The Awakening Role of Design in Social Innovation
Authors: Kang Zhaoyi , Liu Yijun , Liu Mengfei 
Published: November 2024

Amidst societal transformations including economic, political, social, cultural, and ecological realms, social innovation has emerged as a burgeoning field of research and practice. Influenced by societal demands, there has been a paradigm shift in design methodologies and objectives. Diverging from conventional process-oriented design approaches, this paper advocates for an outcome-oriented perspective. It comprehensively explores how design can catalyze "awakening" in social innovation through its intervention at the levels of objects, actions, and outcomes. By emphasizing this shift, the paper offers insights into how design can effectively engage with and contribute to social innovation endeavors.This paper conducts a literature review to analyze the current status and characteristics of social innovation and social innovation design. 1) Social Innovation: Social innovation projects possess four fundamental attributes: innovativeness, practicality, societal participation, and locality. They generally follow six developmental steps: problem identification, action theme determination, involvement of relevant stakeholders and institutions, solution formulation and implementation, retrospective analysis (forming event prototypes), and promotion and diffusion (becoming an incubator). 2) Social Innovation Design: Social innovation design aims for societal transformation, driven by social change, engaging in collaborative design activities. It solely aims at catalyzing positive social change, differing from traditional design in research methods, design objects, and output outcomes. 3) Design intervention in social innovation is not only a necessity for the development of social innovation but also an inevitable consequence of the evolution of design discipline. Existing design tools have accumulated a wealth of mature innovation methods and have been widely applied in fields such as product design, interaction design, and service design. However, due to the lack of a comprehensive discipline system in social innovation design, the role of design in social innovation often remains underutilized. Design requires a more proactive approach to address societal changes.This paper comprehensively discusses how design can play a constructive role in various stages of social innovation through specific case analyses of six social innovation projects including the Di Gua Community and Otera Oyatsu Club. Using deductive reasoning, the paper analyzes and summarizes the perspectives and methods of design intervention in social innovation, concluding that design can "awaken" social innovation in terms of its objects, actions, and outcomes—awakening social consciousness among individuals and facilitating communication between individuals or organizations; stimulating participants' innovative thinking and actively engaging them in social innovation activities, becoming project drivers; and transforming participants into a group with design thinking, some of whom may evolve into future initiators of social innovation, forming a virtuous cycle. This design approach is defined as "social awakening design," aiming to provide researchers with a conceptual framework for design intervention in social innovation and encouraging rational design involvement in social innovation projects.