1. Brief introduction about States of change

States of Change is a non-profit organization striving to create the next generation of public innovation. It brings together innovation practitioners and experts. They work to enhance the quality of public innovation learning to improve lives for citizens across the world by involving themselves with various governments and public sector bodies. They focus majorly on sharing stories of public innovations, running learning programmes and initiating R&D projects.

States of Change was initiated by Nesta, and is now an independent nonprofit that works as a collective. It is brought to life by an international network of fellows, governments and delivery partners and the wider community of practice.

 

 

2. What are their efforts to solve problems? 

They are working to facilitate the capability and culture of governments to help them deal with the various complex problems they face and to support and build the community of public innovation by focusing on the following efforts

• inspire action by sharing stories and practical experiences from public innovators all across the globe.
• Support governments to build their innovation capabilities and cultures by developing practical learning programmes.
• Build the field of public innovation by creating collaborative R&D projects to explore and test what works.
• Some of their stories include articles like the relevance of correct and factful interpretation of data by governments, an article published by Penny Hagen.
• Their learning programmes focus on the key components that help to build innovation capacity and create culture change over time. Participants work on real-life projects throughout and focus not only on innovation methods but also on the behaviours and cultures that enable innovation in government – what they call an innovation craft.
• Their R&D projects include various projects like the development of impactful frameworks for building cultural changes in governments.
• They also provide a rich set of diverse tools, frameworks and innovation lab guides for further reference in helping facilitate public innovation.

 

 

3. How are they related to social design?

In the context of Public Innovation which seems to be the prime motive and the keyword associated with this enterprise, human welfare in society is the goal. The enterprise reaches out to the governments and public agencies across the globe to interact and teach them the design methodology such as the Double Diamond model. This is an enactment that directly impacts the design of society.

Their clients try to renovate the work process to tackle concurrent complex human issues and support the wholesome development of a user-centric socio-economic system.

The modern world is ordained with the governments elected by the public with potential hope of running the world with all goodness. Where stories like the one about Victorian Public Servants, Australia are taught by the State of Change organization with considering real-time projects and encouraging them to take action and evaluate the innovative changes in the projects.

 

 

4. What is Public Sector Innovation?

Public Sector Innovation refers to the innovation that reforms the governance, public service and communication, which all levels of governments and public corporations are taking part in. Public Sector Innovation affects a wider range of people than the other section of the world; therefore, it should be planned with a human-centred and holistic view. 

As the importance of human welfare has come to the fore worldwide, countries have adopted different approaches to bring innovation to the public sector and improve public service quality. For example, the State of Change teamed up with governments of the UK, Canada and Australia. It operates a learning program for public innovation drivers to affect policy-making, social design and administration processes. 

 

 

5. Practice-led and collaborative learning

The cooperation of States of Change with their partners is distributed among the governments of different countries. To build the culture of government, and thus provide the ability to solve the complex problems relevant to the governments, States of Change works hands-on with governments to strengthen their public innovation. In this way, governments can not only learn practically from public innovators across the world and their experiences but also take along a variety of insights that will enable them to solve problems that arise in the future more efficiently and more quickly. 

 

 

Written by Everbright Chakma, Yash Chauhan, Eun-Jeong Dan, Isidora Ceculovic

What is social design?
The focus of social design is the creation of new products or services that help to improve or solve social issues. Social design is about creating with the community instead of only for the community and it is therefore human-centred. 

What is Ashoka?
Ashoka is a big, worldwide organization with more than 3500 fellows in 94 different countries, which was founded by William Drayton in 1981. Ashoka envisions: “ a world where all citizens are powerful and contribute to change in positive ways.“ (Ashoka, About Us, para 3). They want to achieve this goal of a just world by improving the lives and communities all around the world through tackling social issues.

What is their social design approach to tackle issues?
Ashoka tries to improve the world through following three different approaches. 

• Social Entrepreneurship
  One approach is that they identify and support social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs are people with innovative ideas and solutions for challenges in various fields such as social, cultural and environmental changes. Hence, Ashoka is searching for creative, determined and visionary people which are keen to help the public without having any personal gain. Ashoka identifies social entrepreneurs which use methods local to them to solve certain problems in their community. They are pioneers in that field and have been supporting social entrepreneurs all over the world since the 1980s. 

• Empathy and Young Changemaking
  The second approach they follow is to foster empathy and change-making in young people. Empathy is getting much more important in today’s society. To have effective connections between people and in order to solve complex, societal issues, empathy is very much necessary. Therefore, Ashoka believes that young people need to learn about empathy early on. Changemaking is also a big topic, as the world changes rapidly and continuously. So, everyone needs to be a changemaker to make an impact and improve the world. Ashoka intends to foster this by working together with schools, universities and other educational facilities.
  
