Inside-Out: Critical Design Thinking for Transformative Social Innovation

Dear Colleagues,

Design professionals and educators have been at the forefront of social innovation using design thinking and persistent and profound designing for decades, which is exemplified by the seminal works of Victor Papanek (1971), Ezio Manzini (2007), and Constanza-Chock (2020). Designing for social innovation responds to important issues such as human equity, access, and inclusion; the complexities of healthcare; environmental crises; and social justice. Furthermore, design thinking methods have been adopted by policy writers, business professionals, and others as means to support the complex world we currently inhabit and to engage in more human-centred practises. This Special Issue, ‘Inside-Out: Critical Design Thinking for Transformative Social Innovation’, is a forum to explore and highlight critical design thinking from within the rich fields of design. We begin with the words ‘Inside-Out’ to represent our positions within design where thinking processes such as complex problem-identification and problem-solving, reflexivity, and systems thinking are employed to focus and centre on non-human things such as words, images, materials, objects, products, homes, public buildings, and built environments. ‘Inside-Out’ also refers to the human-centred practises of designing where social innovation is most often community-driven; this results in designs that provoke social consciousness and move towards creating tangible shifts where designed things support living beings in profound and meaningful ways. As such, ‘Inside-Outness’ is about co-creation processes, experiences, communities, society, culture, and designed things.

The practises of profound and persistent designing are a kind of 'Critical Design Thinking' that cannot be characterized as one type of designing. ‘Critical Design Thinking’ uses methods and processes where goals are established that aid in better human–thing interfaces. These methods and processes are as diverse as the products created, and often involve considering multiple living beings (humans, animals, and plants), technologies (pluralistic systems and unlikeness that co-exist), physical things, and more. ‘Critical Design Thinking’ pushes designers and the communities they engage with in ways that result in layered meanings, knowledge, and unexpected outcomes beyond the object world. Although objects are often the tangible (and fundable) outcomes, there are also more intangible social and cultural outcomes such as experiences or services.

For this Special Issue of Societies, the editors are seeking articles that highlight the various ways critical design thinking can respond to social issues and/or has resulted in tangible and intangible social innovation. Articles can report on speculative or completed projects but must place emphasis on design methodologies or processes rather than simply reporting on finished products.

• Individual, complementary, or contrasting case studies are welcome, but these must offer up social dilemmas solved through any form of design (e.g., information design, graphic design, product design, private or public spaces, urban or rural landscapes, etc.).
• Contributions may explore participatory design research and collaborative creativity as essential components in addressing complex social issues.
• Additionally, we emphasize the importance of learning and unlearning when reflecting on critical design thinking for social innovation work, as these processes are crucial for fostering genuine and sustainable change.

In this way, our Special Issue, ‘Inside-Out: Critical Design Thinking for Transformative Social Innovation’, aims to bring together and celebrate persistent and profound designing as a focused area within the fields of design.

Contributions must follow one of the three categories of papers (article, conceptual paper, or review) of the journal and address the topic of the Special Issue.

Dr. Megan Strickfaden
Dr. Naureen Mumtaz
Prof. Joyce Thomas
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• equity-centred design
• design for disability
• design for health
• design futures and foresights
• design justice
• design methodologies and processes
• design pedagogy
• generative design
• inclusive futures
• inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary collaborations
• learning and unlearning
• participatory and co-created design research
• systems design thinking
• sustainable futures