[Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation (Design Thinking, Design Theory)] [By: Manzini, Ezio] [February, 2015]

by Ezio Manzini

The role of design, both expert and nonexpert, in the ongoing wave of social innovation toward sustainability. In a changing world everyone each individual person and each collective subject, from enterprises to institutions, from communities to cities and regions, must define and enhance a life project . Sometimes these projects generate unprecedented solutions; sometimes they converge on common goals and realize larger transformations. As Ezio Manzini describes in this book, we are witnessing a wave of social innovations as these changes unfold—an expansive open co-design process in which new solutions are suggested and new meanings are created. Manzini distinguishes between diffuse design (performed by everybody) and expert design (performed by those who have been trained as designers) and describes how they interact. He maps what design experts can do to trigger and support meaningful social changes, focusing on emerging forms of collaboration. These range from community-supported agriculture in China to digital platforms for medical care in Canada; from interactive storytelling in India to collaborative housing in Milan. These cases illustrate how expert designers can support these collaborations—making their existence more probable, their practice easier, their diffusion and their convergence in larger projects more effective. Manzini draws the first comprehensive picture of design for social the most dynamic field of action for both expert and nonexpert designers in the coming decades.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Research, Art Design, Business, Art, Science

Hardcover

First published February 13, 2015

Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Not because of the content but because how difficult this book was to read. Unnecessarily complex sentence structures that required rereading again and again to grasp the full meaning, explanation boxes breaking the text in mid paragraph made me grind my teeth.
Maybe it’s because of the translation?
The domain itself is not difficult and the ideas, even though innovative, not conceptually hard to understand and don’t require technological knowledge of any kind.

It just showed me that I should keep reading on this subject and hopefully there are books that won’t make me sweat while reading.

The book discusses a combination of design methods, general public (or people who the design is for) and available un-utilised resources can be a driver of innovation and create value. The projects mentioned in the book are mostly interesting especially less known projects that are local to the author (such as experiments in communal blocks and neighbourhoods in Milan). The book makes you think about design and social innovation in a new way.

My favourite insight is quoted in a paragraph below. In a society today (and my profession in particular) we celebrate simplicity as the highest value, the conclusion from the text below might feel counterintuitive but this is exactly why this might the first step towards designing a better future, products and services. We should stop simplifying and embrace the complexity (and the locality) to design better for our societies.

“Design for resilience:

How can we design resilient sociotechnical systems? Natural ecosystems, their tolerance of breakdown and their capacity to adapt, may point a way forward.
Ecosystems resilience related to the variety of genetic information to be found within it: the narrower the variety of organisms present there, the more fragile it is. By analogy, we can say that sociotechnical systems based on a single rationale and a single operative strategy (even when carefully studied and optimized) would behave similarly to a natural ecosystem containing a narrow variety of organisms (however highly specialized): they would be fragile systems, risking catastrophic breakdown.
To make human civilizations more enduring, therefore, we should enhance the complexity of technical systems. That is, we should foster the coexistence of solutions based on different logics and different rationales. In addition, we should consider the varied complexity of energy, production, market, economy, and cultural systems as the “genetic richness” of an artificial ecosystem:
a richness that guarantees its capacity to continue a way forward.”

I picked up some great books that I cant wait to read from this book:

Tools for conviviality- by Ivan Illich
Small is beautiful- by E F Schumacher
Creating Capabilities - by Martha Nussbaum

[Alba Poulsen Vallés]

I had to read it for class

[dan turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This pairs very well with Geek Heresy by Kentaro Toyama -- how can we better think about design as something the people who have to live with the results can do, rather than some designers in a room somewhere or designers parachuting in for a weekend, running a workshop, and leaving the results? Manzini (and Toyama) think about and practice on-the-ground work that helps the people facing problems -- teachers, farmers, and so on -- build and sustain what works for them.

[Paulo Peres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, not for social innovation, but to explain the power of design to change our relations and the power of human society

[moosisai · Rating 3 out of 5]

nõelravi soodustab maapiirkondade elanike elukvaliteedi tõusu ✅️

[Maped · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tiene capítulos muy interesantes sobre el diseño desde una perspectiva social que merecen la pena, son tesis de otro modo de pensamiento. Por ese punto, el contenido del libro me parece valioso.

Pero luego… acaba siendo otro libro de diseño mal escrito. El estilo se hace redundante, parte el libro en dos enseñando casos mal explicados que no aportan gran cosa, y los últimos capítulos podrían ser un diagrama. Habla de diseño, luego habla de innovación social, pero no he notado que hable mucho de ambas cosas juntas ¿cómo se hace ese diseño? ¿qué forma tiene?

Un marco teórico muy interesante pero se queda aguado, la disciplina en sí a día de hoy parece inexistente aunque cada vez más relevante ¿cómo es que nos pasa a los diseñadores que nadie viene a jugar con nosotros? El diseño para la innovación social que presenta me da la sensación de acaba siendo niños en el parque con los que nadie quiere jugar. Ojalá existiera.

[mellyana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Appropriate for people interested in contribution of design as knowledge to social innovation.
Academic reading with good range of examples.

[Sam Dignam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good intro to social design. Used it to augment my intro to design class and will be going back to reference :)

[Aidafi]

Help me and my obsession with Artsy Design and philosophical beauty, I keep questioning things which are just spools of dust in my unworthy perspective! *dramatic music cue*

[Yokusun Basi]

Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation (Design Thinking, Design Theory) by Ezio Manzini (2015)

[Kimberly Mccune · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rough translation but a solid text.

[Jaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

difficult to read. many notes, parentheses in the sentences. I got lost many times and had to re-read some paragraphs

[Freeread · Rating 4 out of 5]

ก่อนอ่าน
การออกแบบนี้คือ?

หลังอ่าน
ออกแบบสังคม คือ การทำอะไรก็ได้ที่ช่วยตัวเรา แล้วต่อยอดช่วยคนอื่น มีคนมาช่วยเราทำ เกิดเป็นผลไปถึงทุกคน ยิ่งทำซ้ำๆได้ยิ่งดี โลกเราเข้าถึงกันหมดด้วยเทคโนโลยี สร้างสถานที่ อุปกรณ์ กระตุ้นให้ผู้คนหันมาสนใจ คิดและทำร่วมกัน

[Mills College Library]

745.2 M2963 2015

[Juan Luis Gonzalez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Presenta una ideas bastante chula, pero tal vez sean un poco repetitivas a lo largo del libro.

[Barb0101 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some provocative questions come up in this read. What will design look like 10 years from now?