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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. 
 
 
  



 

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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. 



 

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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  



 

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& 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 



 

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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. 

 



 

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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 



 

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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 forward-

looking 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. 



 

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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  



 

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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). 

 



 

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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 (Gumucio-

Dragon & 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 



 

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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). 



 

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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 



 

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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.  

 

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