Technology and Interaction in the Realm of Social Design: Role, Influence and Value
Year: 2014
Editor: Erik Bohemia, Arthur Eger, Wouter Eggink, Ahmed Kovacevic, Brian Parkinson, Wessel Wits
Author:
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Faculty of Architecture, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Section: Using Technology in Teaching
Page(s): 080-086
ISBN: 978-1-904670-56-8
Abstract
Social design is the most commonly used term to identify an emergent design area that applies its process, thinking, skills and tools to answer complex social problems. Its practices, methods and outputs are unconventional and probably result today in new ways of working with and using technology. However, there is no tool or way in the design community capable of recognising the actual influence, role and value of technology and interaction, partly due to a generalized lack of research in this domain. So the challenge is to gain deeper understanding on how and why technologies are being used in social design projects. Are they assets or obstacles? Do they slow or speed up processes? Are they means or solutions? How they affect and are affected by this new social context in design? In this paper we analyse several social design projects identifying ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ technology and interaction appear or determine these projects. Moreover, we aim to build a pre-model analysis capable of recognising the influence and value of technology in the social design realm.
Keywords: Social Design, Technology, Interaction, Social Design Projects