Social Problems Are Design Problems: How Might We Rethink Innovation For Social Design
It’s always refreshing to watch how we can use design thinking to create social impact. Design thinking and innovation go hand-in hand and thinking like a designer can help us tackle the biggest problems society faces today.
In a world where climate change is still a very real threat, and with a global pandemic that has pushed our health and social security systems well past the breaking point- And A Half’s talk: Social Problems Are Design Problems, shows us how Filipino designers tackle the issues in food security, education, health, and heritage, and innovate through a design-led approach.
With that being said, what is innovation? Isn’t that something like A.I, machine learning, blockchain, and other high technology concepts? And how does innovation relate to design?
Well, we got a lot of good answers that I’ll try to frame in the design thinking format: How Might We?
How Might We Rethink Innovation
To understand how might we rethink innovation, let’s try to understand- what is innovation? Well, innovation shouldn’t and isn’t limited to companies with R&D labs, big budgets, and business units dedicated to “innovation”.
Innovation can be just as present in a teacher working from home, or a farmer working on the fields, just as much as it can in a venture capital meeting at Silicon Valley.
Innovation is not an endpoint as what some definitions lead you to believe. Innovation is a process, not an event.
I’ve broken down into 3 (three) points on how might we rethink innovation for social design.
Reimagine The Way We Use Existing Platforms
Innovation can be done by utilising existing products and reutilising them to suit different needs. Jaton Zulueta of AHA Labs tackles the problem of how we can address the lack of access to education public school students face.
Current public schools students and teachers face a series of challenges such as:
- Lack of access to educational material
- Cut communications material
- The need for mediums to be more intimate
AHA labs also noted that relationship-building is a very important between the student and the teacher, and with the pandemic and the lockdown, the relationship between both was further strained.
After much time spent on the drawing board, the team found that Facebook Messenger is a popular communication tool, especially since Facebook Messenger is has free data for text-based messages.
Jaton explored the idea of using Messenger to become a medium for teachers and students to connect.
In this program, AHA innovated on 2 things:
- How to use the Facebook Messenger platform
- How we communicate over text-based formats
The team at AHA Labs converted text books into bite-sized chunks and formatted the lessons to be broadcasted over Facebook Messenger.
The team also experimented with how to format the texts, so that it feels inviting to the students, and engages them on an intimate level.
AHA gave training to the teachers to teach them how to use Messenger as an effective tool, and gave them educational content such as the text-based lesson plans that they can use.
They even created Facebook groups where the teachers can exchange information and contribute to the lesson plan. The beauty in a platform like Facebook is that you can crowdsource information, and this allowed AHA to build a valuable relationship with the teachers.
In total, the social impact of AHA was being able to train 54,000 teachers, dispense 462 lessons, and involve thousands on students.
Champion Inclusivity
Innovation without inclusivity merely wedges a larger divide in the inequality gap. As designers, its important to see how we can make innovation as inclusive as possible.
Celina Borromeo spearheaded Gising Gising Philippines, a social enterprise that sources produce directly from farmers, and packages them for consumers, thus cutting out the traditional middle man in the supply chain process. For every purchase of a signature food box, another box of vegetables is donated to a family in need.
Gising Gising involves farmers, consumers, and communities to make a sustainable business model, while creating a social impact. Digital technology enables inclusivity, and Celina was able to use digital platforms to advertise the produce they were selling. She was able to work together with the farmers to make product offerings, uplift their livelihood, and help communities in need.
Understand Who We’re Building For
Art Serrano and One Zero Design Co. have done an amazing job in helping preserve heritage in Escolta. The involve the informal economy, street vendors, and local businesses in restoring the magic of Escolta, with the flagship centered around the First United Building.
In successful heritage restoration sites in cities such as Tokyo, Paris, and Barcelona, firms base their designs around the community, and developments done in the area seek to maximise the existing community around them, and provides livelihood opportunities, and attracts tourists.
However, in the Philippines, we tend to design around commute points, and developers such as Ayala, SM, Rockwell, Megaworld, and the like. In fact, we tend to become more familiar with the architectural styles of the aforementioned developers, rather than communities, the architects who designed them, and the stories behind our structures.
The current way we design cities is problematic to our cities since we leave them subjected around the plans of development corporations, lose legacy sites to high-rise condos, cause gentrification in the community, and the abandonment of cultural significance.
Which begs the question, who are we designing our cities for?