This book is about understanding the nature of design and organization in complex living systems. Design is everywhere in our lives—but the nature of complex systems means that few people feel empowered or equipped to design better futures. Although the places we live are full of material objects, they only become meaningful as they are used and experienced by people. The author looks at design as a way of thinking and acting. Design becomes an open-ended conversation with the world around us. The text is also about the shifting social relations of design—moving from an emphasis on individual engineers and designers toward the participatory process of making sense of tools to improve our lives: we call this process co-design.

This book includes a deep-dive into the mindsets and methods of Co-design. It draws on the authors' experience across Australia and New Zealand, as well as design, trauma-informed practice, collective learning and social movements.

Introduction to Hardware-Software Co-Design presents a number of issues of fundamental importance for the design of integrated hardware software products such as embedded, communication, and multimedia systems. This book is a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals of hardware/software co-design. Co-design is still a new field but one which has substantially matured over the past few years. This book, written by leading international experts, covers all the major topics including: fundamental issues in co-design; hardware/software co-synthesis algorithms; prototyping and emulation; target architectures; compiler techniques; specification and verification; system-level specification. Special chapters describe in detail several leading-edge co-design systems including Cosyma, LYCOS, and Cosmos. Introduction to Hardware-Software Co-Design contains sufficient material for use by teachers and students in an advanced course of hardware/software co-design. It also contains extensive explanation of the fundamental concepts of the subject and the necessary background to bring practitioners up-to-date on this increasingly important topic.

This title serves as an introduction ans reference for the field, with the papers that have shaped the hardware/software co-design since its inception in the early 90s.

Although co-design has been practised in new service and product development for some years, it has only recently begun to appear in the burgeoning field of social innovation. It appears to be well-attuned to this new context, offering as it does an open-ended relational process to generate novel solutions to problems whose very definition seems to escape more conventional approaches. However, even less research attention has been paid to co-design than to social innovation. This book explores the potential of co-design as a social innovation process. It reviews the diverse theoretical and disciplinary foundations on which co-design is based. It proposes a framework for understanding co-design as a cohesive practice across the extremely broad scope of its potential applications. It explores appropriate approaches to governance and evaluation of co-design initiatives and outlines the key issues and limitations on its use. Although it is intended to provide a robust theoretical basis for researching co-design initiatives, it will also be of interest to anyone who is contemplating putting co-design into practice.

Working in complex systems brings fresh challenges to leaders, managers, consultants, and those involved in their education. This book (the third in a series of three) introduces a set of practices that will help you develop confidence and strength in working in new ways across boundaries. We know intuitively that when we move outside our organizational boundaries, we need new ways of practicing that will respond to the needs of others and shape the emerging future. Each chapter focuses on a specific practice and explains what it looks like, why it is relevant, and how to integrate it into your work. Questions for reflection and suggested activities offer ideas for immediate action. The format invites the reader to pick a chapter or two when it feels like a good time to engage with professional development. The material is also suitable for discussion with colleagues as part of team development. The practical, applied nature of this book means that it can be used in many different ways to spark ideas and stimulate new ways of working as individuals and collectively. Leaders in complex systems will grow in confidence and expand their practice repertoire as they engage with the material in this volume.

This book provides a guide to co-designing learning environments and relationships. Learning is fundamental to living and organizing in complex systems. The authors begin by revisiting what learning means in living systems. Their experiences with business organizations and formal education systems have led to the conclusion that learning has been lost from view in many complex systems. The authors briefly trace the history of ideas about learning to give new energy and focus for co-designing learning places. The 12 thematic chapters in this book focus on practical ideas. Each chapter centers on a theme that is explored through a collection of short pieces—presented as ideas, theories, stories, approaches, and methods. This book will benefit a multitude of people and professionals who are interested in new ways to think about learning, both individually and collectively–it was written with a diverse readership in mind.

This Research Topic is Volume 2 in the Physical Activity, Health Equity and Health-Related Outcomes series. There is sufficient scientific evidence on the benefits of physical activity in the prevention and treatment of diseases. However, sedentarism remains one of the biggest health problems worldwide, leading to premature mortality in most if not all populations. It has been shown that physical activity behavior is socially patterned with lower participation rates among women, certain racial and ethnic groups, people with poorer access to education, health care and health insurance, as well as people with physical, mental, and cognitive disabilities and older adults.

Designing Service Processes to Unlock Value explores how service processes can be designed to leverage the expanding range of opportunities for service providers and customers to co-create value. The service process design landscape is changing, with many of the previous limitations disappearing on how and by whom services are delivered. Opportunities for new service design configurations are being supported, to a large extent, by technology-enabled innovations; many tasks previously performed by the service provider may now be performed by either the customer or the service provider. As a result, customers are playing a more active role in the service process, not only through self-service but also by providing information to the service provider to create a more personalized service experience. Designing Service Processes to Unlock Value explores how service processes can be designed to leverage the expanding range of opportunities for service providers and customers to co-create value. Readers will learn about frameworks for value co-creation and models for designing all types of service processes, as well as the unique challenges of designing knowledge-intensive services. And with the growing number of alternatives for designing service processes and determining who performs the various service tasks, service performance outcomes are increasingly dependent on the knowledge, skills, and abilities—that is, capabilities—of both service providers and customers. Thus, the book concludes with approaches to unlock these capabilities–and further boost value co-creation.

This Research Topic is a follow on from the Topic Editors' successful volume I. The term “health literacy” was coined by Ratzan et al. in the 1970s providing the minimal health education required in schools, however this term is almost new and in the early phase of development. Though many attempts have been made in the past to define health literacy, WHO construed it as “the cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health.” Health literacy not only focuses on the individual behavior oriented communication but also on the various determinants of health such as environmental, social, and political factors, thus it is ahead in the concept of health education. If health education methods go beyond the bounds of “information diffusion” and bring about interaction, participation, and critical analysis, such kind of approach will lead to improved health literacy, personal aid, and social benefit by enabling adequate community action and contributions to the advancement of social capital.