This book explores an emerging design culture that rigorously applies systems thinking to the practice of design as a form of facilitating change on an increasingly crowded planet. Designers conversant in topics such as living systems, cultural competence, social justice, and power asymmetries can contribute their creative skills to the world of social innovation to help address the complex social challenges of the 21st century.

By establishing a foundation built on the capabilities approach to human development, designers have an opportunity to transcend previous disciplinary constraints, and redefine our understanding of design agency. With an emphasis on developing an adaptability to dynamic situations, the cultivation of diversity, and an insistence on human dignity, this book weaves together theories and practices from diverse fields of thought and action to provide designers with a concrete yet flexible set of actionable design principles. And, with the aim of equipping designers with the ability to drive long-term, sustainable change, it proposes a new set of design competences that emphasize a deeper mindfulness of our interdependence; with each other, and with our life-giving natural systems. It's a call to action to use design and design thinking as a tool to transform our collective worldviews toward an appreciation for what we all hold in common; a hope and a belief that our future is a place where all of humankind will flourish.

About the Author

SCOTT BOYLSTON is professor and graduate coordinator of the Design for Sustainability program at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design), author of four books, and founder of Emergent Structures.

Reviews

"This book is an impressive account of design's relation to capability theory. I recommend it to anyone interested in how design can inform strategies of social innovation."

- VICTOR MARGOLIN, Author of World History of Design
Professor Emeritus of Design History, University of Illinois Chicago

"Scott Boylston imagines something very exciting: the insights and creativity of designers unleashed not in the service of consumerism but instead of a working planet. Given the crisis we are now enduring, we have an unprecedented opportunity to design something new, if we work together. This book gives some clues about how to do just that."

- BILL MCKIBBEN, Founder, 350.org, and author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

"There are several good reasons to read (and to study) this book. And one of them, in my view, makes it unique: it's the first book that really helps designers understand the meaning and the design implications of the capabilities approach: That is, to recognize that their role is not to offer pre-defined solutions, but to enlarge people's freedom to be what they want to be and act as they prefer. And, at the same time, to offer them motivations and concrete possibilities to choose to do it in a sustainable way."

- EZIO MANZINI
Author, Design When Everybody Designs, and founder, DESIS Network

"Scott Boylston provides a thoughtful and necessary path for designers to contribute to social innovation. This is an important book for those seeking to design ways to change the world for the better and create a more sustainable future."

- DEIRDRE WHITE
CEO, PYXERA Global

"Written in an articulate and accessible prose not often found in academic books, Scott Boylston offers his reader a very compelling analysis of how social innovation and design for sustainability can work together as change agents shifting existing paradigms of everyday life, to empower and transform our thinking about design's purpose and future potential. A must read for designers, design management and design students."

- ELIZABETH RESNICK
Professor Emerita, Communication Design, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Author, The Social Design Reader

"The next generation of design practitioners are now asking the question of how we can develop new capabilities and mindsets to tackle complex social challenges. In Designing with Society, Scott Boylston provides us with a comprehensive guide to a new systemic and holistic design ethos which integrates the frameworks and approaches of the leading thinkers in this new field with his own extensive experience in innovation and environmental design."

- SIMON ROBINSON
Co-author, Holonomics: Business Where People and Planet Matter

"It is a profound truth to say that humanity is on the verge of self-destruction because we lack the design capabilities for entire cultural systems. This book comes as a spiritual cry to the design schools of the world that we must pull back the facades of grandeur and look ourselves in the eye, see ourselves with warts and all, and do the internal work to bring the best science and design ethics together for the transformation of every domain of human existence."

- JOE BREWER
Founder + Executive Director, Center for Applied Cultural Evolution

"Scott Boylston's Designing with Society offers a deeply integrated and deeply felt revisioning of the powerful ideas, practices and underling theories driving social innovation at its best today. The book is highly readable and detailed with the author's concepts of relevant systems thinking models and social change processes. As a living systems approach to social change, the book encourages the reader to expand their viewpoint as to what's possible. Designing with Society gives sage guidance that connects the best wisdom of design knowledge with profound approaches to social change."

- Peter Jones
Director of Research, sLab, OCAD
Co-founder, Systemic Design Research Network

" Get this book and consume it cover to cover. I guarantee that it will be the most important book about the potential of design that you will ever read. Trust me on this. Our future depends on it."

- JOHN BIELENBERG, Co-Founder, Pando Institute and COMMON, and Founder, Think Wrong Institute

"In his new book, Scott Boylston calls for a new stage in learning for design and social innovation that requires 'an elevation of awareness.' This book is the crucial next step in evolving and elevating social impact design. Boylston brings together a breadth of knowledge and approaches necessary in seeding and catalyzing social and environmental change. It is an important, transdisciplinary step in evolving design for social impact!"

- TERRY IRWIN, Head, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University

"Designing with Society is a rigorously researched and thoughtful imperative for designers to shift from passive reflection to active reflexivity in our education and practice. Boylston calls for a shift from rote design assumptions and worldview to a "consciousness competence" that deepens designers' social and cultural literacy. The grounding principles in Designing with Society challenge and inspire us to be more humane and just in our design practice and to address head-on the ingrained power asymmetry that prevents us from contributing more effectively to the self-realization of others."

- MIKE WEIKERT & LEE DAVIS, Directors, Center for Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)

"Boylston offers an authentic and highly relevant approach to design practice for our times. Designing with Society engages with design on its own terms-forcing designers to face our weaknesses while broadening and employing our strengths to the benefit of the natural environment and the human condition."

- MARCIA LAUSEN, Director, School of Design, University of Illinois at Chicago and Principal, Studio/lab

"In an original way, Designing with Society establishes a terrain for a new design attitude, the design capabilities approach, that aligns Sen and Nussbaum's capabilities approach and its core tenets with environmental sustainability and social justice principles into a set of workable criteria for designers, resulting in a refreshing guide for designers. and design students."

- LARA PENIN, Director of the Transdisciplinary Design Graduate Program, Parsons/The New School

Book Information
ISBN 9781138554337
Author Scott Boylston
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 580g