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  • Book
  • © 2017

CoDesign for Public-Interest Services

  • Connects co-design and service design to create a process for transforming citizen activism into public-interest services.
  • Clarifies the evolving role of the designer within the current wave of social innovations and collaborative processes.
  • Presents co-design as an instrument to regenerate the practices of democracy and thus as a public service itself.
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Research for Development (REDE)

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxvi
  2. Framing the Scenario of Public-Interest Services

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
    2. Citizen Activism and Social Innovation

      • Daniela Selloni
      Pages 3-13
  3. Experimenting with Public-Interest Services

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 61-61
    2. Reflections from the Comparative Analysis

      • Daniela Selloni
      Pages 117-129
  4. Infrastructuring Public-Interest Services

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 131-131
    2. Defining a Collaborative Infrastructure

      • Daniela Selloni
      Pages 133-140
    3. Infrastructuring by Design

      • Daniela Selloni
      Pages 141-168
    4. Codesign for the Public Interest

      • Daniela Selloni
      Pages 177-189
  5. Back Matter

    Pages 191-193

About this book

This books focuses on co-design, and more specifically, on the various forms co-design might take to tackle the most pressing societal challenges, introducing public-interest services as the main application field. To do so, it presents an extensive study conducted within a particular community of residents in Milan: this is a social innovation story integrated into the discipline of service design, which simultaneously deepens the related concepts of co-design, co-production and co-management of services.


Drawing upon this experience and further studies, the book presents the idea of a collaborative infrastructure and its related infrastructuring process in ten steps, in order to explore the issues of incubation and replication of services and to extensively investigate the creation of those experimental spaces in which citizen participation is fostered and innovation in the public realm is pursued.


Lastly, the book develops otherlines of reflection on co-design seen, for example, as a form of cultural activism, as an instrument for building citizenship, and as a key competence for the public administration and thus as a public service itself. The idea of co-design as a way to regenerate the practices of democracy is a recurring theme throughout the book: co-design is a process that seeks to change the state of things and it is intentionally presented as a long and complex path in which the role of designer is not only that of a facilitator, but also that of a cultural operator who contributes with ideas and visions, hopefully fostering a real cultural change.


Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Daniela Selloni

About the author

Daniela Selloni is a service designer, research fellow and contract professor in Product Service System Design at the Politecnico di Milano School of Design, Milan, Italy. She holds a PhD in Design for a doctorate that investigated the intersection of service design, social innovation, and participatory design, highlighting an emerging field for public interest services. Her research interests focus on the role of design within a sharing economy, collaborative practices and citizen activism, experimental methods and tools of co-design, and community-centered design. Her recent work has been exploring design for public policies and services. She is a member of the POLIMI DESIS Lab, which is part of the DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) international network.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access