcomes this principle builds on the history of social design as a critique of the mainstream and proposes social design as an ongoing critical practice (mazé, 2008). this means understanding the problematic histories of both the mainstream and social design itself, recognizing the epistemic regimes within which they have arisen and excavating the complex power dynamics inherent in designing and designs (abdulla et al., 2019; schultz et al., 2018). 39 principle 12: social design tries to mitigate against the unintended and damaging outcomes of designing. the world is littered with the damaging effects of design, both intended and unintended (monteiro, 2019). this principle, responding to social design’s humanist tendencies, proposes that what is needed to realize well-meaning ambitions is an additional loop of critical reflection. if design typically asks about the possibilities with an inherently optimistic slant, social design must also ask “what’s the worst that could happen?”, “do we risk exacerbating a problem rather than helping it?” and “is design the appropriate response?” discussion whenever one sees principles or a manifesto, it is easy to have a knee-jerk reaction: “this is wrong!” and “that doesn't make sense!” even amongst the authors of the paper, we do not agree on all the principles, and yet we believe that they are meaningful and productive when seen as a collective potluck gathering. we see our role as offering the principles as a boundary object that can be used “to drive transitions through bridging conflicting logics without constraining their diversity” (franco-torres et al., 2020, p. 34). boundary objects work to support sense-making not despite but because they “hold different meanings for those involved” (tharchen et al., 2020, p. 9). it is thus the blend of differences in the principles that are intended to kickstart a community and help support the social design discourse. when we presented these principles to researchers and practioners working in social design via the online document and the two participatory workshops, we received constructive as well as challenging feedback. some of the requested changes were minor, but other feedback was more substantial, such as the need to emphasize the participatory nature of social design, the impossibility of applying all the principles at the same time and the difficulty of picking which ones to apply. the most oppositional comments were made anonymously to the online document, and they challenged our assumption that social design is normative by suggesting, “it can just be a pleasure, not a cause”. this range of feedback has informed the present principles by forcing us to further clarify them and to explore how they can be applied within real-world contexts. the participants suggested that the principles function as a diagnostic device for designers to reflect on their practice. they also emphasized the use of the principles with external partners and stakeholders to articulate what is involved in social design and to establish a common set of reference points to enable better collaborations. one interesting observation was that the participants argued that the principles permit designers to be more normative—social design does not mean having to be disinterested and impartial and that the principles encourage designers to pick which stakeholder agendas they want to support. finally, the participants argued that the principles can assist the broader design discipline by promoting transparency and analysis of what takes place within social design projects. one challenge identified was the academic language in which the principles are expressed, which might not be suitable for a practitioner community. reflecting on this point, we note that social design currently has to borrow theoretical concepts to talk about ‘the social’ as socio-material. despite research emphasizing its relationality, much design practice is still framed as ‘human-centred’, and practitioners do not have a way of talking about the entanglement of people and technologies. in addition, we believe that retaining the multiple phrasings of social design might be beneficial for generating more robust and honest soulsearching about the goals and assumptions within practice and research. this is in line with the way boundary objects have been used to develop “pluralistic tolerance” (stirling, 2011) and cooperation without consensus. so, for now, we retain the mix of academic and plain, emotive language in the principles to represent the multiple nature of social design itself. 40 the other challenge we received was that there is a benefit to the current ambiguity around social design. participants worried that the principles might end up as a regulatory—and exclusionary—checklist. our response is to point to citizen science where the creation of principles also triggered other definitional processes that contested the principles. we argue that this kind of dialogue is productive and can contribute to building a base for conceptual and methodological formation necessary for a field of inquiry to be established. as academics researching and practising social 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(2020). ukri citizen science collaboration grant opens for applications. researchconnect. https://www.myresearchconnect.com/ukri-citizen-science-collaboration-grant-opensfor-applications/ 54 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. teaching design in emerging countries: a train-the-trainer methodology arianna vignati, busayawan lam, philip azariadis, silvia d’ambrosio, spyros bofylatos published online: may 2022 to cite this article: vignati, a., busayatawan, l., azariadis, p., d’ambrosio, s., & bofylatos, s. (2022). teaching design in emerging countries: a train-the-trainer methodology. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(1), 54-66. 55 teaching design in emerging countries: a train-the-trainer methodology arianna vignatia, busayawan lamb, philip azariadisc, silvia d’ambrosiod, spyros bofylatose auniversity of new south wales, sydney, australia. a.vignati@unsw.edu.au bbrunel university london, uk. busayawan.lam@brunel.ac.uk cuniversity of the aegean, greece. azar@aegean.gr dpolitecnico di milano, milan, italy. silvia.dambrosio@polimi.it euniversity of the aegean, greece. bofy@aegean.gr abstract design disciplines have constantly evolved to keep up with the emerging demands of the 21st century. design education is thus called to change its methods, tools and approaches. there is an increasing interest in emerging economies in design education, especially in india, where the role of creativity, communication and technology can support social and economic development. this paper aims to present the educational approach developed in the context of the erasmus+ ka2 project entitled ‘design and innovation capacity building in india/desinno’. the modernisation and internationalisation of indian universities with innovative and contemporary design courses have been the main goals of a set of research and training activities. in this paper, the state-of-the-art methodologies in design thinking, sustainability, design research, social innovation and ethical issues in design are presented, leading to a bespoke educational approach that provides a platform for indian design academics to apply modern educational approaches to their specificities and needs. keywords: integrated product design, interaction design, human-centred design, train the trainer, strategic design, blended learning, design thinking, indian universities introduction the state of the art of practice-based design approaches undertakes the focus on the design studio and design workshop methods for learning. contemporary design approaches and associated skills are moving design education to answer to emerging issues such as the service economy, digitisation and integrated product design that are new areas of education for the indian design institutions participating in desinno. the research question explored in the desinno project and presented in this paper aims to answer this need with a solid understanding of the value of the practice-based design approach and its implication in the tools, learning methods and related programmes. this paper presents a methodology to create innovative design courses through the transfer of knowledge to academics. this train-the-trainer methodology aims to balance the global evolution of design discourse and pedagogy and local needs, competencies and challenges. the desinno project revolves around the role of design and innovation centres inside the universities as places that provide a common ground for: 1. the development of innovative and permanent methods for research and design approaches. 2. the establishment of cross-sectoral projects for collaboration and co-learning. 3. the establishment of inter-industry projects to facilitate the inclusion of design thinking approaches. 4. the development of extreme affordability principles for the benefit of developing nations while taking care of the accessibility and sustainability aspects of design. 5. the development of community-based programmes to enable designers, craftsmen and artisans. 6. the modernisation and internationalisation of indian higher education institutions (heis) by the improvement of university design courses that will encompass product and service design by following 56 state-of-the-art methodologies in design thinking, sustainability, design research, social innovation, ethical issues in design, etc. ` design and innovation centres have a design lab with certain equipment and software for new product development and prototyping. these centres have a strategic role in the practice-based approach to design education. in addition to the establishment of said centres, courses new to the curricula of the three participating heis are to be added to support the use of the centres. design can foster meaningful social change in emerging economies such as india, as it provides the tools to sustain economic growth, to better address the needs of citizens by providing low-cost innovation and create jobs. for the desinno project, we developed a social innovation approach that brings grassroots innovators in contact with designers to scale up tools and products created. creating design-related social entrepreneurship by collaborating with academia through design and innovation tools is an important goal of the desinno project. to support the indian academics in the creation of the novel courses, three capacity-building sessions were undertaken to provide them with material, content and educational methodologies to develop courses that better fit their needs and competencies. the paper is structured in three main sections. first, the research approach, question, and state-of-the-art educational approaches concerning design pedagogy are presented. the second section presents the three capacity-building programmes put forward. in the last section, conclusions are drawn, and the lessons learned are reflected upon. design education teaching design today needs a specific training methodology and the establishment of new educational experiences and services in higher educational institutions and universities. in addition, the covid-19 pandemic has accelerated changes towards remote and blended learning, and its consequences will be felt for years to come. the theoretical framework for a new training methodology in design starts with the concept of the wellknown ‘experiential learning theory’, which stems from the assumption that learning is best conceived as a process, not in terms of outcomes. according to this theory, ideas are not fixed and immutable elements of thought but are formed and re-formed through experience, and thus new knowledge, skills and attitudes are achieved through an immersive and concrete learning experience. put differently, learning is a process where concepts are derived from and continuously modified by experience (kolb, 1984). such a learning experience works within a boundary between observation and reflection on the one side and theory and practice on the other. experiential learning theory offers an asset of awareness that is increasingly demanded by professionals and apprentices in all fields of design (strategic design, service design, fashion design, interaction and communication design, etc.). the boundary between theory and practice is one in which design finds its best nourishment. according to the six propositions of kolb’s theory, the specific focus of a new training methodology in design supports the application of an innovative didactic method (vignati et al., 2017): 1 learning is best conceived as a process, not in terms of outcomes. 2 all learning is relearning. 3 learning requires the resolution of conflicts. 57 4 learning is a holistic process of adaptation to the world. 5 learning results from synergetic transactions between the person and the environment. 6 learning is the process of creating knowledge. the training methodology developed would therefore support the implementation of a learning experience by balancing abstract conceptualisation and reflective observation with concrete experience and active experimentation (kolb, 2005). this methodology has been tested through three capacity-building programmes for a group of indian delegates to train the trainers and improve an innovative design education scenario for new courses in the indian universities. moreover, building upon experiential learning and kolb’s theory, the didactic methodology proposed in the desinno project would notably offer a dynamic and innovative learning experience strictly linked to the practical and ‘hands-on’ dimension proper of the design discipline. design disciplines have constantly evolved to keep up with the emerging demands of the 21st century. according to meyer and norman (2020), the emerging challenges faced by designers can be grouped into four categories: performance challenges, systemic challenges, contextual challenges and global challenges. it becomes evident that design education for the 21st century can no longer focus on traditional skills. it must equip young designers with new knowledge and expertise that can help them tackle complex problems holistically, such as critical and systematic thinking. sanders and stappers (2008) observed that traditional design disciplines tended to concentrate on the designing of products. subsequently, these disciplines were defined by the outputs of the design process. to address emerging challenges, design practice has changed, and new design disciplines have emerged. these new design disciplines focus on designing for a ‘purpose’. the results are not limited to one type of output, e.g. physical products or built environments. in response to these changes, several traditional design disciplines have been redefined to help them stay relevant to the changing world. this paper will focus on three emerging design disciplines, namely interaction design, service design and integrated product design, as they will become new core knowledge assets for the creative industries. to help students develop new knowledge and skills (such as systematic thinking), they must go beyond surface learning, where they are expected to reproduce materials, and adopt a deep approach where they focus on making sense of materials (gibbs, 2010). this means that the educators also should move away from conventional ways of teaching, where most decisions are made by teachers, and adopt a student-centred approach, where the emphasis is on integrating learning across the curriculum (cannon & newble, 2000). project/problem-based learning (pbl) is one of the student-centred learning approaches that has been widely adopted, since it can help students develop critical and systematic thinking by engaging them in solving complex real-world problems (nagarajan & overton, 2019; yew & goh, 2016). two relevant methods for learning in design education were adopted to bring kolb's theory and the process-based design education approach to practice, the design studio and the design workshop. the ‘design studio’ is central to the pedagogy of design (demirbas & demirkan, 2007; shaffer, 2007). design studios are a synthesis of the three diverse types of courses constituting a design curriculum (uluoǧlu, 2000). according to hokanson (2012), the ‘design studio’ includes two main pillars, the public presentation of ideas to the teaching staff and the interaction between tutors and students. the basic elements of the design studio include the design brief, the design research, transitions between design thinking and practice, and the desk crit (sagun & demirkan, 2009; schön, 1987) that happens on students’ desks from the master designer and the design reviews. 58 the guided learning philosophy of the design studio is seen as the means to engage in ‘learning by doing’ (schön, 1987). the design studio requires intensive, closely coupled cooperation for design work in teams with minimal supervision. for students’ design competencies to flourish, emphasis is given to facilitating the three factors put forward by christiaans and venselaar (2005): knowledge of the design process, the integration of different disciplines and the integration of theoretical knowledge in practice. the role of the tutors is more to facilitate and provide high-level guidelines and links to resources rather than to teach or directly correct participants along the way. this is according to a problem-based approach to learning, which has been applied in previous projects in short-term learning activities (koutsabasis et al., 2011) as well as during the duration of studio courses (vosinakis & koutsabasis, 2013). additional principles of problem-based learning include that participants are provided with an authentic problem at hand, i.e. a) it is related to (their future) practice, and the design problem is ill-defined or wicked (kolko, 2012), in the sense that it does not have a unique solution which can be good or bad (not ‘optimal’ or ‘best’), b) the participants work in groups of complementary competencies, c) the participants are responsible for their learning about the problem at hand and d) the participants gradually develop a solution by practising design and engineering methods. the second learning method investigated is the design workshop. in the context of design, workshops typically involve participatory or co-design activities and have been defined as “a form of participatory design, consolidating creative co-design methods into organised sessions for several participants to work with design team members” (hanington & martin, 2012). however, there can be several arrangements of a design workshop, depending on the learning goals and the problem context. design workshops have been proposed in several contexts and forms to deal with complex problems that require a participatory design approach, including co-design activities (holman et al., 2008), change management (holmberg & robèrt, 2000), urban studies (hou, 2013) and urban planning (wates, 2014). generally, design workshops entail several activities that facilitators plan and orchestrate. the workshops often begin with an overview of topics and an agenda, may continue with field visits (goodman et al., 2012), observation or ethnographic research, followed by brainstorming and closely coupled cooperative design, modelling, artefact making and testing. in between these activities there may be breaks with short inspirational presentations or stakeholder visits. according to this preliminary research, it is relevant to remark on the importance of the practice-based approach in the learning methods adopted in design education. three key findings emerged as strategic pillars for the definition of an innovative teaching design methodology customised for the contemporary needs of indian academics: integration of different disciplines a problem-based approach in a real-life environment co-design and co-creation of knowledge and values (trainer to trainer, trainer to student, student to student). with the theoretical foundations and formative decisions on how to train the trainers set in stone, we moved to develop three capacity-building sessions. these sessions aimed to apply the state-of-the-art findings and give our indian colleagues the content and scaffolding to build their courses that would make use of the design and innovation centres established and combining them with contemporary design pedagogy. in the next section, these three capacity-building sessions are presented and discussed. 59 capacity-building sessions in this section, the authors present the experience of running three capacity-building sessions aimed at supporting an hei in india in planning and developing educational content to support the three design and innovation centres. the capacity-building sessions adopted a train-the-trainer methodology with a specific methodology and tools for training, research and applied research activities with companies and institutions. before training design students, it is fundamental to train who is going to train them. the trainthe-trainer methodology has equipped a panel of 35 indian experts (phd students, researchers and professors from three universities) with a particular method and set of design tools with the following aims: to start developing future courses and laboratories to practise a constructive, holistic, empathic and iterative approach that is flexible and that can be applied as both an educational and collaborative strategy to provide resources, content and an overall educational approach to teaching design in a hands-on, experiential way. the methods and tools offered and explored during the capacity-building sessions can be further used by the indian experts along with students in teaching and designing new services but also with local entities, external stakeholders and international partners. these choices were informed by desk research and fieldwork (bofylatos & azariadis, 2022). the synthesis of the research supported the establishment of the design centres as a focal point for the development of the design strategy in india. the train-the-trainer methodology was chosen as an effective method to scale up the interventions selected and to complement and strengthen the labs with both educational material as well as pilot projects. the following sections present the educational approach, the tools and methods adopted and the didactic organisation of the three capacity-building sessions. face-to-face session with a focus on integrated product design brunel university london hosted a capacity-building programme titled integrated product design in uxbridge, uk between 24 february and 6 march 2020 for nine delegates from three indian partner institutions. the programme was developed based on the concept of t-shape designers. according to hansen and von oetiger (2001), the horizontal part of the t refers to a breadth of knowledge across various aspects of design, while the vertical part of the t is defined as the depth of knowledge of professional designers. thus, this capacity-building programme aimed to build upon designers’ core skills and broaden their knowledge in other areas. the subjects delivered under this programme can be grouped into four areas: 1. professional practice (e.g. co-design and research-informed teaching) 2. strategic design (e.g. strategic design management, branding and future forecasting) 3. entrepreneurship (e.g. innovation process and innovation management) 4. technical design (e.g. design for manufacturing and advanced manufacturing) the programme is underpinned by the double diamond model (design council, 2019). the model was chosen because it reflects design practices in industry. it was constructed based on 11 case studies from diverse types of organisations, such as product and service design (e.g. lego® and starbucks), physical and digital design (e.g. whirlpool and microsoft) and emotional and functional design (e.g. xerox and alessi). the process contains four main stages: discover, define, develop and deliver. the first two stages focus on exploring and framing the question(s), while the latter stages concentrate on creating and realising solution(s). at the heart of the process is the notion of convergent and divergent thinking in the design 60 process. designers need divergent thinking to explore all possibilities at the discover and develop stages. however, they also require convergent thinking to systematically narrow down the scope and deliver practical solutions in the define and deliver stages. this model was integrated into many lecture materials and activities. although the programme offered several hands-on activities, it did not involve a task that linked all aspects together. at the end of the teaching activities, the courses were formally evaluated with questionnaires and a final group discussion. according to the feedback collected for the first capacity-building session, it would have been more useful to include a task that connects all subjects, such as portfolio development. in general, the delegates found the process-oriented approach useful. they observed that the application of the double diamond model in teaching and learning activities could help assure the quality of the process and outcomes, as well as avoid subjectivity in assessment. blended e-learning session focused on service design due to covid-19 restrictions, politecnico di milano organised a remote capacity-building programme between 10 and 23 october 2020 for 18 professors and experts from the three indian partner institutions. the programme took place through an exploration of blended e-learning potential and assets using both online interactions and offline activities: 1 online interactions: • lectures • gamified learning experience (several challenges and feedback) • microlearning (learning nuggets) 2 offline interactions: • assessments • co-working activities and round table discussions the topics, contents and tools were planned and offered to guide the indian partners in starting to design their future courses and labs by envisioning possible synergies as systems, both internal and external to academia. to achieve this goal, the training programme focused on service design and was implemented through a creative process based on the human-centred design approach and, thus, throughout three main phases of inspiration, ideation and implementation. the human-centred design makes systems desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable (ideo, 2011). this approach enhances effectiveness and efficiency, improves human well-being, user satisfaction, accessibility and sustainability and counteracts possible adverse effects of use on human health, safety and performance (international organization for standardization, 1999). according to the feedback, the indian professors and experts appreciated the innovative ways of using online platforms and tools proposed during the programme. the topics and themes offered a fresh perspective based on a systemic approach that keeps participants’ motivation and ambition high. further reflections and improvements lie behind the possibility of cooperative sessions among the three indian universities. blended learning session focused on interaction design due to the covid=19 restrictions, the session offered by the university of the aegean (uaegean) also had to be delivered online with synchronous and asynchronous learning activities. during a two-week 61 programme, the university offered a multifaceted lecturing cycle to cover the main aspects of interaction design, ranging from theory to practical examples and case studies. the presentations and dialogues on the selected theoretical issues implemented examples, and co-working activities were designed to offer inspiration and insights to both the uaegean lecturers and the participants from the indian universities. uaegean offered a broad and holistic view of the fields and connected them to digital heritage management (chatzigrigoriou et al., 2021) and connected computer-aided design subjects to humancomputer interaction (hci) and its evaluation tools. thanks to the assignments, the indian experts had hands-on experience of usability studies in the local setting and implemented the empirical conclusions in the framework of desinno. thanks to a selection of online platforms and tools, the indian experts could work together remotely in a collaborative way. during the capacity-building session, the lecturers introduced the concept of interaction design through an introduction to hci. they presented how it is educationally approached as a theoretical course, as a studio course and in terms of research outcomes. in this direction, the participants were given specific scientific papers to discuss among them at the next online session. hence, the first assignment focused on an overview of hci and education in design engineering and research in the uaegean by reading three relevant papers outlining different tools applied to hci and usability, with digital heritage as the central case study. the second assignment focused on running a heuristic evaluation of the indian railways e-service and filling in the heuristic evaluation sheet through task analysis. the participants were asked to try to define the individual tasks involved in the process of booking the ticket, e.g. “you could use task analysis to determine the separate steps the user follows to book a ticket and turn them into tasks to measure their time and errors”. thus, the third and last assignment was dedicated to running a usability test and producing a report of the key findings and directions to redesign the same platform. overall, the two-week programme managed to achieve a high degree of success. the participants evaluated the course highly. the lecturers provided an overview of the fields of hci and interaction design, outlined the synergies with fields adjacent to it such as digital heritage management, design for all and service design and pushed the participants to reflect and gain a second-order understanding of interactive systems through the two evaluation assignments. conclusions lessons learned after the completion of each capacity-building session, the participants were invited to provide feedback through an online questionnaire on their experiences of the training provided. overall, all three capacitybuilding sessions were considered highly successful, receiving an average score of 4.5/5 on a likert scale (1=poor, 5=excellent). thanks to the capacity-building sessions, 35 indian experts received training on all three main design disciplines that the target indian universities focused on, namely industrial product design, service design and interaction design. additionally, a vast volume of resources has been produced, e.g. educational material, presentations, scholarly articles, videos and audio-visual material that can be used by the indian heis for the development of their courses and lectures. 62 the blended approach adopted in the three capacity-building sessions allowed the authors to measure the impact of design education delivered both traditionally (face to face) and with an innovative e-learning approach. the most valuable insights collected from the practical application are: design contents: in addition to the three focus of the design disciplines included in the teaching activities (product design, service design and interaction design), the indian experts declared a high interest in exploring the fields of design for social innovation and human-centred design. design methods: the hands-on and assignment-based approach to teaching was evaluated as effective. the opportunity to apply what the participants learned in practical assignments with a strong relation to real applications in new courses or new educational experiences was evaluated as a relevant outcome. the blended sessions were evaluated to be well planned and apt for the educational goal. the adoption of a practice-based approach in e-learning education allowed for the exploration of new ways of applying and including technologies in the design of teaching programmes. design tools: the participants enjoyed going through the exercises that were supported and facilitated using templates and formats. the train-the-trainer methodology applied for field testing the design education in the capacity-building sessions has demonstrated the following: the effectiveness of the systemic approach in design education: train the trainer with a multidisciplinary and systemic approach to support the building of an innovative mindset for the future education of indian students with contemporary skills and visions of the design discipline. instead of providing a concrete framework of western design, our indian colleagues were given a scaffold to create a bespoke approach that better addresses local challenges and existing design perspectives, hoping to decolonise indian design education. the use of a blended approach demonstrated the possibility to adopt an inclusive approach in design education in emerging countries. the effectiveness of new tools using digital technologies can improve the number of experts and professors involved in train-the-trainer experiences without losing effectiveness and engagement. the capacity for social change through increased empathy developed by the adoption of humancentred design approaches. both human-centred design, as elaborated in design thinking, and human-computer interaction usability and design for all tools foster understanding of the users in the context of creativity. the evolution of the diffuse design capacity of grassroots innovators in the context of the maker movement as part of the labs established. leveraging design as a facilitator of bottom-up solutions can create new social value that is context-specific and embedded in everyday problems in a local context. 63 repeatability and scalability all capacity training programmes, namely integrated product design, service design and interaction design (or digital design) were developed to be turned into either new elective courses or new content that can be integrated into existing courses. to scale up 10-day capacity training programmes into proper courses, further developments were carried out. firstly, all teaching materials were gathered, formatted and shared on the online repository. in this way, all the professors involved in the train-the-trainer courses could access these materials and use them for their teaching and learning activities. the teaching materials and feedback were then used to form the basis for new elective courses or to add content to existing courses. next, the three indian universities engaged were asked to identify which courses they would like to develop further, and a benchmarking exercise was carried out. the aim was to capture the good practice of leading courses in related fields to develop the teaching materials further and address the feedback collected. the courses included in the benchmark exercise are shown in table 1 below. topics courses included in the benchmarking exercise integrated product design bsc product design & technology, loughborough university, uk meng design engineering, imperial college, london, uk ma collaborative and industrial design, aalto university, finland service design ma service design, royal college of art, uk mdes design innovation & service design, glasgow school of art, uk ma service design, university of the arts london, uk introduction to hci ba user experience design, university of the arts london, uk msc human-computer interaction design, city, university of london, uk msc human-computer interaction, university college london, uk table 1: courses included in the benchmarking exercise. after the capacity-building sessions, a concrete application of the tools and methodologies tested has been implemented through the definition of specific syllabuses for three new courses, with the involvement of the professors who attended the capacity-building sessions. the new syllabuses were developed based on key points extracted from the benchmarking exercise and the capacity-building training materials. after that, they were reviewed by corresponding staff at the indian institutes. once the syllabuses were approved, the tutor’s guidance for each course was developed accordingly. the teaching teams who created and delivered the capacity-building programmes were also invited to add relevant information and to provide further feedback/comments to all syllabuses and tutor guidance. the practical application of the contents and the teaching methodologies in innovative design education programmes represent the beginning of the answer to the research aim of the authors, namely the modernisation and internationalisation of indian universities with innovative and updated design courses with a set of methodologies based on design thinking, sustainability, design research, social innovation and ethical issues in design. acknowledgements this work was co-funded by the erasmus+ programme of the european union under the project entitled “design and innovation capacity building in india/desinno” (project no: 598404-epp-1-2018-1-in-eppka2-cbhe-jp). 64 references bofylatos s., & azariadis p. 