After teaching at Savannah College of Art and Design for close to five years, I found myself with over four hundred alumni, and I keep in touch with a large quantity of them through email. A strange pattern started to become evident in our communications: a lot of them are unhappy.

Our Passionate Youth

Students would contact me and describe how miserable they were with their jobs, asking for advice on new career paths or even entirely new professions. It wasn’t that their bosses were mean, or that their working hours were awful; it wasn’t even the larger issues we’ve all dealt with in the business context, like the misappropriation of designer as stylists, or the prioritization of technologists over designers. Instead, I began to hear how the benefits of ‘flow’ and ‘being creative’ and ‘solving really hard problems’ were being grossly outweighed by feelings of insignificance and irrelevance. My alumni were at the forefront of design, working at major consultancies and the heart of the Fortune 500 – and they didn’t feel like their work was meaningful.

I think many of us have confronted a similar feeling in their career, and we’ve rationalized meaning into our jobs. We’ve told ourselves that we were making the world a better place by making objects of beauty, or by increasing the usability of software, and that seems to satiate the concern, at least temporarily. Or, we’ve embraced management, and tried to mentor and guide other designers who were struggling with skills, theory, or career path development. And in many cases, even if these things didn’t pay off, we’ve stuck with jobs that we weren’t particularly fond of, because we had mortgages to pay and families to feed.

But for my alumni, and for the graduates that make up the 55 million millennials in the US, this doesn’t cut it. As a gross generalization, they don’t want the kids, the house, and the two car garage, and so they also don’t want the platitudes of staying the course and doing what you don’t want to do and it’s just a job. Simply, they feel entitled to a career that’s important and that contributes in a meaningful and powerful way to build a better world around them. As they find themselves in a workplace where they are designing diapers, or websites, or even the coveted jobs of designing cars and shoes, the realities of a career supporting destructive, consumptive behaviors just doesn’t seem to jive. And as they watch the banks collapse and the government flounder and the earth implode, they seem to experience a sense of personal longing – a longing for a job that matters.

This isn’t hyperbole. This is the conversation I’ve had over, and over, and over again with my alumni, and I’ve come to a simple conclusion. The creative class of 20-25 year olds won’t be satisfied playing under the old rules. Their goal and primary motivator isn’t financial capital or social capital; it’s personal recognition of meaning. This isn’t surprising, given their cultural backdrop of reality TV and Facebook profiles, and I’m certainly not the first to point this out. But the most interesting part of this desire for recognition is how it relates to the need to right the wrong and fix the broken. There’s a need – an entitlement – to work on big projects, projects with impact, and to be publically and loudly recognized for their creative efforts.

The creative class of 20-25 year olds won’t be satisfied playing under the old rules. Their goal and primary motivator isn’t financial capital or social capital; it’s personal recognition of meaning …  a need – an entitlement – to work on big projects, projects with impact, and to be publically and loudly recognized for their creative efforts.

Our Broken Educational System

Combine this pattern in the guise of modern design education, where integrated efforts between business and design are somehow seen as novel and well intentioned design educators dread the  curriculum council and petty turf war of tenure. Close to six years ago, when I was proposing a Contextual Research Methods course at Savannah College of Art and Design, the Dean of Liberal Arts essentially filibustered the course, blocking its passage through the approval process for close to a year. The reason? He felt ‘ownership’ over all aspects of research, and since no one in the design department had a PhD in Anthropology, how could they possible teach a course in contextual design research and ethnography?

These silly displays of infighting are present at nearly every educational institution in the world, and it’s against this backdrop that the aforementioned entitled students find themselves looking for direction and guidance. To be blunt, they don’t care about the credentials of their teachers; they care that their teachers are knowledgeable and passionate. They aren’t looking for incremental aspects of change that play in the context of the old guard; they see through these small steps forward in a time that requires new approaches and new passion.

There are some fantastic educational programs that have reacted to the changing space of design. New transdisciplinary efforts at Parsons have great potential; existing efforts like the KaosPilot School in Denmark serve as a template for new educational models. But these programs are the exception, and the design students graduating from schools of Art and Design are still learning the tired design-as-form-giving approaches of Bauhaus-driven foundations.

Students at universities frequently suffer the same lagging curricula, as the pace of academic change is slow. A few schools have managed to keep pace with industry, or even lead industry in a particular direction. The well known d.school program at Stanford, under the leadership of  David Kelley and Larry Leifer, and the Rotman School of Management, under the leadership of Roger Martin, have helped advance the role of designers in corporations to unprecedented levels of access, and have helped substantiate design as an independent and worthwhile endeavor.

These programs prepare students for bringing the intellectual power of design to the boardroom to solve the gnarly problems of corporate strategy.

