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This article addresses the role of social innovation in ageing communities. Two cases are considered, namely the Life 2.0 project that focuses on generating information and communication technology services for ageing individuals and groups across Europe, while the second case is a project that was conducted with the BoAi aged care facility in China in which food services were (re)designed through insights stemming from the community. A comparative analysis will investigate how ageing communities collaboratively work with stakeholders, including designers and other professionals, to develop new services with the elderly. The comparative analysis presents insights into the role of ageing communities in service design processes and their roles as co-creators in new futures.

This paper addresses the social phenomenon of ageing and emphasizes the importance of past experiences of ageing individuals when creating new solutions to deal with the issue of elderly ca...

Improvisatory processes are considered synonymous with play, offering only second-best solutions to art and design problems. The role of improvisation in visual art processes is not widely discussed academically. This paper draws on a case study situated in Namibian art worlds to reflect on the role of improvisation in fluid and complex design and art processes. In Namibian contexts, improvisation is closely related to how artists and designers work instead of only being 'play', as improvisatory processes often respond to pressing demands and notions of having to do what needs to be done to sustain livelihoods. This paper documents and learns from the experiences and stories of Namibian art and design practitioners. The connective role of improvisation in design moments, allowing practitioners to negotiate multidirectional processes, often result in becoming unstuck in art and design processes. A holistic approach to improvisation, based on the understanding of lived experiences and actions within environments in which resources are utilised to solve design problems and build new experiences, is explored. Additionally, through improvisatory processes, learning is stimulated through new experiences that come about by utilizing the available resources within a given environment.

This paper examines the participation of various healthcare specialists and representatives in three design sprints aimed to co-design healthcare services through service design approaches. The design sprints were executed during the spring of 2019 in Gothenburg, Sweden; Tallinn, Estonia; and Rovaniemi, Finland, each lasting four to five days. This paper discusses the varied roles of healthcare representatives as participants in health-related design sprints and how these different participatory roles can optimise, support and catalyse design sprint processes to develop health services. The findings show that by being part of a team, healthcare representatives can learn to use design methods and design thinking, which have an impact on future development work for healthcare services. The value of the paper lies in presenting a practical framework for use in design sprints by healthcare representatives towards the development of health-related services.

Identities and notions of the in-betweenness of designers in management positions in Silicon Valley might be shaped by one another given changing sensemaking contexts. As organising becomes less bounded with shorter job tenures designers have been constructing their identities in interactions with diverse stakeholders. Tools, skills and values together with previous experiences continuously shape design manager identities. This research explored design manager in-betweenness by linking it with identity construction, critical sensemaking and social constructionism. While hybrid design managers produce profits and innovations by utilising user data, they also might steer their organisations towards more inclusive values and global responsibility. Internal struggles may follow while there is a need for open interdisciplinary reflection. A broader global understanding of the design space is suggested. Implications for education extend beyond the design field. Deeper reflection on ethics and production consequences across occupational silos enhances critical thinking, enabling collective identity cultivation in organisational sensemaking.

The research investigates the role of service design and improvisation as decolonising practice. It is based on case study research with a focus group consisting of Namibian artists, designers, artisans and arts organisations who participated in artistic and cultural exchange activities of the Art South-South Trust (ASST), a start-up Namibian not for profit (NFP) organisation. The goal of ASST was to increase visibility of the focus group members, enable global exposure and create an arena for multi-vocality. The paper creates a practical framework for decolonising practices in Namibian arts and design by drawing on reflective practice to analyse the activities of ASST alongside interview data collected from Namibian and Australian partner organisations and participants in the program. Critical thinking is used to evaluate the impact of realised activities and processes both in situ in Namibia and in exchange in Australia. This paper explores practices that can enable decolonising processes in Namibian arts and design spheres

The article explores the processes designer-makers and communities should engage in before using service design approaches to produce creative tourism experiences. These processes can yield insights into the inner processes and interactions with external environments of creative individuals and communities. Case studies from Finnish Lapland and Namibia show the importance of identity construction, creativity and storytelling for context mapping. The article presents a practical and flexible mapping tool that has been derived from these case studies. This tool can be expanded and applied by designer-makers for practical mapping activities. The findings indicate that creative tourism involving designer-makers can provide new tourism opportunities that not only generate deeply relevant experiences for tourists but also sustainable livelihoods for local designer-makers.

This paper addresses the fields of social and service design in development contexts, practice-based and constructive design research. A framework for social design for services will be explored through the survey of existing literature, specifically by drawing on eight doctoral theses that were produced by the World Design research group. The work of World Design researcher-designers was guided by a strong ethos of social and service design for development in marginalised communities. The paper also draws on a case study in Namibia and South Africa titled ‘My Dream World’. This case study presents a good example of how the social design for services framework functions in practice during experimentation and research in the field. The social design for services framework transfers the World Design group’s research results into practical action, providing a tool for the facilitation of design and research processes for sustainable development in marginal contexts.