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(2016) problem-based learning: an overview of its process and impact on learning. health professions education, 2(2), 75-79. introduction the state of the art of practice-based design approaches undertakes the focus on the design studio and design workshop methods for learning. contemporary design approaches and associated skills are moving design education to answer to eme... design education capacity-building sessions in this section, the authors present the experience of running three capacity-building sessions aimed at supporting an hei in india in planning and developing educational content to support the three design and innovation ce... face-to-face session with a focus on integrated product design brunel university london hosted a capacity-building programme titled integrated product design in uxbridge, uk between 24 february and 6 march 2020 for nine delegates from three indian par... blended e-learning session focused on service design due to covid-19 restrictions, politecnico di milano organised a remote capacity-building programme between 10 and 23 october 2020 for 18 professors and experts from the three indian partner institu... blended learning session focused on interaction design due to the covid=19 restrictions, the session offered by the university of the aegean (uaegean) also had to be delivered online with synchronous and asynchronous learning activities. during a two... repeatability and scalability all capacity training programmes, namely integrated product design, service design and interaction design (or digital design) were developed to be turned into either new elective courses or new content that can be integra... 1 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. designing a value object for perpetrators of domestic violence inge andrew published online: november 2022 to cite this article: andrew, i. (2022). designing a value object for perpetrators of domestic violence. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(2), 1-14. 2 designing a value object for perpetrators of domestic violence inge andrewa aschool of design, otago polytechnic, dunedin, new zealand. inge.andrew@op.ac.nz abstract this article focuses on a group of people who do not have a voice in everyday discourse – perpetrators of domestic violence. by engaging with qualitative design methods, including the double diamond design process, and looking at the system of interactions and experiences at stopping violence dunedin (svd), this research identified a series of themes and milestones for men who are perpetrators of domestic violence, leading to the development of a value object. a value object can refer to that which creates value for the user. in this case, the object is a key that created a value proposition, working to celebrate the milestones that these men reach in their journey of change, supporting the possibility of an alternative future for them – a future without violence. keywords: human-centred design, user journey mapping, double diamond, value object, perpetrators of domestic violence introduction the author’s master of design research started in 2019 and continued through to 2021 while the world experienced the coronavirus pandemic. during the pandemic, there was evidence of increased domestic violence in our communities. the new zealand family violence clearinghouse found that 9% of new zealanders who completed an online survey reported that they had experienced some form of family harm during lockdown (new zealand family violence clearinghouse, 2020). the united nations described the worldwide increase in domestic violence as a ‘shadow pandemic’ alongside covid-19 (mohan, 2020). the statistics for domestic violence are high in new zealand. according to the new zealand family violence clearinghouse’s 2017 statistics, 35% of new zealand women have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence (ipv) in their lifetime. this statistic reaches 55% when psychological abuse is included. research indicates that domestic violence affects every ethnicity in new zealand, although some groups are at higher risk than others. a survey of women found that the lifetime prevalence of physical and/or ipv was 1 in 2 for māori (indigenous people of new zealand) women (58%) and 1 in 3 for european/other women (34%) and pacific women (32%) (new zealand family violence clearinghouse, n.d.). from 2009 to 2017, 230 family violence deaths were recorded in new zealand, of which 48% were a result of ipv (family violence death review committee, 2020). family violence and perpetration of domestic violence are complicated issues. research on perpetrators of domestic violence indicates that primary preventative measures, long-term investment and the need to develop a holistic approach that incorporates support from more than just the justice system are considered critical for reducing the incidence of domestic violence (polaschek, 2016). it is also well known that perpetrators of domestic violence are often victims themselves, having experienced domestic and/or sexual abuse or other types of traumas in their own lives (baker, 2013; campbell, 2012; roguski & gregory, 2014; snegirev, 2017). https://library.nzfvc.org.nz/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=3603 3 stopping violence dunedin (svd) is a not-for-profit community group that works with men by offering individual and group therapy that offers positive change. svd works with about 800 men per year who have a history of violence and supports them by listening to personal narratives and building trust and connections within group sessions. the svd manager explained that the support developed in these sessions is a vital component in the men’s journey as well as the opportunity for change and hope for a life without violence. the manager was concerned about the drop-off rates of the men and expressed an interest in seeing if this support could be extended to them in some way during the week when they are away from svd. this support, and the skills they learn at svd, are critical while the men deal with the everyday stresses of life. methodology human-centred design (hcd) and qualitative design methods underpinned by the double diamond design process were used to determine whether design could support the transformation of violent male offenders within svd. the double diamond process is a non-linear design method which explores needs, ideas and opportunities by using a discover, define, develop and deliver approach. the two-diamond approach works through a process of deep discovery using divergent thinking, followed by focused action (ideo, n.d.). the four cores of the double diamond principles are research, insight, ideation and prototyping. the very nature of hcd is to generate an understanding of a user group or community and reach a variety of solutions for an issue using specific qualitative design methodologies. according to crouch and pearce (2012), the key intention of qualitative research is to provide a vehicle through which participants’ voices can be heard. as a generative process, it keeps the user firmly in scope, seeking to arrive at solutions to a particular issue that are both feasible and desirable, with a bias towards action (clarkson, 2015). it is only by engaging in a thorough process of hcd that a researcher can fully understand the community within which they are working and strive to create an innovative solution which is specific and contextual. in this research, hcd methods which originated from sociological practice (expert interviews and focus groups) were used alongside design methods such as user journey mapping, sketching and reflection to develop a design intervention point and prototype ideas. semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis the 14 interview questions for the four svd facilitators were based on a face-to-face, open-ended, semistructured method, which worked as a framing device to open up new possibilities during the conversations with the interviewees (crouch and pearce, 2012). the interview questions in this study covered both how the facilitators see their role in the svd group sessions and what they think is important for the men as they begin to face the process of change. this method was employed by roguski and gregory (2014), who completed semi-structured interviews with former violent perpetrators to ensure that their voices and stories were the central focus of the study. the data from the interview transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis, which can highlight similarities and differences resulting in unanticipated insights (nowell et al., 2017). metzger and woodley (2010), in their report about family violence and seeking help, also used iterative data analysis, which allowed themes and patterns to emerge. user journey mapping user journey mapping is a common practice in design, allowing the creation of a visual timeline of the user’s thoughts and emotions when using a new object or design and creating a visualisation of the process that a person goes through (gibbons, 2018). journey mapping can also isolate any moments of destabilization in the process and lead to a design intervention point that can introduce an improvement 4 or a new design idea. in this research, the journey of change for the men at svd was visualised using the monomyth of the hero’s journey (campbell, 1949). this draws from joseph campbell’s extensive analysis of human mythology, identifying a series of archetypal stages that are common across cultures in myths, fairy tales, dreams, books and films (yuille, 2017). campbell’s narrative structure can be applied to design to ensure that the user has an experience (or a journey), if not an actual hero’s experience. in this instance, the themes identified as part of the interviews and thematic analysis and information from a literature review were mapped onto campbell’s hero’s journey to visualise a design intervention point. focus groups two sets of focus groups were completed. the first with the svd facilitators was undertaken to gain feedback about the identified themes, milestones and the prototype idea. the focus group with two svd group members was conducted to gain insight into the milestones and the design prototype. results double diamond design process discover phase the open-ended, semi-structured interview questions allowed the svd facilitators (#1 to #4) to reflect on their experience with men who may be initially reticent to the idea of a life without violence but who, over time, develop new skills and an understanding that allow them to make positive choices. in this coconstruction of knowledge between interviewer and interviewee, a shared understanding was developed throughout the interactions (hollingsworth and dybdahl, 2007). the constructed narratives gained from the interview transcripts were analysed by comparing each interviewee’s answers to establish themes and patterns through iterative thematic content analysis. these themes were added to a table under the interviewee’s name, and if a common theme surfaced, this was considered relevant and given a number. these themes were then compared with other academic research (including research by the svd facilitators themselves) and details of these were also added to the tables. when the data from the themes were tallied, any theme that had a total of 10 or more references was considered relevant to this study (table 1). overall, seven common themes were identified by the facilitators and from research on men who undertake the journey towards a life of non-violence. table 1: seven common themes for perpetrators of domestic violence. themes 1. men share, listen and tell stories 2. the group process helps to develop authentic relationships and connections 3. mentors offer model behaviour and hope for the new men 4. the men develop self-awareness, which in turn raises consciousness 5. children are an important motivation for change 6. cultural connectiveness is important to support positive transformation 7. there is an overall journey of transformation that occurs for men at svd men share, listen and tell stories telling personal stories during group sessions is an essential element in the journey of change for perpetrators of domestic violence. this can be an emotionally painful experience but ultimately leads to an awareness that other men share the same or related stories. facilitator #1 acknowledged the pain that the 5 men bring to svd but also the bravery. she sees this in the men when they tell their stories but also in the courage of other men who can be present with that emotional pain in the room. facilitator #3 also referred to stories told during group sessions. he said: “they learn from each other. they will hear each other’s stories. they will get a better hearing in general. they’ll get a better understanding of the world. their horizons will broaden. their sense of who they are in the world will change, and, as a consequence, their behaviour and their approach to many situations will change”. this sharing of stories is only possible by relationship building which led to the second theme. the group process helps to develop authentic relationships and connections in the interview with facilitator #3, he remarked that the group works to challenge several ideas, including those that support violence as well as a hopeless view of the world. the group works by connecting and developing hope that change is possible. the facilitators reported that men who tell the group that they had failed in some way during the week (e.g. shouted at a partner, child or workmate) usually speak with some relief, rather than a sense of fear. this is due in part to the empathy that is modelled in the group situation and the new ability to think outside just yourself. facilitator #4 also highlighted the men’s need to be seen. the facilitators make sure that everyone is seen for who they are in the group, even if that is initially uncomfortable. peers or mentors, men who have been through similar experiences, are crucial to this process which led to the third theme. mentors offer model behaviour and hope for the new men facilitator #1 spoke about the importance of mentors and their presence in the group. these are men who have attended svd for several months and are familiar with the process. their presence indicates that the process at svd works if you stick to it. facilitator #1 said: “so, i think the mentor’s role is to offer hope. change is possible. just by existing and being there and being able to say, ‘i used to be this and now i’m this’. and that this works”. facilitator #3 said that he believes that the men who have been going to svd for some time model good behaviour in terms of dealing with the many situations that the world throws at them. this model behaviour is eventually enfolded by the new men, helping to shape a new identity. he said, “what changes is the identity of the people we’re talking with. people change who they believe themselves to be”. this change of identity can also occur with self-awareness and the fourth theme in this research. the men develop self-awareness, which in turn raises consciousness facilitator #4 mentioned that men can undergo change and let go of their current violent identity, which she referred to as a raising of consciousness. the men notice their feelings in a situation but also notice other peoples’ reactions. facilitator #2 also talked about group members who are constantly disappointed by their behaviour, which can send them into a cycle of old unpleasant habits. the facilitators constantly tend to those behaviours during the group and work on developing new, positive ones. she said: 6 “they are disappointed with themselves, and they can sit with the discomfort of that because that then becomes the new motivator to try harder, while at the same time not beat themselves up about it because that just goes back to the old punitive model”. making changes to one’s personality is complicated, but there can be many motivators for change, including children, which led to theme five. children are an important motivation for change facilitator #3 pointed out that the men who come to svd essentially just want peaceful lives. they want to be able to work, save some money, get some assets and look after their children. their motives for change are ordinary, but believing that change is an option can be challenging. facilitator #4 pointed out in her interview that although children were a good motivator for change, change for the individual first was more important. she said: “often there comes a shift somewhere along the line and it becomes something they realise – actually it’s not about anybody else. ‘it’s nice that i’m doing this for my kid but i have to do it for me first’. but that’s a process”. a way of supporting positive transformation can also be guided by cultural connectiveness. cultural connectiveness is important to support positive transformation all the facilitators spoke of the importance of connections (whakawhanaungatanga) in the group. whakawhanaungatanga is a māori word that loosely translates as relationship building and family connections. facilitator #1 said that it is continually about connecting and treating everyone who comes through the door like a long-lost family member. in response to a question about this connectiveness, facilitator #2 also said: “we value those differences instead of insisting that we have the same understanding or the same set of values or whatever. we show a willingness to understand, be open to, be curious and have an openness to the cultural values and the cultural norms that other people have grown up with. that’s important”. it may be that connection to one’s own culture is a new experience, and this is part of a journey of change that leads to the last theme identified in this research. there is an overall journey of transformation that occurs for men at svdfacilitators #1, 2 and 4 all reiterated the idea in the groups that “we are all in this together” and “we are all a work in progress”, highlighting to the men that change is possible with support. there is a lot of vulnerability and pain in the group that is so important for the process. facilitator #1 remarked that some of the men have experienced unbelievable trauma in their lives, and in many ways they are only duplicating what they have learnt growing up. the transformation that the men undergo was also a reason that facilitator #2 came to work every day. she said: “i think it is the magic of transformation. when you see changes happening […]. you know when someone turns up and they’ve been hiding under a hoody for months and the hoody comes down. what might look like a surface change […] represents something much bigger. there is something very persuasive about that level of change”. 7 double diamond – define phase user journey mapping with the identification of themes, it was then possible to complete a journey map for the svd men, specifically using the monomyth of the hero’s journey (campbell, 1949). lupton (2017) in her book design is storytelling discusses campbell’s ubiquitous concept of the circular journey where the hero gets a call to adventure, initially refuses the call, but, with the help of a sidekick, embarks on a journey of tests and rewards, resulting in returning home with a hero’s story. although the hero’s journey is not typically found in hcd, it made sense here to relate the hero to men at svd and the sidekick to their potential mentor. the importance of the relationship between mentors and new men at svd has already been identified in the themes above. as lupton (2017) also identified, the circular pattern of the hero’s journey is useful in design, as the user goes through a series of highs and lows and their relationship with an object changes over time. the mapping of experiences of new clients at svd identified a point of design intervention where the men go through trials and failures in their journey of change (figure 1). through trials and failures, this part of the journey prompts personal growth by developing new skills and raising consciousness and selfawareness, and the hero can accept help from their mentor along the way. in the seven themes identified above, the mentor at svd proved to be fundamental to the journey of change, as they display a ‘been there done that’ narrative and are visible proof that the svd group process works if you stick to it. the hero in this instance can cross the threshold with the mentor’s help and move through the rest of the journey towards change. this can include revelation (reviewing old behaviours that do not work anymore), change (being more compassionate with oneself), atonement and return with a changed identity. figure 1: the hero’s journey for perpetrators of domestic violence (adapted from campbell, 2008). milestones upon further reflection and consideration of the journey metaphor, as well as the idea of transformation, seven milestones were identified, which were later approved by the svd facilitators during the focus group 8 session (figure 2). milestones can form an essential element of the journey mapping process, in which a series of actions drives the customer on a particular journey. “action drives stories and it also drives the design process” (lupton, 2017, p. 21). what lupton means by this is that good design creates an unfolding story which works to create connections and memories for the user. figure 2: milestones for stopping violence dunedin (svd) men. storytelling continues to be a strong focus from the research, the interview data andthe stories that come from the men at svd. authentic storytelling was also important in the analysis of responses to new zealand it’s not ok campaign, a recent multi-year campaign to raise awareness about domestic violence. point research ltd. (2010) found that the use of ‘real people telling real stories of domestic violence’ reverberated more with viewers than using actors in advertising. in this instance, the story of the new client at svd, now that it is translated into actions (or milestones), could be further explored towards an engaging and accessible design solution. double diamond – develop phase prototype development the design of an object that the men could carry with them could act as a reminder of their journey of transformation towards non-violence as well as a particular milestone that they might have overcome. initially thinking about what men carry in their pockets – a wallet, cell phone and keys, the key as an object is a useful metaphor for a journey but also carries many other meanings. for example, a key: opens and closes doors (both physical and metaphorical) is often lost and found again initiates new beginnings opens hearts solves mysteries unlocks potential 9 keys are familiar items that protect safe spaces but can also metaphorically offer new experiences and hope. the familiarity aspect opens possibilities for the user and its potential to introduce a new and better future. in this case, the key could remind the men of the journey they were on, as well as their support network at svd. therefore, a further concept was to make a pattern on the key (relating to a particular milestone) that was tactile in some way. this idea fitted with the concept of the value object but required feedback from the facilitators at svd. focus group (svd facilitators) a focus group with three facilitators was held to gain feedback about the design process to date the themes, milestones and key idea as a value object. during the discussion with the facilitators, the idea of the key was attractive. however, in their opinion, not every group member should be given a gift of this kind, as some attended svd merely to fulfil a court order. it was common for some men to attend the group sessions, not engage in the process and leave when the 26 weeks were completed. they also thought that seven milestone keys were too many and that it would be difficult to pinpoint when those turning points might be reached. facilitator #1 felt that a key would be better presented when the facilitators see a ‘shift’ in a group member. this engagement (shift), where an understanding develops of the consequences of their violent actions, usually happens around the 4–6-week mark. it was also suggested that a second key could be presented to any of the men who become mentors. this is currently a casual process at svd, but it is a considerable achievement when men in the groups start to show leadership and help new men to find their way. key design once the value object was determined, the process began with the design of the key and its associated pattern. the pattern on the key was important as both a memory enabler and a reminder of the milestones that the user had achieved, as well as the support of the group. humans rely on both sight and touch to evoke memory, but this rumination can also work to develop new understandings of past mistakes. designed objects, although seemingly inauthentic, can work to change behaviour in the holder, or at least induce a cognitive process. the men could reach for the key in their pocket during times of stress. the idea for the pattern of the first key came specifically from the word ‘shift’, which facilitator #1 had identified in the focus group. the car shift diagram was a natural fit in terms of the metaphoric value of journeys as well as its connection with a ‘shift’ in behaviour. the shift diagram also indicates a succession of stages, going from first to second to third, etc. the second mentor key was based around the adjectives for the word ‘key’ (main, major, crucial etc) and the word ‘mentor’, which led to ‘protector’, in turn leading to ‘manhole cover’. the idea of the manhole cover is that it protects without being visible and is both strong and secure, as well as being inconspicuous (much like a mentor). there were a series of designs for creating the key, but the final prototype was created by developing a medium density fibreboard (mdf) mould, which was cast in brass by a local casting foundry. the mould was created by designing a key shape and the patterns in adobe illustrator and cutting these out using a laserjet. the ‘shift’ and ‘manhole cover’ patterns on the mould were also raised by rasterising (removing) the surface of the pattern, ensuring a 3d-like tactile effect. image 1 shows the mdf mould of the mentor key with its associated ‘manhole cover’ pattern, and image 2 shows the final prototype of the shift key, cast in brass. 10 image 1: mdf prototype manhole cover key. image 2: final prototype shift key, cast from brass. double diamond – deliver phase focus group (svd group members) the purpose of the focus group with two svd members (#a and #b) was to gain their perspective on the seven milestones identified from the research, as well as feedback on the key concept as incentives for men at svd. this session was based on the premise that these men were familiar with each other, as they had been in a group for several months. this level of comfort was important for the results of the focus group, which the researcher saw as a simulation of a social occasion rather than a formal interview (lunt, 1996). the plan for this focus group was to keep it as open-ended as possible for the participants to feel comfortable interjecting as much as they wanted. the following is a summary of the conversation, including some key statements from the two participants. the two group members generally agreed with the milestones that had been developed but had differing views about the order in which they occurred. they also acknowledged that the milestones could come at different times and in different orders depending on the person. it also became clear during the conversation that people might revisit the milestones at different points of the journey. they were not necessarily a ‘one-time’ thing. there were many layers to the speak (tell your story) milestone. #a said that he heard his own story told by someone else at the first group session he attended, which affected him deeply. it was not his story, but he realised then that other people had similar stories to him. it had, however, taken him longer to learn to listen to other peoples’ stories. for him, the ‘return to svd’ milestone was determined by that initial experience, and he returned the next week without question. #b, however, said that it took years before he was able to return to svd, as he was emotionally triggered by other group members in the first session he attended and did not go back. he also acknowledged that ‘telling your story’ is one thing but taking responsibility for it is another process altogether. when we discussed the milestone ‘accepting hope’, they both agreed that it takes varying amounts of time depending on the person, and it can be triggered with 11 certain realisations. these could be, for example, recognizing that you have the power to change, becoming self-aware and identifying what your issues are. another theme, ‘playing the long game’, came up during the conversation, which is important to raise here. as mentioned previously, certain men attend svd for the court-ordered 26 weeks and do not return (having not engaged in the process). both participants had been attending svd group sessions for more than two years and were adamant that the journey of change was lifelong. #b explained that many of the guys are very impatient, want instant gratification and find it hard to see the big picture. he echoed later that coming to svd “is a lifelong thing and it’s a lifestyle change. it’s not a change of behaviour as such”. #a also said about the group sessions, “that’s what i do on a wednesday. these are my guys. i’m a lifer”. the concept of the key was initiated by talking about what people have in their pockets. what do they carry with them that is part of their identity? when #a and #b were asked about what a key could represent for them, the discussion focused on opportunities, keeping and unlocking secrets, as well as safety. losing your key can also create a source of anxiety. when they saw the shift key with the gearshift pattern, the overall response was positive, with #b even comparing it to alcoholics anonymous sobriety chips. he also commented that the ‘reverse’ of the gearshift pattern was realistic, since the journey towards non-violence frequently consisted of ‘two steps forward, one step back’. he also commented that there was a lot of ‘neutral’ or procrastinating in the process. they both agreed that a good time to give out the key was when a group member started to show a shift in attitude. #b mentioned that this can be a huge turning point when someone takes ownership of their violent behaviour. the manhole cover key was also well received, with the concept of this key being for a mentor who had moved into a space where he could start to show leadership to the other, newer members of the group. #a agreed that you do not notice manhole covers until they’re missing. they also concurred with the supposition that the key was suitable in the way that it is not obvious to anyone but the owner (#b mentioned early in the conversation that there is a lot of stigma and shame around attending svd). #b also said that the manhole cover was like safety, and by the time you received, it you knew that there were a few people who definitely “had your back”. he reiterated that at svd, it is about pain management, not anger management, alluding to the support that is built within the group. discussion frascara (2006) believes that we must stop thinking about design as the construction of graphics, products or services but as a means for people to act. in this research, a design solution was sought to remind men of the process and the support they receive at svd. qualitative design methods and the double diamond design process were applied to investigate processes at svd and explore concepts and opportunities which resulted in ideas about journeys and change. this translated to the development of a value object, the key. a value object is that which can influence possible or definite change, and a design artefact can create a shared language and understanding as well as imagine a new future (zino et al., 2021). through the development of themes and milestones at svd, the value object displayed a message, defined by either the shift or the manhole cover patterns. the idea of the value object was to ensure that the user experiences something and ultimately, has an emotion induced that might evoke a change (in this case, a response to a situation with something other than violence). this builds on fuad-luke's (2009) definition of design exploration where we can explore possibilities outside current paradigms. a value object can present a proposition and reveal a positive alternative. 12 we all navigate our world according to our context and our identity (which changes over time), and we keep, carry and wear objects with us that either represent our identity or someone we might hope to be. according to lupton (2002), we rely on the world of things, using objects to survive and conquer, merging our identities with the objects we carry. most of us, for example, carry a mobile phone with us, which helps us to access and share information (which evokes certain emotions), and we can feel lost without it. objects that we keep at home either have a functional or emotive value (or both), and we are affected in some way if they are lost or broken. these objects sometimes tell a story and can communicate to us in certain ways. the keys, in this case, are a recognition of the work that has been put in but also a reminder of the support that has grown around the men at svd. just as a key is a metaphor for opening new doors, these keys are a start to a transformation – an alternative future where men can be in charge of their destiny. acknowledgements i would like to acknowledge the staff at stopping violence dunedin (svd), particularly the manager, for helping me with this research. i am grateful for their time and expertise in helping me to understand the process and journeys of men at svd. i would also like to thank the two men who attended the focus group. i will never forget their openness and honesty about their lives. references baker, g. 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(2021). things for thought – a creative toolkit to explore belonging. design for health, 5(1), 82–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/24735132.2021.1883822 67 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. eco-development of biocomposites from water hyacinth: a sustainable integral design proposal for xochimilco, mexico city ricardo gonzalez published online: may 2022 to cite this article: gonzalez, r. (2022). eco-development of biocomposites from water hyacinth: a sustainable integral design proposal for xochimilco, mexico city. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(1), 67-82. 