BARAZA REPORT: 

3rd AFRICA-DESIGN ‘SOCIAL BENEFITS’ BARAZA HELD ON THE 20th April 2022

Theme: CONSIDERING THE SOCIAL IMPACTS OF DESIGN- A Guide for Getting Started

Aim for the Baraza

• To more deeply consider the impacts that engineered products can have on society.
• To provide you with the materials to bring these ideas to your classroom/teams.

Topics/Activities for the Baraza

• What kind of social impacts do products have?
• Identifying impacts for your own projects/ideas.
• How to improve the social impact of products. 

Conduct of the Baraza

The Baraza was held online via Zoom meeting and was moderated by (from the Brigham Young University Design Exploration Research Group):

Chris Mattson

John Salmon

Chris Mabey

Marin Fisher 

Program: 

Part 1: Short Orientation

Part 2: Impact Activities (4)

Part 3: Workshop Materials

Impact Activities 

ACTIVITY 1

Purpose: Consider one of your Designs and its Impacts on Society

Tasks: 

1. Consider something you have designed, or are designing, or will someday design. Imagine this product in its final form delivered to the user/client/stakeholder. 
2. Give this product a short title of 2-4 words (e.g., bamboo bicycle, or fruit press) 
3. Imagine/consider the possible impacts this product could have on society
4. Enter the product title and impacts on the Google Doc. 
5. Add multiple impacts under your product in the Google Doc. (5 minutes) 

Example: Fruit press: 

• Allows fruit to be processed into juice before it spoils
• Supports skilled labor growth
• Creates worker safety risk

ACTIVITY 2

Purpose: Crowdsource additional impacts for your product

Tasks: 

1. Read the product names and impacts listed by other people
2. Add to the list of possible impacts by adding new impacts to the lists of other. Add anything that comes to your mind. Think about positive & negative impacts.
3. Repeat task 2 multiple times (5 minutes) 

Example: Fruit press: 

• Allows fruit to be processed into juice before it spoils
• Supports skilled labor growth
• Creates worker safety risk
• Could create new business opportunity
• Might change the way people consume fruit
• Could be a piece of equipment worth stealing

ACTIVITY 3

Purpose: Identify and consider possibly neglected impact categories

Tasks: 

1. Considering the 11 social impact categories (below), choose 3 that you may not have considered before, that are potentially pertinent to your product.

 

 

ACTIVITY 4

Purpose: Further consider impacts in neglected areas.

Tasks: 

1. Open the Social Impacts Consideration List, find and review the 5 questions posed for the 3 categories you selected in Activity 3.
2. Use the questions to prompt or inspire the identification of 2-4 specific impacts that you have not considered before but now believe should be addressed.

 

Resources 

• Workshop materials available at design.byu.edu https://www.design.byu.edu/socialimpact-workshop
• The slides from this workshop (with presenter notes)
• Social Impacts Consideration List (PDF)
• References to pertinent literature
• Baraza Activities Worksheet