Design for Social Innovation as a form of Design Activism: An action format

This paper presents and discusses an action format developed through design experiments aiming to make things happen. It brings to the already rich debate on social innovation a designer’s perspective mainly focused on action research and field actions. This experimental action format of design for social innovation is structured on a non-linear sequence of steps and actions that progressively engage a community and help it to set up and prototype a social innovation, through event-like pilot initiative, that’s to say a farewell initiative that, while prototyping the innovation, releases the full ownership of it to the community. The action format is illustrated through a variety research projects and training activities which have brought designers to design with or for creative communities. The action format is an open, in progress framework for intervention set up from the Polimi DESIS Lab, the Politecnico di Milano based laboratory of the international network DESIS – Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability. It comprises a network of researchers adopting a strategic and systemic approach to design, with a specific focus on designing for services and design activism. It explores how design can enable people, communities, enterprises and organisations to kick off and manage innovation processes by co-designing and setting in place experiments of new services and solutions.