Processes and Methods
All the social design organisations in the exemplars within this website have developed processes and methods that ensure they identify and address the needs of people and contexts. Complex problems require an ordered approach; social design and social innovation involve multiple stakeholders, multiple agendas and multiple contexts. An understanding of processes and methods is useful to structure the design approach.
Sometimes when processes and methods are discussed, they are used interchangeably. To clarify the meaning:
Method is a systematic way through an orderly arrangement of specific techniques and aids communication and collaboration. Each method has a process.
Process is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of operations or events which produce desired outcomes. Process contains a series of actions, events, mechanisms or steps which contain methods.
To help understand social design processes, various approaches have been combined and their universal concepts clarified. Click on the links to the left to view the common principles and stages.
Links
Design Council’s Method Bank