Designing for social systems : experiential approaches

Today's design challenges are more geared towards the creation of social systems. While systems design is not new the social systems design challenges of today ask for novel and designerly approaches. We set up a workshop to investigate these approaches employing three techniques as input: co-reflection, lo-fi prototyping and value-flow modeling. Reflecting on the six social system concepts we present insights that can act as a first framework to design for social systems: (1) Finding a balance between taking a first or third person perspective; (2) A tension-field between designing for and experimenting within the chosen cont exts exists; (3) Design constraints were either perceived as inspiring or limiting.