CONTENT

__INTRODUCTION Redening design __1 / SOCIETY The beginning of a new millennium - reverse case reality from market to users __2 / SOCIAL INNOVATION A new unity of product design and democraLzaLon __3 / CASE STUDIES __a / Model Eco-friendly Hamlet __b / Skye & Localsh Food Link __4 / DESIGNERS ROLE design turns into processes and ownership into access __5 / LIVING LABS __a / Save energy a be\er world through energy eciency scope __b / Life 2.0 - geographical posiLoning services to support independent living and social interacLon of elderly people scope __CONCLUSION The stone example

__INTRODUCTION Redening design What is design? Un.l a few decades ago, design was strictly connected to product design and it was perceived only as a ma;er of func.onality, dressed up in appealing aesthe.cs, but we now know that there is so much more to it. The concept of design has evolved: the D word has spread throughout our daily lives in such an impressive way that we can nd it everywhere, almost as an added value, a magic word that suddenly makes everything more precious. And again, we constantly need to re-think the deni.on of design. The society we live in is a very complex system and we are now facing the biggest change needed since the industrial revolu.on: our ways of produc.on and consump.on are not sustainable anymore and our models are proving to be more and more weak. We need to re- think our systems, and this means a lot of work in each and every eld of our society. Design should always aim to recognise what is needed in the society and be able to come up with the best solu.on to solve a certain problem. In this sense, we can say that design is a context-based discipline, made by design professionals, able to recognize even the weakest signals of problems that have not been solved yet. Although, these problems are not only related to ma;er: we are not only talking about new products for new tasks. Some.mes, what we need to focus on are problems merely related to managing resources, or connec.ng people who need something with people who can get that job done. Well, in this sense, we can also say that design is more of an approach, an aLtude towards life, therefore reaching the concept of design thinking. __1 / SOCIETY The beginning of a new millennium - reverse case reality from market to users Thanks to the web, millions of people today can have their voices heard, refusing to be merely an audience on the sidelines, but contributors of shared ideas. Informa.on is everywhere around us, through blogs, videos, websites, links that are some.mes quite confusing since all this informa.on is transmi;ed simultaneously but ideas come to life when they are being shared. The web gets really interes.ng when people pool their ideas and start being crea.ve, because new ideas usually come through mul.ple speeches and now the web has become a virtual place of mass conversa.ons. When we compare the twen.eth century, when mass produc.on was for mass consump.on (such as factories, the produc.on of televisions, fridges, etc.) to the twenty-rst century where mass par.cipa.on is for mass innova.on, we see a denite shiP. This is interes.ngly enough a big step towards a society where more ideas are being shared by more people than ever before. For a long .me, co-opera.ons have been opera.ng on the basis of an organiza.onal hierarchy, where no voluntarily eort is made to do something, unless there is a direct and immediate reward, which generally results in a passive behaviour un.l instructed by bosses on how and what something is to be done. People are all generally taught that they cannot organize themselves, unless there is an organiza.on in charge of everything that goes on. Up un.l now, dierent systems have always operated on the one-way system of pushing products, services and the organiza.on of people and their interac.ons. On the other hand, organiza.onal pa;erns do not necessarily have to come from the top but may be found in the nucleus of these communi.es, where people are freely sharing their ideas amongst themselves and improving upon these new concepts. It is the process between the users who value co-crea.on and strongly enforce it through interac.ons and a common language. We can see dierent ac.vi.es being examples of mass par.cipa.on rather than mass consumerism.

