A visual-analytical approach to phases of transition in people’s life paths

RiDeST - Persone in Cambiamento | Menschen im Übergang | People in Transition is an applied research project in service design, mainly carried out from August 2019 to February 2021. The interdisciplinary team aimed to investigate whether and how social services for people in situations of personal change can be designed and established. — Society is changing: individual non-consistent life paths with frequent phases of reorientation are becoming the rule. However, Global North’s welfare systems and social services are still based on clearly defined stages of life that seamlessly follow one another (Schröer et al. 2013). If one does not (want to) into the designated categories, emerge, the emotional burden increases and the uncertainty arises as to whom or to which institution one can turn to (Pfab 2018). — The project aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the individual experiences and resulting social dynamics of life path transitions and, based on this, providing recommendations to social service operators. Besides conducting an ethnographic study in a social service department as well as a statistical investigation, design research methods were used and developed to investigate how public service providers can offer support to people in transition, to explore the potential of visual-analytical tools (see res below), to conceptualize service concepts and to foster the exchange among the different stakeholders