Intro

The project intends to investigate the possibility of designing and implementing a social service addressed to “people in transition” within the municipality of Bozen-Bolzano, given that at present such service is not provided.

Traditionally social services are addressed to specific, relative stable, social conditions (employed/unemployed/retired, resident/tourist, young/old, etc.) assuming that the passage from one condition to the other does not entail any relevant transition.

However, today, because of the extension of choices related to life-paths and connected diffuse precariousness, more and more people undergo situations of transitions or experience what could have been thought in the past as stable situations as transitions.

These people with the issue and the incertitudes they have to face are not supported by any dedicated social service. The project intends then to investigate if and how it would be possible to develop such a service through a research gathering together social sciences and design competences in collaboration with the municipality of Bozen-Bolzano and the social cooperative Studio Comune.

Background

The background of the present research project is fourfold and entails:

• a general social change regarding individual life paths related to what has been defined as “reflexive modernization” (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994) and the consequent need to update the welfare state;
• a change regarding the tasks which design can fulfil and the domains in which design can intervene;
• the emergence of new forms of interdisciplinary collaborations between design and social sciences.
• the occasion provided by a third mission project, which had to assess the efficacy of a series of workshops for people in transition, funded by the municipality of Bozen-Bolzano, and carried out by the social cooperative Studio Comune – now the main partners of this research project. This last point constitutes already part of the Project’s State of the Art (see below)

As it has been noted, today choices are greater than ever before because of the diversity of social milieux in which we are involved, both through direct participation and through media exposure. By highlighting such changes taking already place at the end of the last century, Anthony Giddens (1991) also noticed that today we express our personal agency through “strategic life-style planning”.

However, the extension of choices and such “life-style plannings”, more often than not do not correspond to an actual empowerment of the individual, because, on the one hand, the need to plan our life-styles and to make choices is imposed on individuals (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002), on the other, such choices and planning take place in a society which provides less certainties and less safety nets, so that our movement and changes from one life situation to another are more and more those of “high-wire dancers in the circus tent” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002, 2).

“Life-style planning” as well as the “precarious freedoms” which characterize our societies entail that people are and will experience more and more phases of transition, from one life-style to another, from one situation to another, or more specifically, from one employment to another, from one place of residence to another, from a set of activities to another.
Because of these changes, the welfare state, emerged and thought for a more rigid society, where changes in individual life paths were not frequent, because people were tied to lifetime jobs, needs to be rethought, as well as the services it provides or it used to provide.

Services were traditionally thought in relation to specific situations related to the working life: services for employed, for unemployed, for retired, for trainees (persons in the education system), service related to the private life out of work (families). The idea was that you could pass from one situation to the other, without incertitudes or actual transitions in between.
Today the situation is radically different and, for instance, it is quite difficult for many to say if they are and at what extent employed or unemployed.

However, though what sometimes emerges as a perpetual state of transition, is a source of stress and strains, the situation of extended choices can be also a source of possibilities to escape lifepaths that can be as stressful. Thus, a situation of transition can provide the opportunity to rethink, reinvent ourselves and rediscover ourselves.
As it happens on the market, where choices are never automatically given and possible without equipping humans through various artifacts and services, in order to actually have the tools be able to make choices (Callon 1998; Cochoy 2007), we think that, in order to allow people to actually enjoy as possibilities the various choices and exploit the present situation in order to transform, at least in part, precariousness as a source of possibilities, the right social services and the right tools are needed.

Today, these services can be devised through design methods and approaches (Junginger 2017; Meroni and Sangiorgi 2011). Indeed, today design has extended its sphere of intervention much beyond products and communication. The way in which design develops services is key. It puts the needs of the targeted users in the center of the development. Additionally it builds bridges between the different stakeholders – in this case between the people in transition and the municipality. Through Service Design methods (Customer Journeys, Cultural Probes, interviews, workshops) not only the phases of transition get understandable, it also helps the customers to reflect their everyday life and the municipalities to understand their structural challenges.

Examples of projects, initiatives and agencies working on service design and welfare service are the following: Design for Government (DfG), Aalto University, Finland (Helsinki); EU Policy Lab (Brussel); Bloomberg Philantrophies/i(nnovation) teams; Design in Government, Department “Government Digital Service” (UK); Policy Lab Design Council (UK); Plattform Apolitical (UK).

Given that, especially in the case like the one we are outlining, the design of services is strictly related to social issues, the design of such services needs to consider social relations and issues. Today thanks to the fact that more and more the interests of design intersect those of social research, such interdisciplinary collaboration is possible. On the one hand design research is more and more based on social research methods (Crabtree et al. 2013), on the other, social sciences have started to take the social role of artifacts more and more seriously (Johnson (Latour) 1988; Latour 1996), thus outlining a common framework where to think design and social sciences together (Mattozzi 2018).

