Redefining socially responsible designing to assist collaborative approaches to community engagement

The concept of socially responsible designing can work at three levels, namely, the level of; form and detail, of system and context and of policy and strategy development. Designers hone their skills at all three levels, but most projects work at the level of form and detail. Design for social responsibility means different things at these levels, which this paper defines in the context of this paper. We recommend designers to initiate their projects at the level of strategy development to facilitate discussions at the level of systems between local end-users, stakeholders, financiers and designers and finally guide local people to work at the level of form. This recommendation comes from the notion that “Great design can and does change the world” and with a systemic view that “collective creativity is greater than the sum of its parts”. Along the journey of socially responsible designing we provide the designer with certain tools such as Soft system methodology, Appreciative Inquiry Method, Dott process and also the concepts of Complex Adaptive Systems and Self-Organization. Science shows us the fundamental basis for the evolution of socially responsible designing. We propose that designers use the concept of generosity, hope and forgiveness, together with their evolving set of practical co-design methods to facilitate this evolution.