68 eco-development of biocomposites from water hyacinth: a sustainable integral design proposal for xochimilco, mexico city ricardo gonzalez a auniversidad autónoma metropolitana, mexico city. ricardogislas@hotmail.com abstract this work starts from the context of an environmental crisis that frames a growing trend of a search for alternatives of a sustainable nature as a proposal solution from the transdisciplinary approach of design. the objective of this work consists of planning an eco-development strategy to create biocomposite materials using water hyacinth (eicchornia crassipes) as raw material. the approach will be part of a collective research programme for future doctoral studies whose further objective is the sustainable integral community development of san gregorio atlapulco in xochimilco, mexico city. theoretically, an approach is made from complex thinking and the sustainability paradigm, resulting in a vision of design as an integral sustainable activity, from the perspective of the formulation of new materials, appealing to movements like material activism, ecodesign and material designers, in conjunction with a circular economy. exploratory experimentation for bio bases and sustainable treatments for the water hyacinth fibre was carried out to establish the optimal formulations for the elaboration of biocomposites. from this, seven biocomposites with different properties were obtained that can be used with various low-impact processes for manufacturing sustainable design objects. by doing so, this stage ended with a prospective scenario that was proposed for further work with the community as the beginning of a social entrepreneurship initiative. keywords: biocomposites, integral sustainability, water hyacinth, eco-development introduction the current situation of crisis in environmental, social, cultural, economic and health aspects is a consequence of the imbalance brought by industrial development, which has raised growth in terms of capital instead of ecological improvements. this is reflected for example, in accordance with sources like the global footprint network (2020), which mentions that the planet has an average biocapacity of 1.63 global hectares (gha) and that the ideal would be to have an ecological footprint that does not exceed that amount. however, the average per person is 2.75 gha, which represents a deficit of 1.1 gha. today, humanity uses the equivalent of 1.6 earth planets in terms of exploitation of resources and waste absorption; among them are deforestation and overfishing and carbon dioxide emissions, respectively. in a local context, we can think about specific problems in each community that can be added to the main ones. in this case study, the presence of water hyacinth with its impact on different areas and scales of xochimilco is the main concern. as a brief presentation, xochimilco has an history of eco-development since ancient times, a balance between a wetland environment and anthropogenic activities. nowadays, there is only a remnant of that antique land. xochimilco “is a zone that includes a group of original towns, a net of water channels, lakes and the chinampas (which is a portion of land built on the water with soil and the help of the endemic ahuejote trees, with agricultural purposes) whose importance was recognised in 1987 by unesco when it was declared a historical and cultural heritage of humanity” (soria, 2004, p. 261). despite its natural tourist attraction, it has various problems in each of its neighbourhoods. with a population of 442,178 people 69 (inegi, 2020), it expresses an environmental crisis promoted by water pollution, deforestation, irregular settlements in the protected area and in the socioeconomic dimension, due to abandonment of local activities such as agriculture, lack of opportunities, unemployment and migration, which together have returned to the town hall a very vulnerable area. one of the original neighbourhoods is called san gregorio atlapulco, a place that reunites a set of characteristics that led to proposing a project towards the sustainable development of the community from the design perspective. beyond the political organisation of this town, san gregorio has the characteristic of being well-organised through cooperatives with mainly commercial purposes. the people who work at chinampas defend their land, interests, customs and traditions, doing a very remarkable form of organisation in the zone. it is proposed that a strategy for the eco-development of biocomposites with water hyacinth can be derived towards a proposal of sustainable integral design. for their part, these materials have properties that make them suitable for use in various design projects. at the same time, the strategy seeks to integrate a prospective proposal within comprehensive community development plans that can be adapted and adopted in areas with similarly vulnerable situations. in the first place, the eco-development concept mentioned here is the one proposed by ignacy sachs (1974), which considers this form of development as an adaptation to the ecosystemic situations of each eco-region. the author mentions that one strategy for development will not fit all realities, given the complexity of the topic and multiplicity of operative variables. this concept aspires to define a development adapted mainly to third world rural regions, addressing specific solutions to specific problems, contemplating the ecological and cultural characteristics and the immediate and long-term needs. the eco-development then, is a reaction against the trend of universal solutions and master formulas. on the other hand, a biocomposites, as defined by bootle et al. (2001) is a combination of two or more constituent materials, which are the matrix and reinforcing component, with at least one being naturally derived. this new material must show an improved performance over its individual components. the reinforcing material can be fibres, whiskers, particles or flakes; meanwhile, the matrix is the binder that provides mechanical support. in the last two decades, there has been a great interest in the development of alternative materials around sustainable design, given the problems of environmental deterioration that have forced us to rethink how resources are extracted and exploited and how objects are produced and disposed of at the end of their useful life. greater attention has been paid to the life cycle of both the products and the materials used. the present work proposes a contribution to the exploration of new material alternatives and the link between design and social innovation through a project leading to co-creation. as designers, is necessary to rethink the activity in terms of the impact of what we design and how, so the main question is: what can be done from the perspective of design to transform the situation of a community with social and environmental issues? this work offers an approach to the potential that a developing country can have by visualising opportunities where they do not seem to be found, taking advantage of local resources to contribute to the transition towards a deeper ecology, following the concept of ecopuncture proposed by casagrande (2011) combining ecology and acupuncture, where a pin prick in a determined place will carry a revitalising effect to the point and its surroundings, i.e. a reaction of positive refeeding to have a bigger impact than expected 70 with the initial move. in this case, san gregorio is chosen as the ecopunctural site to have the incidence for further application of projects. literature review integral sustainability sustainability, from its conceptualisation and foundation, is referred to as a complex paradigm, uniting scientific and technological, political and legal and social and cultural aspects to improve the global environmental situation through local plans, mainly in countries like mexico, in growth. it is about substantiating pro-environmental actions that will lead to modifying the situation through changes on a small or large scale, involving very punctual or utopian actions that motivate a change of paradigm, implying “awareness, responsibility, ethical and cultural aspects, as well as patterns of consumption and lifestyles” (garcía, 2008, p. 73). for his part, lopez (2004), in his essay on integral sustainability, mentions that “it is clear that the emancipatory mission, linked to arousing efforts and actions for the constant improvement of the quality of life of the population, cannot be left in charge of the only attention to the environment, but that it has to be given integrally, it must be assumed taking into account the social problem as a whole. in this case, we would talk about comprehensive sustainability”. this paradigm implies recovering the transforming sense in different dimensions, since, in its practice, it tends to suffer different degrees of reductionism or, as mentioned above, it is easily manipulated in terms of convenience. for azamar and matus (2019, p. 16), the challenge of building comprehensive sustainability involves two central aspects: 1. thinking completely, considering the complex network of knowledge that a particular situation can summon; 2. development of operational actions that merge science and practice into an interrelated whole. sustainability, to face complexity, requires a degree of interdisciplinarity that needs material and logistical resources not currently provided for research. it implies not only the simple concurrence of disciplines but also an exercise in which situations are studied from articulated perspectives, linked to the processes that it defines and at the same time with those that integrate it (tainter, 2006, as cited in azamar and matus, 2019). it will include the integration of productive, environmental, sociocultural, political, and technological processes, among others, that are evident on different spatial and temporal scales. 71 image 1: dimensions of integral sustainability. design in this context will play a vital role, being a determining factor through the points described in the work of garcía (2008, p. 25): “raw material extraction, selection of materials, determination of the production process, establishing how the product is used, distributed and discarded”, that is, influencing each stage of the production of products. sustainable design contemplates the other seven dimensions of the context in which it will be carried out, to transform reality. integral sustainable design through material creation the role of the designer has come to be perceived as “an original conceptually deliberative thinker, who, through an active dialogue with manufacturers, fosters the development of new materials or production processes or develops them himself” (bürdek & eisele, 2011, as cited in karana, 2013, p. 169). and in either case, the request is the same: production must be based on renewable raw materials and recyclable and/or biodegradable products. for this, the following five complementary proposals were considered: circularity in a complex way of thinking, products must be understood as systems that are connected to other complex systems. these connections will allow waste streams from one system to be the raw material for another system. it is in the hands of the designer to apply this principle of circularity in the development of services and products, both by creating some that last longer, and by thinking about the future of the materials when they become waste (cléries et al., 2018, p. 14). upcycling alternatives have been explored mainly in the last decade, such as upcycling, understood differently from recycling (recycling) as an upcycling that “provides an opportunity for waste or discarded products to be transformed into new, reconfigured, readapted and improved articles […] in some versions even being ephemeral like bags made of food waste […] and others that range from soaps, carpets, lamps, furniture and even entire constructions” (bramston & maycroft, as cited in karana, 2015, p. 123). beyond being a phenomenon of mass production, it came to reflect on whether it is possible to compete with local environment al p o litic c u lt u ra l design 72 resources and techniques against industrial production. in time, more and more designers and experts from other disciplines such as biology joined the trend, products of this type entered the market, and material developments were increasingly elaborated based on this principle. material activism at the same time, there is another material concept called material activism (ribul, 2013), whose purpose is to explore the democratisation of material production with do-it-yourself tools, in terms of materials and infrastructure that can be had at home and from there carry out experimentations. from this perspective, new materials can be developed with non-advanced technology, using the inputs at the discretion of each creator, but following some scientific guidelines that are shared “freely” on the internet by activists ranging from bioplastics to biotextiles, from fungal or bacterial polymers for packaging to construction materials. material designers recently, a proposal has been consolidated by the institutions elisava barcelona school of design and engineering, the design department of the politecnico di miano, and ma-tt-er london. it is called material designers (cléries et al., 2020), and it consists of a project, co-founded by the creative europe programme of the european union, whose objective is to promote talent towards circular economies on the continent. material designers consists of a platform, a training programme, an award and a series of events for the positive impact that material designers can have in all types of industry and the generation of an alternative that relates to the circular economy. according to cléries et al. (2020), it is about empowering communities to search for alternatives applied to industry or the creation of activities from a creative sector, as it is through new explorations based on design and with the collaboration of other disciplines. the designer acts as a facilitator of materials derived from a reflection of the context, of the processes with which they can be created and of ideas for their application, since, based on the words of manzini (1986), it has been understood that the designer not only can transform and create using the material for invention, but can invent the material itself. biocomposites nature has developed examples in countless presentations, according to garcía (2017), in wood, where lignin acts as a matrix and cellulose as a reinforcing fibre, bones made up of a calcium binder and collagen fibres, the nacre of molluscs, made up of calcium carbonate or aragonite and a conchiolin biopolymer. now, in addition to proposing the manufacture of environmentally friendly materials, a more comprehensive approach is sought, so that these have relevant social, economic, aesthetic, scientifictechnological and cultural impacts to contribute to the transformation of reality from design. for dos santos and lenz (2013) the most environmentally friendly materials are those formulated from biodegradable polymers and reinforced with natural fibres, which can be composted at the end of their life cycle. however, the challenge here is the balance between life performance because of the physical properties and the biodegradability. for its part, the biodegradable polymers can be obtained from plants, such as cellulose, starch, pectin, soy derivates, polypeptides and polyphenols and from animals, such as silk, wool, polypeptides, chitin, chitosan and glycogen. the natural reinforcements are used to improve mechanical properties, giving stiffness and strength to the matrix, and the main source is the vegetable fibres. these have many advantages besides the environmental, like low costs, easy processing, lower density and lower energy consumption. the main lignocellulosic fibres are flax, hemp, henequen, jute and kenaf, among others, that have the best chemical compositions to work properly on biocomposites. dahy (2017) mentions that natural fibres like flax, jute, hemp, etc. have a higher cost and are not available worldwide as they are obtained from agricultural residues, which are those fibres retrieved after the crops 73 harvesting, also called agro-fibres. this has lead to a search for new sources other than the conventional ones to improve the production of material alternatives. in recent years, there has been a great boom in the exploration of these types of material. to mention some that have inspired this work, we have the paper pulp by debbie wijskamp, a composite of newspaper and a bio binder, to fabricate furniture; the ex-presso project by julian lechner, taking coffee waste mixed with casein or bio resin to make cups and other receptacles, the zostera stool by carolin pertsch, a stool fabricated with a composite made from aquatic plant waste and bio resin; sargablock by omar vazquez, a brick made from sargasso and soil for the construction industry; coconut ecodesign by karina sánchez, a composite developed from coconut waste and bioplastic made of starch; and the cheer project by gaurav wali, a biocomposite that consists of pine needles and bioplastic made from starch. as the main source of inspiration for this work, the cheer project of gaurav (2019) and the thesis ecoregional design for xochimilco by reséndiz (2010) are the chosen works. these are examples of academic works with the intention of reaching another level for social innovation and entrepreneurship in developing countries. the cheer project for india and the eco-regional for mexico are both proposals for organisation that starts with biocomposite materials in similar contexts, trying to take advantage of residual biomass that causes big environmental problems if it is ignored, so that a community takes part to solve the problem, and in a way, it turns out to be a cultural and productive activity. as with these examples, there have been so many more in recent years. developing countries that count on natural fibres that also represent an environmental problem are looking for commercial exploitation in some industries. at this moment, most of the biocomposites projected are limited to lab-scale investigations. it is important to consider the role of government legislation and technology development to escalate the lab work. water hyacinth for biocomposites eicchornia crassipes is a floating perennial plant with green leaves that has a spiky bloom violet and yellow in colour and has a fibrous root that extends up to three metres. it belongs to the pontederiaceae family, whch is native to south america. it is the only species of the genus eicchornia that is floating. the petioles have intercellular spaces filled with air, and the blades are raised above the water level and act as sails, which allow it to float freely and quickly spread its distribution until it becomes a plague (inecol, n.d.). it has been lying in bodies of water in mexico for more than a century, spreading to cause major problems in its early years and to this day. it is suggested that it was brought during the government of porfirio diaz, given the policies that were implemented in the economic sector to increase the development of agricultural and fishing activities. due to this, it is thought that it could have arrived as green manure in chinampera agriculture, as an element of fish farming technology or as an ornamental plant, according to cervantes and rojas (2000). it has a wet weight of 11–51 kg per square metre, corresponding to 0.62–2.87 kg per square metre in dry weight. the biomass has a variable doubling rate of between 7.4 and 46.5 days (juárez, 2011). its use for material creation was not raised until a few years ago. micro-enterprises are dedicated to its transformation into paper and derivative handicrafts woven from the stems, and more recently it has been proposed as fibre for the manufacture of composites and parts for the automotive sector. great interest has been shown in the last two decades for the creation of a wide variety of projects of this type, both research and marketed, for the sustainable use of waste and weeds mainly aimed at their transformation into industrial/handcrafted materials. this plant has been proposed as raw material, for example, due to its absorbent quality, to retain contaminants resulting from spills. vargas (2017) mentions a variety of existing and possible derivative products, such as compost, paper, handicrafts, toxin absorbers, construction materials, paint texturisers, 74 oven supplies, fodder, soil remediation, some produced as a biocomposite, with the addition of chemical or biological matrices. ajithram (2020) evaluates its use in compounds with epoxy resin, showing characteristics very similar to those provided by synthetic fibres. this is oriented to industries such as the automotive industry. non-woven textile production has been proposed by bhuvaneshwari and sangeetha (2017) through a defibration process and combined with another fibre (hemp) that has greater cohesion power. table 1: physical properties of water hyacinth fibre compared with others. (ajithram et al., 2020). methodology to implement an ecological production system for biocomposites in coherence with the context and the objective of comprehensive sustainability defined from the documentary review, a search was carried out for processes with the least impact on both environmental and human health, drifting towards simplified processes that are feasible to be carried out in vulnerable communities with a lack of services, reduced spaces and low investment level, using the most accessible tools and machinery in terms of use and costs, the least possible use of substances or additives both renewable and non-renewable, as well as an optimal use of energy and in the same way, the least possible, whether electricity or from fuel. in this way, a strategy of strategies emerged that occurred four stages before social entrepreneurship. 1) theoretical foundation. relevance of the proposal. 2) strategy where the methods of preparation of the fibre and other inputs for the material creation were planned. 3) strategy of experimentation in the creation of materials. 4) proposal for the future for obtaining materials and the creation of design objects aimed at a social enterprise. image 2: strategy phases of the proposed methodology for eco-development of biocomposites in san gregorio. 75 the main contribution of this methodology is to find a way to make an impactful project in the san gregorio region, going little by little, given the cultural characteristics of the communities. this work frames the first steps where a posture of eco-development is taken through the theoretical investigation and materials are obtained, so is possible to offer workshops with actors of the community to have an approach from the perspective of design and other fields like biology, architecture, chemistry, among others, with social entrepreneurship aimed at since the beginning. this is the first estimated bridge between the community and a group of work that will carry a whole project of sustainable restoration called master plan of sustainable development for san gregorio atlapulco, in which professors, investigators and students from different disciplines like those mentioned before meet. with a complete map of stakeholders, we can formulate a complex strategy for the estimated project to the integral sustainable transformation of san gregorio atlapulco. case study san gregorio atlapulco is chosen as a strategic site within the xochimilco demarcation. it is made up of different zones: rural chinampera, wetlands (remnants of lake xochimilco) and urban and hilly. this area shares the typical characteristics of xochimilco; it consists of an average altitude of 2,240 metres above sea level with an average 669 mm annual rainfall and temperature of 16.4°c (torres-lima & conway., 2018). the lake system is made up of 277.8 km2, where an estimated volume of 2622 cubic metres of water is contained in 160 ha. there is a channel network of 203 km in total length. the agroecological production area has decreased from 9,000 ha registered at the beginning of the 20th century to 1,200 ha. torres-lima and conway also mention a series of problems that affect the sustainability of the san gregorio atlapulco wetlands (table2): indicator socio-environmental impact socioeconomic use of modified or transgenic seeds use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides replacing traditional chinampas techniques with greenhouses construction of stables construction of bridges between canals introduction of a sanitary hydraulic network in chinampas improvised rubbish tips loss of trade with local markets environmental construction of locks and weirs closure of canals and ditches destruction of dykes drainage of sewage into canals deforestation of native ahuejotes trees (salix bomplandiana l.) invasion of water hyacinth (eicchornia crassipes) removal of wild plants and animals use of motorised aquatic vehicles regional abandonment of piers transformation of chinampas into housing conversion of canals into streets no intervention on the part of institutions and government officials table 2: indicators and variables of socio-environmental impacts that negatively affect wetland sustainability in san gregorio atlapulco (torres-lima et al., 2018). 76 the aforementioned has motivated the generation of a proposal that articulates the use of the water hyacinth plague that shows an average yield of 120 tons per hectare yearly (d’agua et al., 2014) and an approximate cost of 70,000 mexican pesos per hectare to remove it from the waters (juárez, 2011), causing an economic, environmental and social impacts that affect the water ecosystems and productive activities. with the strategy of utilisation as fibre, this can be profitable, through value-added products created by the community members in workshops. strategy of planning and technical design the processes for the preparation of the water hyacinth as a raw material for the manufacture of biocomposites are established, starting from the theoretical basis of the treatment of fibres for their use as reinforcement in biobases. a general approach to the treatment of the plant is provided by ajithram (2020) with a sequence of extraction, cutting of roots and leaves (which are discarded), drying and crushing. in addition, implements for these processes were designed and manufactured. subsequently, experiments were carried out with the manufacture of biobases using starches, vegetable glue, pine resin and gelatin. image 3: preparation of biomass for utilisation in biocomposites experimentation. a)–c): drying process in net panels; d), e): designed low cost shredding machine; f) particle sizes obtained from shredding; g) experimental biobases of starch, gelatin, mucilague + fibre. to obtain the optimal biobases for fibre binding, it was considered a design of experiments with mixtures proposed by gutiérrez y de la vara (2008). guided by the geometric representation, the vertexes represent pure mixtures, the edges represent binary mixtures, the faces correspond to tertiary mixtures. and the interior points to quaternary mixtures. image 4: geometric representation of design of experiments with mixtures by gutiérrez y de la vara (2008). strategy of material experimentation with the selected formulas, the material tests were carried out to obtain seven different presentations of fibre and combined biobases, using, as mentioned, simple processes, friendly for the user and the environment: 77 image 5: paper. a laminate from a mixture of 80% water hyacinth fibre and 20% recycled newspaper, both previously treated with water immersion of 7 days to soften the fibre. image 6: agglomerate. material made of 100% fibre, previously treated with water immersion of 7 days, only subjected to pressure in a mould to take form and expel most of the water. this presentation of bars was weak in its face, but very strong when it was resting on its edges. image 7: agglomerate with starch bioplastic. the optimal matrix was composed by a 4:1:1:1: 1/5 formula: water 30 g, starch 7.5 g, vinegar 7.5 g, glycerin 7.5 g, with 1.5 g of dried fibre. the difference between this material and the previous one is that this were not subjected to pressure to give form. it was just cast into the mould and left to dry. it takes around 4 days to be completely dry. image 8: vinyl of gelatin and starch bioplastic with fibre. the optimal formula for the matrix was 10:3/4:2:1, which entails 100 g water, 7.5 g of gelatin, 20 g of glycerin and 10 g of vinegar for the mould used. the optimal amount of fibre added was 3 g dried or 20 g wet. it solidifies in 15 minutes, but to be completely dry takes approximately 96 hours. 78 image 9: bioplastic of pine resin. this material consists of three components: pine resin, beeswax and fibre. the wax is added to give fluency to the mixture. the optimal amount was 15 g resin, 15 g wax and 3 g dried fibre. the matrix is heated until it melts and then is cast in a mould with the fibre already inside it, stirred for a few seconds and left to dry. image 10: bio-laminated weave. this material consists of a piece of woven stems and a process of bio-laminate with starch bioplastic. first, the hyacinth stems are set in the sunlight for drying, then the air is removed by pressure with the hand. once the stems are flat, the weaving starts. the bio-laminated weave consists of mechanical pressure applied to the piece of woven stems. once it is flat, it is coated with layers of starch bioplastic, then is subjected to pressure again, with a source of heat supplying hot air to dry and harden the piece. image 11: bio-panel. a combination of the last two materials: agglomerate + bio-laminated weave. the agglomerate is glued by the faces with starch bioplastic and subjected to pressure. then, two pieces of laminate are set under an d over the agglomerates and glued with starch bioplastic applying pressure too. the result is a light and hard piece of a sandwich of water hyacinth that supports large amounts of weight. 79 strategy of prospective approach this section proposes an application of the development of materials and the manufacture of design objects in a community environment that contributes to its integral sustainable development. it is intended that from this research a complex strategy arises, where the materials function as a means through which a community such as san gregorio atlapulco can provide solutions to the identified problems and solve needs, improving the current situation without causing further environmental deterioration, and alluding to environmental education and awareness. how the project is planned to be carried out in the next stage is in a co-creation space where the community inhabitants interact with the material to explore design alternatives or applications for each material likely to be marketed to generate a social enterprise. this implies empowering the members of a community to achieve independence based on the self-production of materials, using simple transformation processes with local and circular inputs. image 12: examples of applications for the developed materials in this work. 1) biovinyl applications. 2) biovinyl objects. 3) paper for art. 4) biovinyl lampshade. 5) bio-laminated veneer on pdf. 6) paper dog poop collector. 7 & 8) bioplastic from hand-moulded starch. the main contribution of this work is a extensive exploration of the material possibilities with water hyacinth, working with austerity, thinking about taking the processes to a rural environment, with the possibility to make a manual for developing this kind of biocomposite to use with groups in workshops. another contribution is that when the work was showed to the public, mainly academic experts on the region of xochimilco, it generated great interest as a project applying social innovation, whereby this project has been considered the more feasible way to approximate to the communities of san gregorio, to carry then a greater project that covers another area and requires more actors. in the context of developing the project proposal as social entrepreneurship, it is expected that there will be attention to each of situation that needs solutions, as follows: 80 dimension development environmental water hyacinth control; inculcate ecological awareness; the barrier between the protected area and irregular settlements social improve quality of life; creation of new organisations; improve health economic improve navigation in channels; offer job opportunities bio-cultural heritage revaluation; landscape conservation; inculcate values and environmental care political agreements between stakeholders; support networks; proposal of new regulations and policies scientifictechnologic research and technological development (materials, processes); implementation of eco-technologies; educational form a socio-environmental criterion; educate for family planning fields of design sustainable alternatives of creation; aimed at socio-environmental benefit; investigation to and from design; create a regional product identity table 3: developments for each dimension of integral sustainability. final considerations: limitations and scope the objective is to create an eco-development strategy aimed at the production of materials in an environment of scarce resources and infrastructure. the methodology will entail an approach to a technical manual for the eco-development of biocomposites with water hyacinth. aspects of feasibility will aim at a circular economy that contributes to community development through innovation and social entrepreneurship, which in turn, contributes to its control in the tributaries that are plagued by water hyacinth. finally, due to the restrictions of the covid-19 pandemic, the study of the community was carried out through document review and participation in seminars and talks with academics who have worked in the area. conclusions a realistic scenario is proposed to carry out the eco-development strategy in the community of san gregorio atlapulco. through a subsequent multidisciplinary, in-depth study with various actors (research community and authorities) and with a definitive structure, a pilot project with desirable scenarios will be developed. the sustainability paradigm is perceived integrally, trying to contemplate the complexity, in this case, of the object of transformation, and thus responding with a proposal from complexity to provide solutions for social change. however, this approach is nothing more than a viable transition for the moment, towards a paradigm of deep ecology. future investigation will explore the optimisation of materials using other sustainable inputs – biobased or synthetic – and greater self-produced technological development. there will be execution of quantitative tests, such as mechanical, use and end of cycle like degradability and compostability. in addition, an impact matrix 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(2017). lirio acuático: fortaleza en la gestión ambiental. foro en materia ambiental y ecológica, con enfoque y visión municipal. 28 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consumers’ purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging in kidapawan city, the philippines ma. karysa f. garcia, karl p. campos published online: november 2022 to cite this article: garcia, m.k.f., & campos, k.p. (2022). consumers’ purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging in kidapawan city, philippines. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(2), 28-37. 29 consumers’ purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging in kidapawan city, the philippines ma. karysa f. garcia, mbaa, karl p. campos, phdb auniversity of southern mindanao-kidapawan city campus, cotabato, philippines. mkfgarcia@usm.edu.ph buniversity of southeastern philippines, davao city, philippines. karl.campos@usep.edu.ph abstract the severity of the plastic problem in the philippines has prompted the public and private sectors to take measures to address it. as the country shifts to sustainable ways, information about green consumer behaviour is essential to effectively implement policies and programmes. this study aimed to determine consumers’ level of purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging, whether a significant difference in consumers’ purchase intention exists when they are grouped according to socio-demographic characteristics and identify the factors that significantly affect consumers’ purchase intention. a total of 393 consumers from kidapawan city were selected as respondents using purposive random sampling. the results revealed that respondents have a high level of purchase intention for eco-friendly packaging. there were also significant differences in the level of purchase intention when the respondents were grouped according to age and sex. notably, females had a higher level of purchase intention. the findings from the hierarchical moderated regression analysis show that attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, environmental concern, awareness, willingness to pay and quality significantly and positively influence purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging. in particular, it willingness to pay, quality and awareness strongly affect purchase intention. meanwhile, the moderating variables do not affect the dependent and independent variables. the results of the study infer that purchase intention is greater among consumers when they have favourable attitudes and supportive social circles, perceive that it is easy to buy eco-friendly packaging, are more willing to support or participate in environmental initiatives, more knowledgeable, more willing to pay and have a positive perception of the quality of eco-friendly packaging. keywords: eco-friendly packaging, factors, hierarchical moderated regression, marketing, purchase intention introduction as countries experience economic progress, the natural environment deteriorates as a trade-off. countries address this by adopting sustainable development, which includes the promotion of green behaviour, i.e. pro-environment behaviour that minimizes harm to the environment (european commission, 2012). this involves research that aims to develop sustainable production techniques, innovate technologies, craft business strategies and understand consumer behaviour in relation to environmental concerns. filipino consumers’ green behaviour needs to be researched because businesses lack the information they need to decide whether to adopt sustainable ways, such as using eco-friendly packaging. as the country has recognized the plastic problem, groups and individuals from the public and private sectors are combatting this problem by practising and promoting sustainable practices, such as using eco-friendly packaging. however, the adoption of eco-friendly packaging remains slow because some businesses view this as a costly alternative (alpad, 2021) and they lack information on consumers’ behaviour towards it (prakash et al., 2019). 