Challenge
Exploring Social Issues from an Embedded Perspective
Four-person teams were tasked with exploring ways in which investigations can be made surrounding the complex social issues of a community. Through daily immersion in Angered, a suburban area outside of Gothenburg facing challenges of overwhelming immigration, high unemployment, low income levels and disenfranchisement, we explored methods and approaches for information-gathering and sense-making in order to uncover possible problem areas, and create space to further examine and analyze the factors from varied perspectives.

Approach / Method / Tools
community embeddedness
contextual interviews
deep & broad exploration of context
collaborative inquiry
meaning-making
observations
stakeholder mapping
personas
five whysLearnings & Impacts
In a context of extreme diversity, our team identified food and the sharing of a meal as a universally important cultural ritual, and created a community dinner platform by which the residents could gather, get to know one another, and create a stronger sense of unity and environment for sharing. This project emphasized the importance of extensive exploration prior to identification of the problem (going beyond the brief to identify the true, versus stated, problem) and allowed for experimentation with many methods for gathering information in active and passive ways.Etc.
Design & Society / 5 week course @ HDK
Team: Emmy Hall, Mfundo Mthembu, Lindsay Tingstrom, Dimitris Tsagkos