But what if the same educational model was presented with a focus exclusively on transformation of our world around us? The students are clamoring for it, and the world is seemingly ready to embrace a model that doesn’t position corporate vs. consultancy, with the occasional NGO thrown in for good luck. This isn’t even a new idea, as it was fundamental to the design philosophies of Buckminster Fuller and Victor Papanek, and taught (to me, and countless other generations, at Carnegie Mellon) by Richard Buchanan and Craig Vogel.

Transforming the Wicked Problems

It’s in response to these students, and to these traditional problems of academia, and in the spirit of Buchanan and Vogel’s teaching that I’ve started a new educational institution: The Austin Center for Design. The program is entirely focused on Interaction Design and Social Entrepreneurship, with an explicit spotlight on designing for massive change and social innovation. The center exists to transform society through design and design education. This transformation occurs through the development of design knowledge directed towards all forms of social and humanitarian problems.

I have no misconceptions that designers can ‘solve’ massive problems, or even approach them on their own without collaboration from other disciplines. But I feel strongly that designers make great agents of change and can champion new and novel approaches to old and tired problems. The best indicator of design success, in my experience, is a passion to make an impact, and I see a generation that is wildly passionate about addressing social problems.

I feel strongly that designers make great agents of change and can champion new and novel approaches to old and tired problems … and I see a generation that is wildly passionate about addressing social problems.

I hope other educational institutions can escape from the lackadaisical pace of academic change, and I intend to publish the entire curricula that is developed at AC4D to help support other like-minded faculty who may be stuck pushing the curricula-change rock uphill. The problems to tackle are big enough to escape ego; one school can’t possible support the talent necessary to mitigate the large-scale social problems of poverty, equality of education, or health and wellness.

These are problems worth solving.

Top image: One Laptop Per Child / cc attribution 2.0

Professor of Design at the Politecnico di Milano, Ezio Manzini, took time away from airline food, flatbed seats and a view out the window of the Himalayas to talk to us about designing for social innovation and his work with the DESIS network.

Ezio Manzini

SB: Can you tell me a little about the DESIS network and the work you do there?

EM: DESIS is a network of schools (design and others), institutions, companies, and non-profit organizations interested in promoting and supporting design for social innovation and sustainability. It’s a light, non-profit organization, conceived as a network of partners collaborating in a peer-to-peer spirit.

More precisely, DESIS supports social innovation using design skills to:

• give promising cases more visibility;
• make them more effective;
• facilitate their replicability;
• help companies and institutions to understand the promising cases potentialities in terms of enabling services, products and business ideas.

At the same time, DESIS reinforces the design community’s role in the social innovation processes both within our community (developing dedicated design knowledge) and outside it (redefining the perceived design role and capabilities).

SB: What is social innovation? How does it differ from other types of innovation and garage invention that have been the norm for hundreds of years – the two guys in a workshop or the college room-mates with an idea?

EM: Social innovation is a process of change where new ideas emerge from a variety of actors directly involved in the problem to be solved: final users, grass roots technicians and entrepreneurs, local institutions and civil society organizations. The main way in which it differs from traditional “garage” innovation is that here the “inventors” are groups of people (the “creative communities”) and the results are forms of organization (the “collaborative services”).

Some well known examples of social innovation include:

• zero-mile food networks, where not only a new way of eating but also a new relationship between production and consumption and between the city and the countryside are established.
• co-housing initiatives, where groups of families decide to share some services to reduce the economic and environmental costs, but also to re-create a neighborhood
• collaborative services where elderly people organize themselves to exchange mutual help

Looking attentively to the complexity of the contemporary society shows many cases of these worldwide (for more, see the Sustainable Everyday project). While the stories are diverse, they have one clear (and expected) common denominator: they resulted from the initiatives of people who collaboratively invented new ways of living and producing and who have been able to enhance them, solving specific problems and, at the same time, making concrete steps towards sustainability happen.

Car Sharing in Milan - one of the Sustainable Everyday examples

That said, it must be emphasized that social innovation has always existed. But now there are good reasons to say that its role is expanding and will continue to do so in the next future. In fact, previous experiences show that social innovation flourishes when two contemporary conditions are given: when society is facing difficult problems and when some new technologies, having spread in it, open new and (partly) still unexplored possibilities. No need to be said that both these conditions exist and are particularly relevant today.

Previous experiences show that social innovation flourishes when two contemporary conditions are given: when society is facing difficult problems and when some new technologies, having spread in it, open new and (partly) still unexplored possibilities. No need to be said that both these conditions exist and are particularly relevant today.

SB: You talk of ‘diffuse creativity and entrepreneurship’ – can you tell me a little more about these concepts?

EM: Let me start from the phenomenological consideration we did before: in the complexity of the contemporary society it is possible to recognize promising cases of social innovation. These cases can be found in a variety of fields and have usually been conceived and implemented by the actors involved, moving from their direct knowledge of the problems and their own personal capabilities (namely their creativity and entrepreneurship).