Project’s state of the art

Besides these general points, the more concrete background of this project proposal is an actual collaboration that has taken place between the PI, Alvise Mattozzi, and the Social Cooperative Studio Comune. Studio Comune, in the fall of 2018, has indeed organized a series of workshops (see attached documents), funded by the Municipality of Bozen-Bolzano, called “A questo punto mi ripenso” [And now I rethink myself], which tackled the issue of transition in the life of individuals. Mattozzi – helped by dr. Francesco Galofaro – was asked to assess the efficacy of the workshop (see attached documents). Initially thought for people recently retired or who were going to retire in short time, in order to help them in thinking their future activities and life, the workshop has attracted various kinds of people within various walks of life and only some of them were actually in transition from work to retirement.

Because of the success of the workshop we understood that it was addressing an actual need not tackled by other services of the Municipality, as later on the Municipality as confirmed. Moreover, it was tackling them, not only on individual basis, but in a collective one, providing these individuals the possibility to share their experiences of transtions. Something that each participant to the workshop has considered very important.

Because of this positive experience, we – the PI, Alvise Mattozzi, Studio comune and the Municipality of Bozen-Bolzano – have started to think about investigating the possibility to establish an actual social service related to life-transitions.

Research objectives and expected outcome

The first research objective is related to the understanding if a service related to life-transitions is on the one hand needed, on the other, if needed, feasible and in which way within the municipality of Bozen-Bolzano.
Thus, the following research objective are: on the one hand, doable and concrete recommendations for the municipality, on the other hand hand, at least one implemented service for people in transition. After cooperating in interdisciplinary way and by this identifying potential areas of new services, the researchers involved in the project will provide helpful actions to restructure municipal processes step by step, so that the day by day routines can continue according to the customs.
More in general, from a more academic point of view, one of the research objective has to do also with investigating how design and social sciences can actually collaborate.

The expected outcomes will be a guideline and a blueprint for the design of a service offered by the municipality of Bozen-Bolzano for this kind of issues, as well as a sociological analysis of the working of municipal services in Bozen-Bolzano.

Description of the methodological and practical implementation

The research will be carried out together with Studio Comune and the Municipality of Bozen-Bolzano, and with the help of other associations working in the social sphere .

From the sociological side, the following researches will be carried out and coordinated:

• a demographic research on “people in transition” at national, provincial and municipal level
• a research on the organization of municipal services, carried out mainly through the ethnographic method (Gherardi and Lippi 2000)

This research will constitute the ground for the design research, but will already include a design point of view in the process.

For the design research, this will be the sequence of research actions:

1. Analysis supported by Cultural Probes (digital-analogue diaries with daily questions and tasks) to get to know the everyday life of people in transition
2. follow-up workshop or individual semi-structured interviews to reflect the outcome together
3. Evaluation
4. Co-Design-Workshop with representatives of municipality to understand current processes and structures (tangible methods are recommended)
5. Evaluation (implementation of Customer Journeys)
6. Development of Service Concepts
7. Presentation of Service Concepts at municipality
8. Adaption
9. User test of services with people in transition
10. Adaption
11. Final service blueprint handover to municipality

Part of the design research, especially the one regarding workshops, will be carried out together with the Studio Comune associates, and will be funded by the municipality of Bozen-Bolzano.

References

• Beck, Ulrich. 2002. Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences. SAGE.
• Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash. 1994. Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Stanford University Press.
• Callon, Michel, ed. 1998. Laws of the Markets. 1 edition. Oxford ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Cochoy, Franck. 2007. “A Sociology of Market-Things: On Tending the Garden of Choices in Mass Retailing.” The Sociological Review 55 (s2): 109–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2007.00732.x.
• Crabtree, Andrew, Mark Rouncefield, and Peter Tolmie. 2012. Doing Design Ethnography. Springer Science & Business Media.
• Gherardi, Silvia, Andrea Lippi, and G. Napoletano. 2000. Tradurre le riforme in pratica. Le strategie della traslazione. Cortina Raffaello.
• Giddens, Anthony. 2013. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. John Wiley & Sons.
• Junginger, Sabine. 2016. Transforming Public Services by Design: Re-Orienting Policies, Organizations and Services around People. Taylor & Francis.
• Latour, Bruno (Johnson, Jim). 1988. “Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer.” Social Problems 35 (3): 298–310. https://doi.org/10.2307/800624.
• Latour, Bruno. 1996. “On Interobjectivity.” Mind, Culture, and Activity 3 (4): 228–45. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327884mca0304_2.
• Mattozzi, Alvise. 2018. “Teaching Everything in Relationship: Integrating Social Sciences and Design in Teaching and Professional Practice.” Diseña, no. 12 (January): 104–25. https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.12.104-125.
• Meroni, Anna, and Daniela Sangiorgi. 2011. Design for Services. Burlington, VT: Routledge.