Implementation means different things to designers: exploring emerging understandings

The form a social design project takes in the ‘real world’ alters according to the designer, the design question and the context. As this research shows, implementation means different things to designers. To some, implementation means that a project has reached its goals. To others, implementation is seen as a phase in which the project becomes sustainable or part of an infrastructure or a system. We propose four ways of understanding implementation as a continuous process: a process of realisation, actualisation, transformation, or maintenance.

As the design process includes imagining and thinking of new or other possibilities for the current situation, there is often a moment of shifting from concept to reality. Thinking of implementation as “realisation” means considering it as the act of transitioning from the realm of ideas to the realm of forms. When a design project is realised, the idea becomes tangible and receives a concrete form. This could be, among others: a physical product, a digital experience, an activity programme, a service model, or a gathering space. As the design process includes many iterations, realisation can be seen as the phase in which designers begin to test their idea in the designated context. The challenge is that realisation may only mean reaching a point of potential, rather than fulfilling the designer’s intention and long-term goals of the project. A programme pilot, a working digital prototype, a functioning model, and a small-scale experiment can be considered as the realisation of a concept.

There are social designers and socially engaged artists that work in a different way than the common design model of ‘research, idea, and implementation’. They approach their entire process as an act of collaborative collective action. These makers work with a person, a group or a community that are usually non-designers and who are often referred to in policy language as ‘the target group’. Their design process could involve spending lots of time with the relevant community and engaging in activities where short-term design interventions come together in a longer-term design trajectory. Designers that work in this manner blur the boundaries between concept and realisation, studio and context. From the start, they work with the people relevant to the question in the process of imagining and making alternatives to the current state of affairs. They implement throughout the project by actualising ideas at different moments in time. The notion of implementation as actualisation came out of our conversations with Jeanne van Heeswijk.

When discussing the output form of a project with designers, it becomes clear that one-off social design interventions often do more harm than good unless they are explicitly meant for a short-term goal, a research act, or a campaign. Essentially, social design projects respond to a need for change. The social designer hopes to change a situation, improve it, or sometimes amplify and scale up positive elements that are already there but are unnoticed. Implementation, therefore, links closely to the impact the project intends to have on society. What is the transformation the project hopes to achieve? Can the implementation process roll out the concept for a larger group of people, in different locations, over a more extended period? Transformation trajectories address questions about what needs to happen to make positive change and how to shift from symbolic enactment (pilot, prototype, intervention, presentation) to a practical, operational state. Thinking about implementation as setting a plan in action in social design refers to the process of achieving the desired change.

If we listen to different approaches to implementation discussed in this section, then it is clear that implementation should be seen as an ongoing process of care, rather than a temporary phase. In this process, the design initiative gets support continuously over time, is carried by different people, and remains vital. This line of thinking leads to notions of maintenance, ongoing care, and providing support for keeping something in good shape and preserving it from decline. Implementation as maintenance allows us to think in a durational, circular manner. We are never done with maintaining our house, body, or land. The same can be applied to a social design proposition or initiative — it always needs attention, iterations, creativity, and critical reflection. The often repeated saying that we can “design ourselves out of the project” is usually not in line with the reality of working in dynamic social structures. This doesn’t mean that the designer or the same designer that created the project has to remain equally involved. Perhaps it means designers always have a role in maintaining the creative DNA of social design initiatives, consulting, advising, or working on small iterations when needed.