"Design is only ever one tool in the mix, but it brings something very special -- from an ability to help people articulate their problems to a focus on ingenious solutions.” These are the words of Hilary Cottam, founding director of Participle, the self-described "social business" launched originally in Peckham England in 2007 with a dotcom entrepreneur, an industrial designer and an innovator. Over the past 3 years Participle has opened other offices rapidly throughout England.
What is surprising is that Participle isn't a conventional bunch of social workers or do-gooders, it is a design team. The company includes anthropologists, economists, entrepreneurs, psychologists, social scientists, and a military-logistics expert, but it is driven by design techniques and headed by Cottam, 42, who has used her design strategies to tackle the shortcomings of Britain's school and health systems. The company’s favorite kind of design has to do with making people's lives better, often taking account of routine daily concerns. Senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Paola Antonelli, says. "Her projects not only work, they give people a sense of hope and strength."
I think Cottam and Participle are a great example of Design in Society being used as conversation. They seem to be part of a new wave of designers who are trying to speak to the world and change it for the better. We might call them design evangelists. They speak to their society and the people in it through many different facets of design. They believe that many of the institutions and systems set up in this century are failing and that design can help us to build new ones better suited to the demands of this century. Other design innovators speak with their society through design innovations that help poor people to help themselves. Still others see design as a tool to stave off environmental or ecological catastrophe.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/130/mission-critical.html
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