30 previous research on green behaviour, especially green consumption, has mostly been conducted in other countries. existing research has addressed several aspects of green consumption, including the purchase of green products, consumer theory to be used and determinants of green purchase (zhang & dong, 2020). focusing on eco-friendly packaging, most research has been conducted in china, the united states, india, brazil, italy, the united kingdom, spain, malaysia, canada and germany (wandosell et al., 2021). in the philippines, research on green consumption is relatively new. the topics that have been studied are consumers’ profile, purchase intention and preferences. for example, gregorio (2015) and resurreccion (2015) pioneered green consumer research by creating a profile of filipinos as green consumers. in addition, san juan-nable (2016) and palmero and montemayor (2020) investigated consumers’ purchase behaviours for green products. consumer studies about green behaviour, particularly eco-friendly packaging, in the philippines remain scarce. the closest literature is the study by gano-an (2018) about consumer preferences and perceptions of the use of eco-bags. to date, many opportunities for research about green behaviour in the country remain. some of these unexplored concepts about green behaviour appear to be important and worthy of investigation in the context of the philippines. an investigation of these issues is essential because consumer preferences are shifting, and people are paying close attention to sustainable development. moreover, promoting green consumerism must strike a balance among the perspectives of not only businesses, government and environmentalists but also consumers (gano-an, 2018). furthermore, previous empirical research has focused primarily on establishing filipino consumers’ green profile and green products, and little consumer research has been conducted on eco-friendly packaging. this paper seeks to address the following objectives: (1) to determine the level of purchase intention of consumers towards eco-friendly packaging; (2) to determine significant differences in the level of purchase intention when grouped according to socio-demographic profiles; and (3) to identify the factors affecting purchase intention. this research contributes to the scant literature on green consumerism in the philippine context. more importantly, it presents consumers’ perspectives on the adoption of eco friendly packaging that could prove useful in business decisions and policymaking. literature review green behaviour, also known as pro-environment or sustainable behaviour, involves actions that impact water conservation, air quality, energy efficiency and use, transportation, agriculture and waste reduction (mckenzie-mohr et al., 2011). businesses have viewed green behaviour, especially by consumers, as a commercial opportunity, and it has developed further as a research field (peattie, 2010). as such, research related to green marketing is important, as it can foster cleaner production by businesses and sustainable consumption through successful marketing to consumers (dangelico & vocalelli, 2017). in particular, green consumption has been widely studied to gain a better understanding of consumers’ changing behaviour in relation to their environmental concerns. according to peattie (2010), green consumption research encompasses studies related to consumers’ intentions and behaviours and studies founded in industrial ecology or environmental economics. the existing literature shows that research related to green consumer behaviour in the philippines is scarce and relatively new. pioneering research includes gregorio (2015), who aimed to understand the impact of green marketing and provide the profile of green consumers. the study revealed that the lack of green consumerism behaviour was attributed to the convenience and availability of non-eco-friendly products 31 compared to eco-friendly products. another study provided a profile of filipino green consumers. using cluster analysis, resurreccion (2015) found two groups of sustainable consumers: the “mature and product cautious” and the “young and socially pressured”. few purchase intention studies on eco-friendly products have been conducted in the country. san juannable (2016) determined the factors affecting the intentions and behaviours of young consumers towards buying green products. the author found that parental influence and media exposure are significant predictors. meanwhile, palmero and montemayor (2020) identified the factors that influence purchase intention toward organic local food. their findings revealed that environmental concern and health and social responsibility are important drivers of young consumers’ purchase intention toward organic products. overall, green consumer research in the country has covered profiling and marketing research on eco-friendly products. consumer research focusing on eco-friendly packaging is lacking. methods this research utilized a descriptive-correlational quantitative design using a survey method for data gathering. given the limitations that the covid-19 pandemic brought during the study period, a nonprobability sampling technique, i.e. purposive random sampling, was used to determine the respondents. the selection criteria for the respondents included being a resident of kidapawan city, earning his/her income and having a fair level of understanding of green consumerism. the instrument used in the study was a self-administered survey questionnaire adapted and modified from auliandri et al. (2019), hoai (2017), paul et al. (2016), prakash et al., (2019), rajendran et al. (2019) and witek and kuźniar (2021). the questionnaire was designed to obtain information about the respondent’s socio-demographic profile, namely age, educational attainment, income and sex. in addition, statements about purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging and the factors affecting it were included in the instrument. the factors considered in the study were attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, environmental concern, awareness, willingness to pay and quality. the questionnaire consisted of 40 items, which were measured using a 6-point likert scale. this underwent reliability and validity tests to ensure the quality and unobtrusiveness of the statements. the researcher utilized offline and online surveys to maximize the benefits of both. ethical considerations were also considered during the data collection. the respondents were informed about the study and their consent to participate was obtained. for the offline survey, respondents were reached in urban residential areas, businesses and offices within the city. surveys in businesses and offices were only conducted after the letters of request were approved. a total of 393 responses were determined usable for the statistical analysis. the weighted mean was used to determine the consumer’s level of purchase intention. an independent samples t-test and one-way anova were used to determine significant differences in the level of purchase intention when the respondents were grouped according to their socio-demographic characteristics. hierarchical regression analysis was employed to identify the significant factors that affect consumers’ purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging. 32 results and discussion the consumers’ level of purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging is shown in table 1. the findings show that consumers have a high intention to purchase products with eco-friendly packaging when offered in the market (5.30). this finding is in line with the study by palmero and montemayor (2020), which found that young filipino consumers have the intention to buy eco-friendly products. consequently, their purchase intention significantly influenced their decision to purchase. the possible reasons for this are filipino consumers becoming more informed of the ecological impact of plastic packaging (cahilesmagkilat, 2020) and the consequent initiatives launched by both the public and private sectors. the respondents strongly agreed that they would consider buying eco-friendly packaging because it is less polluting (5.42), and they wanted to purchase products with eco-friendly packaging in the near future (5.37). a recent survey revealed that 75% of filipinos were actively looking for brands that offset their impacts on the environment (cahiles-magkilat, 2021). this shows the changing preferences of filipino consumers, which are geared towards sustainability. furthermore, the results demonstrated the respondents’ plans to spend more on eco-friendly packaged products (5.18). gregorio’s (2015) study found that consumers are willing to pay an average 12.5% premium for eco-friendly products. no literature in the philippine context has specified the particular demographics of these consumers. however, several considerations are weighed by filipino consumers when purchasing eco-friendly products, which are usually perceived as more expensive than their conventional counterparts. these important considerations are value for money (palmero & montemayor, 2020), information and social acceptance (resurreccion, 2015). table 1: consumers’ level of purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging. statements weighted mean interpretation 1. i will pay attention to the eco-friendly aspects of the packaging of the products i buy. 5.22 strongly agree 2. i will consider buying eco-friendly packaging because it is less polluting. 5.42 strongly agree 3. i will consider switching to eco-friendly brands for ecological reasons. 5.33 strongly agree 4. i plan to spend more on products packaged in ecofriendly materials rather than those that are not. 5.18 strongly agree 5. i want to purchase eco-friendly packaged products in the near future. 5.37 strongly agree total 5.30 strongly agree tests of difference were conducted to determine differences in the level of consumer purchase intention when grouped according to age, educational attainment, income and sex. table 2 shows the results of the one-way anova. there was a significant difference in the level of purchase intention of consumers when grouped according to age (p-value = 0.025). this finding conforms to the research conducted by witek and kuźniar (2021), which found statistically different levels of green purchase intention among young and old consumers. on the other hand, the level of purchase intention for eco-friendly packaging was not statistically different across educational attainment (p-value = 0.511) or income (p-value = 0.188) groups. this finding is like the results of the studies conducted by naz et al. (2020) and rahim et al. (2017). they posited that eco-friendly 33 products are accepted by consumers regardless of their income due to the popularity and increase in marketing campaigns. the findings could also be attributed to the growing consciousness of filipino consumers about the detrimental effects of plastics and the availability of eco-friendly alternatives. table 2: differences in the level of purchase intention when grouped according to age, educational attainment and income. profile mean square test statistic p-value between groups within groups age 1.350 0.518 2.604 0.025* educational attainment 0.437 0.531 0.823 0.511 income 0.778 0.517 1.504 0.188 table 3 presents the results of the independent samples t-test. the results showed a significant difference in the level of purchase intention for eco-friendly packaging in terms of sex (p-value = 0.009). comparing the mean scores of the males (5.1656) and the females (5.3720) revealed that the latter had a higher level of purchase intention for eco-friendly packaging. these findings are supported by the studies by witek and kuźniar (2021) and rahim et al. (2017), who found a significant difference in the green purchase intentions of females and males. they attributed this finding to female consumers possessing higher environmental concerns than male consumers. table 3: significant difference in the level of purchase intention when grouped according to sex. profile mean difference standard error difference p-value sex -0.2064 0.0786 0.009** the influence of the independent variables, namely attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, environmental concern, awareness, willingness to pay and quality, on the purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging were analysed using hierarchical regression. these variables were entered into the models after all assumptions of the regression model were met. in the first model, the independent variables established in the theory of planned behaviour, namely attitude, perceived behavioural control and subjective norm, were entered. the additional variables, specifically environmental concern, awareness, willingness to pay and quality, were added in the second model. at stage one, attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control contributed significantly to the regression model (∆f = 253.019, p < 0.001). moreover, the coefficient of determination (r2) showed that the independent variables explaiedn 66.3% of the variability in the purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging. this indicates that model one (1) is a good fit. adding environmental concern, awareness, willingness to pay and quality to the model explained an additional 9% of the variation in purchase intention, and this change was significant at the 1% level (∆f = 34.873, p < 0.001). furthermore, all the independent variables accounted for 75.4% of the variance in purchase intention. these suggest that adding the other independent variables yielded a model that better predicts purchase intention. table 4 provides the b-values (b), beta coefficients (β), t-test scores and p-values for each variable accounted for in both models. 34 table 4: summary statistics of the variables. variable b β t p-value model 1 (constant) .839 5.012 .000 attitude .383 .379 8.586 .000** subjective norm .186 .217 4.716 .000** perceived behavioural control .290 .315 6.967 .000** model 2 (constant) .190 1.178 .240 attitude .110 .108 2.198 .029* subjective norm .085 .099 2.417 .016* perceived behavioural control .121 .131 3.070 .002** environmental concern .129 .120 2.229 .026* awareness .183 .168 3.433 .001** willingness to pay .174 .213 5.779 .000** quality .176 .187 4.759 .000** the findings show that all the independent variables considered in this study significantly and positively influenced purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging. in particular, attitude (t = 2.198, p = 0.029), subjective norm (t = 2.417, p = 0.016) and environmental concern (t = 2.229, p = 0.026) are statistically significant at the 5% level, while perceived behavioural control (t = 3.070, p = 0.002), awareness (t = 3.433, p = 0.001), willingness to pay (t = 5.779, p = 0.000), and quality (t = 4.759, p = 0.000) were significant at the 1% level. the results also show that willingness to pay (β =.213), quality (β =.187), and awareness (β =.168) were the strongest predictors of purchase intention. the findings on attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control provide additional empirical evidence that supports the theory of planned behaviour as a theoretical framework for research about purchase intention. consistent with the studies in the literature, attitude was found to significantly affect purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging. when consumers’ beliefs and feelings towards buying eco-friendly packaging are favourable, they have a greater intention to buy it (martinho et al. 2015; moorthy et al., 2021; prakash & pathak, 2017; trivedi et al., 2018). the results indicate that filipino consumers’ favourable attitudes towards buying eco-friendly packaging led to greater intention to purchase them. an explanation for this relationship is the exposure to information about environmental problems. this develops the consumer’s favourable attitude to participate in efforts to solve these problems, such as buying eco-friendly packaging. subjective norm was also found to positively influence purchase intention. this indicates that the consumers’ perceived social pressures from family, friends and/or important people influence them to purchase eco-friendly packaging (auliandri et al., 2019; martinho et al., 2015). the finding suggests that filipino consumers are conscious of how people close to them and/or society in general view their actions, especially those that affect the environment. culture may also play a part in this relationship. conforming to the norm and the actions of the majority is deemed important in philippine society. consumers’ perceptions of how easy or difficult it is to buy eco-friendly packaging, which could be determined by their ability to purchase and the availability of resources, was also found to affect purchase intention (auliandri et al., 2019; moorthy et al., 2021). when consumers perceive that it is easy for them to buy eco-friendly 35 packaging, the more likely it is that they intend to buy it. consumer preference for convenient shopping can explain this relationship. access and availability of eco-friendly packaging are essential to realize purchase intention. consumers’ concern for the environment also influences their intention to purchase eco-friendly packaging (martinho et al., 2015; prakash & pathak, 2017). this shows that consumers have a greater intention to purchase eco-friendly packaging when they are more willing to support efforts to solve environmental problems. like attitude, exposure to information about environmental degradation caused by consuming single-use plastics among others may explain this relationship. this is manifested by consumers’ growing demand for sustainable products and practices nowadays. among all variables in the model, the strongest predictor is willingness to pay. the more willing consumers are to pay for eco-friendly packaging, the greater their intention to buy it. this finding coincides with the findings of the studies conducted by auliandri et al. (2019) and prakash and pathak (2017). in the philippine context, several authors have noted that filipino consumers are willing to pay more for eco-friendly products in general (gregorio, 2015; palmero & montemayor, 2020; resurreccion, 2015). this relationship may be attributed to consumers’ desire to protect the environment and/or to contribute to solutions, since eco-friendly packaging is more beneficial to the environment. this benefit could be seen as an added utility to the money spent on ecofriendly packaging. palmero and montemayor (2020) also noted that filipino consumers greatly consider value for money when purchasing. another strong predictor of purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging is quality. the quality of eco-friendly packaging is deemed an important determinant of intention to purchase it. like the results found by rajendran et al. (2019), in this study consumers had a greater intention to purchase eco-friendly packaging when they perceived it to have better quality. the notion that eco-friendly packaging is less polluting to the environment and is as good as conventional packaging could explain this relationship. the quality of eco-friendly packaging remains an important consideration to consumers, especially if they are paying more for it. lastly, the study found that awareness is a significant predictor of purchase intention, i.e. consumers have a greater purchase intention for eco-friendly packaging when they are more aware and knowledgeable about it. this finding is consistent with the results of rajendran et al. (2019) but contrasts with the results of aleenajitpong (2013). one reason for this relationship is that filipino consumers are becoming more informed about environmental problems, particularly plastic pollution, and more aware of the available eco-friendly alternatives. as such, this is manifested in their increasing demand for sustainable products and practices at present. conclusions and recommendations the findings of this study revealed that consumers have a relatively high level of purchase intention for ecofriendly packaging. in addition, the test of significant difference revealed that a significant difference in the purchase intention of respondents only when they are grouped according to age and sex. in particular, female consumers have a higher level of purchase intention for eco-friendly packaging. also, the results of the regression analysis imply that purchase intention is greater among consumers when they have the following: a favourable attitude, supportive social circles, positive perception of the ease of buying ecofriendly packaging, willingness to support or participate in environmental initiatives, knowledge about eco-friendly packaging, willingness to pay for eco-friendly packaging and a positive perception of the quality of eco-friendly packaging. among these, willingness to pay, quality and awareness of eco-friendly packaging influence consumers’ purchase intention the most. 36 understanding the consumer perspective is essential for business decisions and policymaking. as this study has determined the purchase intention towards eco-friendly packaging, businesses and policymakers are provided with information regarding the receptiveness of consumers to its adoption in the country. in particular, businesses, manufacturers of packaging materials and inventors/innovators of eco-friendly packaging could use this information when deciding to expand the use, production and development of eco-friendly packaging. together with government units, they could find the results about the significant factors useful in making business strategies, policies and programmes. the current work only explored the direct relationship between the dependent and independent variables. future researchers may consider exploring the interrelationships of the independent variables examined in this study. moreover, they may use other statistical tools that include the analysis of the interrelationships of the independent variables. to give substantial support to the quantitative findings, it is suggested to include a qualitative analysis in future research. hence, a mixed research design employing either in-depth interviews or focus group discussions is recommended. references aleenajitpong, n. 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(2020). why do consumers make green purchase decisions? insights from a systematic review. international journal of environmental research and public health, 17(18), 6607. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17186607 97 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. fighting the opioid crisis by design. technology solutions as innovative systems for advancing communities of care against overdose deaths claudia b. rebola, sebastian ramirez-loaiza published online: november 2022 to cite this article: rebola, c. b., & ramirez-loaiza, s. (2022). fighting the opioid crisis by design. technology solutions as innovative systems for advancing communities of care against overdose deaths. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(2), 97-107. 98 fighting the opioid crisis by design. technology solutions as innovative systems for advancing communities of care against overdose deaths claudia b. rebolaa, sebastian ramirez-loaizb a university of cincinnati, cincinnati oh, 45221, united states. rebolacb@ucmail.uc.edu b university of cincinnati, cincinnati oh, 45221, united states. ramirej3@mail.uc.edu abstract the epidemic of opiate overdose deaths has continued to advance in the united states, even more so during the covid-19 pandemic. the state of ohio is at the centre of the nation’s opioid crisis, with one of the highest rates of overdose deaths. ohio’s approach to fighting the opioid crisis involves several items as part of the recoveryohio plan, including increasing accessibility of naloxone in communities and promoting harm reduction through education. various state programmes exist for distributing naloxone, but these are not sufficient for the magnitude of the crisis. moreover, emergency medical services (ems) are oversaturated with calls concerning overdoses. the opioid epidemic has scaled to proportions where the country is in dire need of innovative solutions. this paper describes innovative community-based solutions for fighting the epidemic. two pilots are described in detail: naloxbox and antiod. these pilots involved collaborations between experts in emergency medicine and industrial design, trainers in overdose recognition and rescue, and community agencies and municipalities to design and launch systems for providing community access to naloxone so that lay people can rescue overdose victims in advance of the arrival of ems. these pilots are design-led projects, implemented in communities, which aim not only to educate individuals about naloxone administration but also to empower communities to act and save lives. this model leverages technologies to bridge the access gaps and comply with the requirements of different stakeholders and state regulations while sharing the responsibility of saving lives from opiate overdose. keywords: opioid crisis, overdoses, harm reduction, community-led introduction in the united states (us), drug overdose is the leading cause of injury-related deaths, with more than 932,000 cases since 1999 (centers for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2022a). the number of deaths from overdose involving either prescription opioids or illegal opioids, such as heroin, was six times higher in 2017 than in 1999 (hedegaard et al., 2020). in 2020, the states with the highest rates of death due to drug overdose were west virginia (81.4 per 100,000), kentucky (49.2 per 100,000), delaware (47.3 per 100,000), ohio (47.2 per 100,000) and tennessee (45.6 per 100,000), while ohio registered 5,204 opioid-related deaths (cdc, 2022b). in cincinnati, a city located in southwest ohio, the emergency medical services (ems) reported 2582 responses to overdoses in 2017 (city of cincinnati, 2022). narcan® (naloxone) is a powerful medication that reverses the effect of opioids and can save a person in an overdose situation (emergent devices inc., 2022). naloxone is currently used by quick response teams (qrts) to answer opioid-related emergencies. it must be delivered as promptly as possible to avert death or permanent injury from hypoxia, and the need for prompt administration of naloxone has become a central point. naloxone is available in different delivery methods, and while all methods are effective for use and administration, the intranasal formulation is more suitable for layperson use. significant figures, such as the surgeon general of the united states, have emphasized the importance of naloxone and encouraged the public to have naloxone in reach (us department of health & human services, 2018). although there are significant efforts to increase its availability, access to naloxone is still limited and, in many cases, problematic (us food & drug 99 administration, 2019). even if someone has naloxone for personal use, they cannot self-administer it if rendered unconscious by an overdose. in addition, communities rely heavily on ems, whose systems are saturated with requests. the opioid epidemic has scaled to proportions where the country is in dire need of innovative solutions to fight the crisis. community involvement to rescue lives from overdose affords an opportunity for innovation and helping with the crisis. most states in the us have good samaritan laws protecting lay rescuers (good samaritan assessment act, 2016), meaning that liability is limited and protection from claims of negligence is provided for those who voluntarily perform care and rescue in emergencies. within this rationale, involving the community as first responders may become a vehicle for innovation. community engagement and social innovation the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) defines community engagement as a process of collaborative work, focusing on building trust, involving added resources and allies, and improving communication, which can have a positive effect on health and well-being (mccloskey et al., 2011). as the cdc states, community engagement “frequently involves — and often evolves into — long-term partnerships that move from the traditional focus on a single health issue to address a range of social, economic, political, and environmental factors that affect health” (mccloskey et al., 2011, p.7). community engagement initiatives link people who may have a passive attitude to a problem and initiate a collaborative process that will lead the community to an active leadership role, guaranteeing the sustained effort of the initiative. this linkage opens the possibilities for social innovation to be sustainable and effective. phills et al. (2008) note that many innovations can tackle social problems or meet social needs, but only for social innovations is the distribution of social value. for phills and colleagues, if a solution to a social problem renders a bigger benefit to a stakeholder different than society, it is not social innovation. manzini (2015) moves from the grassroots description towards collaborative organizations, companies evolving in highly connected environments characterized by freedom of choice of their members and an open attitude. from the social innovation perspective, there is a good opportunity to bridge the gap between communities and patients in addiction treatment and to provide platforms in which we share the care of members of our society who are vulnerable due to addiction and increase their chances to stay in treatment. the opioid epidemic is an issue that requires a multi-modal approach, not only a top-down view where legislation and policies slowly move forward and communities are passive protagonists, but a combination that includes bottom-up views where the community takes a leading role and drives change. social innovation perspectives propose a change in the ownership of the solutions, giving communities the possibility to take responsibility and actions. bottom-up approaches also open up the potential for more compassionate and empathetic solutions because they represent the community responding from within. there is evidence that communities are self-organizing and attempting to prevent and reduce the rise in opioid overdoses at various levels (leece et al., 2019). these groups of citizens use strategies that can be focused on different areas such as social change, represented in activities of training, education, stigma reduction and advocacy, and intersectoral collaboration or harm reduction programmes that include naloxone distribution (ramirez-loaiza & rebola, 2022). there are different barriers to the distribution of this life-saving medicine, including stigma, lack of outreach and the overall need for easier access. 100 the purpose of this paper is to describe two design-led projects, naloxbox and antiod, that use technology to bridge the gap between communities and life-saving resources. community resources the state of ohio is addressing the opioid use disorder with approaches on different fronts, including stronger regulation of pharmaceutical wholesalers, increased penalties for trafficking in and possession of fentanyl-related compounds, expanding local prescription drug overdose prevention initiatives, and investing in strategies for granting better access to naloxone (recoveryohio, 2018). project dawn is a community-based overdose education and naloxone distribution programme in which members of the community receive training on recognizing the signs and symptoms of overdose, distinguishing between diverse types of overdoses, performing rescue breathing, calling ems, and administering intranasal naloxone (ohio department of health, 2019). hamilton county public health works through the naloxone distribution collaborative to give naloxone free of charge (hamilton county public health, 2019). the critical element that hinders access to naloxone is the required training before obtaining naloxone. other stakeholders involved in access and distribution of naloxone include altrixmedical, which developed naloxofind, a mobile app that allows people to locate naloxone in a two-mile radius from registered carriers (and registered locations), making it a crowd-sourced supply of naloxone (altrixmedical, n.d.). there is also a community of first responders that seeks to build a community of trained and empowered citizens to act in an overdose emergency and save lives where qrts have longer response times (community of first responders, n.d.). while these are effective mechanisms for naloxone distribution to save lives, there is no system for providing or integrating community-access naloxone, meaning preventable deaths due to the absence of a system that furnishes life-saving naloxone for good samaritan, community use. naloxbox naloxbox was an innovative programme to provide tools, training and awareness to empower laypeople to rescue victims of opioid overdose (ridmat inc, 2022). naloxbox is to opioid overdose what an automated external defibrillator is to sudden cardiac arrest. it provides requisite tools in public places to enable laypeople to save a life in advance of the arrival of ems. naloxboxes contain multiple doses of naloxone, the antidote for opioid overdose, along with a barrier mask to administer rescue breaths. the naloxbox programme design included technologies to support collaborators and end users, and installations were coordinated with overdose training. the naloxbox design involved collaboration between an emergency medicine physician and an expert in industrial design. the design purpose was to create an attractive, approachable, accessible unit that communicates emergency (image 1), with graphics and instructions to facilitate rescue, and information about what naloxbox is, how to secure personal naloxone and how to access addiction services. 101 image 1: naloxbox pilot product design. the naloxbox pilot project was supported by the rhode island department of health’s mini grant programme in overdose prevention, which, in turn, is supported by the cdc. the pilot was launched in cities and towns across rhode island, a state severely affected by the opioid overdose epidemic. two minigrants supported this work, which commenced in mid2017. initially, naloxboxes were implemented in homeless communities where training was provided. the pilot partnered with initiatives such as preventing overdose and naloxone intervention (poni), which was part of the task force where the cabinet was first deployed (prevent overdose ri, 2022). naloxbox’s novel design and collaborative engagement of overdose education and naloxone distribution experts, agencies serving high-risk populations, and public health and municipal officials provide a replicable, scalable model for community countermeasures for the epidemic of opioid overdose deaths. the overall purpose of the project and its implementation was to empower communities to save lives by providing naloxone and the information to administer it. this programme created accessible units with a tech component that sent a text message to the owner when the box was opened (capraro & rebola, 2018). a significant aspect of deploying naloxbox as a pilot was to evaluate the response from the community taking a role as first responders in the crisis. while the project hoped for a successful impact involving community members, the results exceeded expectations in validating the need for refining and scaling programmes, products and services such as naloxbox (jochem, 2019; kantor, 2019; orestein, 2017). from naloxbox to antiod learning from naloxbox, the antiod project started the goal of replicating the programme in cincinnati with an increase in the wide distribution of naloxone by involving the community as first responders for the crisis and supporting ems response. the design was improved by providing single-use kits of narcan, containing disposable gloves and a cardiopulmonary resuscitation (cpr) shield. the package itself was 102 a bilingual training tool (image 2), providing education about signs of overdose, steps to administer narcan, and how to roll a victim into the recovery position. image 2: antiod product design. it was designed to be opened in an emergency by pulling from a tab and tearing a pre-cut strip, leaving the blister and the content ready for use. instead of a box enclosing the packages, antiod proposed a smart dispenser for each location that could hold two kits (image 3). the packs are unlocked by providing information to the smart dispenser (e.g. name and phone number). image 3: antiod single-use pack. 103 the smart dispenser used a lock safety mechanism for naloxone access to address regulatory mandates. a spectrum of access types was designed within the unit described as private, semi-private and semi-public configurations. the private configuration would be available for unit holders who would keep units in monitored spaces (e.g. offices) without the need to input information for unlocking the unit. the semiprivate configuration would allow the unit holder to generate a unique access code to be shared with a group (e.g. front desk spaces). lastly, the semi-public configuration would require users to input their names and phone numbers for data collection-tracking of naloxone distribution. with any configuration, removal of the single-use pack (narcan) is enabled. when someone requires narcan, they touch the 7-inch (17.78 cm) screen, and a 4-digit passcode is requested. when the passcode is given, the product is unlocked and a video of the four steps to administer naloxone is displayed. a switch in the latch is used to confirm that the product was retrieved. this action sends a notification to the location staff and the antiod team. besides being part of the safety mechanism, the platform had three objectives: 1) to give information to bystanders (i.e. how to recognize an overdose, where to get narcan); 2) to provide instructions on the administration of narcan, giving rescue breathing and rolling the victim to the recovery position— a necessary component to meet state regulations for naloxone distribution; and 3) to alert ems with the location for completing the rescue of a victim from overdose (rebola & ramirez-loaiza, 2020). several graphic materials were developed to help the antiod deployment meet the requirements (image 4). several iterations were developed to provide fast and accurate and accessible information for naloxone administration: bilingual, graphical, and video. image 4: antiod collateral materials for locations. 