Designing with Society

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