2 Work Plan

2.1 Work packages

DESIS 09 project has 5 working packages in 3 stages (see Fig): 1) Theoretical clarification and organizational preparation; 2) Joint workshops on case studies and design exercise; 3) DESIS-China Seminar and other two packages of 4) Coordination and management; 5) communication and dissemination.

2.2 DESIS 09 Workshops (WP2)

The workshops will be organized in parallel and coordinated by project team consisting of contact professors of participant institutions and other two as representatives of DESIS-China and DESIS-international.
As didactical course, the objectives of it are 1) to learn and exercise a design research method, Phenomenological Design, Ethnographical Research and Case studies; and 2) to investigate the experiences in Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability and grow the sensibilities on social, sustainable issues.
Credit: 3 (with participation certification authorized by DESIS-China and DESIS-International)
Working language: English and Chinese

Schedule: The workshop includes several steps (suggested):

Steps Days Input Deliveries Notes
1. Preparation, group building Group lists
2. Kick-off, input lectures 1 Ezio’s lecture, step by step LeNS
3. Initiative collection and selection 3 Light format of case study - initiative collection//ppt
- 2 cases study by light format/doc Local cases
4. Field research and visualization 3 Field research toolkit - field research materials/
- 1 cases visualization/ppt
5. Design Exercise 2 Toolkit Exercise results/ppt

The schedule of workshop is a working package lasting 1-2 weeks. It may be organized whenever before this October, depending on schedule of each partner.

1) Enrolment and group building.
The workshop calls for the graduates or senior students from design programmes, it was encouraged to have inter-disciplines groups. It’s recommended that each participating school has 5-10 groups with 3-4 students per group. (In case that the DESIS09 workshop can be integrated into an existing course, enrolment is not necessary.)
Input: enrolment call, toolkit-partA
Delivery_1: groups and members lists

2) Input lectures, toolkits and discussion,
Introduction of course by contact professors of each school, distance lecture by Ezio Manzini, Q&A, Discussion
Input: lectures, toolkits,

3) Case initiatives collection and selection
Each student group will be asked to collect 5-10 local initiatives; a quick presentation could be organized to discuss them and select 2 of them to be described with light format. One of them will be selected to do field research in next step.
Input: instruction on case initiatives collection, light format, criteria of selection as reference
D2.1 presentation of case initiatives/ppt
D2.2 description of two cases with light format/doc

4) Field research of selected case, analysis and visualization
To do field research for the selected case with given instruction and collect necessary and enough information of the case. To review light format of the case and to generate visualisation.
Input: field research instruction, visualization template
D3.1: Field research materials/doc, photo, video and others
D3.2: case visualization with V template/ppt

5) Design exercises
Design exercise of intervention for selected case based on results of field research. How to improve the services, experiences, systems in the viewpoint of design? The design intervention will be done based on the visualization of case.
Input:
D4.1: PPT of case visualization-based design intervention/ppt

2.3 About Toolkit

The idea of Toolkit is a set of prepared files that can enable each participant institution and their professors, students to organize the workshop by themselves. The toolkit includes 3 parts.

Part-1: Press
- Press release
- Enrolment call
Part-2: workshop
TB_case examples
- Selected casesA examples_light format
- Selected casesB example_short format
TB_template
- Light format of case study
- Visualization template
TB_field research
- Consent agreement
- Field research and interview guideline
- Picture checklist
Part-3: Reference
- Stepbystep instruction of workshop
- Project Proposal
- Reference package

DESIS 09: Social Innovation and Connection
— Case studies of Chinese sustainable lifestyles in network society and the design implications

List of Participants:

Participant No. Participant organisation name City

1 (Coordinator) Tongji University (Tongji) Shanghai

2 Tsinghua University (Tsinghua) Beijing

3 Hunan University (Hunan) Changsha

4 Jiangnan University (Jiangnan) Wuxi

5 Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art (GAFA) Guangzhou

6 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) Hong Kong

7(co-coordinator) Politecnico di Milano (Polimi) Milan

1 Summary

DESIS 09: Social Innovation and Connection is collaboration between Politecnico di Milano (Polimi) and founding members of DESIS-China, promoted and coordinated by DEISS-China under the umbrella of DESIS-International. It is a didactical and researching project for design-oriented phenomenon observation and exploration of design for Chinese social innovations. It focuses on 1) cases collection and analysis of grassroots social innovations by ethnographical research to investigate the emerging initiatives of Chinese urban sustainable lifestyles with particular intention of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and MCTs (Mobile Communication Technologies) and 2) design exercises to explore the design intervention on collaborative services of them.

