Social design is a fairly new addition to the design field. We can debate whether social design is new. And whether all design is social. But we're not going to do that this time.
We can see that in recent years, there has been a boom in design practices where designing relationships through participation forms the basis. These projects do not necessarily have to result in a physical product. They can also take the form of an event, an app, a service, etc.The focus is on designing for a specific social situation. How social designers practice their craft is no different from how other designers do it. You have agencies that do social design, mostly taking on major projects for governments and companies. And you have solo designers, who often have a practice with a more artistic basis. Of course, there are also hybrids of these practices. But ultimately, there is usually a non-material result at the end of the design process. Coalitions have been formed, objectives have been formulated, processes have been designed, soul-searching has been done and relationships have been established.
For a museum, it's an interesting question how to showcase a social design project that has a non-material result. How do you show a project whose designed part is gone? The designer has usually designed a process to let people experience or understand something. The result is actually in the people who participated. Of course, we luckily always have the photos, but they don't give us the experience. Funnily enough, it's not that different from the dilemma of exhibiting physical products. For example, if you display a shaver, you only show part of it. The experience isn't there. The use of the item is hidden. Here, too, you can show photos or videos, but that's not the whole picture.
I guess the trick is that it's not about the object. It's about the context of the object. To continue with the example of shaver: you can also view it in the Mediamarkt. In fact, you can even grab it! The shaver ends up in the museum because it tells us something about the world around us. About political, cultural, economic or social reality. It's part of a certain perspective that tells us something about our world. It is part of a narrative. This is also true of social design. It is not created in a vacuum, but is a response to what is happening around us. That means you have to encapsulate it in an exhibition narrative. You use the projects as use-cases. For example, you can show the process to provide insight into what choices have been made and what they are reacting to. I am also not opposed to carrying out some projects again - provided that it fits the scope of the project - so that others can experience it. Just like I'm in favor of letting people use products so they can experience them. Design creates tools and most tools don't get better if you don't use them.
