Toward societal transformation through design storytelling: A case study of brand design in the mineral water industry in Finland

The world today is facing the urgent need for fundamental transformation in the ‘Anthropocene’ era. However, even if consensus has been formed around the need for transformation, what constitutes fundamental changes and how these changes occur are researched and debated across multiple disciplines, including design studies. Recently, in the design field, transition design has been proposed as a new area of design practice, study and research. Transition design is based on long-term visioning and recognition of the need for solutions rooted in new, more sustainable socioeconomic and political paradigms. This study explores the role of design storytelling in steering and navigating a societal transformation. Using a critical single case study method, this study analyses the fundamental elements of transformation that emerge from each component of design storytelling. A mineral water company in Finland was selected as the purposive single case. It is a specific type of private organization that intends to bring about a societal transition through optimum use of design storytelling. The findings illustrate that the components of design storytelling, which use societal change as their innovative business proposal, distinctively match the components of societal transformation. Design practices that leverage visual and verbal elements edit and weave a new relationship between the sociotechnical landscape, regime and innovation proposed by the company. We believe that this paper makes two main contributions. First, the authors emphasize the potential role of design as a deliberate change process for societal transformation. Second, through the cross lens of societal transformation and design storytelling, the storytelling and narrative approach of societal transformation by design is underlined

Supporting a Sustainable and Engaging Online Transition for Co-Design through Gamification

Co-design approach is increasingly popular in many organizations that address global change and social sustainability challenges, thanks to its unique and diverse methods of engaging relevant people in design processes and decision-making. However, the social distancing led by the COVID-19 pandemic seriously problematized the traditional in-person co-design activities. A sustainable online transition is unprecedentedly pressing. By acknowledging the limitations of online co-design, i.e., lack of means for participant engagement, we argue that gamification holds great promise for online co-design. This paper presents an empirical study to investigate this potential qualitatively. Based on the data collected from three gamified online co-design implementations, we examine the benefits of gamification and how future activities should be designed and implemented from the participants’ perspectives. Based on the participants’ perceptions, we propose several recommendations for designing impactful gamification. The finding suggests that gamification can facilitate online co-design activities in an enjoyable, relaxing, structuring, and creative manner, since they are perceived and recognized by the participants. Moreover, the successful implementation of online co-design implies that great sustainability benefits can be achieved through online transition, i.e., reducing paper consumption and time spent on meetings and unproductive discussions, supporting extensive diversity and density in representation. Online can enable this by overcoming not only the geographic and time limitations but also relevant social issues

Human-centered approach for flourishing: discovering the value of service ecosystem design in psychosocial career counselling service

University students are becoming more and more fragile under the new circumstances of socio- economic climate, subjective factors, increasingly diverse student population and the strong presence of their parents It is much more difficult for them to manage their campus life, containing academic performance, social support, psychological well-being, or financial pressures, in a new environment. The problem of adapting the way of university life and directing their future in a positive way is raising. The latest report from National College Health Assessment indicated that over half of students have these fragile feelings, such as hopeless (53.1%), overwhelming by all you had to do (86.9%), Exhausted (not from physical activity, 83.4%), very lonely (64.4%), very sad (68.1%), overwhelming anxiety (61.4%) and so on (ACHA,2017). Besides, Career-related Issue (24.2%) is the one of the main difficulties for undergraduates to handle within the last 12 months. These negative emotions and issues effect the students’ flourishing in life. In this scenario, the Psychosocial Career Counselling Service (PCCS) is a corresponding solution for students to reach flourishing in the campus ecology and social ecology. The aim of this service is to improve students’ decision-making skills, communicating skills, the self-concept, and other coping strategies (Naicker,1994), It supports individuals to understand and discover themselves so as to become self-directing (Shertzer & Stone, 1981). The career trajectory has a serious impact on human flourishing, and it affects people’s every single day into varying extents, such as social circles, a marriage partner, holiday plans, retirement possibilities (Krumboltz, 1993). However, the critical weakness in career related services at university is in the absence of perception from students. The study from Engelland, Workman, & Singh (2000), was conducted in three universities and analyzed the both perspectives from undergraduate clients and career service staffs. It showed that the three of the five service quality gaps in campus were derived from the lack of understanding student expectations. The objective of this study is to explore what are the improvements of PCCS from student perspective and how service design can contribute to this service in a cross-cultural context. It is a collaborative research and conducts with a psychologist who is in charge of PCCS at university. Therefore, it combines the knowledge from design discipline and psychology field. The methodology strategy of this research is Case Study to understand what are the service improvements from human-centered approaches, and build service maps from institution documents. Two national universities, that one is in China and another is in Italy, has been chosen and the unit of analysis is the PCCS center for each case. The research target is first-year undergraduate student from different disciplines. The reason of studying on freshmen is that they experience the transition time from high school to campus life. In this period, they suffer a stressful and anxious time while they build new psychological identities (Skahill,2002), and the common “freshman blues” can escalate into fragility, when students start their adulthood and live on their own (Ruiz,2017). The methods are in-depth interview, open- ended questionnaire, and documentation. In China, this exploratory study collected 32 interviews that last around 40 mins to 60 mins. Besides, open-ended questionnaire elicitation resulted in 553 responses in total and 549 for the valid responses. The intent of the mixed method research was to apply the qualitative questionnaires to explore and make sense in a wider range of the qualitative findings. In Italy, there were collected 32 interviews that in the same time range from 40 mins to 60 mins. In addition, there were 487 responses in open- ended questionnaire and 267 for the valid responses. The method of data analysis is thematic analysis- 6 steps (Braun & Clarke,2006). The findings from the two countries emerged a connection between service improvements and the service ecosystem, since the institution system, education policy, culture, and social environment are different. It entails five nested social systems- microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and ecosystem (Jones, 2017) to improve the service quality in a holistic vision. With both theoretical and empirical explorations, an inter-disciplinary approach for service ecosystem design of the campus PCCS for first-year students are emerged. In addition, it puts forward a robust conceptual service design output, which demonstrates its high potential to benefit human flourishing. It discloses for the academia and practitioners both in design and health field an opportunity to see the service ecosystem design for people’s wellbeing in intercultural background, which based on human-centered design logic in order to consider PCCS improvements from new insights, which involves students in an active role for creating the service in an initial step, which is a new collaborative way in PCCS to make a common ground for service design from both design and psychology, which provides an integrated outcome for the general situation and the particular cultural diversities

