Hi David,
Thank you for your message.
It is true some people like yourself have been involved in social design from a variety of perspectives within the Art and Design tradition (looking at your list - not all of what you have done has been within that tradition). It is a small number compared to social design more generally.
I suggest it is self- evident that by far the most social design activity has been done outside Art and Design fields or the wider range of design fields taught in academia. This is an observation on the evidence not a pre- judging.
A list of typical modern fields of practitioners doing social design work, just in the area of community development, is at http://anandhakumaran.blogspot.com.au/2009/04/history-of-community-development.html
Another broad field with many of subfields is 3rd world rural redevelopment. Another area is anti-corruption. Another is crime prevention. Another is health.... ... Going back historically there is the history of religion-based 'social design' back to Owen and before. Prior to that one could argue that unions and before that guilds undertook forms of social design. Before that ... I suggest you can go back to beginning of records in all civilisations to find examples of social design. My favourite example is pirates - specifically that of Black Bart and his crew - who invented insurance as a social design. I remember a tremendous lecture about it by Richard Sanders( 'If a Pirate I must be') at the Institute of Cultural Research.
The point I'm suggesting is that it is useful for teaching and researching social design from the perspective of Design Schools is to be aware that there are already a lot of people currently and successfully working in the social design area who are not associated with Design, and that there is a lot of work that has been already done and tested and researched over hundreds of years.
Regards,
Terry
==
Dr Terence Love
FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI, MAISA
Director
Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
Perth, Western Australia
[log in to unmask]
www.designoutcrime.org
+61 (0)4 3497 5848
==
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Sless
Sent: Friday, 10 February 2017 1:40 PM
To: phd-design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: About Social Design
Terry,
Your assumptions about people from the Art and Design field are wrong at least in my case and several others I know from that tradition who have taken an interest in social design. I began my interest in Social Design through agricultural development work, town planning, architecture, public information campaigns, museum and exhibition design, systems thinking and cybernetics, political science, complexity theory participatory design etc. I could go on but I’m not trying to blow my own trumpet. Merely to illustrate the point.
Try not to make false assumptions about an entire tradition within the larger design traditions. It’s not helpful. And, as I’ve said before, it tells us more about your prejudices than the subject at hand.
David
blog: http://communication.org.au/blo <http://communication.org.au/blo>g/
web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/>
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute • • helping people communicate with people •
Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (03) 9005 5903
Skype: davidsless
60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068
> On 10 Feb 2017, at 3:47 pm, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dear Azza, David, Anne-Marie and others,
>
> What follows may seem harsh, but its perhaps a useful reality that
> might improve social design if Social Design is to be taught and
> learned in universities and departments of design, or considered to be
> an aspect of Design Research
>
> It is perhaps helpful to realise that designers in the Art and Design fields are small, recent, and relatively inexperienced group of edge players in a worldwide, wide-ranging historically long -stablished tradition of social design (though often given other names).
>
> Just to place the role of the (since the 1960s) Art and Design
> involvement in social design
>
> 1. The real scope of existing activities of 'social design' practice worldwide is enormously bigger than the 'social design' of the Art and Design fields.
>
> 2. The main drivers of, the experts in, and the histories of 'social design' exist in much larger number outside the Art and Design fields.
>
> 3. What designers from the Art and Design traditions call 'Social Design' has been going on for a *much* longer time than it is found in the Art and Design 'designer' literature.
>
> 4. The early literature on Social Design is hard to find. You have to know where to look and more importantly 'how to look' - although some of this is the kind of common sense that is very uncommon when people are fixed in a discipline.
>
> I have a lot of respect for Victor Papanek after working with him for a week or so in Australia in the early 1990s. I see his work as introducing into Art and Design the possibility of looking through a small window into a huge historically already well-established tradition of practice not otherwise either seen or usually undertaken by those professionally involved as designers in the Art and Design fields.
>
> The evidence of the established traditions of social design practices in all its other guises is often hard to find via a quick search. Sometimes the evidence is in plain sight but hard to see. For example Jane Jacobs and her work built on an already long established tradition of long history of social design in several different traditions - the most obvious one being community development with its several hundred year old record of practice. Another is religious practice.
>
> The literatures on these 'social design' histories and practices are often hard to obtain. In many cases, they are out of print or grey literature. Predominately, the evidence is a matter of oral tradition and memory - because people undertaking such social designs were too busy and too much under pressure relieving social problems to record - and in that work there is little money or need to record things. In some cases, records of such work has been censored from the public record.
>
> Below is an example of the kind of background in which social design was undertaken not so long ago in the UK. In many parts of the UK at present similar work is going on in similar conditions.
>
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2776842/Shocking-photos-captur
> e-real-squalor-Britain-s-slums-poverty-meant-afford-Playstation.html
>
> Regards,
> Terry
>
> ==
> Dr Terence Love
> FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI, MAISA
> Director
> Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
> Perth, Western Australia
> [log in to unmask]
> www.designoutcrime.org
> +61 (0)4 3497 5848
> ==
> ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Sless
> Sent: Friday, 10 February 2017 10:33 AM
> To: phd-design <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: About Social Design
>
> Hi Anne-Marrie,
>
> I just read your paper cited below. It’s an excellent piece. Well done.
>
> It closely mirrors some of our own approaches to design in the field of information design. Though obviously you are working in a much more complex context. But it struck me that those who have been following the ‘Are politicians designers’ thread would glean some very valuable insights from your paper.
>
> Thanks for sharing it.
>
> David
> --
>
>
>
>
> blog: http://communication.org.au/blo
> <http://communication.org.au/blo>g/
> web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/>
>
> Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
> CEO • Communication Research Institute • • helping people communicate
> with people •
>
> Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
> Phone: +61 (03) 9005 5903
> Skype: davidsless
>
> 60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068
>
>> On 10 Feb 2017, at 6:50 am, Anne-Marie Willis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Azza and others discussing this topic,
>> Eman Elbana and I struggled also with the vagueness of 'social design' but then became less concerned with labels for particular kinds of design as we tried, in a recent paper, to make sense of the vast and complex problems that such practices seek to engage. You may be interested in it Design Philosophy Papers: Socially engaged design: a critical discussion with reference to an Egyptian Village http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/qtcjt4N73uCS3TTQT8NU/full .
>> best wishes,
>> Anne-Marie Willis
>>
>>
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