Spaces and Services for Local Communities
Spaces and Services for Local Communities
Course description
A multi-disciplinary approach-based set of lectures on the academic and practical experience in Spaces and Services for Local Communities by Polimi DESIS Lab and its network, held by a group of researchers and practitioners with a specific interest and action in Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability.
Intended Learning Outcomes
By actively participating in this MOOC, you will achieve different intended learning outcomes (ILOs).
Week 1
- Interpret the definition of Design for Social Innovation in literature and practice.
- Define the vast array of Design Methods applied to Service + Spatial Design.
- Interpret and select the challenges of uncertainty and the three strategies for design in uncertainty: Systemic Thinking, Extending Competencies, and Collective Intelligence.
- Identify the fundamentals of Codesign.
Week 2
- Interpret the objectives of the Service Design + Spatial Design approach.
- Define the notions and perspectives of Design for Placemaking.
- Identify the key principles and concepts underlying Civic Design and Public Interiors.
- Examine the relationships between Queerness, Design and Public Urban Space.
- Interpret the need to extend beyond Human-Centred Design.
- Define the concepts of Urban Food Systems and Educational Cities.
Week 3
- Describe University Social Responsibility and Design for Social Innovation incubation for different actors and stakeholders.
- Create for Responsible Tourism, Hospitality, Design for Social Innovation, Service Design, and Sustainability.
Prerequisites
No prerequisite knowledge is required for this course.
Activities
Over and above consulting the content, in the form of videos and other web-based resources, you will have the opportunity to discuss course topics and to share ideas with your peers in the Forum of this MOOC. The forum of this MOOC is freely accessible and participation is not guided; you can use it to compare yourself with other participants, or to discuss course contents with them.
Topic outline
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The first week provides a general introduction to the context, addressing the topics of Design for Social Innovation and Uncertain Futures. It then delves into Methods and Tools, explaining some Applied Design Methods used by Polimi DESIS Lab, with a particular focus on Co-Design, Spatial User Journey, and Prototyping.
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The second week centers on the topic of Design for City Making. This section is divided into two parts: S+S (Spaces + Services) Explorations, which covers Spatial Design, Service Design, Design for Placemaking, Designing Relationships, and Public Interiors; and Urban Social Ecosystem, which includes lectures on Educational Cities, Queer City, Designing for a Multispecies World, and Design for Food Systems.
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The final week, called Proximity and Communities, is also divided into two modules. The first module, Social Practices Incubation, includes lectures on Service Design for Recovery and Co-production, Design for Social Innovation Incubation, and City of Youth. The second module, Proximity, covers Neighbourhood Living Labs, Proximity Dimensions (from urban to remote contexts), and Responsible Tourism, focusing on designing community-based tourism services.
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Video transcripts FolderNot available unless: You are a(n) Student
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Assessment
The final grade for the course is based on your results from your responses to the graded quizzes. You will successfully complete the course if you reach 60% (or more) of the total score. The maximum score possible for each quiz is given at the top of the quiz. You can see your score in the quiz on your last attempt or on the 'Grades' page.
Certificate of accomplishment
You must be registered in POK through Politecnico di Milano personal account to obtain the Certificate of Accomplishment. It will be released to anyone who successfully completed the course by achieving at least 60% of the total score in the graded quizzes and filling the final survey. You will be able to download the Certificate of Accomplishment directly from Politecnico di Milano web services. The Certificate of Accomplishment does not confer any academic credit, grade or degree.
Information about fees and access to materials
The course is delivered in online mode and is available free of charge.
Course faculty
Laura Galluzzo
Laura Galluzzo, PhD in Design, she is Associate Professor at the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano. She is operational manager of POLIMI DESIS Lab within the international DESIS Network (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability). Her research focus is on participative projects of (public) Spaces and Services.
She has a specific expertise in the co-design of spaces as activators of collaborative actions, community hub, incubators of social practices. She has been a researcher in various national and international research programmes on this topic. She works on the relationship between Spaces and Services (S+S) design with a focus on temporary interventions, domestic and urban transformations. She is the author of The Legacies of Interiors and Con-temporary Living, and many others scientific articles.
Claudia Mastrantoni
Claudia Mastrantoni, Post-Doc Fellow Researcher at Design Department of Politecnico di Milano, part of PoliMI Desis Lab – DESIS Network Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability.
Ph.D. in Design (2022), with a thesis about Public Interiors: Infrastructures of Seamlessness. Enhancing Synergies between Spaces and Services - Environments and Activities within Public Administration.
She holds research, teaching, and professional experience in Spatial and Service Design, mainly related to Public Spaces (including Public Interiors), Social Innovation, Temporary Hospitality, Territorial Welfare and Cultural Development.
Ezio Manzini
Ezio Manzini President of DESIS Network and Honorary Professor at the Politecnico di Milano. He has been guest professor in several design schools world-wide, as (in the past decade): Elisava- Design School and Engineering (Barcelona), Tongji University (Shanghai), Jiangnan University (Wuxi), University of the Arts (London), CPUT (Cape town), Parsons—The new School for Design (NYC).
