Design Thinking for Social Inclusion

The d.thinking (Design Thinking for Social Inclusion) project addresses individuals, groups or communities faced by social exclusion as experts in their own right. The need for new, innovative, interactive, iterative methods for addressing social issues, and particularly those recognizing the need for empathy, diversity, or resiliency, requires new and innovative approaches in the collaboration between the relevant social actors. Design Thinking is such a method, and can be a useful and diverse tool for all partners and their target groups. Design thinking is based on the joint development of human-centred problem solutions in multidisciplinary teams. This also includes the active involvement of the target groups at all levels.

d.thinking aims to raise awareness about social inclusion and marginalised groups and communities through the activities of the project and the engagement of local communities, contributing to their social inclusion by recognising them as active stakeholders in social processes rather than 'beneficiaries' of policies or initiatives, and allowing them to co-design the learning process and content through the application of the Design Thinking approach. In addition, the project aims to contribute to social inclusion by reaching out to people and communities that have been marginalised, using Design Thinking principles of empathy, perception, understanding and creative thinking. Finally, the project aims to enable relevant social actors to work together through an inclusive and reflective methodology and to benefit from each other's contributions in order to foster social bonds and community ties.

In the preparation phase, partner organisations shared their experience and knowledge and developed a common understanding of the competencies and skills needed to develop the results. The structure for the Training modules was drafted during the kick-off meeting. A project logo was designed. The social media site of the project has been published and disseminated to constantly inform stakeholders and multipliers about the project and invite them to cooperate. During the development phase, the training modules were structured and designed. External stakeholders were included in the development of modules. The drafted training modules were compiled, discussed, and finally advised. The storybards for the explainer videos were drawn, discussed, and finalized. The training modules were piloted, evaluated, and finalized. The entire training material was translated from English language into partner languages. The training platform has been designed, developed, piloted, and published. In the dissemination phase of the project, the original plan for dissemination and exploitation of project results was discussed and revised, and the dissemination activities were implemented. A short-term teacher training and multiplier events were organized and delivered. Actions for further dissemination and exploitation of project results beyond project lifetime were discussed and agreed.

Central outcome of the project is a multilingual d.thinking training platform (www.d-thinking.eu) that can be used by teachers, trainers, or facilitators to develop and implement workshops based on the Design Thinking approach. 3 individual training modules on the platform, specified for highly relevant focus areas (social entrepreneurship, sustainability management, community work), explain the entire Design Thinking process, suggest methods to go through the different iterative steps of the process, and present practice examples for the practical implementation. The training platform includes short video tutorials to illustrate the process and individual methods. Other results of the project include the development of local stakeholder networks, implementing the Design Thinking approach at local level.