  
• Organizing for Changemaking
  This aspect of Ashoka’s business model has the goal to connect social entrepreneurs with business advisors, business schools and other social entrepreneurs to create more advanced opportunities and help people and organizations to reach their full potential.
  The future requires all of us to be leaders and initiators. Hence, The organizing for change-making follows the goal of sharing knowledge, creating opportunities and increasing social impact. This came as an answer to the changing of management models, ever-changing technologies and new individual empowerments. Ashoka’s truly believes that everyone is and can be a changemaker

Why Ashoka is a good example for social design
Everything that Ashoka does and achieves has a strong connection to social design. For every action they take the human stand in the centre. They consider issues that are deeply connected to society and help to change people’s lives for the better. By supporting social entrepreneurs who use methods that are anchored in the local area, they truly focus on local customs, etc. Hence, the impact these social enterprises or organizations have is great. Ashoka furthermore, not only supports social entrepreneurs but also fosters exchange to ensure that knowledge can be transferred and with that make way for even more impact. By helping young people with their education and by building their knowledge, they foster a sustainable network of people keen for change from the very beginning.

Authors: Julie Grosjean, Shirin Dörig, Kaho Sakuta, Sophie Furter

Introduction Social Design
Social design brings forth a new perspective into the design field and creates a new way of thinking about what impact design can have on society. Social Design aims to fulfill human needs, instead of traditionally focusing on market needs. Human needs are diverse since the environment and systems change. One can see how many levels human needs and Maslow’s Pyramid shows different levels; Self-actualisation, Esteem, Love-Belonging, Safety, Psychological needs. Social design can also aim to evoke different positive emotions for people for example: aim to evoke a feeling in people of relaxation, support, joy, fulfillment or feeling of safety. 

About Demos Helsinki
Demos Helsinki is a Finnish Organization that does consultative work for various sectors such as the government, organizations, and individual clients. Furthermore, they are a non-profit organization with the goal of sustainability at heart. Demos Helsinki’s team consists of experts from various backgrounds ranging from social sciences to economics, design, engineering, law, and natural sciences, this is to have a broader approach in dealing with the issues for their clients. They also do their own projects, research, and publish articles regarding sustainable and human wellbeing topics like how to create zero waste, social design, and many more.

What does this have to do with social design?
The reason for the existence of Demos Helsinki is motivated by the urge for societal transformation. Moreover, social design creates interventions that improve social needs in many fields. Social Design can arguably be integrated everywhere. For example, the various fields include:

1. Responsible production 
2. Sustainable 
3. Affordable 
4. Redesign government 
5. Immigration topics 
6. Social issues 
7. Health care systems 
8. Education 

Demos Helsinki tackles a diverse range of projects in the Sustainable approach to pharmaceuticals in the environment, A new strategy for the University of the Arts Helsinki, Carbon neutrality for businesses, and more. 

How they apply social design
After several trials and errors using various Business models on developing strategies and designing solutions, Demos Helsinki has come up with their model called the Demos Helsinki Impact Model. This model gives a clear structure on the goals they want to reach, the ways they apply, and their boundaries. Such boundaries are created so they don’t contradict their goals for sustainability and human wellbeing. They have leverages that aim for transformations:

• Governance approach → Transformative government
  This aims to achieve a new governance mindset that balances both change and stability, managing critical long-term transitions alongside more immediate needs.

• Expanding agency → Expanding agency in decarbonization
  To achieve decarbonization, there is a need for more driven citizens, states, corporations, and communities. As a result, this demands strengthening the agency.

• Physical and digital infrastructure → Regenerative infrastructure.
  The issue with the current physical and digital infrastructure is that it fails to fully address collective and individual needs. Demos Helsinki aims to make such infrastructure more accessible to the community to act upon people’s needs better in the system.

• Paradigm of economy → Emancipatory economy.
  The goal is to achieve an economy where the priorities are put on developing human capabilities, wellbeing, freedom, and sustainability.

With these, they put themselves to be responsible for the community to reimagine and create radical changes in the Society. 

Social Design Projects with Demos Helsinki 

Zero Waste Project
This project aims to help the world become more conscious about its waste. They mentioned the day-to-day and year-to-year waste is becoming more apparent on how wasteful is our lifestyle. Although this is not a new problem we still are living as if it wasn’t one. After WW2 the waste of the human race has increased due to mass production causing overproduction of our consumer goods. Furthermore, consumer goods aren’t being replaced after another one is worn out or broken but when something new comes to the market causing manufacturers to create things that aren’t long-lasting or repairable. Sadly, the problem about waste is in multiple fields of technology, society, and culture and Demos Helsinki is trying to tackle the problem from all angles. 