These people have been able to recombine existing entities (technologies, organizations, both traditional and new existing ideas) to give them a new use and meaning (that is exactly what, in one of its best definition, creativity is). At the same time, they have shown an incredible skill and sensitivity in term of entrepreneurship, as every one of the new solutions they invented had to be imagined, realized, and managed in the real world and in economic terms.

The economy to be considered here is a complex and sophisticated one: a social economy emerging from the combination of different economies; the market one, of course, when marketed products and services are needed; but also the economy of time and attention of the involved actors, when their active participation is required; and sometimes also the economy of the gift, when some voluntary activity is included too. I think that is more than enough to say that whoever succeeds in imagining, realizing and managing this kind of organizations is a real champion in terms of creativity and entrepreneurship!

SB: What does a favorable environment for social innovation look like? Are there some key characteristics we should look for, or design for?

EM: Given its spontaneous nature, social innovation cannot be planned. Nevertheless, the invention and implementation of new ways of living and producing are more likely when creativity and design thinking are diffused and, most importantly, where local institutions have a collaborative and tolerant attitude (this is what, in my view, can be defined as a favourable environment). In parallel to this, they become more robust and spread when they are empowered by specific sets of products, services, and communications that can support them and make their realisation easier (that is, when appropriate enabling solutions had been developed).

I like to add that, in our experience, the most successful cases (i.e. the one who lasted in time and spread) have been the results of a positive interplay between creative people, proactive local institutions, and sensitive entrepreneurs:

• creative people who imagine (and actively participate to) new proposals;
• proactive local institutions who understand the social value of these new proposals, tolerate them even when, as it frequently happens, operate at the margins (or even beyond) some existing laws – but it has to be said that creativity, by definition, has to break something in the existing order!) and develop innovative governance tools that permit to support the new initiatives;
• sensitive entrepreneurs, who recognize in the emerging social innovations new explicit or latent demands, and therefore, new business opportunities.

SB: As interaction designers, what can we be doing, today, to help foster this type of innovation?

EM: Designers can use their specific knowledge to empower the social innovation processes: bringing new ideas, orienting the resulting initiatives and conceiving a new generation of enabling solutions. In this larger framework we can discuss, in particular, what interaction designer can do. Of course, this discussion is open.

In my view, speaking in very general terms, interaction designers can play a fundamental role in social innovation. The core of interaction design is of course the way in which people interact (with products and/or with other people). At the same time, the core of the new social innovation initiatives are service-oriented solutions where, similarly, the core of the overall systems are the interactions (their qualities and their effectiveness). If this premise is true, it therefore appears that the social innovation could be a “core business” for interaction designers and that a whole set of lines or research on how to improve it will appear.

Interaction designers can play a fundamental role in social innovation. The core of interaction design is the way in which people interact (with products and/or with other people). At the same time, the core of the new social innovation initiatives are service-oriented solutions where, also in this case, the core of the overall systems are the interactions: their qualities and their effectiveness. If this premise is true, it therefore appears that the social innovation could be a “core business” for interaction designers.

Moving to a more concrete discussion of the same topic, I can introduce here some considerations, which have emerged from research we are doing at the DIS-Politecnico di Milano. The topic of our research is what designers can do to conceive and develop digital services to catalyze people (in the digital sphere) and support them in some collaborative initiatives (in the physical sphere). This possibility appears very concrete and, at the same time, highly promising in social and environmental terms.

What we’ve found and focalized so far is a variety of digital service typologies aiming to support the existence and the consolidation of collaborative organization in different ways. They are:

• Creating new producer/consumer network;
• Mapping diffused information;
• Aggregating social action;
• Creating social network for conviviality;
• Building mutual support circles;
• Exchanging competences, time and products;
• Sharing products, places and knowledge.

In each one of these typologies we can already recognize several interesting cases: from new networks of farmers and urban consumers, to maps of localize sustainable initiatives; from initiatives aggregating collective power (in order to achieve some social goals), to organization aiming to promote social conviviality; from mutual support circles of people suffering of the same diseases (as diabetes, allergies, obesity, etc), to platforms to exchange competences or to share products. The list goes on.

I would say in conclusion that if ‘correctly designed’, digital services and platforms really can support social innovation, and thereby improve social fabric and promote more sustainable ways of living and producing. Of course, to design them ‘correctly’ is what interaction designers should do. And what, in my view, they all have the potential to do.

Interaction 10

If you want to meet Ezio Manzini in real life: he is one of the keynote speakers at Interaction 10. It is the third annual conference hosted by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Each year, IxDA aims to gather the interaction design community to connect, educate, and inspire each other. This year it is held in Savannah, Georgia (USA).