104 the system relied on wifi connectivity via the touch-enabled tablet screen, and information is input directly into the unit. by connecting the dispenser to a wireless network, the team can keep track of each location, plan restocking, keep a record of the activity and, more importantly, oversee the expiration date of every naloxone dose in the programme. moreover, having the smart dispenser be unlocked with a passcode as an access feature ensures accountable staff in each location and the mandatory data (name and zip code) for naloxone distribution. the programme was well received within the cincinnati community, validating the need for such programmes (ditirro, 2019; kirklen, 2019). antiod received an honourable mention in the fast company’s world changing ideas in the health and wellness category (fast company, 2019). from antiod to the public antiod partnered with several initiatives and organizations for its implementation. for example, the community of first responders was involved to provide information access to the smart dispensers for the people enrolled and trained in their programme, registered as naloxone carriers in the naloxofind app. in addition, the antiod project worked with organizations such as the former downtown cincinnati inc., now part of the 3cdc group, for stakeholder engagement, and cincinnati bell for supporting the communication and technology aspects of the project. while these collaborations were instrumental, the larger public community was a necessary component to close the circle of innovation. it became apparent that there was a necessity to engage and educate the public about the reality of the crisis. the “antiod: reclaiming our city” exhibition, hosted at the cincinnati central public library of hamilton county (image 5), was deployed to empower the public to take action (royzman, 2019). image 5: antiod exhibition at cincinnati central public library. instead of delegating the problem to institutions, the idea was to design mechanisms to share the responsibility of combatting the crisis. 105 the exhibition was designed to be an interactive platform for collecting and distributing information on overdose signs, treatment, support and resources for victims, relatives and the public. the exhibition was divided into four main sections: act: what and how can someone save a life from an overdose? share: what are the real stories related to addiction and/or overdose? learn: what are the facts and resources available for overdoses? and know: how is life after an overdose and can we learn from individuals touched by the crisis? with these four areas, the public was provided with information on naloxone administration, signs of overdose, local resources like project dawn and destigmatized language guidance, to mention a few. the exhibit also engaged the public by displaying the enquirer’s pulitzer prize-winning “seven days of heroin” video documentary (enquirer and media network of central ohio staff, 2017). overall, the exhibition was an invaluable venue for creating a network of shared responsibility and community involvement. scalability and opportunities any design project presents obstacles throughout the process. naloxbox and antiod encountered different obstacles that served as motivation to design technology for community engagement. this article presented iterations in creative development that explain how products and systems evolve to meet requirements across states. the success lies in transforming those obstacles into opportunities, thus making the later design stronger, as presented in the public exhibition. additionally, it is noteworthy how the design had to meet regulations and comply with legislation, in our case, set by local and state health entities, while at the same time keeping in consideration its ease of use, for example, the collection of names and zip codes before unlocking the pack and the display of interactive information on how to use naloxone. design can be an agent of change, generating community engagement and a social push 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(2018). surgeon general’s advisory on naloxone and opioid overdose. https://tinyurl.com/54ktmtwx us food & drug administration. (2019, september 20). statement on continued efforts to increase availability of all forms of naloxone to help reduce opioid overdose deaths. https://tinyurl.com/b8hz9z3n 14 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. toward societal transformation through design storytelling: a case study of brand design in the mineral water industry in finland yasuyuki hayama, francesco zurlo published online: november 2022 to cite this article: hayama, y., & zurlo, f. (2022). toward societal transformation through design storytelling: a case study of brand design in the mineral water industry in finland. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(2), 14-27. 15 toward societal transformation through design storytelling: a case study of brand design in the mineral water industry in finland yasuyuki hayamaa, francesco zurlob apolitecnico di milano, milan, italy. yasuyuki.hayama@polimi.it bpolitecnico di milano, milan, italy. francesco.zurlo@polimi.it abstract the world today is facing the urgent need for fundamental transformation in the ‘anthropocene’ era. however, even if consensus has been formed around the need for transformation, what constitutes fundamental changes and how these changes occur are researched and debated across multiple disciplines, including design studies. recently, in the design field, transition design has been proposed as a new area of design practice, study and research. transition design is based on long-term visioning and recognition of the need for solutions rooted in new, more sustainable socioeconomic and political paradigms. this study explores the role of design storytelling in steering and navigating a societal transformation. using a critical single case study method, this study analyses the fundamental elements of transformation that emerge from each component of design storytelling. a mineral water company in finland was selected as the purposive single case. it is a specific type of private organization that intends to bring about a societal transition through optimum use of design storytelling. the findings illustrate that the components of design storytelling, which use societal change as their innovative business proposal, distinctively match the components of societal transformation. design practices that leverage visual and verbal elements edit and weave a new relationship between the sociotechnical landscape, regime and innovation proposed by the company. we believe that this paper makes two main contributions. first, the authors emphasize the potential role of design as a deliberate change process for societal transformation. second, through the cross lens of societal transformation and design storytelling, the storytelling and narrative approach of societal transformation by design is underlined. keywords: societal transformation, transition design, anthropocene, design storytelling, narratives of change, designs for the pluriverse introduction in the ‘anthropocene’ era, the world is increasingly faced with the urgent need for fundamental changes (steffen et al., 2007). contemporary environmental problems, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and resource depletion (clean water, oil, forests, fish stocks, etc.), are human-driven issues that raise concerns about the future of earth’s environment and its ability to provide the services required to maintain a viable human civilization. the global change phenomenon represents a profound shift in the relationship between humans and nature. while a variety of terms have been applied to describe this fundamental shift, the term “transformation” is becoming institutionalized in the vocabulary of the scientific and policy communities (feola, 2015). recent contributions by large studies regarding societal transformation have emphasized the deliberate change process, which encompasses the possibility of steering or navigating, if not fully managing, the process of change (feola, 2015). in this context, several concepts of the change process have been emphasized, such as consensus-building through visioning (beddoe et al., 2009), transition management (grin et al., 2010) and social learning (park et al., 2012). owing to the essential need to evoke imagination 16 and pose alternative worldviews, the power of narratives has been considered to be at the crossroads of future studies and narrative studies regarding societal transformation and narratives of change (noc) (wittmayer et al., 2019). like the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (jasanoff & kim, 2013), noc can generate a shared sense of belonging and community identity that leads to actions and creates meaning based on a common outlook on social reality and the desired future (pfotenhauer & jasanoff, 2017). meanwhile, aligned with this argument, research has been proposed in the design discipline on transition design or design for transitions as a new area of design practice (irwin, 2015). transition design is based on long-term visioning and recognition of the need for solutions rooted in new, more sustainable socioeconomic and political paradigms. furthermore, as a more radical and complete overhaul of design processes is needed, escobar (2018) insists on the need for an ontological reorientation of design. fry and nocek (2021) echo this perspective by arguing that design practice needs to become unrecognizable to itself in order to imagine a successful solution to climate change. while consensus has been reached on the need for fundamental changes to address these issues, what these specific changes should be and how they should be implemented remain a subject of intense debate across the academic spectrum (e.g. feola, 2015). this study explores the potential role of design storytelling in steering and navigating a societal transformation. specifically, the authors believe that design can play a fundamental role in societal transformation by narrating an alternative story. design storytelling and proposing new worldviews involving social, symbolic, physical and material changes have the potential to lead to fundamental societal changes, which will create a new relationship between the sociotechnical landscape and the value propositions that social innovation initiatives pose to society. hence, this study set out to answer two research questions: 1. how can design form the elemental factors of societal transformation? 2. how can design storytelling play a role in societal transformation? mineral water consumption and environmental and sociopolitical impacts to tackle the research topics, this paper focuses on the issue of mineral water consumption. water constitutes one of the most crucial natural resources on earth for all creatures, including humans and other species. the issue of mineral water consumption is rife with ethical considerations – who owns and can sell water and who gets to consume it – which may become even more critical in light of increased water shortages. with the major shift in interest from human-centred design to design that seeks harmony with more-than-humans (e.g. forlano, 2017), including with nature itself, it would be extremely significant to consider the role of design with regard to water consumption, in particular by reconsidering the most primordial and fundamental act of life, water consumption. from the larger perspective of the discussion of transitional design and the ontological reorientation of design, this paper intends to be a catalyst for broader rethinking of our daily consumption activities and their environmental, social and political implications. methodology a single case study serves as the foundation of our paper (yin, 2009). this critical single case study was guided by the purposive single case selection approach (edmonds & kennedy, 2016) to collect the most relevant data regarding the roles of design in prompting elemental factors of societal transformation and the roles of design storytelling in transformative change. the case study was developed and defined through the following sub-steps: deciding the unit of analysis and selecting the case, collecting the data, analysing the data and synthesizing and interpreting the findings. 17 first, the unit of analysis was set. the methodology consisted of analyses of changes in the fundamental patterns, elements and interrelations of value systems for current dominant brands in a specific market, the transition to a new brand and the roles of design storytelling in leading to that change. therefore, the unit of analysis (yin, 2009) consisted of fundamental elements of societal transformation, which involves societal, symbolic, physical and material changes (feola, 2015); thus, a focus on those key elements by a new brand entering a specific market leads to a societal transformation among dominant brands in that market. based on this unit of analysis, a mineral water brand, lahqua, from finland was selected as the critical single case; the brand intended to inspire a societal change in consumption through the power of design storytelling. second, the data gathering involved adopting multiple sources of information/evidence for data triangulation. face-to-face semi-structured interviews and documentation provided by the design agency, hangar design group, which supported the mineral water brand, represented the primary sources of information. the selection of interviewees aimed to gather information regarding the various perspectives on the project for societal transformation by design. the design director who led the design project and the pr manager knew that the mineral water brand was aiming to make a societal transformative change in water consumption. the data were combined with the researcher’s observations from a site visit to the design agency, as well as external documents to ensure data triangulation. third, after the data were collected, the data were analysed and synthesized to construct a discussion of the findings. the steps were as follows: summarize the data collected, analyse the interviews and documentation, triangulate the data and interpret the findings. this process consisted of content analysis to identify elements of societal transformation and the roles of design storytelling from a theoretical perspective, as described in the following paragraphs. to analyse and synthesize the findings from the case study, conceptual frameworks were set, namely, elements of societal transformation for pursuing sustainability (feola, 2015) and the role of stories and narratives in social change processes (wittmayer et al., 2019). through a literature review covering a wide range of arguments regarding societal transformation, feola (2015) depicted transformation as a process of structural change, that is, a change in the fundamental patterns, elements and interrelations in a system. feola emphasized that pursuing sustainability requires the involvement of social, symbolic, physical and material changes. hence, the focus of this case study is a company pursuing a sustainable alternative worldview, so that the theoretical focus can be applied through the elemental factors of the social, symbolic, physical and material changes that the company proposes to the market. meanwhile, in the context of a story’s role in societal transformation or noc, wittmayer et al. (2019) insisted on three roles of narratives: changing frames, identity-forming and meaning-making, and guiding practice. the new frames that social innovation initiatives put forth in their noc have the power to encourage actors in the relevant sphere to reconsider their behavioural practices and influence personal and collective identity formation, which would lead to practical actions toward change. hence, this study applied noc as a theoretical lens to analyse the case and find out how design can lead to storytelling for the sake of societal transformation. 18 results the collected qualitative data show the potential power of design to guide a brand in formulating new elemental factors for sustainable social transitional purposes, by deconstructing the existing elemental factors and reconstructing them into an integrated whole. our analysis also showed that design storytelling can potentially lead to a sort of societal transformation through offering an alternative framing, providing meaning and guiding the actions of targeted people. design decomposes elements and reconstructs an integrated whole for societal transformation the first component resulting from the case analysis is relevant to the use of design. in conceiving new products and services, designers are required to “reframe” the problem (dorst, 2011), change the meaning of the product and the reason for buying it (verganti, 2011) and put new cultural messages and symbolic value into products and services (ravasi & rindova, 2008). as the brand aimed for a transformative behavioural shift in water consumption, the case analysis indicated that the brand and the design firm had a strong intention to “reframe” the problem. the design director said the following: “we started reasoning, giving ourselves the mission to transform or create this brand, which is a brand that does not exist. it is a startup; treat it as a love brand, as something very close to people. so, it’s a design/packaging project, but actually, we did a strategic project on how this brand can be perceived by people. therefore, we defined a little bit the fact of being a game changer as a core element, a game changer from a philosophical point of view but also a visual point of view”. starting from the gap analysis between the market and the target users, the design firm and the brand concluded that they should aim to become a “game changer” in the market and not just design new packages, like the usual branding projects aiming for better commercial success do. the current natural mineral water market is dominated by global players who historically focused on polyethylene terephthalate (pet) bottles. on the other hand, there is an emerging ethical type of consumer who aspires to live a healthy lifestyle but is also conscious about the welfare of the planet. to bridge the gap between the current state of the market and the unsatisfied desires of “conscious citizens”, the design teams reframed the project’s objective from a design/packaging project to a game changer. the aim was clearly reframed to change people’s mindset and behaviour toward natural water consumption, by providing them with a new option that matches their desire for a more sustainable way to live and consume, allowing them to be sensible and care not only for their own health but also for the planet. hence, the design teams first concentrated on story construction works, that is, the decomposition and reconstruction of story elements from the philosophical and visual perspectives. the design director said the following in the interview: “the aurora, for example, is not there in any other country compared to the competitors. therefore, we took that as a building block [...]. we enucleate the various elements”. in this way, leveraging on “building blocks” that the brand can potentially speak and wear, the design team deconstructed the elemental factors and reconstructed them in several dimensions. through the theoretical view above, the elemental factors were analysed, as shown in table 1. first, as for the social aspects of transformation, the social mission that the brand pursues is a sustainability challenge, specifically, reducing the environmental impact of plastic packaging. most extant mineral water 19 brands rely on using plastic packaging. as a result, the daily consumption of natural water has a major social and environmental impact globally. the brand intentionally focused on this issue and tried to change the social elements of the packaging to have less environmental impact. in keeping with the change of social mission that the brand focused on, the other three elements, namely the symbolic, physical and material aspects, were also organized to align with the social mission. for the symbolic aspect, the brand tried to compose a symbolic logo with several keywords, such as source, water, nature and recycle. these keywords, placed alongside iconic images, were dedicated to inspiring change in consumption behaviour and were expressed as symbols of a “purpose-driven brand”. the symbolic logo was developed as a core storytelling element. the physical aspect of the brand has focused on the origin of the water produced by the brand. in this aspect, the source was stressed as being “from the planet not from the laboratory”. indeed, the source of the water carefully selected by the brand is lahti, the location of finnish lakeland and the country’s leading environmental city. the water source has remained untouched since the ice age and is surrounded by green forests and fresh air, which are ranked among the purest in the world by unicef (green lahti, 2021). leveraging on purity, the cultural background of water consumption in finland involves people valuing healthy hydration and physical well-being. the core value of the product is the pure water source. finally, the packaging materials were strategically selected to symbolize the social mission of the brand, namely an innovative, sustainable, recyclable, biodegradable, forest-based and paper-based material derived from certified sources. the brand selected the best available technologies aiming for maximum product quality and sustainability. lahqua spring water is packaged at the source in a newly purpose-built sustainable factory equipped with modern state-of-the-art machinery. the factory packages the water with certified renewable raw material which is 94.9 % forest-based, fulfilling global food safety initiative benchmarking (i.e. global food safety initiative-benchmarked fssc 22000).the production is carbon neutral and “naturally circular” with the cartons and forest-based plastic caps sourced from responsibly managed forests. its high-quality packaging ensures natural water conservation using vacuum pressure technology and aseptic materials. the packaging is mostly made of biodegradable, forest-based renewable materials from certified sources. when it came to designing the packages, the design team took advantage of these facts in order to communicate these brand values and to make clear the priority mission to develop the manner of production and consumption in a naturally circular way. as these different elemental factors were decomposed, the design teams reconstructed the story as an integrated whole. the director emphasized this as follows: “you see, this is a creative branding hypothesis. this is a symbolism that is also in the logo storytelling, so all the values here i find in the design of the logo. but you see, also in the way of writing, in the way of representing, for example, the graphics. here there are already combinations of elements that start from the idea, start from the strategy and transform it into something visual and creative”. “you see that even here the whole thing, the packaging, the bottle, the logo, the way of writing; everything contributes to give this storytelling narrative that we are talking about”. this integration was analysed as a proposal for a holistic website (image 1). all the elemental factors, such as the societal, symbolic, physical and material components, were integrated into one holistic website. 20 this is a way to awaken potential customers’ thoughts on ethical consumption using visual and verbal design languages as a consistent storytelling format. “this, for example, is the website. this is a complete project. we start from a concept, we dissect it, we define the values, the mission, and then we transform it into a series of creative touchpoints that all come together—so it also means different people because there is the photographer, there is the creative, there is the video maker—contribute to give an identity and then to build storytelling [...] the strategic part, the definition of the ‘strategic hat’ is important because then everything becomes coordinated and coherent”. here, it is worth noting that the director underlined the importance of storytelling and the strategic part of the design project. this implies that the role of storytelling and the strategic view of coordinating the story as a coherent whole were essential parts of the design activities that aimed for a societal transformation. table 1: analysis of the elements of change. elements of change facts of the case implications social sustainability challenge: reducing the environmental impact of plastic packaging long-term sustainable growth to raise awareness and concern about our planet and the future related to the emotional and higher benefits of the brand social awareness and concern transformative agent emotional attraction symbolic key graphic logo with keywords and images: e.g., source, water, nature, recycle graphical and verbal symbolic integration simplicity and ease of understanding by the average target consumer physical origin: coming from a specific natural water source from the planet, not from the laboratory core product content differentiated from other brands sustainability and well-being material innovative packaging: sustainable packaging made of biodegradable, forestbased renewable materials from certified sources -paper-based packaging for general consumers and glass bottles for the hotels, restaurants and catering (horeca) channel alternative worldview as a physical material itself variable material solutions for different potential customers 21 image 1: integration of the elements into a prototype storytelling website. the role of design storytelling: an engine of alternative framing, meaning-making, and actions the second construct derived from the case study relates to the role of design storytelling. in the context of societal transformation, wittmayer et al. (2019) insist that narratives can play a fundamental role in the construction of individual and social identities and efforts dedicated to the development and communication of collectively shared worldviews. they label them “narratives of change” (noc), stating that they can reframe the alternative frame, drive meaning-making and prompt actions. to adapt this theoretical argument to the case, an analysis was conducted (as shown in table 2). the following describes the analysis based on each analytic unit from the theoretical viewpoint. first, the case showed that the design team intentionally reframed conventional thinking by posing critical narration and changing the frame through a provocative narrative. during the early phase of the design project, the team formed a reframing narrative phrase that challenged current water consumption behaviour. after conducting an existing market analysis of the worldwide natural water industry in terms of packaging design strategy and practice, the team recognized some key trends and insights into the competition. following the “ethical consumerism” trend and new regulations, existing natural water companies were making further “responsible commitments” and supporting charitable causes to raise their profile, focusing mainly on “carbon neutrality”, the recyclability of materials, the use of recycled materials, energy efficiency and corporate social responsibility programmes. however, many of the dominant brands still use plastic packaging, which adversely impacts the environment. the team also recognized that around the globe consumers aspire to live a healthy lifestyle, desiring simple products with naturally healthy attributes, minimal processing and natural ingredients. they want transparent and traceable ingredients that can be read about on the packaging. the design team then issued a sharply critical narration: “who would drink from plastic when they can drink from the source?” (image 2). the design director recalled the following: “we, for example, say we are different from all the other water producers. the other water producers are all inside the plastic bottle icon. we say, ‘no, we're not that, we're completely different,’ and we put ourselves in a new concept where the content is more important than the container”. 22 image 2: changing the frame and making meaning. parallel to the reframing and posing of a provocative narrative, the design team interwove different narrative components into coherent narratives, consequently creating new meanings. by aligning the factual matters related to the brand, the design team explored relevant and emphatic narrative components in everyday life in finland, the purpose of the brand and the wider contexts of change. the factual matters emphasized were relevant to the essential values of the brand, such as “north eu origin finland lathi heritage”, “untouched source since the ice age”, “pure quality with balanced mineral content”, “innovative packaging” and “sustainable production processes”. those facts were gathered iteratively through a collaborative discourse between the design agency and the client as a team. it is notable that by posing hypothetical elements with provisional narratives alongside carefully selected images and words, the design team gradually wove the core narrative structures through discursive activities. thereafter, putting those factual matters at the centre of the structural narrative, other emphatic and emotional narrative components were sprinkled throughout the core narrative. for instance, “the everyday habit of people in finland to drink pure water for healthy well-being” “the brand's purpose to dedicate [itself] to inspiring change with imagination and creativity” and “contextual stories of emergent needs of sustainable worldviews” were the key empathic narratives added to the fact-based structural narrative. 23 consequently, those interwoven fragmented narrative elements were integrated into a simple narrative phrase: “lahqua is your source”. the design director stated the following: “with that in mind, here’s the ‘big idea,’ the theme of saying, ‘i bring the water source, from finland, i bring it to your home’. therefore, this product is your spring in some way.” finally, in the development phase of the design project, every touchpoint and design element were synthesized into an actionable practice to which potential customers could be easily and naturally guided (i.e. guided practice). specifically, all the outcomes were designed to engage potential customers to act towards ethical consumption through the simple narrative phrase “less plastic better for earth”. the initial touchpoint that the brand chose was remarkable. the brand decided to launch its exposition on one of the most effective occasions to draw international attention to its values of innovativeness and environmental friendliness, namely the finland pavilion at the dubai expo 2020. the expo had a powerful underlying message of environmental friendliness, and the brand intentionally chose a provocative occasion to position itself within the wider context of environmental awareness and succeeded in encouraging international leaders to embrace a sustainable world. furthermore, the innovative packaging line was coherently designed with three types of packaging produced: a bag in bag format, an elopak format and a glass bottle for the horeca channel (image 3). the brand thoroughly avoided the use of environmentally hazardous plastics, instead using paper and glass containers, while tailoring its packaging to the various usage scenarios of its users. in addition, other touchpoints and elements, such as the logo, font, merchandising and website, were designed carefully to contribute to the emphatic storytelling. in conclusion, the design director and the pr manager emphasized the following: “we have to imagine who will drink this water. we imagine a free person, an international person, a person who can have these characteristics. therefore, in storytelling, we already visualized what the target audience could be […] this project has been done, ‘it's now displayed at the dubai expo’. it's a project very focused on the future, very focused on a new vision of water consumption”. image 3: directing actions through the newly designed packaging systems. these design storytelling practices are intended to trigger change of mindsets and behaviours of target users, hence generating user experiences. generally, it is not easy to change people’s mindsets and behaviours. it requires stimulating the imagination, understanding and even creativity of the people involved. in this case, the team designed whole user experiences where people can change their mindset 24 and behaviour step by step as naturally as possible, through leveraging on the power of story, which evokes imagination and provides a guide for action and structural uncertainty (milojević & inayatullah, 2015). coherently united social, symbolic, physical and material aspects formulate “a good story”, which enables the target users to understand the story logic and perceive the verisimilitude of the narrative account, not the truth of it (bruner, 1986). it is notable that once the users take the action to select this brand for everyday water consumption instead of other brands that use pet, their small single actions can contribute automatically to reducing pet bottle consumption, hence taking a tiny step toward an alternative better future in which a “naturally circular” ecosystem is realized. in summary, this analysis implies that design storytelling aimed at a social transformation toward sustainability contributed to reframing the existing view into a new one, making new meaning and providing a reason for practical action. in other words, this role of design storytelling can be highlighted as creating a new worldview for the general public to take small ethical actions, which may potentially accumulate into societal transformation. table 2: analysis of the role of narratives by design. dimension of the role of narrative key narrative phrase related design activities analysis changing frames “who would drink from plastic when they can drink from the source?” deconstructing current standardized water consumption behaviour through a critical view questioning the current form of consumption through a provocative narrative making meaning “the brand is your source". weaving factual matters (e.g. north eu origin finland lathi heritage, pure quality with balanced mineral content, innovative packaging) with emphatic stories from everyday life in finland, the brand purpose and wider contexts generating new meanings through a coherent narrative using facts, people, the brand and contexts guiding practice "less plastic better for earth". synthesizing every brand touchpoint and element into holistic user experiences for people to naturally take action prompting a new type of consumer behaviour through an actionable narrative message and user experiences discussion and conclusion this paper explored certain fundamental roles of design and design storytelling that aimed to achieve societal transformation. first, design can form the elemental factors of societal transformation by decomposing extant elements and substituting them with new multi-dimensional ones. starting from the gap analysis between existing realities needing to be overcome and alternative futures; design decomposes current realities into pieces of elements with the power of images and keywords. thereafter, design can reconstruct those newly proposed elements in social, symbolic, physical and material dimensions into an integrated whole. second, design storytelling can fuel alternative framing and meaning-making and lead actions as part of a societal transformation movement. in other words, design storytelling can perform 25 as an agent to convey “narratives of change (noc)” through leveraging the power of story, which evokes imagination and provides a guide for action and structural uncertainty. the findings of this paper suggested that design can contribute to constituting fundamental changes and that the role of design and design storytelling is to steer and navigate societal transformation. hence, these findings can partially fill the gap indicated by feola (2015) regarding a certain lack of knowledge of what constitutes fundamental changes and how these changes can be prompted in multiple disciplines. furthermore, these findings can extend the knowledge of transition design (irwin, 2015) from the perspective of design storytelling for societal transformation. as we have seen in our analysis, it is worth mentioning the implication of the importance of storytelling and the strategic aspect of design, which can guide societal transformation. in addition, our analysis indicated that design could play a remarkable role when aiming for societal transformation. indeed, it should be underlined that design starts the transformative practice from the initial deconstruction and reframes the issue and extant elemental factors, integrating newly developed elements into a specific whole and then leading to an actionable practice in a comprehensive way. also, the study notably implied that design can be a potential driver of “narratives of change” or noc, as the empirical case study showed. more broadly, in relation to the argument of the ontological reorientation of design (escobar, 2018), this study can add an empirical contribution, namely that design and design storytelling can possibly perform as a trigger for the overhaul of the relationality of people, nature and culture (even if the packaging redesign can surely only scratch the surface in terms of sustainable practice). however, some limitations of this study are worth noting. first, methodologically, although the case was selected with specific analytic intention and empirical qualitative triangulated data were used, the results and considerations rely on a single case. more case studies or other empirical studies should be conducted to certify the findings of the research and generalize them. second, the case itself was mainly derived from a branding design and packaging design project, even though the project team intended to create a game changer in the broader context of water consumption and hence become part of societal transition. the authors believe that this case should not be interpreted as a case of brand differentiation in commercial contexts, but rather as one that can lead to societal change. however, to figure out the potentialities of design and design storytelling, diverse types of design projects (e.g. product design, service design and product-service system design) should be investigated according to the theoretical perspectives of transition design and design storytelling. third, the theoretical views borrowed from transition studies and future studies to analyse the case itself may not be mature, since the topic of research and debate in multiple disciplines needs to be developed further (feola, 2015). future work should be expected in several research directions. first, further empirical studies on the role of design and design storytelling can investigate the validity and generalizability of the findings. specifically, other case studies or empirical action research could provide supportive findings for the role of design and design storytelling in societal transformation. second, the collaborative aspects of societal transition involving different actors could be a meaningful research path. since societal transformation is a huge matter, potential actors could be considered broadly to include innovative private companies, governments, citizens and so forth. therefore, a specific question that could be posed among different actors is “how can design storytelling have an impact on societal transformation involving different societal actors?” taking into consideration the urgent demands for societal transformation in the anthropocene era, further research and practice by interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners are awaited. 