If we’re to design sustainable futures, we'll need to do it collectively. How can we foster collective
thinking and creativity? Unfortunately, we don’t know much about the spaces, places and materials
that can support and inspire collective creativity. It’s time we learned.

EVERYTHING IS SOCIAL NOW

Design has been growing in scope to embrace the larger social contexts
of products and services. In the past, design was focused mainly on
material concerns with the embodiment of design ideas in the form of
products, environments or communication systems. But now the con-
versation is about design for experience, design for service, and design
for transformation. Everyone wants to play in the social design spaces.
Designers, students and educators talk about design for social good
and design for social impact. People from the business community talk
about social innovation. The art community is exploring social practice.
Social practice can mean anything from art work about social issues, to
provocative art installations, to community-based, participatory practices.

Who will be involved in the emerging social design spaces? What roles
will designers play when everything is social? The answers to these ques-
tions will vary depending upon the mindsets of the people involved.

THREE DISTINCT MINDSETS ABOUT SOCIAL DESIGN

CAN BE SEEN IN PRACTICE

Social design spaces are proliferating rapidly and the landscape can be
confusing. But some patterns can be seen. Designers have (at least)
three mindsets to choose from:

1. DESIGN FOR PEOPLE: Here designers are considered to be the
experts in designing for others. The focus in practice is on the tradition-
al forms and formats of objects, spaces and systems.

2. DESIGN WITH PEOPLE: Here designers take on new roles. Because
they invite end-users and other stakeholders into the design process

as co-designers, designers become facilitators who help others to be
creative. An advantage to this approach is that the co-designers will take
pride in and ownership of the process, leading to sustainable results.

3. DESIGN FOR CHANGE: Here designers turn to the applied social
sciences and use probing, provoking, and other interventional means of
getting people to change their behavior. For example, this approach is
being explored in addressing healthcare situations such as obesity. But
some people are concerned with this approach since it has the potential
to infringe on personal rights.

In this short paper I'll talk mainly about design with people where
designers learn to facilitate the creativity of others. In order to design
with people we need to know more about how spaces, places and mate-
rials can contribute to creativity.

CONTEXTS OF CREATIVITY: A FRAMEWORK

There are many competing theories about what creativity is and how it
works. Contexts of Creativity [8] is not another theory about creativity.
Instead, it is a framework for organizing what we know about creativity
in order to help people facilitate the creativity of others. Figure 1 shows
the layers of context that contribute to individual creativity. It shows
that individual creativity is not only in the head (as once was thought)

but in the heart as well because creativity is affected by emotion. And
creativity takes place in the body. It is evoked through activity and
motion. [4] And the last layer shows that creativity is affected by the
environment and the materials that are present.

Collective creativity is shown in Figure 2 as a group of diverse individuals
connected in thought and action while working together on a very big
idea (i.e., the green splat). Collective creativity uses all of the contexts
of creativity (head, heart, body, places, spaces and materials) to support
and scaffold the shared space of thoughts and ideas. When collective
creativity is working well, everyone contributes simultaneously to the
big picture that comes from the shared mind and body space. The
co-construction of the big picture is essential for collective creativity
and this is where the importance of the materials comes into play. The
tools and materials must possess generative potential. [7] Communica-
tion design will soon undergo radical transformation as we learn more
about creating such materials and tools to support and provoke creativity.

BODY

HEART

HEAD

| PLACES, SPACES AND MATERIALS |

FIGURE 1. Individual creativity

CO-CREATION

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