Social design in public space
These days many designers focus on triggering participation in public space. This requires social design skills, being an insight in how people interact with things, how and why people participate. In this research project a group of Social Spaces researchers and external experts propose the following situation to students: ‘Imagine all public infrastructures break down, how could your new media application, intervention, service or object help people in self-organising part of their infrastructure (like water, public transport, garbage…) ‘. The outputs are several new media and design works in public space. Keywords are public space, Internet-of-Things, social design, participatory design, service design.
The first period of the project the students work with Lieven Menschaert, Rob van Kranenburg and Liesbeth Huybrechts. The process is guided by an international design network Social Spaces is involved with, called Design for Change. Plus, the methodological approach of the students is framed by our own UseWell project.
The second period Virginia Tassinari and Nik Baerten take over this process and continue with a new group of students, inspired by the prototypes generated in the first period.
