We introduce the concept of Nordic social design by combining Koskinen’s definition of ‘new social design’ (Koskinen, 2016) as that where the object of design is the social for ex. the social structures, processes, practices, forms of actions, etc., with elements drawn from Markussen’s original framework (Markussen, 2017) to set the purpose of this design process: to effect a decisive qualitative change in the circumstances of participants through the skills and capacities of design and design artefacts. Nordic projects such as UTOPIA (1981-85) are pioneering forerunners – the project’s goal was the development of powerful skill enhancing tools for graphic workers, in the light of the emerging graphic workstation technology (Bødker, Ehn, Sjögren,& Sundblad, 2000).
Scandinavian participatory design approaches emphasise change and development, not only technological change and systems development, but change and development of people, organisations, and practices, occurring in changing socio-historical contexts.
Gregory, 2003
Isn’t Nordic social design just another name for service design?
No. Scholars have extensively elaborated this conceptualization of social design, to distinguish it from other design disciplines as well as from variations of the creative and innovative “social” such as social innovation, design for social impact, and social entrepreneurship. Services are delivered. Social structures, processes, practices, forms of actions, etc. – the object of Nordic social design – are more often experienced as an outcome, and approaching them as the object of our design skills has the capacity to change the outcome, and thus the experience of the individual. My own example of this is the case of facilitation of group work. If one considers facilitation as the object of design, then one can unpack every aspect of it such as choice of facilitator based on numerous criteria, their training and skills development, and their attitude and approach.
Such a consciously crafted approach ( “the social design”) for any particular group of participants and known objectives, removes the randomness of participants experience of a facilitated activity. See Light and Akama, 2012 for two comparative cases where it can be seen that the difference in participant experiences were due to the differences in facilitator – who they were, what their background and attitude was, and how they interacted with the group. What Light and Akama, 2012 have foregrounded for me, is the impact of a well designed facilitation on the participatory design outcomes – the social – in addition to the well planned tools, methods, activities, and artefacts used in the sessions – the functional (see Sanders et al., 2010 for a taxonomy of the same).
References
Bødker, S., Ehn, P., Sjögren, D., & Sundblad, Y. (2000, October). Co-operative Design—perspectives on 20 years with ‘the Scandinavian IT Design Model’. In proceedings of NordiCHI (Vol. 2000, pp. 22-24).
Gregory, J. (2003). Scandinavian approaches to participatory design. International Journal of Engineering Education, 19(1), 62-74
Koskinen, I. (2016). The Aesthetics of Action in New Social Design. In Proceedings of DRS 2016 International Conference: Future-Focused Thinking.” Proceedings of DRS (Vol. 1).
Light, A., & Akama, Y. (2012, August). The human touch: participatory practice and the role of facilitation in designing with communities. In Proceedings of the 12th Participatory Design Conference: Research Papers-Volume 1 (pp. 61-70).
Markussen, T. (2017). Disentangling ‘the social’ in social design’s engagement with the public realm. CoDesign, 13(3), 160-174.
Sanders, E. B. N., Brandt, E., & Binder, T. (2010, November). A framework for organizing the tools and techniques of participatory design. In Proceedings of the 11th biennial participatory design conference (pp. 195-198).