For this reason, Demos Helsinki has developed some solutions in the hope to make the future society less wasteful, for example, they recommend an Upcycling society, a Craftsman society, a Remake society, and The post ownership society. In addition, they hope that people will follow this advice for a less wasteful world. 

Discussion
Demos Helsinki as a think tank brings forth many ideas and solutions, due to its mission to improve the quality of life for people, which they show with their contribution they are making. It seems as though there are not enough ways to integrate social design into the system and that we still struggle to find new and better ways. Furthermore, we enter a realm of future situations, where one can not fully predict what is to come and which interventions one could design.

Questions that arose while researching:

• How will society integrate social design more? 
• make social issues more addressable and accessible?
• How far can design improve lifestyles and where is the limit? 
• How feasible are their goals and when? 
• How far does such an agency have an impact on changing the governance mindset and economy?

Authors: Ann Maria Mathew, Anya Low, Zirzareth Molina

What is Ideo.org?

IDEO.org is an international non-profit design and innovation consultancy that was founded out of the famous IDEO design consultancy. IDEO.org uses human centered design methods as well as the concept of design thinking to design for a more just and inclusive world. The organization emphasizes on the importance of resilience When it comes to Design Thinking, the consultancy’s Mother company IDEO has been fundamentally involved in establishing this method in design practice which explains why IDEO.org is capable of developing well situated design solutions to resolve social problems like poverty or oppression of marginalized groups. Their overarching goal is to establish design as a recognized practice in the social sector in order to improve lives. They achieve this by designing for impact through partnerships with organizations that provide innovative solutions. A key differentiator of this organization and other consultancies is that they keep reiterating and refining their solutions after they are already out. To present the organization further, we have summarized two projects that they have conducted and capture the organization’s mode of working. 

One-in-Two Girls is Adopting Contraception with Smart Start

The aim of this project was to introduce modern contraceptives among girls in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Tanzania to reduce unplanned pregnancies that often lead to larger social problems like economic imbalances, famine or ecological shortcomings. Women and girls in rural areas do not have access to sexual healthcare and the female body and therefore contraception is heavily stigmatized. The use of contraception is not yet widely accepted, as local social and cultural values ​​associate a woman’s worth with her ability to bear children. Fertility is highly valuable, as it is directly linked to marriage and a woman’s capability and their perceived responsibility to build a family. More often than not, conscious family planning would not be considered due to the stigma attached to contraception and the inaccessibility of healthcare infrastructure. 

IDEO.org conducted ethnographic user research on their target group to understand the needs of these women and empathize with their social and cultural system. They realized that the message should be conveyed in conjunction with planning for the livelihood, required financial resources and the families that they want.

Thus, IDEO decided to present a solution to these women in a communication language that they understood and that fit their circumstances. Which is comparing the value of a bag of teff (a common grain in Ethiopia) to raise a child in order to demonstrate the financial responsibilities attached to a family, using a clean and understandable visual system of infographics. And instead of waiting to be approached by their users, they realized that in order to successfully reach women, the services would need to go to her and were implemented in the users support systems. This approach has already reached around 70,000 young women in the 3 countries. 

What made the project so successful is that instead of assuming the cultural and social norms of the community IDEO.org performed in-depth user research to avoid colonial dynamics and putting western values ​​over the local culture. Instead of putting their design at the center, the users were placed at the heart of the project.

Designing for and with people.

Social Movement Around HIV Self Testing for Kenyan Men

Another project of IDEO was about developing a concept that would increase the uptake of HIV self-tests by men and their sexual partners. HIV is still a big problem in many African countries, especially among young men as contraception materials like condoms are still inaccessible and stigmatized. Even though nowadays, as people with HIV live a long and healthy life using medication, there is an overwhelming cultural reluctance to test in any way and the impact of the HIV crisis is detrimental to the development of these areas.

IDEO went about the problem employing a human-centered approach, speaking about sex and HIV to young men across all regions of Kenya. The participants were highly uncomfortable about those topics and they said that once a man results in being HIV-positive, he loses everything: his community, his identity, and his reputation. This is due to the fact that they only hear of people dying from HIV, but they never see people living openly with it, which is easily possible nowadays.

