Community And Network Based Design And Social Innovation

Facing global culture identity and sustainable crisis, design is reconstructing its object,content, methodology and approaches. Design should not only serve for industry upgradesand commercial innovation needs, but also being a proactive promoter for social economy andsocial innovation. In this study, an all-round review and explore was made about social valueof design and its methods to participate in social innovation from both sociology and designdisciplines, and meaningful attempts about community&network based design and socialinnovation methods were carried out through a series of international workshops, practicaltopics and participatory field study, all of which enables design to participate in all kinds ofcommunity innovations using a more tensional structural form and the power of socialidentity (through innovation networks, design networks, social networks, etc.).The first step of this study is to summarize community research results in sociology, andcompare different social needs in rural communities, urban communities and virtualcommunities, based on which an argument is proposed that potential changes might be causedby user-centered design and community-centered design. The shifting of focus may result in afundamental revolution on design goals, which will transforms design emphasized onsatisfying men’s individual needs and experiences to design for groups, public needs, regionsand cultures. Design will pay more attention on recessive and immaterial level, resolvingsocial issues and needs aroused in social formation transformation process.To study design methods of social practice and social innovation, I summarizedexperiences in Chinese rural construction movement, Japanese and Chinese Taiwancommunity empowerment cases, European old city and future community practices, andcharacteristics and methods in social innovation movements from the angle of sociology; andreviewed design’s ‘social responsibilities’ emphasized by Victor Papanek, critical regionalismof Lewis Mumford, sustainable product and service system design methods andimmaterialism by Manzini, design theories, systems, and organization approaches byinternational design companies such as IDEO from the angle of design.All above indicates that,“community and network” is the basic unit and basic conditionto connect people and society; it’s the place and technology basis for social welfare, cultureidentity, democratic participation and other rights, which is also the basic approach to providepublic services, create life experiences and stable social capital. Facing diversity groups andcomplex fuzzy front, building “community and network based design and social innovation(DS-CN)”working methods and system helps to integrate multi-discipline resources andinnovation networks, which will maximize design’s social value. For rural communities, from the level of national culture development, this paper constructs “regional intangible culturebased local design methods” according to community empowerment experiences whichemphasized on people, culture, place, product and landscape; attempts are made by means ofindustrial design, communication design and other design fields on diversified industrialoutputs of intangible culture, integration of design-production-market, cultural ecosystemprotection. For urban communities, this paper discusses how to construct “web based productand service system” from a technical perspective, in which product indicates a new businessmodel and media, while serves refers to new contents, information, culture and life style.After finishing thinking in culture level and trials in technical level, a team with200people, which was made of different companies and multi-discipline professionals, went toPingtai Village in west of Hunan province, Alashan in Nanati Village of Xinjiang province,and urban communities in Changsha in this consecutive three years, and carried out designand social innovation practices for different goals. These activities greatly improve and enrichour research and practical experiences, and also form a good interaction with communityresidents.In the process of participation, we compared the different roles of urban design,industrial design, and information design professionals in promoting regional economicdevelopment and infrastructure construction, lifestyle and cultural protection, social equityand cultural identity as well as in sustainable service design. They impact the communitybasic structure (geographic, demographic, organizational structure, culture) differently, buttheir activities are separated and there’s few approaches for collaborate. For this reason, weemphasized in DS_CN system that "occupations are different, but social responsibility isshared; social needs are different but all exists; therefore different innovative powers with anew form of organization is required", and the key to this integration is “knowledge platform","organizational design” and "co-participation" of designers and local residents.Anyway, the future web-based "virtual community" is worth thinking, it will thoroughlyshake nation-states and all existing organizational forms based on fixed space with thestrength of a global economy, it demonstrates the importance of organizational networks andthe trend of personal labor, and it transforms time and space."Virtual community" is not onlygiving birth to identity pattern and social needs that different from the stage of "civil society ",but also is more important as a tool to redefine new forms of country, organization andcommunity. Therefore, distributed systems, collaborative networks, and innovativecommunities will become additional participation forms for design.