Social Innovation And Design

In today’s world design is everywhere, or, to be more precise, design awareness is everywhere. In the last decade design has evolved, its application now near universal while its discipline specific practice augmented by interest from an array of areas contiguous to design. It is and has been a vehicle of political coercion and symbolism. It serves as an informal indicator of economic performance, cultural regeneration and social well being. The growing interdisciplinary relationship between the world of design and social innovation has led to new opportunities, responsibilities, and challenges for the designer to better understand how their processes can be employed to spark meaningful, positive sociocultural evolution and revolution.
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Design is a highly entrepreneurial profession. It is also a maturing academic discipline. Design is an interdisciplinary, problem solving activities which require substantial creativity, innovation and technical expertise. That which concerns not simply with the production of imageries but with the analysis, organisation and methods of presentation of visual solutions to communication problems, to quote Frank Pick, "Design is intelligence made visible".
Designers bring empathy and creativity to social challenges. The first helps to understand the human-centered solutions that can make a real difference in real people’s lives; creativity can defeat habits with innovative approaches to making a measurable difference. John Heskett makes it abundantly clear, "Design is one of the basic characteristics of what is it to be human, and an essential determinant of the quality of human life. It affects everyone in every detail of every aspect of what they do throughout each day. As such, it matters profoundly". It is the designer’s approach to the process of solving complex problems, particularly in the willingness to test risky options that transcend the traditional view of problems that is a strategic advantage. Every designer is encouraged to become engaged with socially relevant projects in order to use their creative talents to their highest and best purpose and to demonstrate the value of designers and design

To quotes Jane McGonigal, a game designer and a researcher “Gamers are super empowered, hopeful individuals. These are people who believe that they are individually capable of changing the world. And the only problem is that they believe that they are capable of changing virtual worlds and not the real world.” There is a need for a critical approach not only in examining such games but also in creating them by implementing human centric approaches to understand user needs (as well as business, economic, environmental, social, and other requirements) to create successful solutions that solve real