Users are striving to be involved in the crea.on processes, not accep.ng to be at the bo;om of the produc.on chain and passive recipients of what designers and companies see t for their needs. This crea.vity comes from the disposi.on of thought and behaviour that enables us to imagine and put into prac.ce solu.ons. The solu%ons we are talking about are services born from the convergence of interests between groups of people that rearrange resources and rela.ons. This occurs through the art of making do, and create value and benet to improve the environmental condi.ons. These people, although ordinary, are able to go beyond the obviousness of dominant ideas about how problems are solved. At the same .me they are oPen afraid of changes since co-opera.ons and poli.cians established apparently imperturbable social models and solu.ons. That is why this tendency is manifested through micro-transforma.ons, where fewer environmental resources are consumed. We call these groups of people crea%ve communi%es. The way they operate is strongly inuenced by the environment they live in, including na.onality, tradi.on, current situa.on, level of development, local economy and environmental resources. This is why we can nd many examples dealing with dierent interven.on areas and responding to specic needs, which can rarely be reproduced in new contexts without an adapta.on process. But some.mes the main features of a local ini.a.ve can inspire another community: enabling solu.ons are the main catalysts for social innova.on, and crea.ve communi.es translate them into services designed to enhance the power of collec.vity. __2 / SOCIAL INNOVATION A new unity of product design and democraLzaLon The central meaning of innova%on relates to renewal or improvement, with novelty being a consequence of this improvement. For an improvement to take place it is necessary for people to change the way they make decisions, or make choices outside of their norm. 1 Democra.zing innova.on refers to the possibility of freely making comments, complaints, remarks about a certain technology and its plaWorm that may in turn immediately enhance the way the products and their use are developed. Ordinary people make experiments and try to improve something they are not sa.sed about in the technology and create new ways of u.lizing and developing them into something else. The democra.za.on of innova.on refers to a new unity with the so-called lead users where a certain plaWorm is created, serving as a base for user iden.ca.on and inclusion in the itera.ve process, so that markets and new technologies are simultaneously constructed within this immediate interac.on with each other. People have access to new informa.on and communica.on technologies and this process is leading to a new social intelligence. They use their capabili.es to invent new ways of living and doing, and design has to support this innova.on and focus it on sustainable direc.ons. __3 / CASE STUDIES __a / Model Eco-friendly Hamlet In Zawoja Przyslop, Poland, the Associa.on for Sustainable Development designed the Model Eco-friendly Hamlet project: to prevent its closure, the Number 4 Elementary School has been expanded into a tourist informa.on and environmental educa.on centre.

1 Deni'on from Wikipedia (the open source free encyclopedia)

The project makes available a variety of resources such as products by local craPspeople, natural riches, cultural monuments, the Amber Trail route and the monastery wind power sta.on. Products are easily accessible in the Sklepik pod Magurka shop, and the tourists walking the Amber Trail can spend the night in one of the agro-tourist hostels and buy souvenirs from one of the ecological shops. The Associa.on for Sustainable development, which has its headquarters in the school, comprises people who most ac.vely want to solve the problems in their area, and work to improve the quality of life while respec.ng the local cultural and natural heritage. The aim is to create a modern hamlet using renewable energy, where residents save water and energy and recycle their garbage while bearing in mind their tradi.ons. Based on pre- exis.ng ecological investments, a plan was developed to introduce innova.on to individual householders by iden.fying the most forward-thinking ones and encouraging them to change the hea.ng system of their homes. Once they see the economic advantages of the change, the idea is that the pioneering house-owners inspire others to do the same. Thanks to this ini.a.ve, people get socially engaged, local residents have ac.vi.es, the school is maintained, the environment is defended and the cost of the ecological installa.ons is recouped over .me. This kind of project has also inspired many other areas in Europe, but in the underdeveloped countries from Asia and Africa, the environmental issue is less understood and taken into account because of dierent priori.es. In the Global South crea.ve communi.es mainly try to reduce poverty encouraging local produc.on, and do not have many concerns about sustainability, even if the environmental impact is smaller. Ini.a.ves aimed at encouraging local produc.on, especially food, are spreading among developed countries since our rela.onship with food has changed during the last years. Consumers are be;er informed about nutri.on and more aware of the environmental and societal impacts of everything they buy, plus food prices are soaring and the global food supply chain, aPer epidemics, proved to be vulnerable. __b / Skye & Localsh Food Link In Skye, Scotland, the Localsh Food Link helps increasing local food produc.on by distribu.ng products among the local community: a shared van links the network and distributes local products all over the island. Skye & Localsh Food Link is a voluntary associa.on of local producers, caterers, retailers and consumers with an interest in promo.ng local food. Food distribu.on was made dicult by the large distances between producers, retailers and consumers, decreasing the availability of local produc.on on the island. To improve this situa.on the associa.on was ini.ated on voluntary basis and aPer the success, Food link Skye and Localsh were incorporated in a no-prot company to manage the food link van. Nowadays the group comprises about 15 producers and 40 customers, who pay the price of what they order and a 10% levy is paid by the producer to the company. The aim of these case studies is improving our lives with as less waste of energy and materials as possible, and what is noteworthy is how these ini.a.ves come from quick problem solving by people who respond to their needs without many concerns about ins.tu.ons. Human behaviour is regulated by culture and habits, and corpora.ons and poli.cians play an important role in aec.ng peoples behaviour, giving rise to norms, customs, tradi.on, rules and laws. Some of them can be explicit, like administra.ve guidance, some of them can be implicit, like moral and social norms. The common feature is that they regulate how people relate to each other by making some ac.ons more predictable then others, just like the crea.ve communi.es do through their services. It does not mean that crea.ve communi.es are rejec.ng the promo.on of communist morals of ins.tu.ons, but they are reviving the old ideas from the 1960s based on peer to peer working, community innova.on and folk crea.vity.

