Sustainable Design for Rural Communities of Ethnic Minorities in China: Product-Service System Promotes Social Innovation

Abstract

Since China actively joined the globalization process, industrialization and urbanization have brought economic development to China's traditional rural areas, but at the same time, many problems have also arisen. Among them, the problems faced by rural areas where ethnic minorities live in compact communities are more severe. Besides the common problems in rural areas, they also need to face the decline and disappearance of ethnic culture. The design and social innovation of rural areas and ethnic minority settlements have attracted scholars from many fields to study and practice. In 2013, we formed an interdisciplinary team to cooperate with Guangxi's ethnic management agencies to carry out a series of social innovation practices in many places in Guangxi, China, this paper explores the development model of local social innovation and promotes the sustainable development of local society. Based on the Internet platform application service thinking design and product-service system design method, a new model is established to promote the local economic development and protect and inherit the national culture characteristic. The experiences, sustainability and discussed methods in this paper provide reference for the practice and research of different social innovation and social lessons.