26 acknowledgements we would like to express our gratitude to mr michele bicego, group creative director and ms. luisa barbieri, brand, media and communications director of hangar design group for providing detailed case information and cooperating with the interviews. references beddoe, r., costanza, r., farley, j., garza, e., kent, j., kubiszewski, i., martinez, l., mccowen, t., murphy, k., myers, n., ogden, z., stapleton, k., & woodward, j. 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(2009). case study research: design and methods (4th ed.). sage. 58 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. social cause advertising is not your traditional advertising: a graphic design framework for social change rafaella-maria lakeridou, christos karpasitis published online: november 2022 to cite this article: lakeridou, r-m., & karpasitis, c. (2022). social cause advertising is not your traditional advertising: a graphic design framework for social change. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(2), 58-78. 59 social cause advertising is not your traditional advertising: a graphic design framework for social change rafaella-maria lakeridoua, christos karpasitisb auniversity of central lancashire, school of arts and media, cyprus. rmlakeridou@uclan.ac.uk b university of central lancashire, school of sciences, cyprus. ckarpasitis1@uclan.ac.uk abstract when designing advertisements, designers use a framework created by principles (guidelines) that form the foundation of the design. however, based on the literature, designers apply existing graphic design frameworks in social cause advertising without acknowledging that such advertisements differ from traditional advertising. these advertisements are designed not to promote a brand name but to influence the public and attempt to change social behaviour towards a cause. when designing for social change, designers should differentiate their advertisements and apply a tailored framework with the most effective and influential graphic design elements. although some academic studies exist on how advertising can initiate social change, further investigation is needed on which graphic design elements are the most effective. such research can add new knowledge to the multidisciplinary fields of graphic design and advertising and to the existing literature. this paper describes how social cause advertising differs from traditional advertising and presents the need for a graphic design framework for out-of-home social cause advertising. the objective is to identify graphic elements that can be applied specifically in the design of out-of-home social cause advertisements and build a tailored framework. the research followed a mixed methods approach: quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (interviews) data. the findings indicated that specific graphic design elements (like monochromatic colour schemes, geometric shapes, etc.) can be applied in social cause advertising to build a tailored framework targeting different age groups/genders. such findings lead towards more public engagement and action towards the social cause advertised; but also add new knowledge to existing research, which suggests that elements like image and typography are the most effective visualization techniques. this research is part of a phd in graphic design inspired by social cause advertisements. the researchers, who lost a loved one due to ischaemic stroke, devote this research to create awareness for different social causes and design for social change. keywords: social cause advertising, out-of-home advertising, graphic design, graphic design elements introduction social cause advertising differs from traditional advertising in that it does not attempt to promote a brand, product or service and increase sales. rather, it attempts to change social behaviour, raise awareness, educate or promote a public benefit towards a cause (landa, 2021; gupta, 2012). social cause advertising has been around for years because of its immense power to promote action. karen and fox (1980) point out that social cause advertising aims to move people from intention to action, while gupta (2012) argues that social cause advertising is one of the most effective means to create social awareness, bring social change and shift the public mindset. on the other hand, out-of-home advertising (which is the main focus of this research) covers all advertising that is seen out of home, such as billboards, transit advertising, posters, etc. (altstiel & grow, 2006). studies have shown that this type of advertising is ideal for raising awareness, but also vital in providing information and enhancing knowledge (manickam, 2014; walia, 2012). 60 generally, graphic design involves a creative process to build a visual. designers use a framework created by a set of principles (guidelines) that can assist in creating a visual design. in this paper, we argue that social cause advertising should be more clearly differentiated from traditional advertising when it comes to design. it is observed and reported that designers apply universal design techniques in social cause advertising, without acknowledging which design elements are the most favourable amongst different demographics to create effective advertisements. such criteria are important, as this will enable designers to reach their target audience and engender a more favourable attitude. for example, visual language is a key asset when composing an advertisement. kronrod et al. (2012) concluded that language in environmental campaigns needs to be carefully assessed and selected. hence, as social cause advertising is based on collecting issues and addressing them to the public, designers must identify and apply elements that the public favour. by creating a tailored framework with elements that are the most favourable and effective amongst different demographics, designers will be able to customise their campaigns. timke’s (2019) visual analysis on disability and advertising recommended that disability be represented more carefully in social awareness campaigns. more specifically, timke (2019) suggested that designers should start using images that represent different disabilities more clearly. therefore, in our proposed framework, designers would be able to use a specific type of imagery, such as graphics, drawings or photographs. related studies have been conducted on the multidisciplinary fields of graphic design and advertising (borba et al., 2015; manickam,2014; nazim, 2020; park, 2014; troy, 2019). however, these studies examined different aspects of graphic design or advertising without focusing specifically on graphic design elements. according to troy (2019), although a few academic studies on advertising design and initiating social change exist, further investigation is needed. therefore, this research focused on graphic elements such as line, shape, texture, colour, value, typography and image. we investigated how these elements could be applied in designing out-of-home social cause advertisements to build a tailored framework that will attract more people and lead towards more public engagement and action towards the social cause advertised. for example, as stated by the national heart, lung, and blood institute (2022), although women’s heart disease awareness has doubled since 2002, it remains the leading cause of death. therefore, with this research’s potential to inspire action towards prevention, a tailored design will not only show a different perspective on social causes like heart disease (e.g. inspiring more women to be aware and increase checkups), but also connect with societies through a more supportive and favourable approach that will increase health assessments in general and reduce mortality. out-of-home social cause advertising out-of-home social cause advertising addresses social issues publicly through out-of-home media. the outdoor advertising association of america and advertising agencies such as dash two, bmediagroup and the empire group use the term out-of-home advertising for: • billboard advertising the traditional large, printed advertisement on a podium positioned for the public eye. • transit advertising content displayed on public transport vehicles. • posters print advertisements, often displayed in noticeable places specifically for people on foot. • street furniture advertising all forms of out-of-home advertising displayed at street level/ printed on outdoor furniture. 61 • place-based advertising located within a specific location where a particular group of people congregate for different purposes. this research focused on the list above, as it was important that the findings apply to all media classified as out-of-home. according to one study, this type of advertising can be more reliable, accurate, highly appealing and effective advertising tool than internet advertising (borisova & martynova, 2017). graphic design elements dabner et al. (2013) note that every discipline has its own set of rules and methods. graphic design is a discipline which follows fundamental principles to create an effective composition and form a visual language for the public (poulin, 2018). graphic elements are building blocks which compose a design (samara, 2011). below, the key design elements are listed as presented in multiple sources (dabner et al., 2013; evans & thomas, 2012; poulin, 2018; resnick, 2003). the elements are applied in all types of advertising as they give character to the design. therefore, studying the elements gives a better understanding of their function in the design composition. however, each element has different variations. an investigation of the graphic design elements will enable this research to conclude on each element’s role and how it can be utilised in social cause advertisements for maximum impact. line a line can be actual or implied. however, for this research, it was most appropriate to investigate literal lines in design, as implied lines are a conceptual element. lines add character and direction to the design, yet they can communicate emotion and give unique characteristics. figure 1 illustrates the different line variations applied in design, as presented by field (2018). figure 1: line variations (field, 2018). shape shapes in design can be symbolic or create a pattern (wong, 1972) and are an important building block in visual grammar. more specifically, shapes add characteristics to the design composition. according to wong (1993) and malamed (2011), three universal shape groups known as the basic types of shapes are used in design (figure 2). vertical line horizontal line diagonal line zigzag line or jagged line curved line delineating line calligraphic line implied line 62 figure 2: three universal shape groups (wong,1993 and malamed, 2011). texture the element of texture is defined as the look and feel of a surface (resnick, 2003). visual texture refers to the effect of the surface which can add richness and dimension (poulin, 2011). texture can be described through a variety of visual effects ranging from flat and shiny to bumpy and rusty (poulin, 2011) (figure 3). figure 3: visual effects (poulin, 2011). space space is a conceptual element which refers to the area within the design known as positive space or negative space (figure 4). positive space is an area which contains graphical elements such as shapes, images and typography. conversely, negative space is the empty area of the composition. space in design creates a visual effect which has an impact on human perception (samara, 2014). figure 4: negative and positive space (samara, 2014). colour colour in graphic design is a powerful element which delivers meaning, emotional moods and functional information (buether, 2014). the use of colour in design conveys a story. however, the element of colour is a broad subject which can be investigated and specialised solely as research. for this research, it was most appropriate to investigate the six types of colour schemes, as they are the foundation of colour composition (figure 5). geometric shapes organic shapes abstract shapes positive space negative space 63 figure 5: six colour schemes (feisner, 2006). value when referring to the element of value, one refers to the degree of colour (figure 6). the element of value is a tool which indicates how light or dark design elements appear in a composition. value can be used for multiple purposes, ranging from creating a contrast to building a visual hierarchy amongst the design elements. value can evoke feelings in design, as dark values indicate mystery, while light values can reflect happiness (smith, 2017). figure 6: value scale (smith, 2017). typography typography (or fonts, as known by many) is an element which cannot pass unnoticed, as it is the process of making language visible (cullen, 2012). typography gives character to the content of the composition. this research examined the typography categories most used in advertising (figure 7). monochromatic colour schemes complementary colour schemes split complementary schemes triadic colour schemes analogous colour scheme tetradic colour schemes 64 figure 7: typography used in advertising (amplify, 2019; amstel, 2019; inman,2020; jgi outdoor, 2020; the perfect media, 2019). image images are a powerful visual element and essential in several disciplines, such as advertising, as they can bring a design alive (ambrose & harris, 2006). drawing a summary from authors like meggs (1992), poulin (2011) and landa (2021), this research focused on two types of images (figure 8). figure 8: image type. concerning the impact that each element can have on the design of advertisements and on influencing public perception, research suggests that the impact can differ across different elements and demographics (guthrie, 2009). moreover, research conducted by park (2014) on the most effective ways of communication in a cause-related campaign design found that images, infographics and typography were among the most comprehensible elements for the intended audience. methodology to develop a graphic design framework for out-of-home social cause advertising, this study was based on a deductive approach and was supported by mixed-methods research. quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously, and the results were combined in the overall analysis (tashakkori & teddlie, 1998). both primary and secondary data were collected during this research. secondary data related to graphic design and social cause advertising were obtained from sources like journals, books and articles published between 1972 and 2022. such data helped the researchers to empower the primary data, which were illustrations photography san-serif fonts arial berlins sans calibri franklin gill sans helvetica lucida grande tahoma verdana serif fonts baskerville georgia time new roman garamond didot 65 obtained through web-based surveys and through interviews. these two methods were combined in similar studies in the past (dombrowski et al., 2013; troy, 2019), as such data collection helped strengthen the research. table 1 summarises the research instruments used in this research and their purpose. survey 1 (n = 150) investigated the participants’ perceptions, attitudes and favorability towards different graphic design elements and styles applicable in out-of-home social cause advertisements. survey 2 (n = 50) was an advertisement recall test that investigated which advertisement graphic design elements contribute more to recalling a social cause. the participants in surveys 1 and 2 were initially identified using convenience sampling, followed by snowball sampling whereby each participant was asked to share the survey with eligible friends. the sample population represented a range of demographics such as age, gender, nationality (e.g. american, cypriot, lebanese, australian, etc.) and region of residence (e.g. europe, middle-east, asia etc.). survey 3 (n = 11) targeted professionals in the design industry and their perceptions of different graphic design elements and how social cause advertisements are designed. finally, interviews with 3 professionals in the design industry helped obtain more in-depth information and deeper insights into the aspects addressed in survey 3. for survey 3, agencies from across europe, the middle east, the usa and the uk were selected and contacted through a personalised email invitation. these agencies were selected based on their portfolio to ensure that they were experienced with social cause out-of-home advertising. the participants in survey 3 were also invited to participate in a short virtual interview. table 1: research instruments applied and purpose. n = number of participants the sample consisted of adult participants aged 18 and over (table 2). to understand the audience, the population was divided into generations to enable the researcher to understand the different target group instrument ν purpose general public survey 1: (web-based via qualtrics) 150 investigated perceptions, attitudes and favourability towards different graphic design elements and styles applicable in out-of-home social cause advertisements. survey 2: (web-based via qualtrics) 50 conducted an advertisement recall test, specifically on existing out-of-home social cause advertisements, and determined which elements (e.g. typography, graphics, colours, headlines, etc.) attract the general public but also contribute to remembering the social cause. design agencies survey 3: (web-based via qualtrics) 11 understand from professionals in the design industry: (i) how social cause advertisements are designed and (ii) how different elements and styles are perceived. interviews (virtual via ms teams) 3 obtained more in-depth information on the aspects addressed in the design agencies survey. 66 demographics and their preferences in order to develop a tailored graphic design framework for the general public. table 2: age groups and generations. the demographic data of the respondents to survey 1 is shown in table 3. of the respondents, 81 (54.0%) were female and 69 (46.0%) were male. table 3: demographic characteristics survey 1 participants (n = 150). *n = number of participants the survey was divided into two sections, as follows: section one: qs1–5 were about demographic variables: gender, age, nationality, etc. such data gives background information on the research population and also helps divide findings into different categories for comparison (e.g. gender and age preferences). section two: qs6 20 examined public perceptions, attitudes and favorability towards graphic styles and elements (e.g. please rate the level of attractiveness for the following line variations: 1 = not at all attractive, 2 = slightly attractive, 3 = moderately attractive, 4 = very attractive and 5 = extremely attractive). in these questions, some other criteria were also investigated, such as out-of-home advertising types and social causes (e.g. please rate on average the level of attention you pay to the following out-of-home mediums: 1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often and 5 = always). survey 2 included 50 participants, of whom 26 (57.8%) were female and 19 (42.2%) were male (table 4). generation age group generation z & millennials 18–30 millennials 31–40 millennials & generation x 41–50 generation x & baby boomers 51–60 baby boomers, the silent generation & the greatest generation 61 and above characteristic n % gender female male 82 68 54.7 45.3 age (years) 18–30 31–40 41–50 51–60 61 and above 35 69 23 12 11 23.3 46.0 15.3 8.0 7.4 67 table 4: demographic characteristics survey 2 participants (n = 50). characteristic n % gender female male 29 21 58.0 42.0 age 18–30 31–40 41–50 51–60 61 and above 15 21 9 2 3 30.0 42.0 18.0 4.0 6.0 *n = number of participants this survey combined picture choices and closed multiple choice questions, using 30 advertisements, including two sets of 15 different social causes. the survey was divided into two main sections, as follows: section one: qs1–5 assessed demographic variables like gender, age group, nationality, etc. section two: qs6–25 were a series of short advertisement tests. hence, 2 sets of 15 different social cause advertisements were tested. each set was given 30 seconds viewing time, which corresponds to approximately 10 seconds viewing time per advertisement (this gave participants the experience of being out of home while simultaneously conducting a recall test). survey 3 obtained data from design industry professionals (tables 5 & 6). the population (n = 11) included directors, co-owners and designers from graphic design/creative firms and out-of-home advertising agencies that either specialised in social cause advertisements or had a strong knowledge of their design (e.g. some participants either worked in well-known design agencies or created popular social cause campaigns, ranging from climate change and environmental awareness to health and poverty). table 5: design agencies sample (n = 11). id job title industry a co-owner advertising b co-owner graphic design c co-owner graphic design d co-owner design for social change e head designer design for social change f creative director graphic design g head and creative director design for social change h director graphic design i creative director graphic design j director design for social change k director design for social change 68 table 6: demographic characteristics survey 3 participants. characteristic n gender female male 4 7 age 18–30 31–40 41–50 51–60 61 and above 4 3 2 1 0 position founder/co-founder creative director junior designer service designer 6 3 1 1 *n = number of participants the survey was divided into two main sections, as follows: section one: qs1–3 obtained demographic variables like gender, age group and agency location. such information helps to evaluate cultural diversity in the sample and build a complete profile of the respondents. section two: q4s–21 assessed the respondents’ knowledge and perceptions of different graphic design elements and styles and the design of social cause advertising and out-of-home advertising (e.g. please rate the level of emphasis on the following design elements when you are designing an out-of-home social cause advertisement: 1 = no emphasis, 2 = minor emphasis, 3 = neutral emphasis, 4 = moderate emphasis and 5 = major emphasis). with regards to the data measurement and scaling, a number of techniques were applied. some questions were worded in an open-ended way and used semantic differential scales (figure 9). please rate on average the level of attention you pay to the following out-of-home mediums: 1 = never 2 = rarely 3 = sometimes 4 = often 5 = always figure 9: semantic differential scales. for some questions, likert scaling was most appropriate. as shown in figure 10, negative responses were scored with the lowest number. please select the level of agreement or disagreement for the following statements: 1 = strongly disagree 2 = disagree 3 = neutral 4 = agree 5 = strongly agree figure 10: likert scaling. 69 the other forms of survey questions were matrix, multiple-choice and picture choice questions. findings the data analysis showed that different demographics had different preferences. therefore, it was appropriate to divide the findings into two sections: 1) designing to attract age groups, and 2) designing to attract gender. designing to attract age groups the participants (all ages) found delineating lines the most attractive (table 7). however, the 31-40-yearsold age group found implied lines equally attractive. this suggests that the type of line that mostly should be used in the design of out-of-home social cause advertising is delineating. table 7: line variation attractiveness (age group preferences). age (years) line variation attractiveness of each line variation (within age group) % 18–30 delineating line 50 31–40 delineating line implied line 69.2 69.1 41–50 delineating line 60.9 51–60 delineating line 83.3 61 and above delineating line 81.8 with regards to shape preference, although the data collected from the designers indicated that organic shapes were the most used (54% of participants replied ‘often’ or ‘always’), over 52% of the respondents perceived geometric shapes as attractive (e.g. ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ attractive’). such learning will be shared with the professionals who participated in this study. the element of texture is a visual effect. of the professionals (n = 11) who participated in this study, the creative directors (n = 3) gave a 27.3% major emphasis on texture. therefore, this element should not be used in out-of-home social cause advertisements, as a rating of 27.3% is deemed too low. rather, texture is an element that should be applied in printed advertisements where the public can feel the surface. the element of space is applied as a conceptual element in design. the professionals (n = 11) gave a 54.5% emphasis on space when designing an out-of-home social cause advertisement, without any particular preference (e.g. negative or positive space). therefore, space in design should be applied, as it is a component that draws attention to the content but also strengthens the relationship between the viewer and the communicating message (samara, 2014). most of the participants (50.7%) found monochromatic colour schemes the most attractive, except for the 51–60-years-old age group, who had no preference. therefore, to draw a conclusion on colour favourability for the 51–60-years-old age group, designers should rely on the second highest response within that age group, which was monochromatic. 70 furthermore, value and colour are two elements which are combined to form a composition. the professionals (n = 11) gave a 54.5% emphasis on value when designing an out-of-home social cause advertisement. hence, depending on the social cause, it is recommended that designers apply the most applicable shade (lightness or darkness) of monochromatic colour. with regards to typography, the findings showed some differences in the typeface preference (table 8). the 18–30-years-old age group (63.8%) found the didot typeface the most attractive, whereas the 31–40-years-old age group (77.9%) and the 41–50-years-old age group (65.2%) both perceived the garamond typeface as the most attractive. on the other hand, ages 51–60 years (83.3%) and 61 years and above (82.8%) both selected the georgia font. however, ages 61 and above found times new roman equally attractive. table 8: typeface attractiveness (age group preference). age (years) typeface attractiveness of each typeface (within element) % 18–30 didot 63.8 31–40 garamond 77.9 41–50 garamond 65.2 51–60 georgia 83.3 61 and above georgia times new roman 81.8 81.8 lastly, concerning the most preferred type of image, most of the participants (ages 18–30, 41–50 and 61 and above) found drawings the most attractive (table 9). however, ages 31–40 (59.5%) had no preference, and ages 51–60 (8.7%) perceived graphics to be the most attractive. table 9: image type attractiveness (age group preference). age (years) image type attractiveness of each image type (within element) % 18–30 drawings 40.7 31–40 no preference 59.5 41–50 drawings 18.5 51–60 graphics 8.7 61 and above drawings 11.1 designing to attract gender it is important to mention that the studies performed throughout this research took measures that allowed the participants to declare a nonbinary gender identity. however, during the studies, all participants declared themselves as either male or female. when designing to attract gender, the findings suggest delineating lines. both the female (65.4% within element) and the male (65.2% within element) participants found delineating lines the most attractive option. additionally, with regards to the type of shape, both females (55.5% within element) and males 71 (49.3% within element), also found geometric shapes the most attractive (e.g. ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ attractive). further, both female and male participants found monochromatic colour schemes the most attractive (50.7%). however, some social causes (e.g breast cancer awareness and prostate cancer awareness) need to apply monochromatic colours accordingly. for example, when designing a breast cancer advertisement, designers can apply monochromatic red colours with different values to create pink tones. with regards to typography, the female and male participants had different preferences. the female participants found serif fonts like didot, garamond and times new roman the most attractive (table 10). the male participants found serif fonts like didot, garamond and georgia the most attractive (table 11). figure 11 presents a visual of each preferred typeface. table 10: typeface attractiveness (genderfemale preference). gender typeface attractiveness of each typeface (within element) % female arial baskerville berlin sans calibri didot franklin garamond georgia gill sans helvetica lucida grande tahoma times new roman verdana 24.4 53.7 19.5 29.3 67.1 11 70.8 53.6 17 18.3 22 22 69.5 20.8 72 table 11: typeface attractiveness (gender -male preference). gender typeface attractiveness of each typeface (within element) % male arial baskerville berlin sans calibri didot franklin garamond georgia gill sans helvetica lucida grande tahoma times new roman verdana 32.3 58.9 19.1 30.9 72.1 19.1 72.0 63.3 5.9 19.1 23.6 16.2 61.8 14.7 figure 11: preferred typeface. lastly, concerning the type of image, both female and male participants found graphics/illustrations the most attractive (tables 12 and 13). didot a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” garamond a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” georgia a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” times new roman a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” 73 table 12: image type attractiveness (gender female preference). gender imagery attractiveness of each image type (within element) % female graphics/illustrations drawings photographs no preference 63.4 23.2 50 13.4 table 13: image type attractiveness (gender male preference). gender imagery attractiveness of each image type (within element) % male graphics/illustrations drawings photographs no preference 58.8 20.6 42.6 22.1 the framework developed figures 12 and 13 present a summary of the findings and, more specifically, the framework with the graphic design elements that should be applied in the design of out-of-home social cause advertisements. figure 12 illustrates the elements this research suggests when designing to attract different age groups; figure 13 presents the elements suggested when targeting gender. 74 figure 12: designing to attract age groups. 18–30 31–40 41–50 51–60 61 and above key age: 18–30 element line: delineating line element shapes: geometric shapes element value element colour: monochromatic colour schemes element typography: didot typeface element image: drawings age: 31–40 element line: delineating line element shapes: geometric shapes element value element colour: monochromatic colour schemes element typography: garamond typeface element image: no preference age: 41–50 element line: delineating line element shapes: geometric shapes element value element colour: monochromatic colour schemes element typography: didot typeface element image: drawings age: 61 and above element line: delineating line element shapes: geometric shapes element value element colour: monochromatic colour schemes element typography: georgia or times new roman typeface element image: graphics age: 51–60 element line: delineating line element shapes: geometric shapes element value element colour: monochromatic colour schemes element typography: georgia typeface element image: graphics 75 figure 13: designing to attract gender. discussion this paper investigated graphic design elements that can be applied specifically in the design of out-ofhome social cause advertisements and presented the key elements for effective advertising. although elements currently applied in the design of out-of-home social cause advertisements may be influential, such form of advertising should have a tailored framework. these findings suggest that social cause advertising should be differentiated from traditional advertising. hence, a universal graphic design framework tailored for the design of out-of-home social cause advertisements was developed after carefully analysing data collected from surveys and interviews. the designers who participated in this study who specialised in out-of-home advertising reported a lack of good design in social cause advertising. such forms of advertising should have a graphic design framework to create more effective out-of-home social cause advertisements, to attract the public (reach more people) and lead towards more public engagement /action. moreover, according to the interview data, the characteristics of the target audience should play a key role in the design decisions about social cause advertisements. more specifically, campaigns should be designed to meet the target audience’s demographic characteristics (e.g. gender and age). these research findings could have a positive impact on practice, such as the design process and achieving design for social change. however, this claim should be further tested in long-term studies. for example, further research should be conducted to determine more specifications for the elements presented in this paper as well as the validity of the proposed framework. in our opinion, the next steps of this research are to present findings to designers and practitioners. on the other hand, with regards to the impact this research can have on the literature, our research supports existing research about increasing awareness towards a social issue. in an empirical study conducted in jordan, ‘the effect of advertising campaigns in encouraging women's early breast cancer screening’ (alhawamdeh & azzam, 2019), the main findings showed that in a specific advertisement male female gender: male element line: delineating line element space: negative & positive space element shapes: geometric shapes element value element colour: monochromatic colour schemes element typography: didot, garamond and georgia element image: graphics/illustrations gender: female element line: delineating line element space: negative & positive space element shapes: geometric shapes element value element colour: monochromatic colour schemes element typography: didot, garamond and times new roman element image: graphics/illustrations key 76 campaign, there was a 54% effect in encouraging women´s early breast cancer screening due to the overall design. therefore, with our research, designers can tailor advertisements with specific elements favoured by females regardless of their age group (table 10) e.g. delineating lines, geometric shapes, monochromatic colours (light red value to create pink tones), typefaces like garamond or times new roman and graphic images. this research can have a significant impact when designing for social change. the visual content included in social cause advertisements can influence the public by creating an attraction (attracting more people), which can lead towards more public engagement and action. the findings aim to motivate and connect with 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(1993). principles of form and design. wiley. http://doi.org/10.1353/asr.2019.0024 38 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. the benevolent future of fashion: a framework for business partnerships with a social purpose georgina twamley, francesco mazzarella published online: november 2022 to cite this article: twamley, g., & mazzarella, f. (2022). the benevolent future of fashion – a framework for business partnerships with a social purpose, discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(2), 38-57. 