DESIS Network’s purpose is “to promote design for social innovation in higher education institutions with design discipline so as to generate useful design knowledge and to create meaningful social changes in collaboration with other stakeholders.” Applying members who share the same vision and fulfil the following requirements will become DESIS Labs.
The Association is coordinated by the DESIS International Coordinator: a person elected by the Assembly, who collaborates with the International Coordination Committee (ICC) to evaluate new Labs application requests.
Conditions
A Design School/University can establish a DESIS Lab when the following criteria are met:
• a Design team is already working in the field of Design for Social Innovation (the team can include academics, students and researchers), can prove maturity and experience about it and is already in contact with DESIS Network.
• the Design team expresses interest in the DESIS Network’s aims and projects and appoints a Lab Coordinator (with the responsibility of the overall Lab policies).
• one or more social innovation-related projects can be presented as an example of the Design team’s activity (they can be projects developed by students in design classes or by professional researchers and experts; they can be already concluded, in progress or still in the launching phase).
Membership and activities
Members can be legally constituted higher education institutions or Universities with design disciplines, private or public. Each Member commits itself to establish and sustain a DESIS lab in its higher education institutions.
Each Member-DESIS Lab also commits to:
• collaborate in promoting and developing at least one DESIS Initiative
• participate in the annual DESIS Assembly
• present a short report on their activities and programs at the annual Assembly.
DESIS initiatives are groups of DESIS Labs cooperating to realize a common cultural, didactic or research program and DESIS Assembly is the meeting of the Members and invited Partners (“Partners non Member” – Universities non Members and other legal entities non Members, interested to the activities of the Association).
What to do (first step) to become a DESIS Lab
When the previous requirements are met, an e-mail with a Lab Profile, two recommendation letters, a project presentation and a data form about the Lab should be sent to the DESIS International Coordination.
Evaluation
Once the Membership Request Letter and its attachments have been received by the International Coordination Committee, they will be analysed in order to verify if the formal requirements are satisfied. On this basis, feedback will be send to the interested teams.