Changing the social
environment
Design thinking
We no longer vote for political parties, politicians,
programs and platforms. The ballot is cast for the social
environment we live in, directly connected with our
everyday lives. Instead of trying to shape it, we treat it as a
precondition for well-being.
In purely visual terms, the environment is the most visible
sign of our isolation from the surrounding world. The
nostalgia for the clean, tidy and green streets of the past is
therefore understandable. Now everything around us
symbolizes disarray, clutter, negligence and lack of
direction. We consider ourselves poor, lagging behind and
without any perspective because of the way we perceive
our environment. Crumbling facades, colorful squares of
building insulation put at random, overflowing rusty bins
(wherever there are any left), cigarette butts, plastic bags
flying around – each look brings disappointment, every
harmful action we take encourages degradation, every
gesture of indifference confirms our isolation from the
surroundings (and reaffirms the borders of our restricted
comfort zone). Even when something is new or
refurbished, we often see defects – not because we are
trying to find them, but because it is not people-oriented.
Design thinking is a method of problem solving, based on
observing people, discovering their recognized and
unrecognized needs and offering them new solutions to
meet those needs more effectively. It is a way of
understanding people and their desires from the very
beginning of the process of creating a product or a
service.
Design thinking’s aim is not to make our external
environment look nice; it aims at making it more
meaningful. Its aim is not to make bus stops more
beautiful, but make them more functional. It doesn`t start
from packaging, it originates from content.
Proximity Designs is a company in Myanmar that uses
design thinking to create products specifically targeted at
low-income farmers and their particular needs. Eighth
graders from the school at Columbia University are
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creating new designs for the perfect classroom – the way
they see it through their own eyes; the furniture company
Bernhardt then makes their design a reality.
Containers2Clinics make fully equipped medical stations
from used cargo containers in locations with limited access
to medical services. Transformatori and Hamalogica
provoke people from Bulgarian cities to create a more
interesting and engaging urban environment by getting
together and working on projects.
This is design that puts people at the forefront.
Experiences
We need design thinking to involve people in changing
their social environment. However, this is not our ultimate
goal.
As I mentioned before, even when we indicate economic
growth people don`t seem to feel happy – this has been
defined as the paradox of Bulgarian transition. This is not a
paradox, though, and the reason is obvious – we don`t
have enough meaningful experiences which would make
us feel happy. As consumers, the consolation of buying
online or in shopping malls is temporary – we often use it
to escape from the gloomy environment around us. Even if
we have money to spend, we spend it on things we easily
get bored with (or those which further isolate us from our
surroundings).
Our ultimate goal is to create
experiences that will make people feel
safer, happier, knowledgeable, valuable
and special.
Every one of us creates something to be used by other
people – customers, clients or employees. It should engage
people in a complete way. As the design company IDEO
puts it, this applies to everything – the way we educate
ourselves, the way we communicate, the way we treat
ourselves from illnesses, the way we buy and the way we
spend our free time. Every aspect of our lives can be
turned into an experience, into something special. And this
is not a novel idea.
Take a look at the photos you have from last year.
On most of them you are smiling, right? You are with a
colleague at work, or with friends on holiday;
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then there are shots from the parking lot at your office,
from the shopping mall, from the last party, with you and
your new sneakers, from kayaking on Veleka River close to
the Black Sea shore. We should aim at having experiences
not only as a result of our personal lives, but as the
ultimate goal of every company and organization – banks,
supermarkets, auto services, and hospitals. Meaningful and
satisfying experiences should be the result of using their
products and services, of their communication and
service. They should not be a lucky coincidence but a
sought-after result.
If we want to truly engage and impress people with what
we do, we need experiences with the power to strike a
chord with them. Even on their own, authentic
experiences bring significant added value to society.
Social innovation can also be turned into an experience.
There are already several examples of fashion designers
who make exclusive lines of clothing that support social
causes in an impressive way – for example, using skills and
materials from local communities in Ghana or restricting
the buyers to those who are blood donors.
If you fancy such things you can order a limited edition
woven laptop or smartphone sleeve created by Bulgarian
grandmothers or a T-shirt designed by Eastern European
prisoners. Social causes are plentiful and diverse, the ways
to present them in a special way even more so.
These experiences are not a trademark of developed
societies whose consumers are over-satisfied with
products and services and want something special.
They are very important for social contexts such as ours,
where people have very low expectations towards
products, services and their environment in general.
Almost everything we see or use is more or less the same
– or a tiny bit better, a little newer or with a slightly
improved quality. On the other hand, when we experience
something new and exciting we remember it for a long
time and we share it with everyone. The best thing about
creating memorable experiences is that they increase the
expectations of anyone who goes through them. And then
we start to look for them everywhere we go.
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