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).

After 10 years in the field, I woke up one day to realise that my service as a UX practitioner had become a commodity. Usability had become the ‘in thing’ and everyone could do it and show that their products were better than the competition. Usability as a buzzword, populated Product Lifecycle processes in many organizations. So it comes as no suprise when the general attitude of stakeholders these days is one of a shopper saying: ‘One McUser Experience with usability fries please.’

Usability as Commodity

Usability, as a practice, has evolved over the years with the primary goal of understanding the product use by ‘representative users.’ Around the same time our field shed its more academic title of “Human Factors” to eventually become User Experience.  We started focusing on the overall experience a person had as a result of their interactions with a particular product or service.

The term User Experience for the most part has been adopted as the operational title for many firms and other in-house teams encapsulating interaction design, user research and visual design. In some organizations the groups evolved to include other peripheral groups such as audio-visual designers and in rare instances brand & marketing. Nonetheless what is evident is that field as practice has become a commodity.

We aren’t rare anymore

A working definition of commodity means “a good for which there is demand.” But these goods are produced without qualitative differentiation across a marketplace. I will take creative liberty to also add to the definition and include “service” as well.  Today across the board, it seems, that “anyone can do usability” – harkening to Chef Gusteau’s motto from the movie, Ratatouille, that “anyone can cook.”

Like usability, UX is also slowly becoming commoditized. As a practitioner the evidence is blatant and often disturbing. As companies add visual and interaction design to their stable less attention is being paid to the the quality of the designs. For proof of this only look at the mobile field where it seems that every mobile phone is slowly beginning to look the same in aesthetic appeal. The absurdity of this is more evident when seen in analogy to plastic surgery where the surgeons craft of redesigning body parts has evolved into a store front where someone can ask for a J-Lo behind and a Halle Berry nose. But perhaps this is the nature and end game of design as we know it. Or is it what happens when Right Brainers are thrust into a Left Brain environment with the only goal of design production.

And we wonder why Designers are often of a melancholic nature… I feel the sudden urge to scream back at Gasteau that in fact: “not everyone can do it!”

From Clicks to Sexy

Incidentally in the last year I have had four different job titles as my peers and I continued to remold and refocus to stay relevant in the technical space. This fluidity of titles signals the ever-present lack of comfort we feel, where we constantly have to justify our collective existence as necessary appendages to development teams. And if you are a UX professional who has never had your value questions, I stand corrected and ask: “How can I join you in this mystical world?”

Today UX is once again on the verge becoming as institutionalized commodity of the technological landscape. Earlier our focus shifted from purely functional to both functional and aesthetic. But is that the end? When the first iPhone was released in the US in 2007 – the technological design space was like “Whoa.” Apple brought sexy back in stroke of creative genius by turning a little box into the most desirable piece of metal and plastic on many minds. Time magazine even went on the name the iPhone “Invention of the Year” in 2007. With the debut of Apple’s iPhone just about everyone in the industry started wondering how they could also make technology sexy.

A friend of mine, then working at Microsoft, called me wondering if I knew any designers who would be interested in working on new server designs. They wanted to make the products more desirable. “Servers?” I asked, just completely puzzled and blown away by the impact one little sexy device was having. Designers had arrived. We had entered the age of Aesthetics in Technology. Usability and UX in all its sentience had come a long way…Baby!

What had happened was that UX morphed to understand, not only the functional aspects of product use, but also the more aesthetic and experiential parts of product design. A few years back the most critical aspect of user experience was lessening the number of steps in an interaction. “How can we be faster and more efficient?” was the prevailing question of the day. In the post iPhone launch CEOs everywhere were hushed up in boardrooms using the “S” word, asking questions like “How can we create a sexy solution?”

But now we have reached the point of aesthetics, and there’s already the feeling that it’s a commodity again. So we have to keep on evolving. Fortunately the next traveler on the way to design paradise has arrived, but more about that in my next column.