Adapting Social Design Research Methods for Socially Distanced Practice

Social Design Research, due to its interactive and democratic nature, typically requires access to participants at all stages of the Design process (enquiry, insight gathering, ideation, and testing). This ensures that the designers’ practice is informed with contextual knowledge gained through relationship-building and ethnography, which are key features of Social Design Research [1]. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the delivery of Design education, and the approaches taken by lecturers and students had to adapt. The methods, attitudes and approaches to Design research and practice have evolved due to these changes due to the use of newly adopted digital collaborative environments. This paper presents the adaptations to existing Social Design Research methods and new ones which have been generated by the students through the undertaking of a project aimed at designing for social value delivered to first year Product Design students at the University of Derby