Testing is crucial to prevent the spread, but nobody wants to be seen near a center and if they’re infected, they won’t tell anyone. IDEO then realized that the culture emphasized the importance of privacy but that men would still share their results with very close and trusted friends. To situate a solution within this system, they developed a self-testing kit and started the movement “Niko Nao” ( “I’m with them” in Swahili) that is about supporting others regardless of the results. They successfully implemented the product and strengthened its efficacy by spreading the movement with a series of Facebook ads that raised awareness of the kits and ambassador programs.

The essence of IDEO

Since 2011, Ideo.org has done many projects under a human-centered perspective that have had an important impact on people’s lives from around the world.

Like in the two describe projects ‚Smart Start‘ and ‚Niko Nao‘, people from vulnerable communities have been reached through services and products that Ideo.org has designed thoroughly with and for the people. These projects had a positive impact because Ideo set people’s needs, worries and even cultural context in the center of all. At the same time, Ideo used the power of educating and inspiring women and men to empower themselves to believe that their lives can be better if they have more control over them despite any circumstance.  

Working alongside people, organizations and governments seems to be the key for Ideo’s success since it gives Ideo’s designers the whole view-perspective they need to tackle the right issues with the right tools. For Ideo, Social design is their way or tool to creating a more just and inclusive world , as their slogan says.

The authors:
Alexandra Infanger, Andri Zindel, Idoia Paucar Herrera, Noah Büchel, Grace Wu

Social Design is a tremendous field to dive into. An interesting way to do so was to discover the Creative Bureaucracy Festival. Struck by this unique combination of terms, we got curious about how bureaucracy – often negatively associated – can not only be creative but also celebrated as a festival. 

The Creative Bureaucracy Festival is an international forum for government innovation. It takes place every year and is located in Berlin, Germany and it is a part of the Falling Walls Foundation GmbH. Despite the pandemic, the festival of 2020 was not canceled but hosted online for the very first time. 

The festival celebrates fresh insights and pride in what the public sector can accomplish. Their slogan „good government matters“ is not only about drawing attention to the big social, ecological, and economic problems of our time but also to search for new ways of addressing those issues. Therefore, it hosts public speeches by more than 100 impressive and diverse bureaucrats and allies. The speeches vary in a multitude of themes such as Modernisation and Organisational Structure; Work and Employment; IT and Digitisation; Leadership and Management; Identity and Solidarity; Citizen Participation; Education; Sustainability; and more. They also nominate and reward three remarkable change-makers of the public sector. Thus the festival creates spaces for exchange and shows examples of bureaucracy at its best. 

The festival’s website provides well explained and described case studies and interviews about creative bureaucracy and raises three main questions:

1. What purposes and regulation regimes need to be achieved?
2. How can the inner life of the bureaucracy be enriched and how can the people and the organization give their best?
3. How can bureaucracies rethink and refresh their relationship to the public and business worlds?

To answer those questions, the movement recognizes creative people who are willing to contribute to society. However, they are limited due to obstacles and barriers in the bureaucracy to be creative and make a change. Therefore, they aim to find new ways to let their voice be heard, as their power is crucial in the wicked problems of the 21st century. They attempt to rethink the public administration, its flexibility, and dynamics towards better co-creation with individuals from the public. 

An important realization we made is that bureaucracy is not mainly about rules, but is more about people. Additionally, we learned that in areas where design and innovation are least expected from our point of view, are in fact highly needed, continuously evolving, and have a great impact. We have recognized that the Creative Bureaucracy Festival mainly focuses on the 4th order of design, as it is about designing systems. Therefore, systematic thinking is needed in order to understand and address the mentioned big and complex problems, which are so deeply embedded in our social life. This reveals how significant and diverse social design is.

 

Authors: Melanie Arnold, Lital Brushtein, Leandra Michel, Georgina Mrose

 

Before we get into the nitty-gritty we have to understand the relationship between social issues and design. In order to do so, we have to get into the topic of social design.

What is social design?

Social design is creating a product that assists, facilitates, and empowers culture. It is also viable, attainable and alluring. Economically and socially viable, environmentally attainable, which sequentially makes it alluring society. All in all, Social Design means designing for society with the help of society.

Why should social design be a north-star for business people?

Social design is looking at ways to affect entire communities or organizations.

We, humans, are very good at solving linear and technical problems, issues that are straightforward and that at most times have a black and white solution. On the other hand, social problem solving is something we are not yet fully proficient at, as it requires many steps of prototyping and adjusting it based on the feedback and reaction from the user. These feedbacks and responses are unique to each culture which makes it impossible to foresee and plan. Only by observing and understanding people can adjustments be made. 