E-LEARNING AND DESIGN PRACTICE. Tools and methods for professional learning of strategic design approach

The aim of this paper is to present a new methodology in teaching the strategic design approach combining e-learning with practice activities in a unique process of learning experience. Design is moving its domain area close to the management of the innovation and the company strategy. In this new framework strategic design is a mind-set that drives to answer to the social, economic, environmental challenges. Designers can improve their capacity do adopt this mind-set to be able to operate in this complex context also using specific tools and design methods to understand the user experience and to co-design new solutions. These methods are various and can be taught and learned through various education experiences; a wide range of topics in a constantly changing world render designers as lifelong learners. This new professional framework need a continue learning process that designers need to follow to empower skills, competences, knowledge and abilities. Trough a research activity with a pilot experience, a new teaching methodology has been tested in international high training courses and partially in a training program included in a European project

Making Visible: Valuating the Impacts of Design Intervention for Social Cooperative

The aim of this exploratory paper is to generate a method of evaluating design interventions for organizational change in third sector and to apply this method to an ongoing design research project with a national social cooperative in Italy. The evaluation model is a way to present what changes and impacts that design, especially strategic design, could bring to organisations and how these results could enable organisations to fulfil its missions in a more “human-centered” process. The results will consist of a theoretical framework to evaluate, taking social cooperative as one example, and the applied results in an empirical project. In the future, this framework will be continuously developed in this and also other similar projects

Co-designing a walkable city for the elderly through system thinking approach

This paper is based on a research project carried out in the Metropolitan Area of Milan, which looks at cities of the future as highly populated by long-living active people and characterized by innovative technological facilities. The project is conducted based on a multidisciplinary research approach with the goal of studying how to enhance the elderly’s walking activities in urban environments. The whole process has applied the system thinking approach to actively engage participants (senior citizens) and stakeholders in all the research steps. Findings have revealed the presence and absence of hardware and software of urban environments in terms of walkability for the elderly. The research concludes with a reflective definition of walkability parameters emphasizing the soft aspect and a systemic design guideline for future development

Design and Innovation: How Many Ways?

Introduzione allo Special issue Design and Innovation: How Many Ways

Discussing the potential therapeutic effects on design for psychological well-being: A case of social ecology for occupation service systems

Although the term of ‘design’ and ‘health’ sounds far, the link between two fields is getting closer and closer. The topic of ‘Design for Health’ increasingly demonstrates that design knowledge and practices can benefit health and well-being field (e.g., for the products, environment, communication, etc.). From the past researches, the evidence-based design approaches have showed a therapeutic effect on human well-being issues, but it is rarely to illustrate some positive well-being connections from experience-based design perspective. This paper aims to study the therapeutic link between service design and health or well-being through the mixed research methods. In order to understand this unclear relationship, this research was focused on the topic of vocational psychology to analyse the career service network in higher education institutions through service design framework. The results, in the end, not only indicate that service design can positively impact human-well-being, but also illustrate key approaches from service design which can improve people’s well-being. Therefore, this paper summarizes that transforming services for psychological well-being from design approaches is a positive way to improve human well-being comprehensively