Stefana Broadbent
Stefana Broadbent is an Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Milano in the Department of Design. Between 2014 and 2016 she was Head of Collective Intelligence at Nesta, UK’s innovation agency. Previously Stefana was a Lecturer in Digital Anthropology at University College London where she led the Master in Digital Anthropology. London Stefana holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive science from the University of Edinburgh, and a degree in Psychology from the Université de Genève. Her research has focused on emerging digital practices and their impact on society.
Valentina Auricchio
Valentina Auricchio, Associate professor of the Design Department of the Politecnico di Milano. Her research is focused on Design Methods and managing strategic design projects with small and medium industries including Design Thinking processes. Her main interest is in design processes, methods and tools and their application within different sectors for strategic innovation. Recently she has been working in the field of Cultural and Creative Industries and their role and impact on societal transformations (in the EU funded project ekip – European Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Policy Platform). She is the Delegate for international affairs of the Department of Design. She is a member of Polimi DESIS Lab, part of the international DESIS Network.
Annalinda De Rosa
Annalinda De Rosa, Assistant Professor at the Department of Design - Politecnico di Milano. She is also an adjunct professor at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) since 2019. She belongs to the Polimi DESIS Lab research team (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability).
Her research focuses on design for social innovation theories and practices in urban and rural contexts, specifically developing design-driven models for incubating innovative processes to improve social cohesion through participatory design. She has collaborated and co-coordinated projects such as OnFoods (2023-26, NextGenerationEU), Human Cities projects (2020-24 and 2014-18, Creative Europe), DoCS4Design, Doctoral Courses System 4 Design (2020-23, Erasmus+), campUS, Incubation and settings for social practices (2014-16) and GIDE – Group for International Design Education (2014/16).
Anna Meroni
Anna Meroni is Full Professor in Design in the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano.
She is co-founder of the DESIS Network Association and honorary member of its International Coordination Committee. Her research focus is service and strategic design for sustainability to foster social innovation, participation and local development.
She has developed a specific expertise in co-design strategies, methods and tools.
Anna originated the concept of community-centred design and works transversally on new entrepreneurship, place making, public services, urban commons and responsible research and innovation – RRI. She is principal investigator of national and international research projects, chair of conferences, author of several publications, member of different scientific boards and visiting lecturer in international universities.
Davide Fassi
Full professor in design at the Politecnico di Milano. He published “Temporary Urban Solutions” (2012) and “In the neighborhood” (2017). His research is about the relationship between space and service with a community centred approach. Awarded with XXV Compasso d’Oro in 2018 for the project “campUS – incubation and settings for social practices”, Ambrogino d’Oro (2022) and Seoul Design Award (2023) for Off Campus Nolo, a neighborhood living lab of the Politecnico di Milano. Coordinator of the Polimi Desis Lab a research lab on design for social innovation and sustainability and member of the DESIS network international coordination committee. Rector’s delegate for cultural activities and public engagement.
Daniela Selloni
Daniela Selloni is PhD, service designer and assistant professor at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano where she teaches in the master’s degree in Product-Service Systems Design and in various master courses of POLI.design. She is member of Polimi DESIS Lab (part of the international network DESIS, Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) with which she has worked on numerous Italian and international research projects. She works on social innovation, placemaking, public services and urban commons. More specifically her research focuses on methods and tools of co-design and how collaboration can be experimented in public and private organizations. She is author of “CoDesign for Public-Interest Services” and co-author of “Massive Codesign” and “Service Design for Urban Commons.”
Vanessa Monna
Vanessa Monna is a Postdoc Fellow Researcher at the Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, within the PoliMI DESIS Lab. She is currently involved in two European Research Projects: ekip - Innovation Policy Platform for the Cultural and Creative Industries (https://ekipengine.eu/), and Human Cities/SMOTIES - Creative Works with Small and Remote Places (https://humancities.eu/smoties/). Her PhD focused on the emerging theme of Civic Design, which she investigated to organise existing knowledge and develop a theoretical framework. She was a Visiting Scholar at the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago, USA. Before her PhD, she collaborated with national and international institutions as a Fellow Researcher. Vanessa tutors BSc in Product Design classes at Polimi’s School of Design. She also teaches within the TISE Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Program and was a Guest Professor at UFJF Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Brazil.
Ambra Borin
PhD in Design (2024), with a research titled "DESIGNING SYSTEMS OF PROXIMITY. Crystallisation of proximity practices from Urban contexts to envision community-based Design strategies in Small and Remote places”. She is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Polimi DESIS Lab of Design Department at Politecnico di Milano; involved in “OSMOSI. Osservazione e Studio dei MOdelli di progettazione e sviluppo degli Spazi Ibridi, luoghi di sperimentazione urbana e inclusione sociale attraverso attività creative e culturali,” a two-year program funded by the Ministry of University and Research through the National Research Programme and Projects fund (PRIN - 2022). Additionally, she collaborates as a Teaching Assistant with Politecnico di Milano (Italy), Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona (Spain), and Tongji University College of Design and Innovation in Shanghai (China).