__4 / DESIGNERS ROLE design turns into processes and ownership into access Un.l now, design has always been associated with tangible products, which are, by their nature subjected to a life cycle. Designers have been doing their job over the years, pushed by many dierent mo.va.ons: improve everyday life, educate people, protest, save the environment, trend-seLng, etc. Each one of these mo.va.ons was the reec.on of an era, with its social, poli.cal and economic features. What makes designers dierent from other professionals is their eort in fullling needs which have not yet been expressed: people have the answers, designers help them in making it clear. So we could say that, through their products, they have given voice to the society. What will become of them if the same society they helped to express, gains the skills to independently come up with solu.ons? During the last decade many things have changed: the products of design turned into processes and ownership into access. The loss of the illusion of control led society to realize how weak mass produc.on is in managing the complexity of the world we live in. Enabling tools, such as technology and social plaWorms, have supported this dematerializa.on and showed a second chance, never considered before: problem solving in a do it yourself way and with benets for the environment. Society has found the answer by itself: products used to have a life cycle, now it is .me to claim for something able to evolve. If given the opportunity, ordinary people can do something extraordinary. While designers have been doing this as a job, dealing with big enterprises and receiving economic feedback, people who are now feeling an ac.ve part in a social network nd their mo.va.ons in well being and recogni.on. Besides this happy to do aLtude, crea.ve communi.es are providing a future scenario where design skills are no longer coming from professional training. Common sense and necessity are the main catalysts in designing ecient collabora.ve systems, in which the simpler solu.on is oPen the most sa.sfying. Designer's role has to be redened, moving from the mass produc.on of products to a human-centered approach, based on experience and collabora.on. In service design it is no longer objects that need to be designed, but human rela.ons and behaviours. This shiPing leads to a more treacherous territory, since the technical skills that put designers on the safe side, with a well dened job prole, are no longer enough to respond to people needs. Focusing on people, designers can work at dierent levels to design interac.ons and experiences, making some behaviours more predictable than others. To deeply understand people needs, to foster empathy, to arrange new collabora.ons between stakeholders, to generate visions and work within communi.es are just some of the new skills associated with this brand new job prole. Many reliable sources would not properly refer to this ac.vity as new, but as a media.on between many actors belonging to dierent elds, from psychology to economics. Despite this, what is really peculiar in service design is the approach with the users, who are no longer passive consumers, but ac.ve co- designers. The new role of design is to empathize with them and s.mulate social intelligence, in order to create a new consciousness that fosters a future scenario, based on collabora.on and sharing. Society itself is claiming for this vision, designers are trying to make it tangible.

