Design Practice for Social Innovation
I recently ran a workshop at the SOCANZ Auckland Innovation Conference titled Design Practice for Innovation:. The focusing question for the workshop was: How can we use creative design approaches to co-create value?
With workshops at the conference lasting only 90 minutes the aim was to provide participants with:
- A hands on introduction to some core principles, practices and process of design
- An exploration of the potential benefits in the context of social innovation and how participants might apply (or be applying) aspects of this in their own contexts
- Pointers for where to go to learn more
Max Adler of Imminent Service Design helped facilitate the session (thanks Max!) and we with worked with 30 fabulous participants from a range of community and social sector organisations from across New Zealand.
Design is an action-based practice and best explored through experiential rather than theoretical means. In this vein the workshop was hands-on and included two ‘Design Doing’ activities (User Journey Mapping & Prototyping). These activities enabled participants to reflect on some of the core principles and practices of design – as well as how they might be applied in their own context – on the basis of (a little!) hands-on experience.