Valentina Facoetti
Valentina Facoetti, PhD Candidate in Design at Politecnico di Milano. Her PhD in collaboration with Alpitour World investigates how Service Design and Design for Social Innovation can enhance the positive social impact on place-based communities in new tourist destinations. The main aim is to rethink the relationship between tourism companies and local communities and define a new framework for community-based responsible tourism services.
She is research collaborator at Polimi Desis Lab, dealing with design for social innovation and sustainability, in particular working on community-centered design research projects, with a particular focus on participative projects of spaces and services. She is Teaching Assistant at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano for Interior and Spatial Design and PSSD Master' degree courses.
Elisa Cinelli
Phd candidate in Design and member of the POLIMI DESIS Lab within the international DESIS Network. She graduated as a MSc in Interior and Spatial Design with a thesis that examined the efficacy of reception facilities for homeless people in the city of Milan. Her PhD research investigates the relationship between pre-school educational services and urban environments. How the right to the city is guaranteed, starting from the point of view of children.
Valentina Ferreri
PhD student in Design at Politecnico di Milano. She is part of POLIMI DESIS Lab, a research group part of an international network that deals with Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability. Her doctoral research concerns the queer city, experimenting how a queer, intersectional, feminist and plural gaze could be adopted in the processes and ways in which participatory design acts regarding urban practices that affect public space. She is tutoring, at the School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano, the master's degree course in Product-Service-System Design on the theme "Transforming Cities" and the elective course "Temporary and Inclusive Urban Solutions" on the theme "The Queer City". In the past, he has been tutor in the POLI.DESIGN master “Design for Food” and she collaborated in “SOSpesa” project with Off Campus Nolo, a neighborhood-based service for food recovery and redistribution against food insecurity.
Francesco Vergani
PhD, Post-Doc Fellow at the Department of Design (Politecnico di Milano). He is member of Polimi DESIS Lab where he collaborates in research activities focusing on the relationship between situated communities (both human and more-than-human) and public spaces such as “Vocabolario di Quartiere” (2019–ongoing), a situated vocabulary in the Nolo neighborhood (Milan), developed within the living lab “Off Campus Nolo”. He is currently Adjunct Professor at the School of Design (Politecnico di Milano) where he teaches the elective course “Designing in a Multispecies World” at the Bachelor's degree programmes.
Lucia Viganego
Service designer and research fellow at Polimi Desis Lab, a research unit of Politecnico di Milano’s Design Department. With previous working experience in participatory design and service design for the agri-food sector, she currently collaborates with the PNRR project OnFoods. Her work focuses on the design of sustainable food systems in urban areas and alternative food networks, with an emphasis on social justice and environmental sustainability. Since 2023 she has collaborated as a teaching assistant in the master's courses of Service Design and Spatial Design at Politecnico di Milano, where she has combined research on food sustainability with didactic activities.
Irene Bassi
Research fellow in design at the Politecnico di Milano. She is a member of the Polimi DESIS Lab, where she collaborates on research activities about private and public procurement in urban areas, within the PNRR Project OnFoods. Since 2023, she manages “Sospesa", a project about a new solidarity network of local stakeholders, in the Nolo neighbourhood (Milan) developed within the living lab “Off Campus Nolo”. In 2022, she collaborated on the design of OUT.Il cortile sociale, regenerating the courtyard of the Municipal Market in Nolo. Since 2023, she is a teaching assistant at the School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano.
Daniela Sangiorgi
Full Professor in Design at Politecnico di Milano. She returned to Italy after working eight years at Lancaster University in UK, where she collaborated in the foundation and development of the new research center ImaginationLancaster. She has a PhD in Design and a Degree in Industrial Design at Politecnico di Milano. One of the first scholars in the newborn field of Service Design, she has been working since the beginning in the scientific development of its knowledge base and community. In parallel to the foundational work, she has developed a specific interest in the application of design for the public sector, particularly the healthcare domain. A further stream of work in service design has been related to creating bridges and interdisciplinary collaborations in close service research and service science. Her current role as the Head of Product Service System Design Master program at the School of Design of Politecnico di Milano, has increased her interest in the development of service design education in Italy and globally.
Federico De Luca
Federico De Luca is a PhD candidate in an interdepartmental program between the Department of Management Engineering and the Department of Design at Politecnico di Milano. His research centers on the mechanisms of service co-production in primary care and territorial contexts, collaborating with volunteers and the third sector. Federico employs hybrid approaches, integrating management processes for organizational and regulatory aspects and participatory processes such as co-design workshops to ensure effective collaboration and innovation. Additionally, Federico is actively involved in training and educational projects on design thinking processes in public health and healthcare organizations and management.
Marta Corubolo
Marta Corubolo, Researcher at the Design Department of the Politecnico di Milano. She is a member of the Polimi DESIS Lab, her research interests cover service and strategic design and social innovation, community centered design and collaborative services, with a specific focus on the incubation and growth of local initiatives and their relationship with the private, public and third sector.
Contact details
If you have any enquiries about the course or if you need technical assistance please contact pok@polimi.it. For further information, see FAQ page.