All are based on human needs

Since the early appearance of human on the earth, all of the inventions and innovation have always been stemmed from human needs. Not exceptionally, social innovation is based on our willingness to get more and better resources. Thus, human-centered design thinking is extremely necessary to accomplish a social innovation. 

Today, we are in a changing world. Resources are becoming increasingly scarce, though demand seems not to decrease in the future. Most developed countries will confront the burden of aging, and some developing regions will suffer from youth bulge. The world is rebalancing. 

One of the small things we can do during the reshaping is to maximize every unit of resources. Here comes social innovation. However, social innovation can be effective to solve social problems only when it is human-centered. 

When I went to Australia for the first time, I was amazed by the impeccable accessibility facilities. The entry of every building has slope to let wheelchair pass through safely, and bus drivers will lower the right side every time when boarding. I suppose the disabled person has easier and cheaper access to get the wheelchair, because almost every disabled person has electricity-powered wheelchair. There seem no barriers for disabled person. They go to the market, mall and park just like us. Unfortunately, none of these facilities is applied in China. I could imagine how time-consuming the design process of these accessibility facilities is. To complete the system, designers need consider every aspect of disabled person's needs, such as their behavior, life-style and route on the street, etc. 

When we design a novel solution for social problems, cost is an important factor to put into account. Frugal engineering seems to be a good way out. As predicted by insiders, Apple will develop a cheaper product this year that focus on low-income and rural customers. Yes, engineering should be possible to be cheaper if every component can be more efficiently used. However, cheaper does not mean to sacrifice quality. Instead, designers should understand customers. Again, design thinking should be human-centered. If Apple will focus on low-income market, they need to investigate demands of this group of customers, then decide whether keep Wi-Fi function or not, for example. 

On the road to social innovation, human is always the target. Sometimes, however, if we seek for satisfying human demands to the most extent, cost will be inevitably high. Thus, it is a question to balance the demand and cost to effectively complete a social innovation.