Social Design Education and Mindsets

Abstract

In recent years, as Japan faces many complex social problems, social design—a way to cope with these problems in a decentralized and innovative manner—has been playing an important role in this country. At the same time, higher education institutions are expected to foster those who will eventually put social design into action and lead social change. In this article, we go through a couple of cases in social design education and see how the design-based thinking method is incorporated into these programs. We also analyze how educational programs for cultivating mindsets are playing important roles in social design education. Mindsets play crucial roles in innovation in general, but we explain why it is particularly important in social design.