New book: Playful Civic Empowerment

The new vision that the book presents will be of high importance in the many challenges that humanity faces nowadays. These challenges are extremely complex and ask for a new approach in which we embrace uncertainty and the diversity of ideas and cultures that shape our society. In order to create a better future we should design for more than solely functionality, optimisation of data or efficiency.

We see that it is difficult to bring change as an individual in these complex challenges and for that reason people unite in communities. These communities happen to be the backbone of change in an increasing number of cases. In the book there is advocated for a more crucial role of design; to change from designing products, services and interactions to processes of collaboration with citizens and their network. This new role of design asks for new forms of technology that are build on honesty, ethics and sustainability in order to support civic empowerment.

Other than the above suggests, the book is not solely written for designers; it is meant for anyone who wants to start or contribute to change and is seeking the tools to do so. The book includes a toolkit that can help in starting a community initiative.

Carrying five sections, called cahiers, in total the book elaborately explains the new forms of designing for civic empowerment. The cahiers can be read separately and each one addresses a different aspect of the topic. Through practice and theory design recommendations are presented, examples are given and possibilities for research and education are explained.

The book will be published on DATE and available for order at WEBSITE LINK.