How to design for social change: a template

Abstract

Policy design and institutional design are about realising social change. Literature in these domains is largely conceptual and rarely specific about the real-world context of who designs, how to design and what makes a good design process. This lack of clarity may frustrate design education. Reviewing this literature, both in terms of common ground and controversies, nevertheless, obliquely reveals answers to these questions. A template emerges for designers to study the social complexity of specific design challenges and to structure their design processes accordingly. This social complexity, and its implications for how to organise the design process, is to be understood as critical, gradual, multiple and variable.