Designed for Good: Recovering the Idea, Language, and Practice of Virtue

Product Information

To get started with design for good projects, we’d recommend first volunteering or working below your standard pay rate. Unfortunately, many of these causes are under-served, and thus underfunded. The Calm Harm app encourages users to interact with characters to manage their emotions effectively (Image credit: Calm Harm) By doing this together, we can supercharge the design for good movement in the years ahead, and help to make meaningful change. Far from being “just” an aesthetic discipline, design is an approach to problem-solving itself. It combines a thorough analysis of people’s needs with creative and patient development of potential solutions. DfG are thrilled to share that we've reached a significant milestone in our journey to empower the youth of Liberia.

Star Atlas is a mobile video game designed to provide early intervention support to children aged 7-12 years with anxiety by combining exposure therapy with an immersive gaming experience. Just because an app has good intentions, doesn't mean it's based on scientifically robust assumptions (Image credit: Calm Harm) One Feeds Two has shaken up the congested charity sector by developing a credible brand with The Clearing that’s gained buy-in from national partners, including the likes of Bryon Burgers, Higgidy Pies, Mindful Chef and Baker Miller, to name but a few. The charity has delivered over six million school meals to children in poverty, putting more than 31,500 children through a year of school. Almost 99 per cent of these meal donations are from partner activity. All new solutions will be made available to the impacted communities on an open-source, license-free basis to maximise impact. The most promising initiatives will be given additional funding and support to scale their benefit further.Finding spaces where change is needed is the first step for anyone interested in designing for good. Our hope is that we all move further towards considering the human impact of our work, especially upon the marginalized and under-served.

A huge thank you to Clean Team Toilets for their continued support and enthusiasm to test these new solutions, and for their partnership with DfG. Mitchell says sustainable change lives on after you’re gone. "That means teaching others what I know, connecting people and building teams where I can, and being an open book with all my resources, with the assumption that empowering others is more impactful that just doing what I can alone." We discussed that many of us in the creative industries have been involved in 2-3 day design sprints for social good, that generate tremendous energy, but sadly do not always lead to real world impact in the long-term. As a result, DfG was created to explore alternative approaches to achieve lasting change. Some of the guiding principles include: Creative director at Seattle-based agency Modern Species and AIGA member Gage Mitchell is part of a task force/committee of socially responsible and sustainable design thought leaders that drives the AIGA Design for Good initiative. This was formed to help provide the organisation and its members with clarity around what "design for good" means and how it differs from sustainable design, diversity and inclusion, and other AIGA social impact-focused initiatives.

How Can I Get Involved in Design for Good?

Let form follow function, alongside the psychological and aesthetic aspects for your users. Products (and services) are bought to be used. Users/customers want to enjoy good experiences (or at least be spared from frustrating ones) and have expectations for you to satisfy. Your design’s usefulness means nothing should detract from that usefulness. Building cross-company teams to bring the different expertise that is needed for complex social problems. While this answers the question, “what is design for good?”, it also raises another one: isn’t all design “design for good”? Tiffany continues: "While it seems like a saturated market, there’s a real need for good quality, evidence-based apps to support people in various clinical and non-clinical contexts." She discovered that, according to ORCHA (Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps) which carries out independent assessments of apps for NHS Digital, there are over 327,000 apps claiming to help us stay healthy or manage our health (rising 990 per cent from the 30,000 available in 2013), yet only around 112,000 of these apps are looked after, updated and kept fresh. In the United States, the longest acronym is LGBTTQQIAAP: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning (people who question their sexuality), intersex, asexual, allies (heterosexual allies of the cause), pansexuals (who claim an attraction for any gender). Sometimes an O appears for "other".