Educating the Next Generation of Social Innovators. Lessons Learnt from a Series of Experimental Service Design Studios at the School of Design—Politecnico di Milano

Abstract

This contribution is about the connection between design research and education in the field of social innovation. In the last years, as researchers within the POLIMI DESIS Lab, we organised the service design studios held within the Master Degree in Product-Service System Design as a part of our research projects. These studios, in which we mainly teach service design and co-design methods and tools, were characterised by a strong connection with the local context, including activities such as citizen engagement and involvement of important stakeholders, such as the Municipality of Milan. Named ‘City Service Hubs’ and ‘A resilient city’, these studios represented an opportunity to experiment with students’ alternative ways of organising the daily life in the city of Milan, simulating within the protected environment of education new possible modalities in which social innovation can start.