Multi-disciplinarity requires team members to justify and competitively defend their disciplinary perspective, which creates a risk of them becoming ego-centric (Fisher & Smith, 2011). Whiteley (1993; 2010) examined the problem of multiple intentions affecting social development projects and recognised that to design responsibly, the designer must facilitate a co-creative process. Service Designers have been seen to accommodate co-creative design activities in recent projects. In the UK, different studies to develop collaborative practices utilise diet, exercise, meditation and different group working strategies and are objective and empirical, conducted in clinical settings. However, design-based social innovation projects occur in real life (live) community contexts and mostly produce case-studies as outcomes, which are subjective and biographical. Therefore, this research looks to create a mixed-method. The research process is also multidisciplinary, whilst based in design it has a complexity science, holistic perspective, incorporating physiological and psychological methods. The derived methodology described in this paper utilises social interactions, physiological information and psychological data to build a holistic set of methods to triangulate the effects that meditative practice can have on co-creating individuals and teams. The corresponding analysis requires a three step process; firstly, generating themes or hypothesis(es), secondly, coding data based on the hypothesis and thirdly, categorizing the themes based on their relevance and importance within a multidisciplinary social innovation context by reducing the instance of ego-centricity in its team members. The contribution of the paper is that it demonstrates that a hybrid methodology can be derived to create evidence-based research to support the development of more open, collaborative and human centred approaches to innovation.

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Can awareness-based practices benefit co-creationin community social innovation?

(2010). The Banham Lectures: Essays on Designing the Future edited by Jeremy Aynsley and Harriet Atkinson. The Design Journal: Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 240-245.

Nigel Whiteley

Papers

The Banham Lectures: Essays on Designing the Future edited by Jeremy Aynsley and Harriet Atkinson