39 the benevolent future of fashion: a framework for business partnerships with a social purpose georgina twamleya, francesco mazzarellab a london college of fashion, london, w1g 0bj, united kingdom, g.twamley@fashion.arts.ac.uk blondon college of fashion, london, w1g 0bj, united kingdom, f.mazzarella@fashion.arts.ac.uk abstract consumers are increasingly buying from brands they believe in, and, therefore, fashion businesses increasingly need to align their operations with their customers’ values. with this in mind, this paper reports on a research project aimed at demonstrating ways in which the fashion system can begin to benefit society, consumers and businesses more. recommendations are distilled from desk research and primary data collected through a consumer survey and interviews with fashion industry experts. the findings from the research reveal how collaborations can be used as a multidimensional tool and expose the tangible advantages of communicating ethics and engaging audiences by aligning with consumers’ desires. the research findings were used to inform the development of a framework which paves the way for a more socially conscious fashion industry by providing businesses with a checklist to follow to create partnerships and projects with a social purpose. to conclude, this paper advocates for how the fashion industry should begin to create more positive social impact and lays the foundations for further research on the benevolent future of fashion. keywords: fashion, strategic partnerships, activism, social impact, charity introduction the fashion industry causes a negative impact on society and the planet in many ways, including abuse of labour rights, compromise of workers’ health in a fast fashion production system, non-inclusive fashion media, anxiety related to over-consumption and a sort of ‘waste colonialism’ (i.e. communities in the global south face the impacts of fast fashion trends in the global north). within this context, there is a lack of insight into how the fashion industry can create positive social change. contemporary research on how businesses can be benevolent to society often refers to the concept of the ‘triple bottom line’ or the ‘three ps’ (i.e. people, profit and the planet) (stoddard, 2017). within the scope of this paper, this means that businesses can help wider society through new approaches like collaborations designed to have a social impact. building networks and business partnerships can be one way to address complex societal issues, develop a social purpose and therefore contribute to social justice. this paper addresses the rise in popularity of collaborations in the fashion sector and discusses how they can be harnessed to improve businesses’ actions and therefore reputations. the research presented in this paper intends to address a knowledge gap about how brands can take small steps towards being more socially inclusive and impactful. particularly in a post-covid world, many businesses may not be ready to make substantial changes, but smaller one-off projects and collaborations can act as a gateway towards new ways of doing business with a social purpose. collaborations in fashion have always existed, and in recent years their popularity has exploded, as they are used for marketing campaigns, new concept development and acquiring new markets, as well as developing more systemic responses to complex issues. aziz and jones (2018) track the increasingly benevolent trajectory of contemporary business and marketing strategy in their book series good is the new cool. their work has been influential in shaping a potential benevolent future of marketing, one in which “a great ceo should have the brain of a cfo, the heart of a storyteller, and the soul of an activist” (aziz & jones, 2021, p.7). 40 the theories reviewed in this paper were applied to a mental wellness platform called ‘helpingyourself’, set up by the first author of this paper. strategic partnerships are at the heart of ‘helpingyourself’, which aims to work with others to grow faster and benefit from collaborators in terms of credibility, authority and audience. this approach has been beneficial. similarly, other industries have been analysed for this project to find out if their approaches could inform benevolent fashion collaborations. however, there is limited literature that analyses the topics of business, society and consumer wellness together. with this in mind, the overall aim of the research project presented in this paper was to develop a framework for fashion-related collaborations enabling consumer wellness and social enterprise creation. the framework was then applied to ‘helpingyourself’ to validate its effectiveness. literature review the following sections discuss the key findings from the literature review concerning consumer wellness, business collaborations and social entrepreneurship – to identify a knowledge gap and inform the development of a framework. consumer wellness, values-led fashion and emotional bonds consumer wellness has become increasingly prominent as a marketing concept and business approach. discussing the make-up brand l’oréal, martin and shackleford (2021) state that the company is now focusing its marketing less on the product and more on the feelings that consumers wish to feel, saying the brand is now selling a “sense of belonging, self-realization and self-confidence” (para. 1). this builds on cartner-morley’s (2019) argument that wellness does what fashion used to do by selling consumers an ideal vision of themselves. vogue business (2021) uses the new term ‘comfort consumerism’ to reflect consumers’ new prioritisation of wellbeing alongside luxury. hilton (2007) suggests that consumerism was typically a cause of societal ills; however, now consumer culture moves towards catering to society’s needs. given the urgency to address sustainability challenges, brands face increasing pressures to show that they are not supporting relentless consumerism. gaffney (2020) points out that generation z (gen z) customers are facing unprecedented stress and that they expect brands to authentically engage with their needs and aspirations. businesses which show they care about societal challenges create for themselves the opportunity to bond with their customers as a consequence of a shared value system. according to chitrakorn (2021), consumers expect that brands have a purpose in society and are consistent in their messaging or they suffer the consequences of not following through on the values they espouse. on the other hand, companies may be reluctant to take a strong stance on societal issues due to fear of losing customers in case their positioning or messaging does not please everyone. however, brands that speak up about issues in a heartfelt honest way can develop an emotional bond with customers, resulting in increased brand loyalty. when customers develop an emotional connection with a brand’s purpose, they become brand advocates (moore, 2015). younger shoppers want to buy from brands that align with their values, including 33% of baby boomers and 60% of millennials surveyed as part of a study by deloitte (2020). brands that act on their values are not going ‘above and beyond’, but are merely meeting customers' expectations (thomas, 2020). according to aziz and jones (2021), a customer is 83.7% more likely to support a brand that they believe in. this change in consumer behaviour affects how fashion is perceived and purchased (hilton, 2007); this consumer agency contributes to shaping a more sustainable world in which we want to live. conscious fashion consumers now see shopping as a moral choice. accordingly, there is now a marketing need to think about people as citizens as well as consumers (hilton, 2007.). 41 collaborations, compatible values and catering vs. pandering to consumers collaborations across the fashion industry have become hugely popular, featuring multifaceted objectives. mondalek (2021) states that the best collaborations are financially beneficial, bridge audience gaps and ‘reinforce existing consumer bases’. they are proving a valuable contemporary instrument in resolving business challenges and allow organisations to co-create solutions. collaborations are so advantageous to brands that their future seems assured as a strategy within the fashion industry. table 1 summarises and categorises the applications and objectives of collaborative projects. table 1: objectives of collaborations. customer approaches marketing approaches bridging gaps cross-pollination of audiences. seeking media attention through novel content. harnessing design skills or technical expertise from another company. reinforcing the brands’ beliefs by partnering with an ethical organisation. receiving social media engagement. gaining credibility or authority in a new area. benefiting from another brand's influence and authority. for example, a brand considered new/cool/fresh or representing gen z ideals. using marketing & pr to create and contribute to a new brand narrative; can introduce a brand to new audiences and hopefully increase sales. strategising for gaining market share and customer acquisition. creating good ‘karma’/benefiting brands’ reputations. positioning a brand differently in the marketplace. reliable introduction of benevolent marketing that can avoid appearing self-serving. companies often adopt multidisciplinary approaches to address complex challenges; these can include partnerships with other organisations having different skill sets or audiences (aftab & bailey, 2013). moreover, companies often start with low-risk experimentation and small steps before developing large innovations. collaborations can be a way of experimenting by adding value for existing customers, while also opening up new markets. previously, companies’ marketing efforts aimed to interrupt customers. in contract, now the aim is for brands to become part of contemporary culture. increasingly marketing activations show a trend of including messaging with a community feel and social impact. for campaigns to have legitimacy, brands that collaborate need to ensure they have shared values. deeley and sergison (2021) suggest direct questions that a business can ask itself to ensure alignment with its collaborators: for instance, ‘is the collaboration going to damage or support the brand messaging?’ and ‘is the collaboration going to support change?’. collaborations involving people in the public sphere have been described as utilising ‘reliable idols’. however, without shared values or clear communication of the reason behind them, campaigns featuring reliable idols can appear vague or even inauthentic. for instance, h&m’s ‘role models’ marketing campaign (figure 1) highlights young people who are making progress on causes including social equality, sustainability, etc. yet the poster does not show a connection to the brand or charitable efforts the company is making; it lacks social impact. 42 figure 1: poster of role models campaign (source: h&m). gaffney (2021) advises that companies need to strike a balance between pandering to and catering to consumers by showing sensitivity and respect in order to build successful collaborations. benevolent campaigns in the right tone can ‘cater’ to consumers as well as benefit companies by increasing customer engagement and sales. within this context, paulins and hillery (2020) refer to the need for ‘socially responsible’ communication and advertising. approaches like donations and long-term plans help communicate that the brand intends to make a positive contribution to society and that the project has integrity. consumers’ expectations mean that companies must be careful in managing their collaborations and be considered in their approach to crafting a message that is going to be well received, otherwise they risk seeming ‘self-serving’. when communication is not received as intended, it can seem that companies lack sensitivity and are merely ‘pandering’ to a consumer trend. therefore, careful consideration of the correct approach to support a ‘good cause’ is crucial. the wrong tone can risk a company missing the mark, facing criticism or, in extreme cases, exposing the brand to ‘cancel culture’ -type conversations. 43 cancel culture began with observations of commercial communication missteps highlighted in the media. companies face the risk that the public sometimes ridicules brands that miscommunicate about important topics (meyer, 2021). the atmosphere of blame has been described by some critics as inflexible and stifling. others renounce the humiliating effect cancel culture can have, questioning its fairness. mishan (2020) points to the consumerist nature of cancel culture, which means that businesses must pay attention to this new critique of their products, services and people. an atmosphere of social responsibility for communicating in a politically correct way has become part of the business. romano (2021) describes how confusion about cancel culture has not prevented it from becoming ‘culturally and politically entrenched’. insensitive messaging is now usually noticed by society, and companies have to face the consequences of getting their communications wrong. careful messaging is important for consumers but also for a business’s reputation; it affects wh cichompanies will collaborate with them and even its future workforce. research shows that gen z employees want to work at companies that have a social purpose. figure 2 depicts apple's job advertisements based on working somewhere that aligns with employees’ values, which is good for both recruitment and pr. figure 2. apple’s advertisements to future employees (source: linkedin). from fashion as the ‘business of inequality’ to socially conscious companies benevolent collaborations help charities fundraise, build social credibility for brands and help brands offer aspirational allure while sharing inclusive messaging. d’agostino (as cited in girod, 2020) discusses the fine line between fashion’s aspirational, exclusive nature and the new trend of social inclusivity, highlighting the contemporary challenge of balancing community feel with aspirational allure. within this context, we are witnessing the rise of socially conscious companies that intend to activate positive social change and develop charitable projects as profitable business opportunities embedded in corporate culture (stoddard, 2017). pallotta (2013) discusses innovative ways in which social causes are tackled through business partnerships and charity projects instead of through donations. these contemporary approaches provide shared responsibility and generate larger financial contributions towards charitable causes, creating a social impact. aziz 44 (2018) echoes this, endorsing partnerships with non-profits as the new combination of commerce, conscience and culture. research shows that positive social impact also positively affects the bottom line. according to kantar (2020), brands with high perceived positive impact are outperforming value growth by more than double of those with low impact. another stark statistic is that 95% of millennials would switch brands if a company supports a good cause in an authentic and meaningful way (kantar, 2020). for businesses trying to increase market share, these data offer enough evidence for adopting new socially active approaches both for socially impactful campaigns and for developing a long-term social purpose. overall, the literature review shows that the market and cultural trend for doing ‘good’ is undeniable. however, there is scope for further research to better understand what incremental steps businesses can take to build collaborations that bring about positive social change. figure 3 illustrates the key learnings from the literature review, which informed the primary research discussed in the following sections of this paper. figure 3: key learnings emerging from the literature review. methodology the project presented in this paper was conducted by adopting grounded theory as the research strategy to create a framework that could be tested and used in the future. this implied the development of a theory through multiple stages of data collection and identifying interrelationships between categories of information to refine the theory (creswell, 2013). the project entailed a cross-sectional study investigating a phenomenon within a particular time. an inductive research approach was used, and multiple data collection methods and thematic analysis contributed to building from particulars to general themes (creswell, 2013.). figure 4 illustrates the research design, consisting of three main consecutive steps, incrementally contributing to addressing the aim and objectives of the project discussed in this paper. 45 figure 4: research design. considering the project’s timeline and scale, as well as the available resources, an online survey and semistructured interviews were chosen to collect the data and inform the development of the intended framework. based on insights from the literature review, the survey comprised 8 questions, mostly multiple-choice and likert scale questions. the survey was filled in by 100 participants from 14 countries, providing insight into the public’s perception of fashion brands and consumer wellness. the survey mostly provided quantitative data but also included one open question, which allowed for qualitative data collection too. qualitative research was fundamental in gathering opinions for this project. semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven fashion sector professionals, each sharing their specific knowledge, providing feedback and advice on the project and contributing to a rich in-depth understanding of how collaborations are built. the interviewees had diverse expertise, including fashion education, social enterprise development, multidisciplinary collaborations, charity and retail. the interviewees were selected on the basis of professional background. while no interviewee had exact expertise on this research, each had relevant knowledge and made a unique contribution to the body of research presented in this paper.table 2 details the varied perspectives of each interviewee and how each participant contributed to inform a multi-faceted body of knowledge. in the final interview, simone parchment reviewed the framework draft and reinforced its legitimacy, stating that she had seen all of the benefits of collaborations described in action in the industry. this began the evaluation process. 46 following this, a panel discussion on the topic allowed for evaluation of the research in an open unstructured way. the panel consisted of a fashion designer, a fashion psychologist, an entrepreneur and a researcher, who each contributed their experience of industry norms and innovations and consented to be quoted. table 2: industry interviewees, with their roles and perspectives. interviewee role perspective farah liz pallaro business advisor and lecturer. author of fashion, business and spirituality fashion business trends and change drivers shehan perera communications officer at social enterprise uk socially enterprising business development jonathan chippindale ceo of holition, cutting-edge luxury retail technology services company expert in multidisciplinary collaborative approach, knowledgeable about fashion collaborations and projects sarah burns mbe chair of operations for fashion charity smartworks knowledgeable about how charities work with fashion brands jo tutchener-sharp ceo of scamp&dude fashion brand that engages in charitable collaborations knowledgeable about how fashion brands work with charities ruby wight creative lead: campaigns and partnerships at burberry retailer running collaborations with the goal of brand marketing simone parchment head of strategic partnerships at matches fashion retailer running collaborations with the goal of customer acquisition thematic analysis (saunders et al., 2019) was conducted to extract themes and patterns and draw meaning from the raw data collected in the form of the survey responses and interview transcripts. the data analysis was iterative, with each stage informing the subsequent one. software (codepen, otter.ai and edwordle) was used to identify duplicate words and phrases from the data and to flag key concepts. quantitative data were categorised according to how they related to each key theme that emerged from the analysis. the themes were used to develop questions that were asked at the panel discussion, informing the development of the framework. findings the following sections discuss the thematically clustered findings from the data analysis, revealing where relationships and contradictions arose. the survey results evidenced consumers’ perceptions of fashion brands. figure 5 is a word cloud illustrating the values and qualities the survey respondents believe fashion brands should have for consumers to feel more emotionally connected to them. larger words indicate more popular concepts and consumers’ priorities. consumers communicated a general sense of disappointment, as evidenced through words like ‘disillusioned’, 47 as well as a call to action – ‘transparency’. figure 5: word cloud representing values consumers want to see embodied in fashion brands. the data collected through interviews with fashion industry professionals were analysed to identify recurring concepts and cross-checked to see which key points and perspectives were shared amongst the interviewees. a word cloud (figure 6) was developed to represent fashion industry professionals’ needs, aspirations, priorities and opinions about collaborations. subsequently, the framework was developed based on the common ground between the consumer and industry perspectives. figure 6: word cloud representing key concepts that emerged across all the industry professionals interviewed. overall themes were established using a variety of approaches to compare and contrast the data. figure 7 illustrates the key themes which emerged from the primary research (survey and interviews); this means concerns that were common to both consumers and fashion industry professionals. they are discussed in the following sections alongside the key themes emerging from the secondary research. these areas of common 48 ground formed the foundation of the framework. figure 7: key themes recurring in both the consumer survey and the interviews with fashion industry experts. the fashion industry needs to change both the consumers and the industry experts argued that the fashion system needs to change. the survey respondents criticised the myriad of negative effects that the fashion industry – underpinned by a capitalistic system – produces. they questioned the consumeristic culture that the fashion industry contributes to, as highlighted by the following quotes: ‘i'm interested in why the owners created the brand to begin with when there are so many brands out there. what is their clear and honest brand objective?’ and ‘it’s getting to the point where it is unacceptable for brands not to make any effort’. these qualitative insights from consumers were accompanied by quantitative data with stark results: 86% of the survey respondents said that they felt let down by a brand or felt it did something that does not align with their values. additionally, the interviewees expressed concerns about the industry’s negative impacts; for instance, jonathan chippindale argued the following: “the big piece of the pie is still toxic. i'm so sad to say that because i've worked for so many years to contribute to changing that. but it is what it is. so, the only way that you can change that industry is when we all – every one of us – take responsibility individually and, as a collective, we do things”. interviewee shehan perera said that employees want to work at companies that care about social issues and aim to make positive contributions to the world, stating ‘people expect their employers to give a damn about the planet […] like about changing how capitalism works and taking the steps to get to that point’. perera works for social enterprise uk and described how he has seen companies grow fiscally while also developing their connections with communities and making significant contributions to a fairer and more just world. this comment reflected the secondary research, which shows that the public wants to shop and work at companies that espouse values that align with their own. 49 putting the customer first another theme emerging from the survey was a sense amongst consumers that their needs and aspirations are currently not heard. two-thirds of the respondents said that they had participated in cancel culture in some way. based on the findings from the survey, figure 8 shows the values that consumers want to hear brands speak about. ethical employment practices and sustainability were the two most prominent values. this echoes the point from the literature review that emphasised the benefit of advertising company values to attract employees and establish a reputation as an ethical company. keywords like ‘transparency’, ‘community’, ‘accessible’ and ‘tone of voice’ came up in the survey responses. however, surprisingly, they did not come up in the interviews with thefashion industry professionals. interviewee sarah burns from the charity smartworks was the only professional who emphasised that brands need to listen to consumers more, making insightful comments about market gaps, such as the lack of workwear for transgender people. she advised that brands should focus on one clear message to begin to play a more supportive role in society. figure 8: brand values that consumers would choose to support. collaborations can be harnessed to ‘walk the talk’ one consumer described fashion as one of the most popular industries and therefore that fashion should use its power ‘to help improve the world we live in’. others expressed the need for brands to be less self-serving, stating that they want to see them ‘doing good for the world and not just for themselves giving back’. such comments reinforce aziz and jones’s (2021) argument that brands should think of their customers as citizens, following a trend in which future consumers (such as gen z) are merging their morals with their shopping habits. consumers are voting for socially impactful businesses with their purchasing power. in line with research showing that younger consumers want to know why a brand is doing a project, interviewee jonathan chippindale described how a ‘fight [is] going on inside consumers’ brains between the need to be a citizen of the planet and […] consumerism’. additionally, shehan perera argued that ‘responsible business’ is ‘the strongest kind of business model’. ruby wight discussed her work in building partnerships and collaborations at burberry (exemplified in figure 9) as contributing to creating a more benevolent fashion industry: “we’re always making sure our community, our campaigns and our content reflect both the truths and dreams of the world we live in and inspire people to imagine their possibility. because we create so much, so regularly, we have the opportunity to put our values and ambition for even greater diversity and inclusion at deeper levels, into practice and act on it”. 50 overall, the findings from the primary research indicate participants’ recognition that collaborations and charitable projects can provide a stepping stone for brands and organisations to work together to make benevolent work become an everyday part of the business. figure 9: burberry collaboration featuring footballer marcus rashford, who received racist abuse following missing a penalty in the european final and has since been defended and celebrated (source: wonderland magazine). importance of ethics and values the findings from the secondary research establish that it is important that collaborations are mindful and considerate of sensitive topics and avoid tokenistic attitudes. in line with this, one consumer participating in the survey explained that ’clear communication of ethos and practices is what we need most in the industry; anything else feels like pandering to a consumer looking for change’. several survey respondents mentioned that they prefer shopping from brands whose beliefs they ‘buy’ into. as interviewee shehan perera put it, ‘it's very easy for a brand to pretend to be doing the right things’. discussing the ethics of collaborations, jo tutchener-sharp highlighted the need for researching whether potential collaborators have the same ethics in all areas of their business, ensuring that nothing is hidden. she added that any bad press brands receive could have a knock-on effect on the company’s reputation. for instance, ruby wight mentioned burberry’s ‘brand guardians’, who help guide the partnership process and ensure that the content is in line with the brand’s character. on the other hand, when brands cannot find an alignment of values and vision, they should not be afraid to say no to potential collaborations. authenticity good ethics require integrity to feel authentic. a lack of alignment can risk compromising a brand’s reputation. consumers participating in the survey commented that they can ‘see through’ campaigns or communication that are greenwashing or ‘hopping on a bandwagon’. they want to know why a business is supporting a cause and require clear communication. brands need to build trust and meaningful connections with their customers; otherwise, efforts can appear tokenistic. this speaks to sinek’s well-known hypothesis that people 'don't buy what you do, but they buy why you do it’ (roi group, 2016). sharing a ‘why’ through a personal story can be authentic, which may be easier for small and medium enterprises (smes) in fashion. 51 value of collaborations for venturing into new sectors the value of collaborations was consistently mentioned in the interviews. jonathan chippindale stated that collaborations can help brands align themselves with ‘another cooler organisation’ or lean on it. he referred to some collaborations that connect similar brands such as ‘hermes x rolls royce’ versus other partnerships between two very different brands such as ‘dolce & gabbana x smeg’. interviewee ruby wight (working at burberry) highlighted that collaborations can be useful to ‘venture’ into new sectors. for instance, to create the first sneaker collection for the brand and make sure it reached its full potential, the brand ‘worked with hypebeast to bring their perspective to that collection, as they have a lot of authority in this streetwear field, so could bring this new era for us to their community in a credible way’. here, wight refers to collaborations activated by brands to benefit from another company’s credibility. cross-pollination of audiences or skill sets is a popular reason why brands decide to collaborate and bridge market gaps. new ideas through partnerships the foundation of a successful partnership involves celebrating individual perspectives while creating new content. interviewee jonathan chippindale argued that progress happens when two people collaborate and develop ‘a third idea that they wouldn't have had individually’. collaborations can be used in guiding creative content that gives both parties a chance to highlight their work as well as create opportunities for new combined perspectives. to exemplify this, ruby wight shared her experience in building collaborations at burberry: “through that process, our role is one of commissioners, as the brand guardians that guide the content, to make sure it feels connected to our broader brand narrative, and something that our audience can associate with. that is where the magic and mystery of the collaboration comes together, because you have to make space for both of you as creative teams to exercise your individual perspectives and find a way to spot the synergies, the frictions, the contrast and contradictions, and bring them together to make something that may not have existed otherwise”. such collaborative processes can create unique outcomes and innovative ideas and lead to customer acquisition through increased engagement. the hope for a successful collaboration is that it can increase sales and make a beneficial addition to the brand narrative which will last for the long term. a framework for business partnerships with a social purpose the findings from the primary and secondary research discussed in the previous sections informed the development of a framework for building business partnerships with a social purpose. the research findings informed the outline of questions which were used at the panel entitled ‘fashion and wellbeing’ that was held in september 2021 as a collaboration between ‘helpingyourself’ and ‘the fashion clinic’. the latter was created in conjunction with the ma fashion entrepreneurship and innovation course at london college of fashion, university of the arts london (ual) to be a hub connecting creatives in the fashion industry. this was deemed an appropriate audience for disseminating this research and its output, since members of the fashion clinic are interested in fashion entrepreneurship. in doing so, the collaboration between helpingyourself and the fashion clinic adopted principles drawn from the framework such as cross-pollination of audiences. the panel discussion was publicised on social media and then published as a podcast on spotify. the panel led to plans being made for two more collaborations. drawing from the findings from the primary and secondary research, the framework includes a checklist of things that brands could consider when creating collaborations and charitable projects. moreover, the framework so far 52 was presented by the first author of this paper to students in the bsc in psychology of fashion course at london college of fashion, ual to disseminate the research and begin to nurture the next generation of professionals who could create positive social change in and through fashion. figure 10 illustrates the key headings and insights from the ‘benevolent future of fashion framework’. the framework summarises the benefits of benevolent collaborations and provides a guide to using 8 key principles to create a successful benevolent collaboration. in this context, success is measured by longevity, as, ideally, socially impactful projects benefit everyone involved, leading businesses to commit to a social purpose. as more businesses discover the multifaceted benefits of these projects and adopt these practices, there is an opportunity for large-scale change in consumer culture as it moves towards benefiting businesses, consumers and society. to make the framework accessible, the content of the framework is written in an accessible ‘newspaper’ tone of voice. the framework is distributed as a ‘read-only’ website link which can be easily accessed by the public (https://rebrand.ly/ecwldzl). the online document is editable by the researcher and first author of this paper. embedded into the framework is a request for readers who have adopted the framework to contribute feedback and suggestions via email. the feedback will be evaluated and amendments made, fulfilling the intention of sustaining an ongoing project that can continue to develop and widen its scope, contribution, and impact. this resource constitutes a legacy of the project presented in this paper. 53 figure 10: key themes underpinning the ‘benevolent future of fashion collaboration framework’. 