__5 / LIVING LABS __a / Save energy a be\er world through energy eciency scope Save energy aims to transform the energy consump.on behaviour of public buildings users focusing on civil servants, ci.zens and policymakers by applying exis.ng ICT-based solu.ons, specically an energy management system that will provide real-.me informa.on about consump.on in a user-friendly way, thereby empowering ci.zens to take decisions that lead to energy savings. The project is supported by the ICT for Sustainable Growth Unit, with funds from the ICT-PSP part of the compe..veness and innova.on program. The project brings together 15 partners, including public authori.es, public agencies, universi.es, research ins.tutes, SMEs and corpora.ons, to implement ve energy eciency pilots, located in Helsinki (public schools), Lisbon (city technical services), Leiden (city administra.ve services), Lule (cultural services) and Manchester (Town Hall). The public authori.es, the owners of the pilots, are commi;ed to implemen.ng the energy eciency results in other buildings and to pro-ac.vely being involved in a European-wide communica.on strategy. The building energy management system makes available consump.on measurements about hea.ng, air condi.oning, ven.la.on, ligh.ng and other equipment, to be processed and compared with simula.ons and best prac.ce indicators. This informa.on is provided in real .me, directly to the consumers. Each pilot is equipped with a technical plaWorm comprising sensors, smart meters and actuators plugged to the electrical equipment. The data are gathered locally and integrated in a remote plaWorm that aggregates, analyses and makes this informa.on available on the Web, on xed displays and on mobile devices such as mobile phones. The pilots implementa.on follows the Living Lab methodology at local level and at the cross- border interac.on level. Save energy users are totally engaged in the co-crea.on of new processes and behaviours, for example in a school where young students, teachers, sta and parents are fully involved and emo.onally engaged with the project. This systemic approach involves all the relevant stakeholders from the very beginning of the idea and concept, crea.ng the mo.va.on to share, discuss their own experiences and expecta.ons. The Save energy dissemina.on strategies aggregate Web 2.0 tools, services and communi.es to foster collabora.on and knowledge sharing among all stakeholders. The informa.on and the interac.on occur in both the public and the private spheres. The tools include several applica.ons for messaging and collabora.on among the inner core of the stakeholders, with emphasis on the consor.um partners. The Save energy Web 2.0 services syndicate data to and from the building management systems and operate as a broker of informa.on for the real-.me informa.on systems and the serious game. The Save energy Web 2.0 communi.es provide a social networking plaWorm to build online communi.es of prac.ce where users can share or par.cipate in the loca.ons, interests and ac.vi.es of other users using Living Lab methodologies. These communi.es are closely linked with best of the breed Web 2.0 tools to share blogging and micro-blogging posts, podcasts, documents, videos, bookmarks, presenta.ons and photos. The Save energy portal aggregates informa.on from all the other components through widgets, links, add-ons and the embedding of applica.ons or mul.media resources. __b / Life 2.0 - geographical posiLoning services to support independent living and social interacLon of elderly people scope The Life 2.0 project aims at genera.ng new opportuni.es for social interac.ons by oering new services for elderly people, based on the use of tracking systems and social network applica.ons. The objec.ve of the project is to build product-service solu.ons that increase the opportuni.es for:

