Social Intervention Design

Ready to start designing? This space introduces you to a process for designing social interventions.

Start here

In this short video, Kenneth Bailey walks us through the full design process, from opening up our ideas (divergence) to narrowing and testing them with others (convergence). It's a great way to orient yourself to how we think about design, imagination, and problem solving.

What does moving through a design process feel like?

In a design process, we are always moving back and forth from divergence to convergence.

‘Divergence’ refers to opening up your senses and taking in new sources of information from the outside world, as well as widening your set of ideas about what you’re trying to do. The divergence phase includes discovery and ideation.

‘Convergence’ refers to testing your ideas and narrowing your choices as you move your intervention out into the world. The convergence phase includes specification and iteration.

Divergence and convergence diagram from a 2009 talk by designer Tim Brown

Designerly Thinking

Thinking like a designer, or “designerly thinking", means we stay open to other people's ideas, we’re not afraid to change or let go of our own ideas, and we stay nimble to questioning ourselves and how we see the problem we are trying to solve.

DISI Process Phases

1/ Discovery

In this phase, you question your understanding of the problem you’re interested in addressing. Discovery is about getting out of your thought habits.

2/ Ideation

In this phase, you are generating and populating a range of ways to address the problem.

3/ Specification

In this phase, you’ll be making prototypes of your design.

4/ Iteration

In this phase, you’ll be testing your social intervention out in public and closely reading what effects it is having.

Connecting Design with I-A-E

How do we know where to start designing for social change? We created a framework to help you read social situations through the lens of ideas, arrangements, and effects (I-A-E).

When we intervene at the scale of arrangements, we can create a more transformative change than if we just intervene in effects. By using design to intervene in existing arrangements and imagine new ones, we can produce new effects—ones that make a society more just and vibrant.