Designers share: What are social design practices like in China now?
Original Chinese article published in Stanford Social Innovation Review China (Web) on Sept. 18th 2021.
Linda Tan, Linfu Zhang, Jaiwei Zhou, Chang Xu, Wenbin Song
Edited by Xintong Liu
Translation: Linda Tan
Introduction
With stakeholder-driven economy in the global backdrop and "rural revitalization" and "common prosperity" making headlines, the idea of shaping society is thriving in China, as it is elsewhere. All those in support are striving to find their role: should I be contributing money, time, or thoughts?
As a driving force towards shaping society, the concept of social design has entered the thoughtscape of its practitioners. The term social design has existed in the Chinese context for at least 20 years now. Today, all the top design institutions in the nation offers majors and reseach programs related to social design. And in the arena of social innovation, social design is often a synonym for innovation, though its definition is still somewhat amorphic. Definitions aside, major commonalities between social design and social innovation are hard to ignore: they both intend on tackling wicked problems, and drive systematic through cross sector collaborations.
Defining social design is challenging, because on the one hand, most design process is at least partly triggered by societal needs; and on the other, many solutions that arise in response to social challenges have been thoroughly "designed", even when there's no one to claim the role of the designer.
We wish to spend some time exploring the following within the context if social innovation in China: who is engaging in the social design process and how do they understand their roles? what are the intentions behind social design processes? What unique role does the act of designing play? How is the social impact of design being measured, if it is being done?
To find answers to these questions, we initiated the SSIR Social Design Community in July of 2021. Dialogues in the community thus far have displayed a social design landscape that is as dynamic and fuzzy-around-the-edges as complex problems themselves. Perhaps if we wish to "see" this landscape in a clear light, we need a process analogous to The Blind Men and the Elephant. To this end, we are inviting members of our community to share what they consider local social design practices, and with these case-studies, we can slowly piece back reflectively, what are social design practices like in China now?
This article marks the beginning of a long conversation, or an on-going journey.
Full English translation of this article is in progress.