 social contacts between elderly people in their local area, acquiring knowledge about people living in the areas and events occurring close by geLng knowledge about services and assistance available in their area oering their residual capabili.es and skills to friends, family and other people of any age, living in their area. Tracking systems are going to provide on-.me localized informa.on about those opportuni.es. The services based on those systems will increase elderly peoples control and social contact within their living area, thereby increasing physical and social ac.vity in elderly peoples life, reducing the social distance between elderly people and their neighbours and reducing their feeling of loneliness and isola.on. Adequate social network applica.ons will support social interac.on at the local level, thus crea.ng an addi.onal level of informa.on about the life in the neighbourhood, or a sort of augmented neighbourhood. The proposed solu.ons will integrate homecare ac.vi.es, social ac.vi.es, family links and neighbourhood life, in an ecosystem that will support independent life for elderly people. The consor.um will collaborate with elderly people and local senior services. The project ac.vi.es will consist of series of solu.ons that will be proposed to users, tested and implemented with their collabora.on. This pilot will take place in 4 living labs located in Denmark, Finland, Italy and Spain. The ac.vi.es of the living labs will include workshops involving the consor.um and periodical evalua.on of the pilots involving elderly people associa.ons, experts, companies and researchers aiming towards economically feasible and socially desirable solu.ons. Business cases will be developed, in order to generate products and services that should be available on the market in a period of 2-3 years. The pilot development will lead to solu.ons for new services and infrastructures that public authori.es will be able to develop in collabora.on with external business partners. TECHNICAL APPROACH Several services are available, that combine tracking systems with online geographical maps. The access of those services to elderly people is s.ll complicated though, because of their lack of familiarity with several technologies involved in the new services. Life 2.0 aims to address and propose new solu.ons that adequately integrate exis.ng technologies and products with new understandable and usable services and technologies in order to increase elderly peoples capability to interact with their social surroundings. The services considered in this project aim at making the network of social interac.ons more visible to elderly people, by tracking and loca.ng people that are relevant to them (rela.ves, friends, caregivers) and giving them the chance to contact them with a phone call, a text message or in person. Life 2.0 will create an open plaWorm that will support services based on the connec.on of dierent technological solu.ons, including: 1. Portable tracking devices 2. Visualiza.on applica.ons 3. Social network applica.ons The Life 2.0 plaWorm will support bundles of services ranging from basic geographical posi.oning systems to socially networked services and to local market-based services.

CONCLUSION people have the need to writethey nd a stone with which to write and the designer tries to understand the mo%va%ons and func%on which this tools needs to fulllthen comes the design of a pen(stone example) Thirty years ago, the design process considered giving a shape, a func.on and an aesthe.c quality to a product. Designers have been regarded as a key actor in the tradi.onal legacy of execu.ng design only in studios or in special places. We are now living in an era where everybody designs and ordinary people propose solu.ons. Normal everyday people are solving problems, thinking provoca.vely, reformula.ng solu.ons and applying techniques of crea.ve thinking where the common rela.onships are in contrast to the standard and conformist pa;erns. These so called professionals of everyday are sharing their visions and looking at problems from dierent perspec.ves. The concept of well-being is opposed to the mass consump.on which the industrial society has imposed throughout the world. Users of products and/or services have stopped seeing themselves as pure consumers and have discovered that they are able to determine their own lives. As Clary Shirky said: We have lived in this world where liFle things are done for love and big things for money. Suddenly big things can be done for love. 2 Given this theory, personal ini.a.ves and collabora.on can s.ll create something big among a li;le community. Designers s.ll play their role of mediators between two res the users and manufacturers. Their role is to sell a product that fullls its func.on and to make it visually pleasing to the eye of a customer, who buys it for that func.on or for the pure symbolism that design presents. On the other hand, their primary func.on is to work in crea.ng a be;er quality of life for users. These facts put the designer in a posi.on between two dierent target groups and so ques.oning the future role of the designers. Our concern (threat) about this process is which role designers are going to have among people who strive for be;er ways of living, and increasingly seek to nd the solu.on by themselves. Living labs are examples of how the designers are doing their job in this new social perspec.ve and collabora.ng with users in order to achieve their goals in fullling their needs and at the same .me providing solu.ons in concrete contexts. The designer has a social role, as an actor who is part of the community he is designing for and developing design strategies capable of transmiLng promising proposals into concrete solu.ons, generated at a social level. This role includes a sensi.vity and skill in organizing this community, building scenarios and developing systems of products, services and informa.on to increase their eciency and accessibility.

2 Shirky, C. (2010) Cogni&ve Surplus: Crea&vity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Penguin Press HC, London

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