"So new it does not have a name"

This morning, Alice Rawsthorn highlights the social and service revolution for the third time this year. Frederik Wiedemann is a partner of ReD Associates, a social design firm that was employed by the city of Copenhagen to improve the rate of sick leave in its offices.

"ReD Associates, one of a new breed of hybrid consulting groups that combine design with other disciplines, such as ethnography, psychology and anthropology, to tackle social problems as well as commercial ones.Rapidly though this area of design is expanding, it is still so new that it does not have a name, at least not one that has stuck. “Social design,” “service design” and “service innovation” are among the favorites, but a bunch of design graduate students in San Francisco nailed the problem by staging an exhibition in March entitled “What the *#&! is Social Design.” Nameless it may be, but there is an accepted methodology in this field and ReD’s approach is fairly typical."