Social innovation is a process of change where new ideas emerge from a variety of actors directly involved in the problem to be solved: final users, grass roots technicians and entrepreneurs, local institutions and civil society organizations.
It has been observed that, in Europe (EMUDE 2006) and world wide (CCSL 2007), these groups of innovative people, known as creative communities, are generating promising cases of social innovation towards sustainability. By solving some everyday life problems collaboratively, they propose and put in practice ways of being and living which have a positive social impact and a reduced environmental footprint. Therefore, to promote grassroots social innovations can be an available step towards sustainable and harmonious society.

Connection is a keyword abstracted from premier research on Chinese social innovation (CCSL-China 2007; Chita08 2008). It has been found those grassroots social innovations intentionally or unintentionally increase the social relations and fabric between participants. Given social infrastructure has been transformed profoundly during rapid urbanization in last decades, Re-connecting between people becomes very important step to increase social cohesion and social sustainability.
At the meaning time, connection is also implicated between the people, information and places with ICTs/MCTs. It is well known that information technologies enable radical change in the way of being, doing and producing, such as Second life, Linux, Amazon, Wikipedia, Creative common, Facebook and so on. Open source, P2P, Social network, Web 2.0 have been dramatically transforming our social infrastructure, economy and industry in the cyber world.
The convergence of innovations in social-tech system between everyday life and cyber life may generate great potential in radical change toward sustainability, in particular social sustainability and cohesion.

Joint workshops: The main part of project is joint workshops organized by founding members with the same theme, didactical toolkits and inputs toward different local context of each member. A toolkit will be prepared by Polimi and it is to facilitate participant institutions to manage the workshop independently. During the workshop, Prof. Ezio Manzini (Polimi) and probably other professors will give the distance lectures by Internet didactical platform of LeNS (the Learning Network on Sustainability).
The results of DESIS 09 will be involved into a case repository in SEP (Sustainable Everyday Life) and discussed in DESIS-Seminar in October. Academic publications by participants on related topics will be submitted and presented in DESIS-session of 2010 Cumulus Conference (Shanghai). The outcomes of the workshops will be further developed to be a part of DESIS exhibition in World Expo 2010.

The Objectives of this project are 1) to enrich the didactical and research activities of each partners in terms of content (Topics and methods) and partnership (national and international collaborative framework); 2) to collect cases on the subject of social innovation and sustainability in the different local contexts, as results, a cases repository of Chinese social innovation will be built as common knowledge of DESIS-China for further research; 3) to explore design experiences in visualization, intervention and promotion of social innovations; 4) to formulate a collaborative research framework between founding members of DESIS-China;

Impact: DESIS09 is the first collaborative project between 6 founding members of DESIS-China and a pilot research on Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability in China. It will also be a milestone of DESIS-International. During this process, It will strongly increase the impact of DESIS initiative as a research topic or a research network nationally and internationally in the field of design and civil society. Furthermore, It will profoundly reinforce the academic links between participating institutions. The research experiences in collaboration framework and on related research subjects will foster the further research or collaboration of and between participants of DESIS-China.

Project Team

Coordination team: Liu Xing(Tsinghua), Ji Tie(Hunan), Zhang Xian(Jiangnan), Chen Yongqun (Tongji), Feng Shu (GAFA), Benny (PolyU)
Scientific coordinator: Prof. Ezio Manzini
DESIS-China Coordinators: Lou Yongqi, Gong Miaosen

Advisory Committee:
Prof. Cai Jun, Director, Industrial Design department, Tsinghua University;
Prof. He Renke, Dean, School of Design, Hunan University;
Prof. Wu Siegfried Zhiqiang, Dean, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University;
Prof. Guo weimin, Dean, School of Design, Jiangnan University;
Prof. Tong Huiming, Dean, School of Design, GAFA;
Prof. Lorraine Justice, Dean, School of Design, the HongKong Polytechnic University;

3.5 Endorsement (DESIS-International):
Josephine Green, Social Innovation, Philips Design, The Netherlands
Geoff Mulgan, Young Foundation, UK (SIX)
Francois Jegou, Strategic Design Scenario, Belgium (SEP)
Nicola Morelli, School of Architecture and Design, Aalborg University, Danmark
Satu Miettinen, Product design department, Kuopio Academy of Design, Finland
Federico Casalegno, Mobile experience Lab, MIT, USA (DESIS-USA)
Carla Cipolla, Service design and Social Innovation Group, Federal university of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (DEIS-Brazil)
Anna Meroni, Dis-Indaco, Politecnico di Milano, Italy (DESIS-Italy)
Lara Penin, Schoolo of design strategies, Parsons The new school for Design, USA (DESIS-USA)
Andrea Mendoza, Universitá de Los Andes, Colombia (DESIS-Colombia)
Luigi Ferrara, Institute Without Boundaries, Canada