70 509 Digital Commons: Strategic design for society (Autumn 2026)

This is a third semester Master course only available for students in their final year. Students must have passed 70 513 Service Design 1 and 70 602 Service Design 2 or 70 512 Interaction Design 1 and DES4016 Interaction Design 2 in order to be accepted for this course. If students do not have these previous courses, they are required to document advanced design skills in interaction or service design through a portfolio.

Upload portfolio here:  https://nettskjema.no/a/421797

The course builds on the design skills and methods learnt across the previous Foundation and Master courses. In this course students and teachers integrate and push these skills and mindsets to create rich, reflexive projects that address societal issues through the design of digital services and interactions. For students who want to take part in this course a strong sense of curiosity, experimental outlooks, societal engagement and independence is therefore recommended.

Course responsible: Einar S. Martinussen

Digital commons: Strategic design for society’ is an advanced Master course about designing for digital societal development. The course introduces the students to how design methods and tools can be used strategically to address societal challenges in the context of the digital shift.

This course has a focus on using design in the broader context of sustainable societal development, and will use the lense of digital technologies and platforms to investigate new possibilities for positive change. Students will get to apply and expand their skills and mindsets as designers through practical, exploratory projects where the design of digital services and interactions are put to use to work with a range of societal issues - including sustainability, power and equity, policies for urban- development, innovation and knowledge, welfare and public services, and citizen participation. Alongside these practice-led projects the course will offer a selection of theoretical and inspirational lectures and seminars on topics such as technology critique, political science, sociology, studies of everyday life. Through this course students will also learn about theories and methods from the field of strategic design and get practical experience from applying these in design projects. Dan Hill describes strategic design as follows:

"Strategic Design takes the core principles of contemporary design practice – user research and ethnography, agile development, iterative prototyping, participation and co-design, stewardship, working across networks, scales and timeframes – and then it points this toolkit at ethical concerns, addressing systemic change within complex systems, and broader societal outcomes.” Dan Hill (2019)

A particular focus for the course is exploring how digital services can be designed to expand and enhance social infrastructures for everyday life. Social infrastructures are the common spaces, facilities and institutions that enable social life and participation in society. Key examples include both formal institutions like libraries, museums, public pools, culture venues, parks, playgrounds, and sports-halls, as well as more informal structures like street-corners, cafes, and organizations and clubs that contribute to socially resilient and sustainable cities and communities (Klinenberg, 2018). Today, our use of social infrastructures is increasingly interwoven with digital platforms, as forms of digital commons, engendering new forms of practices, functions, and possibilities. In this course we will investigate how digital tools and means may be used to strengthen and enhance social infrastructures and thereby contribute to societal development. We will also explore and conceptualize a broader understanding of digital commons as social infrastructure by designing and developing prototypes and interventions that help us examine the digital shift in society through citizen-led participation and user-experience. Through the projects in the course students will use design methods to develop strategic interventions in the world today, as prototypes and pilot-projects.

The course brings together research-initiatives at AHO with ongoing society development-projects. The ‘Digital Commons: Strategic design for society’ course is organized together with the research-group Digital Urban Living / Digital commons and is a part of D-Box, the National Centre for Transforming Public Services (a collaboration between AHO, BI and DOGA). Key partners and collaborators from these research-groups and networks will be involved in the course. This course builds in part on the series of courses organized by Digital Urban Living over the past years, and will continue our exploration of many of the themes addressed in here, including digital society, sharing culture, inclusion, social sustainability and trust.

KNOWLEDGE

Students will be able to:

·       Describe general theory and discourses around design and digital societal development.

·       Describe general theory, techniques and outcomes of strategic design, exemplified by research and projects within the field.

·       Apply and explain various strategic design techniques and frameworks in own projects.

·       Describe complex issues faced by designers working with digital societal development.

·       Use design as a strategic, conceptual framework for analysis, judgement and discussion in the context of societal change.

SKILLS

Students will be able to:

·       Design interventions with focus on immediate value, subsequent outcomes and plausible strategic impacts.

·       Integrate their established design skills as a part of a strategic design methodology.

COMPETENCE

Students will be able to:

·       Conduct collaborative and co-creative design projects as a team in a public and/or situated studio setting.

·       Explore and understand the potential of design for strategic change in different aspects of society.

·       Envision and communicate possibilities and solutions in the context of societal challenges.

·       Further develop their general design competencies within a strategic design framework

The course has two core components: thematic seminars that run throughout the semester, and a series of design-projects. The seminars will be run by teachers and external guests and address a series of themes that will inform the development and discussion of the design-projects. The design-projects will be run with external partners and the students are expected to develop, and in part organize, these projects with a high degree of independence and professionality. The majority of the work will be done as pairs or groups, as well as through collaborations across the whole class. Projects typically have multiple presentations throughout in order to allow students to see and comment on each other’s work. Co-learning with and from other students is an important part of the course, and it is encouraged that the majority of the time is spent working in the class studio in order to develop an inspiring and encouraging design-environment.

Assessment method: Portfolio assessment

Grading scale: Pass/fail

The student must submit all assignments in the course to receive final assessment.

The students will be assessed on the quality of submitted design projects and presentations throughout the course.

Other aspects that is evaluated are active participation and collaboration in class, independence, professionality, co-learning and collaboration with others. The students are expected to attend all collective activities (workshops, presentations, seminars) and participate in the studio throughout the projects.