Social Design
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DI207-15 Term 1 |
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Module Leader |
| Adela Glyn-Davies |
Second year only |
Term 1 |
15 CATS |
35 practical class hours and 35 private study hours |
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All lectures and seminars will be face to face unless otherwise stated in Moodle |
| Please note this webpage refers to the module as planned for 2024-2025. For other versions, please refer to the module catalogue: Module information |
This module fosters students' development in becoming designerly agents for change through engagement with their local and regional communities.
Social Design understands design as an ethically driven philosophy seeking to make improvements to the lived experiences of people, communities, and the environment . It is underpinned by the principles of co-design/ co-creation, working in partnership to identify, investigate and resolve design problems.
Students will learn a range of approaches to participatory design, social action and entrepreneurship through investigating philosophies, methodologies, and case studies. Through this they will develop a toolkit of techniques and their appropriateness to specific situations. Key to this is being able to understand a social context as a complex interaction of people, artefacts, systems, and economies.
During the module, students will have a relationship with a specific community context and over a period will develop collaborative research into the environment and factors which are shaping that community and propose co-design approaches to address the needs arising from that research.
Principal Aims
The aims of this module are to give students the opportunity to explore and test methods, approaches and frameworks relating to design and systems thinking within an interdisciplinary context. This will shape your emerging specialist design practice and help you build your designerly methodology.
Throughout this module will be part of an interdisciplinary team, where they will be sharing, collaborating, and developing their existing and newly developed approaches to researching, defining, and solving complex life-centred design problems. This module aims to engage students in ethnographic, site and precedent studies, in order to learn how to establish a substantial set of qualitative data for problem definition that entails the visual and methodological study of lived, shared, and learned experiences.
Social Design aims to encourage students to explore and research community life, impact and value through co-design.
This module aims to further students' individual and group-working skills, whilst challenged to develop abilities of professional pitch as well as crit skills as a part of their evaluative and making practice. Finally, this module presents a continuation of students' design and systems thinking development on an interdisciplinary level.
Outline Syllabus
This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.
Intro to Social Design. Live briefing by local community.
Ethics and research in Social Design - participation vs co-design?
Towards social- environmental impact - The Civic and Systems Change.
Intensive tutorials - project development. Induction and practical work (fabrication labs, workshops and print).
The compassionate CRIT and Pitch development.
Final Pitch with Showcase.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students should be able to:
- 1. Co-create and develop a research and development process to identify and address a social need.
- 2. Understand theories and methodologies of Social Design theory and practice.
- 3. Understand design ethics and sustainability and incorporate these into professional design practice.
- Document an understanding of appropriate community research and co-design methods.
Research element
Students will be undertaking research on a multi-stakeholder level and will be testing their concepts with a target audience. This module will introduce them to an ethics form in the introductory part of the learning journey.
Interdisciplinary
This module is entirely interdisciplinary as all modules on DSI - direct links to UX, UI, Service Design, Anthropology, Spatial Studies, Design thinking, Digital Ethnography, and Critical studies - just to name a few.
International
The content of this module is drawn from a broad set of international precedents and practitioners allowing for a multi-perspective exploration of design practice.
Subject specific skills
- Accessing, evaluating, synthesising and applying knowledge for specific community design challenges.
- Participating in group discussions, design activities, reflections.
- Facilitating and leading group group discussions, design activities, reflections. Doing design studies (descriptive, analytical, creative).
- Communicating design studies in a range of formats, synchronously and asynchronously, to a wide range of audiences.
- Creating and using a personal portfolio of studies, notes and reflections.
- Understanding and applying appropriate and ethically considered methods when researching and co-designing with communities.
- Delivering a professional design pitch to a target audience.
- Developing rapid and refined prototypes to support design proposal and implementation.
- Curate and exhibit work for discourse and dissemination.
Transferable skills
All of the above are transferable. In addition, advanced digital skills including collaborative whiteboards, setting up and running online collaborations, visualisation and planning tools, project management tools.
Indicative reading list
View reading list on Talis AspireLink opens in a new window
Please note: Module availability and staffing may change year on year depending on availability and other operational factors. The School for Cross-faculty Studies makes no guarantee that any modules will be offered in a particular year, or that they will necessarily be taught by the staff listed on this page.