Design for Social Innovation Course
Since 2017, students from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and across the University come together at the Harvard iLab over the course of one semester for a new class offered by the D-Lab: Design of Social Innovation. The course is led by Patrick Whitney, Professor in Residence, and Andre Nogueira Visiting Scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and is designed to give students a hands-on introduction to design methods and frameworks as a complementary approach to complex public health challenges, specially when information is incomplete and fast-changing.
On its first iteration, students were tasked to look at the World Health Organization (WHO) and the way it addresses pandemics, and then design solutions to help it more effectively manage disease outbreaks. To keep their thinking fresh, students were forbidden from researching how WHO already works. They looked at different models of change, made conjectures, and then researched whether their ideas could work.
On its second iteration, students were asked to work with six different organizations in the Boston area and from other cities in the US, dealing with food insecurity, aging, and mobility. Students were exposed to problems that were both socially relevant and rich with business opportunities presented by these organizations. In order to help these organizations, students were involved in diverse activities including gathering and analyzing ethnographic data, identifying patterns in the daily life, reframing problems, using early stage prototypes, concept creation and design of flexible systems and other design practices.
In addition to weekly critiques, the class receives frequent visits from experts in both fields design and public health to discuss students insights, and defend their concepts while learning how to work collaboratively. Usually, students start the class considering “design” as the process of creating a building or smartphone, and leave the course realizing how they can leverage design to tackle large, ambiguous problems in public health.
The Design for Social Innovation course is not about what is, but what might be.