The Social Innovation Research: A Concept Of Participatory Desgin Perspective

Nowadays,the world is in the period of transition to a sustainable society.Social innovation has drawn great attention from different disciplines and fields including design.More and more scholars and researchers have been attracted to explore and practice it.Participatory design,also known as co-design,as a method and an open and collaborative process,is increasingly becoming a means to gather collective intelligence and seek common solutions to problems.Under such circumstance,the relationship between participatory design and social innovation is being widely discussed and studied.The purpose of this paper is to explore the basic elements of social innovation under the premise of participatory design,to construct the universal model of participatory social innovation and exploring the potential of participatory design methods in the social innovation design.There are two basic questions considered as research basis in this paper: First,what is the change and development of the participatory design method under different social conditions since it was proposed? Second,what are the basic elements for different kinds of social innovation in different fields under different social circumstances? Starting from these two basic questions,this paper studies the relationship between participatory design and social innovation.The theoretical research of this paper includes: I.research background,theoretical basis and research perspective of the paper,as well as the discussion about the significance of the technology innovation;II.social innovation and participatory design theory,including the social attributes of design(general design,social responsibility of design,social value of design and expansion of design thinking,etc.)and social innovation driven by design,explains the role of design in social innovation,and describes the tools,methods and processes for designing and implementing social innovation;III.analysis of basic elements of social innovation.On the basis of social network theory,this paper studies the group type,group wisdom and social interaction,analyzes the social innovation step by step,sums up the three major elements of social innovation design(meaning-based place-making,vision-oriented scenario-creating and collaboration-centric relationship-building).It also profoundly analyzes every element of social innovation,reflection of analysis on group types,and the basic framework of social innovation;IV.the research on participatory social innovation methods analyzes the connotation and construction of the participatory design method.It deduces three levels of participatory design(co-creation,co-experience and co-reflection),and defines relationship among the three levels;V.the structure of the theoretical model of participatory social innovation,correlation among the three levels of participatory design and three factors of social innovation,definition of the primary,intermediate,advanced,three different levels participatory social innovation,as well as the theoretical research model of structuring participatory social innovation.Practice stage mainly includes case study and project practice.Red Hook Hub,Human Cities and Cité du design have been selected for the case study.Based on the three different levels of participatory design,the participatory social innovation model is demonstrated from the perspectives of the three major elements of social innovation.The project practice applies the models of participatory social innovation to the practice of “New Channel” of social innovation projects,which can test the feasibility and operability of the model,carries out specific exploration and experiment,verify the standpoints and innovative points in this paper from the aspects of theory,method and practice,discover the weakness and deficiency of participatory social innovation models,as well as look into the subsequent research work.The main research achievements in this paper are as following:I.This study focused on the participatory design method and social innovation as the research object and analyzed the process of the participatory design-driven social innovation.We also defined the social innovation with “participation and collaboration” as the core-the participatory social innovation.II.The principal part of social innovation is collaborative organization,while the latter is a group.Through profound analysis on social innovation,the three elements for social innovation has been obtained: place-making,situation-creating and relationship-building,which correspond to the place group,situation group and relationship group and establishes the mapping relation between social innovation and the principal part.III.The participatory design method has been developed for decades and has experienced different social conditions and backgrounds.The paper analyzes and concludes the three levels of participatory design: co-creation,co-experience and co-reflection.The three levels are interrelated but differentiated.This paper illustrated the relationship among the three levels through case study.IV.According to the three elements of social innovation and the three levels of participatory design,we defined the participatory social innovations at primary,intermediate and advanced levels,constructed the conceptual model of participatory social innovation,and demonstrated the model’s feasibility and effectiveness through project practice.In a word,social innovation is the innovation based on popular participation,while the participatory design method itself has the attribute of “common” innovation,the two are essentially related.The models of participatory social innovation summarized and discussed in this paper,as a kind of experimental research approaches,provided a perspective on the application of participatory design in social innovation,which enables the expansion of research and practice of social innovation.