Nineteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Design thinking gives the opportunity to use designer tools to solve problems of all sorts. Specifically, solving social problems and creating social impact has been the issue of academic research and professional practice. In recent years, notions like social innovation and social entrepreneurship with the purpose of creating social impact have been used and studied together under the umbrella term of design thinking. This paper focuses on the relationship between creating social impact and using design thinking methods to solve social problems. To identify their potential, the study examines the theoretical structure of design thinking, social innovation, and social entrepreneurship through social impact-oriented projects. As long as providing a review of the common points between the two; especially the way they try to tackle wicked problems; examples of projects created within the framework of design thinking are exemplified to demonstrate this relation.