Designers have the power to either stimulate or limit how people live their social life. The objects we design effect people and the spaces they live in, the objects form habits and create new ways of living, and they give users a chance to interact with people they don’t yet know and create new networks.
This social energy can be describes as social capital – as the collective value of the network between people and the will to invest in such a network.
The task of the workshop will be solutions, either physical objects, communicative agents or services that will stimulate the formation of and participation in social network in order to raise the level of social capital.
The workshop will deal with social capital in public urban spaces and construct design objects for intervention to
1) stimulate the network between individuals and
2) raise the level of social capital among people in public spaces
The workshop will be research based in the way that it includes a scientific grounding and involves the students in the creation of new evidence based knowledge through shared research and co-creation.
Workshop for the International Seminar Week, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany was held 4. to 8. May 2009, with students from MA Product Design and MA Visual Communication.
Approach // Methode The methods will be systematic research, anthropologic observation, and production of knowledge, construction of scenarios, video prototyping and mock-ups. The workshop will take place in groups of three or four, with knowledge sharing between the groups all working on connected but different parts of the city. The participants will work in trans-disciplinary teams from graphic and product design.
Goal // Zeal The Goal of the workshop is to provide the students with research-based education, gain experience on how to produce knowledge in a systematic way and to produce specific design solutions related to the specific theme of social capital.
Short literature list // Kurze Literaturliste Elizabeth Sanders and Uday Dandavate, ’Design for experiencing: New tools’ /// Tom Kelly, ’The Cross Pollinator’ in Ten Faces of Innovation ///Robert D. Putnam, ‘Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital’
Projects /// Projekten
1 Tanja, Bianca, Gyde, Te
2 Christian, Olga, Xi
3 Kristina, Laura, Carolin
4 Marcel, Sandra, Daniel
5 Bernd, Robert, Lena
6 Bruno, Antonia, Mariana
