WHAT IS
SOCIAL DESIGN?

What is Social Design

With roots that run as deep as the Amsterdam School’s beautiful public housing, social design differs from conventional design practice by prioritizing responsibility and inclusivity as design principles. Social designers believe that effective, attractive design should be as available to the global 99% as it is to the 1%. Social designers feel that design needs to evolve to include social and ecological commitments so that it does not contribute to reinforcing existing patterns of social inequality and accelerating crises related to consumerism like plastic pollution and the climate crisis. Like Human-Centered Design (HCD), social design operates through a participatory and feedback-driven model of design invention, engaging end users from the beginning and collaborating with them to generate and test prototypes. In sum, social design is about bringing beautiful and impactful things into the world, but it is also about building the alliances, relations of trust, and civil power that make a better world possible.

THЕ ESSENТIAL PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL DESIGN

This list of eleven principles is а distillation of the values and approaches that define social design and distinguish it from other design domains. Whereas the process is common to many innovative or creative efforts, and many of the skills required are essential to other disciplines as well, these principles contain the distinctive essence of the system.

Ideas come from the inside, not the top.
Questions are more important than answers.
Rely on experiments more than plans.
Creating is not the same as solving problems.
Limits inspire invention.
The real story is in the context.
How people see themselves is most important.
Innovation needs a network.
Communication is the first act of generosity and inclusion.
The process is the strategy.
Human capacity is the goal.

From Cheryl Heller, The Intergalactic Design Guide: Harnessing the Potential of Social Design

ABOUT

The SOCIAL DESIGN LAB was founded in 2025 to help bring social design practice into the world of Greentech and green infrastructure. We office within Rice Nexus in the Ion building (3201 Main St.) in the heart of Houston’s Innovation District. If you need insight into the social and human side of innovation or have an idea you would like to develop, please reach out to us at: [EMAIL] Looking forward to hearing from you!

Dominic Boyer directs the Social Design Lab and serves on the Board of Governors of the Rice Sustainability Institute. As one of the founders of the field of Energy Humanities, he has been researching and writing about energy transition and climate resilience for many years. As a designer, he helped create the world’s first glacier memorial, which was named a Finalist for a 2020 Beazley Design of the Year Award by the London Design Museum. The same project inspired The Economist to create its first-ever obituary for a non-human. Boyer’s recent research has been supported by NSF, NOAA, the Berggruen Institute, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, among others. The author of nine books and volumes and more than 100 research articles, Boyer’s latest book is No More Fossils (U Minnesota Press, 2023).