Mamta Gautam
Across literature, design thinking has been acknowledged as an effective tool to address social innovation, this paper takes a closer look at systemic design framework to establish the need to go beyond the conventional design approaches by emphasising the interdependencies within systems and encouraging students to think critically about the multicausal nature of societal problems. The paper studies classroom project systemic design at NID HARYANA , finds overlap between social innovation and systemic design. While social innovation is a tool to achieve impact and desired change, systemic design is proposed as an effective tool to address the complexities that social innovation aims to address. The cases of project analysed demonstrate the wholistic nature of solutions irrespective of the SDG addressed unlike the perceived notion that few sdgs are directly aligned to social innovation. It is noted that best cases of social innovation addressed one or the other societal issues as an important vertical in addition to economical and ecological aspects of the chosen system. The paper demonstrates that Design education is at a critical juncture, demanding a shift towards addressing complex social challenges through innovative and sustainable solutions and demonstrates systemic design is an effective tool.
Keywords: social innovation, systemic design, 17 SDGS