The recently concluded Aspen Design Summit (November 11-14) was, at least conceptually, an important trans-disciplinary event. Growing out of a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio conference on how design can help inform and improve social sector delivery, the hands-on workshop (sponsored by Rockefeller and the Winterhouse Institute in collaboration with AIGA) brought together public, private, and design sector experts to work on five well-defined (and very challenging) projects with as many client organizations. Read more about the Summit, the results, and the overall problem-solving space at Change Observer here and the Winterhouse Institute here.
As the entire “design for social change” movement gathers momentum and matures, we hope to see more organizational infrastructure emerge (and this is an area of keen interest to SFIP). One of the outcomes of the Aspen event was a proposal for New Design, a soft structure linking interested design firms to philanthropic funders and social challenges, which may be a step in the right direction. As one summit participant oberserved: “…there’s only so much you can accomplish in three days….” What if this was one part of an “Appropriate Solutions Laboratory” @ SFIP?
SFIP | Santa Fe Innovation Park 
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December 2, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Stephanie Gerson
“One of the outcomes of the Aspen event was a proposal for New Design, a soft structure linking interested design firms to philanthropic funders and social challenges…”
This is what I understand as the ‘soft’ side of systems design – instead of physical resources flows, à la industrial ecology or permaculture, we’re talking informational, financial, and human resource flows. But as with ‘harder’ side of systems design, we’re still ‘linking’ outputs to inputs, available resources to needs; in this case, linking interested design firms and philanthropic funding to social challenges. Hence Wendell Berry’s astute observation that “the genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.” Our work is therefore that of taking 2+ problems and (sometimes, re-)linking them into integrated solutions. Or as permaculturist Bill Mollison would have it, the problem isn’t an excess of slugs, but a deficiency of ducks (link the slugs to the ducks, and voilà).
I envision a dazzling mind-mappy dashboardy interface for tracking the available informational, financial, and human resources and needs, e.g. in a municipality, and facilitating the process of making connections. Kinda like a match-making website but for systems design. Whether or not that’s absurd/realistic/desirable, here are three manifestations of soft systems design akin to the design + social sector idea that emerged at Aspen:
>>Obama Works, a national grassroots organization, linked the time and toil campaign supporters willingly spend (lots!) to public service (whyobamaworks.org).
>>All for Good, a craigslist service, similarly links folks who are willing to volunteer with local volunteer opportunities (allforgood.org).
>>Lend Me Some Sugar links underutilized advertising dollars with social-enterprises-to-be (facebook.com/LendMeSomeSugar?v=app_4949752878).