ABOUT US
The social design research group was established in 2015 at the Department of Design, Media and Educational Science / SDU
The social design research group was established in 2015 at the Department of Design, Media and Educational Science / SDU
The group has a keen interest in how people can be involved in participatory design processes leading to social value for the individual and society at large. By social value, we refer to changes at a human scale that is felt to be beneficial for marginalised or vulnerable societal groups and communities.
The group has a keen interest in how people can be involved in participatory design processes leading to social value for the individual and society at large. By social value, we refer to changes at a human scale that is felt to be beneficial for marginalised or vulnerable societal groups and communities.
Design research practice is essential for our work
We use design methods to make sense of wicked problems, as a way of engaging and co-designing with people and as a process of making artefacts or services enabling people to cope with difficult situations in life.
Through a number of research projects we have documented our ability to evaluate social design outcomes by bridging disciplines from the human and social sciences.
RESEARCH AREAS
In our social design unit we are concerned with the urgent societal need for rethinking core services of the Scandinavian and European welfare states. In particular, our research projects lies within the following four areas:
NEWS
New publication in Journal of Design Research
How do we evaluate or account for social value in Social Design? The need of documenting and evaluating change in Social Design has been a recurrent issue addressed through a number of publications in Journal of Design Research. What has been pointed out is that design researchers need analytical tools, [...]
New article on art and design interventions in urban space
A new framework for curating urban interventions Urban interventions are often associated with a strong notion of human agency: architects, designers, and artists acting as political subjects to contest existing power structures. But what if we take non-human and more-than-human actors found in the city into account? How can these [...]
The 9th Nordes Design Research conference
The Social Design Unit in the Nordes 21 organizing team Together with a group of great people, the social design unit is deeply involved in arranging and hosting the NORDES 2021 conference, which is held August 15-18 as a joint event at Design School Kolding and University of Southern Denmark. [...]
Visit to Veenhuizen Prison
The social design unit travels to the north of Holland to see the new “fathers wing” in Veenhuizen prison Despite COVID restrictions, we manage to visit the prison in Veenhuizen in the Netherlands and meet the researchers and prison staff who are attached to this particular prison and who [...]
Thomas Markussen
thma@sdu.dk +45 93507196
Eva Knutz
evak@sdu.dk+45 93507135
University of Southern Denmark
Department of Design, Media and Educational Science
Universitetsparken 1
6000 Kolding, Denmark
