About Us

ARK are a group of people from diverse backgrounds, who are interested in using design thinking to respond to social issues in our community. We aim to work with the public, organisations and education establishments, using social design* to encourage discourse and response to social issues.

*What is social design?
OPTION 1:
For us Social design encompasses a range of ideas about people and how we experience and interpret the world through design. It relates to designing, building or creating something in a way that benefits those who use it as well as those who produce it. It is also about people working together to design things, for example products, services, systems, events etc, in a way that will work best for them and the community, based on their own knowledge and experience. Social design is about facilitating change for the better.

OPTION 2:
social design is the application of design thinking and co design to solve problems/issues relating to people and their environments.

As you can see there is no right or wrong, no definite answers, but we do know that it is people and involvement in these issues that are the key. Have a look here at one of our older posts with a nice presentation from Simon about his thoughts.