Limited Stories: Social Design Potentials Within Indigenous Contexts

In social design processes, designers seek to improve challenges by using design to solve problems and answer communities' needs. Aspects of change are central to social design, as transformative change usually forms the goal of the design action. This study will consider narrative practices, such as stories and creativity, to explore how they can—and cannot—reconstruct realities faced by marginalised communities. Social designers frequently encounter such settings to address particular needs using social design tools. The chapter is based on a focus group discussion conducted during a community arts-based intervention, thus prioritising a qualitative approach to comprehend the fundamental problems in this particular South Deidentified context. When dealing with sensitive matters and designing with marginalised communities, social designers need to understand narrative practices' power to be changed and transformed. People, processes and artefacts can contribute to the reinterpretation of stories, thereby changing the direction of dominant narratives. Social designers ought to gauge the power of stories with care to create better cohesion and carefully guide disruption.