54 conclusions this paper discussed a research project aimed at demonstrating ways in which the fashion system can begin to benefit society, consumers and businesses more. this is driven by a desire to address the needs and aspirations of contemporary societies and to counter the lack of critical disclosure in the past of the negative impacts caused by the fashion industry. the research was fuelled by a desire to change the fashion system, and this was highlighted by the theme of disillusionment that recured across all the data collected (from the consumer survey to the interviews with industry experts). with this in mind, the project presented in this paper was developed at the intersection of fashion, collaborations/partnerships and non-profit development. perspectives from the public and fashion sector experts were collected and cross-referenced, providing valuable insights that point towards strategies to shape a benevolent future for fashion. findings from the research indicate that when businesses take action to help society, the benefits can also lead to commercial growth. fashion brands can contribute to addressing societal needs by partnering with charities and non-profit organisations and developing aspirational and benevolent projects. building on findings from primary and secondary research, a framework was developed to guide fashion brands and non-profits in creating collaborative ventures that provide societal and commercial advantages. following on from the successful launch of the framework at a panel discussion, the first author of this paper is gathering ongoing feedback and will continually amend this resource to actively contribute to shaping a benevolent future of fashion. building on the successful presentation of the framework to students from the london college of fashion, there is an opportunity to continue to use it not only in business settings but also as an educational resource to prime the next generation of professionals who could make a positive impact on consumerism and society. considering the limitations of the project presented in this paper in terms of the timeframe and sampling strategy, it is recommended to expand the research by including more global perspectives from international participants and involving people from a variety of socio-economic and educational backgrounds. a natural next stage of the project would be to further apply the framework and evaluate its effectiveness, for instance through interviews with the industry experts already involved in this project, as well as with other professionals to gather more feedback. other recommendations for the next steps include further developing the framework into a more comprehensive guidebook and developing business collaborations and charitable projects to scale up its impact. for instance, an opportunity was identified by the two authors of this paper to collaborate with rego, a project using fashion activism to address societal issues (such as youth violence) and offer educational and employment opportunities for young people in fashion. in conclusion, it is envisaged that thanks to an alignment of values and continued engagement in collaborative ventures and charitable projects, this paper can inspire readers in shaping a more collaborative and socially benevolent approach to business practices in the fashion industry, perhaps using and contributing to the framework here presented as a step in the right direction. references aftab m., bailey m., spencer, n., & jeffs, c. 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(2021, january 8). comfort and wellness set to define luxury in 2021. vogue business. https://tinyurl.com/mr3dynzw keywords: fashion, strategic partnerships, activism, social impact, charity consumer wellness, values-led fashion and emotional bonds table 1: objectives of collaborations. figure 1: poster of role models campaign (source: h&m). from fashion as the ‘business of inequality’ to socially conscious companies figure 3: key learnings emerging from the literature review. figure 4: research design. figure 7: key themes recurring in both the consumer survey and the interviews with fashion industry experts. the fashion industry needs to change figure 8: brand values that consumers would choose to support. figure 10: key themes underpinning the ‘benevolent future of fashion collaboration framework’. references honeyman, r. (2014). the b corp handbook: how to use business as a force for good. berrett-koehler. saldaña, j. (2021). the coding manual for qualitative researchers (4th ed.). sage. 79 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. exploring mutual learning in co-design mirian calvo, leon cruickshank, madeleine sclater published online: november 2022 to cite this article: calvo, m., cruickshank, l., & sclater, m. (2022). exploring mutual learning in co-design. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 3(2), 79-96. 80 exploring mutual learning in co-design mirian calvoa, leon cruickshankb, madeleine sclaterc aimaginationlancaster, lancaster university, lancaster, england, uk. m.calvo@lancaster.ac.uk bimaginationlancaster, lancaster university, lancaster, england, uk. l.cruickshank@lancaster.ac.uk cthe glasgow school of art, glasgow, scotland, uk. m.sclater@gsa.ac.uk abstract an emerging body of literature identifies a connection between mutual learning and co-design, yet it does not specify the nature of this connection or its implications for the practice of co-design. in this paper, we explore the theoretical and practical implications of mutual learning in co-design. we present three case studies with rural communities in the highlands and islands of scotland (uk). using participatory action research, we undertook a series of co-design projects with each case forming an action research cycle. through these, we build cycles of insights concerning mutual learning and how this can contribute to practical co-design outcomes for participants. we also present insights that increase the duration and amount of mutual learning in co-design projects. keywords: co-design, participatory design, mutual learning, community engagement, design research, social design introduction many co-designers and researchers have experienced the magic of a project that just ‘flies’, seemingly with little effort, and the inverse where things seem always to be ‘stuck’. in this paper, we explore how mutual learning between the participants in co-design processes may influence the success of projects and call for more co-design research focusing on this area. while the labels of co-design and participatory design (pd) are “often tangled” (mattelmäki & visser, 2011, p. 1) and used interchangeably to name collaborative design approaches (fuad-luke, 2009), co-design is also described as a contemporary progression of pd (meroni et al., 2018; selloni, 2017). initially, co-design was described as the collective creativity happening over the entire design process (sanders & stappers, 2008), depicted as workshops (binder, 2010) or events where people explore issues together in creative and open-ending ways (brandt & eriksen, 2010). rizzo (2010) refers to co-design as an umbrella of creative methods, techniques and practices whose aim is to inspire and enhance the divergency of the design process. in the context of social design, where design is driven by social demands (manzini & meroni, 2014), design goals and objectives are established with community members in their environments (mattelmäki & visser, 2011) and within a broad social agenda (markussen, 2013). in a review of the social design agenda (which is the theoretical context of this study), co-design and its methods have been divided into four orientations (mattelmäki & visser, 2011). the first orientation emphasises people’s expertise and involvement, while the second one focuses on people’s contributions unfolded with tools developed by designers. a third orientation concentrates on the twin roles of designers as simultaneously facilitators and participants of collective creativity. the fourth orientation focuses on collaboration between designer-people, adopting a distinctive attitude to people, who, given appropriate tools and engendering inclusive and creative third spaces (muller & druin, 2012), become creative contributors to the design process (manzini, 2015, 2019). in all these orientations, mattelmäki and visser (2011) observe, collaborative engagement is required, as well as the development of an interdisciplinary methodology of knowledge exchange (winters & mor, 2008), whereby mutual learning can be supported (fuad-luke, 2009). here we focus our attention on the 81 fourth orientation, seeking to amplify and support mutual learning to nurture collaboration between participants including designers and non-designers. zahedi (2011) contributes to an emerging body of literature that identifies a connection between mutual learning and co-design (see also disalvo et al., 2017; robertson et al., 2014; smith et al., 2017). simonsen and robertson (2013, p. 2) define co-design as “a process of investigating, understanding, reflecting upon, establishing, developing, and supporting mutual learning between multiple participants in collective ‘reflection-in-action’”. this statement emphasises that co-design requires participant learning and foregrounds mutual learning as a key part of the practice of co-design. the literature, though, does not specify the nature of this connection or its implications for the practice of co-design. this is a relevant issue because mutual learning influences both the co-design process and its outcomes (bødker et al., 2004). bødker et al. (2004) call for the active integration of people directly affected, arguing for a pragmatic need for mutual learning between designers and users, embracing its inherent democratic stance and aligning with the fourth orientation outlined by mattelmäki and visser (2011). this underscores the need for more research to deepen our understanding of mutual learning and co-design. origins of mutual learning in co-design co-design can be traced back to the early 1970s with the emergence of the work of kristen nygaard and colleagues in the scandinavian countries (muller & druin, 2012; simonsen & robertson, 2013; spinuzzi, 2005). at that time, there was a move to include trade unionists and workers in the design of computing technologies introduced in the workplace rather than imposing new solutions in a hierarchical manner (ehn, 2017). in the uk, co-design took inspiration from the works developed by the tavistock institute in london, which conducted action research projects. mumford (1987) built upon the emerging field of design research (archer, 1981; cross, 2001), tavistock’s experience, and upon the ‘soft systems’ methodology, developed by checkland (1981). the soft systems methodology focused on supporting dialogue as the basis of the design process, emphasising mutual learning. since then, co-design has been used in humancomputer interaction (hci) and design interaction and recently been expanded to other design disciplines, such as urban design, architecture, social innovation and public participation (meroni et al., 2018; zahedi et al., 2017). in europe, researchers laid the foundations of an approach based on democratic social constructivism and participatory action research (par) methods and techniques (bannon & ehn, 2013; spinuzzi, 2005). nygaard and bergo’s (1975) research revealed that a local knowledge production strategy needed mutual learning. such learning was considered the cornerstone of an emerging methodology. as ehn (2017, p. 10) states, “our ambition was to unite participatory actions research in the field with systematic theoretical reflections aiming at a productive interplay between academic and local knowledge production”. this statement illustrates co-design as a form of community engagement (selloni, 2017), which strengthens communityresearch partnerships as means of investigating communities and their sociocultural issues (davis et al., 2011), and in turn enhancing community conditions (balazs & morello-frosch, 2013). it also outlines how co-design borrowed from lewin’s (1946) work and par with a vast social research tradition (mcniff, 2002; walter, 2009; whyte, 1991). co-design also found inspiration in freire’s (1970) emancipatory learning notion, which helped assemble epistemological strategies. as ehn (2017) explains, two strategies were aligned: (i) the ‘decentralisation’ of power underpinning local knowledge production (nygaard & bergo, 1975) through central strategies and local actions around disruptive practices in the workplace; and (ii) the emphasis on communitycontextualised learning as the means for emancipation and liberation (freire, 1970), which opposes 82 traditional theorisations of learning (formal learning based on knowledge acquisition). combining both strategies, co-design developed methods and techniques to study the dynamics of social life through an approach focused on collaborative enterprise, mutual learning and reflection (mcniff, 2002). as sanders (2017) states, mutual learning in co-design was originally perceived as an emergent type of learning, happening there in all the interstices between social real-world situations and in between hands-on designerly activities. the notion of such learning in co-design situations was aligned with freire’s (1970) pedagogy of emancipation. this changed when co-design became more prevalent in the united states, where trade unions were less powerful in the workplace, with a corresponding move from democratic aspirations towards functional product features (spinuzzi, 2005). with this shift the (often implicitly understood) notion of mutual learning shifted away from freire’s (1970) emancipatory aspirations; it was considered a taken-for-granted process (robertson et al. 2014). this created a gap in understanding between co-design and mutual learning (brereton & buur, 2008; karasti, 2001). we propose in this paper that research attention should be focused on addressing this mismatch between theory and practice. case studies this section presents the methodology adopted and discusses three cases associated with leapfrog, a three-year (£1.2m) uk arts and humanities research council (ahrc)-funded research project. leapfrog used co-design as the methodology to bring people together from diverse backgrounds and with different levels of expertise to engage in dialogue to develop transformative agency through community engagement. this entailed a process involving communities in co-design situations and developing engagement tools to take into those communities to support effective engagement. partnerships were built on the triad of university–public–community. the three cases were conducted in the highlands and islands of scotland (uk), with a total of 15 co-design workshops and 277 participant interactions, where we explored the connection between mutual learning and co-design. the overarching aim here was to explore whether and how mutual learning contributes to co-design with external stakeholders with real-life challenges to address. the first case describes a sixmonth project on the isle of mull with five non-profit organisations aiming to develop engagement skills and supporting tools to re-animate engagement of disengaged people. the second case focuses on a ninemonth project with 12 service providers and third-sector partners who address loneliness and social isolation of elderly people in rural communities. this project aimed to develop effective ways to engage with lonely and socially isolated people and share best practices. the third case discusses collaboration with a social enterprise committed to sustainability and focused on engaging wider local communities in the renewal of the social enterprise’s physical assets and future services. methodology the methodology that guided these three cases followed a par approach, informed by ethnographic and co-design methods. par is an interdisciplinary research umbrella that covers an extensive range of approaches, which have change and action as common key drivers of research (walter, 2009). it has two objectives: (i) to produce knowledge and action that has a direct and meaningful use for the communities researched; (ii) to empower those communities through the construction of local knowledge, aiming to enhance their sociocultural and economic conditions (reason, 1998). we used the par approach to acquire a greater grasp of how the communities produced knowledge through mutual learning in designerly engagements. 83 par illustrates a spiral of research stages where each stage informs the following one (mcniff, 2002). each stage is also represented by a cycle within the steps of 1) planning: systematising experience and problematising, 2) action: reflecting and choosing action, 3) reflecting upon the action: observing the course and consequences of action and change, 4) systematising learning: coding and organising insights and 5) dissemination: validating and sharing new knowledge (loewenson et al., 2014, p. 13). the three cases were structured as action research cycles, allowing each one to inform the next one. the researchers also looked at the idealised model of co-design developed by fuad-luke (2009, p. 149), which illuminates four phases: (i) initiation and planning (collective catalysing), (ii) informed participatory design (collective understanding and exploring), (iii) pd with design team (collective designing and deciding) and (iv) doing and learning (collective actioning). a schematic idealisation of this was used as the theoretical basis for elaborating a research design capable of supporting mutual learning, onto which the researchers combined ethnographic and creative co-design methods and drew on reflective and analytical techniques. ethnographic methods were employed to reveal the dynamics of social interaction that would otherwise go unnoticed. the researchers devised creative tools for engagement and data collection to support not only the co-design workshops but also ethnographic encounters. co-design methods were used to accommodate participants’ agencies and orchestrate collective creativity, geared towards co-articulating shared goals. the data-gathering sets of each case study were analysed separately with a three-step process of affinity diagramming. this is considered “an interpretive, reflective method that is used to achieve new insights and ideas not to provide definite, objective answers” (harboe & huang, 2015, p. 96); thus it follows abductive reasoning (simonsen & friberg, 2014). at the end of the project, data triangulation was deployed to consolidate our insights. a methodological framework to study mutual learning in co-design we developed a methodological framework encouraging positive change and action in the communities we collaborated with. par provided a meta-process where each case study was configured as one action research cycle. the research design focused on the infrastructure of each action research cycle following five steps: 1) preparation for co-design, 2) co-design situations, 3) follow-up, 4) systematising learning and 5) dissemination (see calvo, 2019). each ‘research situation’ was designed based on the insights from previous ones. figure 1 illustrates the research design with two-way gears, reflecting the flexibility and responsiveness of a research design to the contextual changes that may arise. the varied sizes of the gears symbolise the estimated amount of time for each step. 84 figure 1: methodological framework scheme. source: calvo (2019). preparation for co-design this first step of three stages is depicted with small, exchangeable gears, meaning that one stage informs the others and vice versa. this involved (i) initiation and planning and collective catalysing, (ii) historical research and (iii) interviews. co-design situations step two comprises several stages: (i) a catalysis situation, (ii) a co-design workshop, (iii) prototype testing, (iv) delivery and (v) design ethnography: reflective group interviews, participant observation and reflective drawings. follow-up the follow-up step methods are (i) participant observation and (ii) conducting reflective interviews, observing the course and consequences of the co-design situations in perspective. systematising learning this step comprises the analysis and involves (i) affinity diagramming, which embeds (ii) stimulated recall analysis (messmer, 2015), (iii) narrative inquiry (chase, 2008) and (iv) production of second-order reflective sessions. dissemination following par principles, the last step aims to close the circle by presenting to the participants and other relevant audiences the theoretical concepts uncovered by the study. this involves dissemination, validation workshops and showcases. this research design gave us flexibility and consistency between the case studies, allowing us to draw out insights focused on mutual learning whilst being responsive to the tangible needs of the participants. 85 case one: co-designing on the isle of mull the first case involved four visits to the island in which three ethnographic encounters, four in-depth semistructured interviews and three co-design workshops were facilitated with a total of 13 participants with contrasting backgrounds and experiences, including the following non-profit organisations: highlands and islands enterprise (hie), mull and iona community trust (mict), ulva school community association (usca) and tobermory harbour association (tha). the participants included volunteers, community managers, trustees and chief officers. overall, their shared motivation was to collectively develop skills and tools to support engagement activities within their respective communities and enhance participation, as participant 3’s statement reflects: “it is just to get more tools or experience on how to increase participation in the community […]. things happen in mull because community members make them happen.” the co-design workshops in this case study were conceived as a progressive sequence, from initial conversations to prototyping. the workshops created spaces for design-participant interactions, gradually gaining trust and building mutual understanding in in-between designerly activities and coffee breaks. once we established interpersonal bonds, we gained access to some participants’ natural settings, for example during the tha community event in tobermory and with usca in ulva ferry, where participant observations were conducted, as well as semi-structured interviews (image 1). for the research team, it was crucial to build trusting relationships with the participants and to be able to gain access to natural settings so that we could experience first-hand and empathise with some participants’ everyday life constraints. in turn, we were also able to identify those learning moments by being there and bringing their voiced perspectives to the fore. we also observed the sequence of methods we were using and assembled them into an emergent research design with five steps: (i) co-design situations; (ii) learning from the context; (iii) delivery; (iv) access to natural settings; and (v) systematising learning. all steps were synchronised with the four visits in which we conducted the fieldwork. image 1: participant observation at ulva ferry with usca members. 86 we identified a strong component of mutual learning associated with the designerly engagements we facilitated. mutual learning emerged between the participants in the process of building trust, respect and mutual understanding through sharing perspectives and ideas, questioning each other’s ideas and codeveloping early prototype ideas. this was evidenced when the research team discovered that some of the participants began collaborating on some community development projects after their involvement in the co-design workshops. insights were gathered around how the co-design situations supported knowledge exchange about participants’ skills and ways of engagement. this led to building trust and certain levels of collaboration. the emerging productions were the eventual result of mutual learning. one insight from this process was that participants were not aware that they were learning by participating and doing. towards the end of the project, via conducting design ethnographic methods (participant observations) in natural settings, we began unpicking some of the participants’ notions of mutual learning. participant 10 said the following about learning during a community event in tobermory: “there is very important learning behind these events. all the schools on the island are very used to community events, helping to put their efforts into entertaining other people. there is a lot of exchange between different organisations. they are also in the schools, so they know each other […]. the children learn from a very young age about being part of the community.” mutual learning went unnoticed through the participants’ eyes, in that all interviewees were unaware of the degree of their knowledge production, competencies, skills and/or dispositions to engage in co-design situations or even in volunteering within their communities. participant unawareness of learning was identified as a challenge to overcome, as mündel and schugurensky (2008) suggest: how does one make explicit an implicit process of mutual learning? we used this insight of a lack of participant awareness (and reflection) to inform the next case study project. case two: co-designing to address loneliness and isolation the second case took place through six visits to the inverness, aviemore and moray area in the ne highlands of scotland, engaging with a total of 17 participants. the participants came from social enterprises and public service providers, including badenoch & strathspey community transport company (bsctc), health and social care moray, family outreach, art therapy, let’s eat forres, unit credit and tsi moray. the participants had diverse roles, from social care officers to well-being coordinators, art therapists, volunteers and more. all the participants wanted to address the loneliness and isolation of elderly people in the rural areas of inverness, aviemore and moray. the case focused on developing tools that could enable them to share assets, resources and best practices – tacit knowledge produced through their everyday ways of working. 87 image 2: co-design workshop 2: sharing personal stories through playing. responding to the understanding developed in case study one, we refined the research design, devising and facilitating a series of co-design situations (image 2), in which we assembled collective and individual reflective activities (image 3). the aim here was to draw out participant learning awareness. to help the participants reflect more on their learning process (when they are not used to such actions), we designed and introduced a reflective journal, with prompt questions and drawing tasks, to capture their thinking and emergent learning moments. we also observed that, in each case, the spontaneity and improvisation of everyday life affected and modified the course of events and thus the methods deployed. for instance, gaining trust and access to natural settings had a different pace in this case. in the first case, participant observations came late in the project, hampering the collection of enriched data about participant learning. therefore, the research design was reformulated reinforcing the use of design ethnography methods at the start and what produced early interactions with key participants to begin building trust right from the start. 88 image 3: reflective sessions. the first stage, ‘preparation for co-design’, helped us gain an in-depth grasp of participant motivation. in the second stage, ‘co-design situations’, we observed how the quantity of participation directly influenced not only the quality of the co-design process but also mutual learning. the participant observations called for attention to personal stories as vehicles for sharing experiential learning to mutual learning. in the third stage, ‘follow-up’, we gathered insights pointing out that the learning happened through participation and socialisation, through experiencing, playing, listening and having fun and observing how people behaved. as participant 1 said: 89 “by listening, by having fun, we were connecting in that moment of hearing the stories, hearing other people's opinions in a good atmosphere that it was not a debate or people trying to get rid of others. it was comfortable, fun, and sharing. it was playing.” this statement was shared with all the participants interviewed, and it emphasises the insight that personal stories enable mutual learning in a two-way, collective process of communication. different learning channels were activated through listening, empathising (emotional connection) and hence better understanding people’s identities, values and the motivations behind their stories. in the fourth stage, ‘systematising learning’, we used affinity diagramming to analyse the data, which suggested that the co-design situations and the follow-up interviews elicited the participants’ awareness of mutual learning. participant 8 commented on this: “it certainly broadens my understanding and feelings of how to relate to people and systems [...]. i think the game and having fun in those activities were essential to learning [...]. in terms of how the learning happened, well, most was interactive and fun. for me, that is the peak experience of learning.” all the participants interviewed expanded their understanding of mutual learning, through human interaction and collective fun, key conditions for mutual learning. they also reinforced their dispositional learning towards embracing openness from the divergence of ideas brought to co-design. the role that quotes from other participants played in this is significant: offering statements in a lexicon natural to the participants helped them recognise their own mutual learning experiences. case three: co-designing tools for renewal projects this project comprised a close-knit collaboration with the newbold trust, a social enterprise committed to sustainability in forres, ne scotland, with seven visits involving a total of 31 participants from the newbold trust, the findhorn foundation and forres local community groups, e.g. sky delights (nairn), roots, fruits and leaves (across moray), manna juice (elgin), roseisle gardens (college of roseisle) and the bread kiln (garmouth). the trust had a victorian house and about seven acres of grounds, most of which were neglected due to financial constraints. we initiated a co-design project that involved the renewal of both its physical assets and its identity as a social enterprise. the aim was to explore innovative ways to include wider local communities in the physical transformation of those neglected spaces and envision future uses. we also wanted to extend our use of early interaction and sharing participant statements on learning as a stimulus for more collaborative learning. we also deployed reflective journals to support independent reflective tasks and encouraged the participants (and the researchers) to embed reflective practice to raise awareness of our ways of learning in such designerly informal environments. 90 figure 2: route of the facilitated walk. after a series of co-design activities, including role-playing, switching roles and prototyping, walking (see careri, 2002; ehrström, 2016) emerged as the method to engage such communities. touring the trust’s grounds became the method for engagement. one member of the newbold community facilitated the 91 walks following a route around the grounds (figure 2). we moved, walking in small groups, comfortably observing our surroundings and letting ourselves be embraced by the environment (image 4). through walking, we shared our ideas on future uses for the different physical assets. these conversations sparked mutual understanding through mutual learning. here, we consciously removed graphic artefacts to create a third space (muller & druin, 2012) based on the participants’ voices, placing a focus on human-to-human interactions and also encouraging statements on reflection on learning to be shared naturally through conversation. image 4: catalysis workshop facilitated walk activity. in terms of the research design, we employed participant observations during the ‘initiation and planning’ stage, which allowed us to establish favourable conditions for attempting an immersive approach. our stay with the newbold community facilitated our immersion as we got to know the participants in a more natural (informal) context, away from the more formal ones associated with the workshop contexts. we also introduced two new methods in the ‘co-design situations’ stage: the catalysis workshop and test prototypes. the catalysis workshop was designed to enhance the construction of group dynamics and to animate the sharing of personal stories of their experience. the test prototypes emerged when some participants identified actual situations for trying out the prototype tools with wider communities that involved experimentation. this situation favoured letting the participants take the lead. analysing the methods used and the gathering of data from the participants, we observed that the greatest volume of insights was revealed during the co-design situations stage. yet, the reflective interviews of the follow-up, along with the reflective journals, proved crucial in identifying specific learning situations during the project. the sense of ownership was embedded in the group dynamic right from the start. interestingly, the breadth and depth of results were quite like case two. as in case two, mutual learning happened through participation and socialisation, learning through experiencing, playing, listening and having fun, using all the senses. participant 6 stated: 92 “we learnt in different channels, visual, auditory, kinaesthetic etc. – our feeling channel, then our dreaming, our relationships channel and our cultural channel. my impression of what you did reinforced that notion of learning as you have to approach it from different channels and not just sitting and trying to figure it out with your brain.” the participants acknowledged having learnt through their experience, listening and sharing different perspectives on the different spaces explored through the facilitated walks. this reinforced the idea that stories enable mutual learning. during the reflective interviews of the ‘follow-up’, we began unpicking the impact (transformational agency) upon the newbold community. as participant 1 said: “the process helped to open ourselves up, and our relationship is a little different now. we are more comfortable. for instance, we used to have a non-flexible system. every week we had, like, a business meeting, and we decided during the process we would have meetings when we really needed them.” the community had adjusted their organisational ways of interaction based on a change in interpersonal relationships, which suggests that the co-design process contributed to enhancing interpersonal relationships (see calvo & sclater, 2020). this process was ignited by mutual learning moments that drew from verbal-only interactions at the beginning of the project then were reinforced by more explicitly designerly interactions once the group was more familiar with each other. the use of only verbal activities at the beginning of the co-design workshops was explicitly experimented with during this case study to support mutual learning, interspersing these activities with collective reflective activities. the knowledge co-produced by these verbal-only activities was then used as the content of other designerly activities/interventions later in the project, amplifying and building upon the meanings transcribed by the participants’ exchange and learning processes. throughout these three workshops, we experimented with different approaches to understanding mutual learning in co-design while at the same time being respectful of the needs and motivations of the participants. this, to our minds, is an ethical concern. a developmental research design suggests a strong commitment to establishing egalitarian relationships. discussion increasingly, co-design projects reflect new emerging themes and goals that are socially ambitious, going beyond the design process that shapes designerly innovations (akoglu & dankl, 2019). we argue that mutual learning is a key part of the co-design process (as do muller & druin 2012 and simonsen & robertson, 2013). further, though, we contest that the structure of co-design projects can be configured to enhance mutual learning and that this may also lead to positive impacts on participants beyond the tangible outputs of a co-design project. in case study one, we found that informal learning was present if the researchers probed for it through explicit interview questioning and that this learning was very much situated towards the end of the project. responding to this in the second case study, we introduced a more explicit and reflective co-design structure to help reflect on processes. also, we introduced reflective journals and statements from the participants to be shared across the group to get people thinking about mutual learning without it being imposed from the outside in the design researcher’s language. 93 we found that this prompted informal learning to be recognised by the participants and took place earlier in the project. for the final case study, we extended the notion of reflective language between participants and prompted more and earlier mutual learning and built activities around walking, where the focus was on human-to-human interaction. analysis of the activities indicated that mutual learning in this mode was not significantly different to the previous two case studies, but that combining informal walking and reflective talking activities with more explicitly designerly activities did have a positive effect on mutual learning. further, the bond developed during a combination of walking and wa orkshop led to impactful, long-term relationships between the participants. this combination of walking and a workshop is an indicator, we believe, of a shift in approach for 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