A great example of how Social Design was achieved by understanding the community and society is Jeff Brown’s example. He is a grocer that transformed his grocery business by applying social design to the business model. He created social experiments in his grocery stores to try to affect society positively.

With that said, Social Design begins with an ultimate vision, not just with simple goals such as „I want a successful business.“ It needs to start with its primary purpose to make a difference and positively affect society so that people involved feel passionate enough to pivot around what is required to be done to get to where it is necessary.

So, who is THE Finish company: Demos Helsinki?

Demos Helsinki is a global think tank based in Helsinki. A think what? It might sound abstract at first, but a think tank it’s actually a very simple concept – Usually, it’s an institute that conducts research and advocacy on a wide range of issues such as social policy, economics, technology, etc.

Now, there are several such think tanks, but what distinguishes Demos Helsinki from others is the independence of the institution, which is 100% project-funded, without any political affiliation or external core funding. The organization has 50 people from different backgrounds spread over three units: Demos ry is a registered non-profit association, which owns Demos Helsinki oy and Demos Research Institute oy. Demos Helsinki oy specializes in consultancy for clients from the public and private sectors, NGOs and foundations. Demos Research Institute oy specializes in academic research.

What do they actually do?

The services of Demos Helsinki range from conducting research, consultancy services, to reimagining and experimenting with futures for their clients. Sounds like a task, doesn’t it?

Who’s hiring them?

They often work for curious governments, cities, companies, universities and other partners. In their own words, Demos Helsinki works for everyone who shares their mission of building a fair, sustainable and joyful next era.

Why does Demos Helsinki choose to work with social design?

Demos Helsinki believes that the future needs to be created from a multitude of perspectives, which is reflected in our people. Additionally, they are aware of how change can only happen if we all work together. 

This awareness that Demos Helsinki possesses becomes clear as day when you analyze their work and how it influences a broad range/group of society. 

And, when it comes to their work, we can see how Demos Helsinki tackles human issues and social change in projects such as carbon-neutral strategy, public services, Sustainability Goals, etc. An example is their carbon neutrality for businesses, which they intend to help companies in the marriage of their business strategies and climate goals. 

Moreover, they clearly express their positioning and mission by having quotes on social change highlighted throughout their website. Quotes such as: 

„Demos Helsinki has been built on the idea that change can only happen together.“

„Only together can we fight for a fair, sustainable and joyful next era.“

„We work with curious governments, cities, companies, universities, and other partners.”

What is their approach to change the world they wish to see?

When it comes to their approach, how they want to change the world they wish to see with their work. Demos Helsinki focus on the following four steps:

1. Expanding agency in decarbonization:
   With their work, Demos Helsinki wants to „achieve fast and radical decarbonization“ by different actors such as the states, citizens and corporations.
   
2. Transformative governance:
   They believe that citizens do not have enough trust in politics and public governance and want to change that by finding a “new governance mindset.”
3. Regenerative infrastructure:
   They are also convinced that the current physical and digital infrastructure is not used at their full potential because the users do not have enough influence over those structures.
   
   
4. Emancipatory economy:
   And finally, they are convinced that financial capital should no longer be the main goal in our economy, but we should focus on wellbeing and sustainability.
   

But let’s get to an actual example…

By utilizing the above-stated approaches Demos Helsinki have successfully worked on projects such as the Kesto project and the carbon neutrality strategies for businesses;

What is the KESTO project about?

The goal of this project is a localization of Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) in Finnish municipalities. It deals with how to bridge the everyday management work with the SDGs’ global sustainability framework. The result of the project is a replicable three leadership models, and they help strengthen the strategic leadership and cooperation process of municipalities when applied on a local level. The KESTO project suggests the importance of sustainability and the direction to Finnish.

What are the Carbon neutrality strategies for businesses about?

In this project Demos Helsinki created a four-ring model to help companies react to climate challenges and conduct business better. This is an example of their business model, as carbon-neutrality is at the core of all their operations.

• First ring(core): company’s carbon footprint
• Second ring: it facilitates the carbon neutrality of customers
• Third ring: it seeks impacts on the whole industry
• Fourth ring: idea of a carbon-neutral society

To come back to our first question of how a Finish company solved social issues with the help of design, Demos Helsinki tackles the problems of their clients with the help of research, a human-centred approach that involves a number of perspectives and a focus on sustainability. In their view, change can only happen if we stand together and fight for a fair, sustainable, and joyful future.

The Authors: Jeanne Streit, Marina Praxedes, Yeon Lee, Ayko Neil Kehl