Design and Gamification for Reshaping Relations and Services in Social Cooperatives

It’s increasingly clear that design is no longer just an added value for business in contributing to developing better products, services and experiences; instead, it’s leading a new methodology in managing the process of innovation. In social cooperatives, design thinking is providing possibilities to better organize complex internal relationships in order to facilitate innovation process towards better services as final offerings. The research team of Creative Industries lab is collaborating with a national organization with local structures for social and health care. This type of organizations is generally not considered within design-related fields, however, it's necessary to show up possible impacts and values of design for them. Thus, the research activities and intervention are aiming at supporting the organization in improving the quality and effectiveness of its offered services through reshaping the development approach and transforming the organization from results-oriented to capability-oriented. The research has developed a gamificated co-design activity involved all the staffs of the organization as a “pilot” to test a new way to form organizational change. It had two specific objectives: the primary activity is to involve all the staffs in improving the sense of belonging and working motivation; the latter one is to develop a new strategy to facilitate care workers to participate in service innovation process, which is supported by specific designed toolkits.