Design and new behaviours: Project responsibility, social and cultural connectivity. [Three case studies]

Abstract

In the design practice, physical action is combined with intellectual action and comprehension of the reference context, the essential starting point and line taken by the project. The ability to create connections (connectedness)1 is developed during the evolution of innovation processes, which, together with the activity of cultural design mediation, contributes towards the diffusion of new behaviours. These new behaviours are oriented by a sense of responsibility, memory and context. The project defines products and strategies as a guide to the introduction of ways to act responding to the social values and expectations in terms of well-being. Three different experiences, three stories have been taken, from which several tools were identified as characteristics of a specific culture and manner. The ability to observe considered to be making visions and concepts take shape, based on knowledge and history and on bonds with tradition; the ability to take care, communicating a specific know-how to, eventually, become a social value of a behaviour model; the ability to give-back, a sequence of reciprocal contributions of giving and taking between the company and the place to which it belongs; the ability to listen which, by also drawing from ethical stimuli, places the end user at the centre of the process; and, finally, the ability to co-operate, a patient organizational construction and combination of competence, for the diffusion of the new behaviours. All permeated by an atmosphere, a spirit pertaining to an identity-related culture, developing the ability to create ties.

Key words: design practice, project responsibility, social and cultural connectivity.