🌱 What role does design play?
Design is everywhere — in “products, services and entirely new businesses”.[i] How things are designed has implications and consequences, and it also creates opportunities.[ii] Design “has the ability to advance human behavior”. In line with this, design that is planet-centered is thought to be able to “play a huge role in driving a sustainable economy”, as it can shape “the products we make, the processes we follow and the policies we influence”.[iii]
🌱 What responsibility do designers have?
When the design process is looked at as a series of decisions that a designer makes, it shines light on the responsibility of the designer in shaping the effects of the design on the environment and people.[iv] As “planetary systems are complex”, “design processes and tools are necessary to help navigate complexity and create better solutions for society that fit within the planet’s boundaries”.[v]
🌱 What potential does design have?
Design has the potential of considering and asking the difficult questions that are needed in order for us to create a change towards a socially and environmentally just future. Designers play a key role in society and our ongoing transitions. They “can guide companies to strive for more service-centered business models that consumers will be willing to buy into, ones that avoid damage to the environment, but are also built to adapt as needed”.[vi]
🌱 How does the work of designers need to change?
As we transition, the manner in which designers “work will also need to evolve to integrate new criteria for assessing quality, such as by measuring the carbon footprint of production, monitoring manufacturing practices and considering the ethics of source materials—as well as the effects on indirect users or disturbances generated by a project”. It is no longer “enough to [simply] focus on desirability, viability and feasibility when designing new services”.[vii]
🌱 What step is needed next?
The next major step in our transition is the process of “redefining design thinking methods to include both human and environmental needs”.[viii] In their article titled “Futures: Resilient Futures”, Brian Collins and J.A. Ginsburg argue that “we are at a moment in history where almost everything needs to be rethought, reimagined and done different: How products are made. How services are delivered. Packaging. Materials. Business models.”[ix]
🌱 What role do designers have in shaping the future?
Brian Collins and J.A. Ginsburg see designers’ core role in aiding “companies and organizations [to] see, create and communicate their places in the future”. In order to properly do that, designers must however “look beyond the stakeholders of today” and think at least a few years into the future. They argue that even more than the “stakeholders”, designers should be thinking about the “stakes”.[x]
This post has been adapted from a newsletter written by Saskia Tykkyläinen and Christine Nikander for a collaboration between Palsa & Pulk and The E-Waste Column. The newsletter titled “How can designers step in to create a more sustainable future?” was originally published in both “The Just Transition Newsletter” and “The E-Waste Newsletter”.
[i] https://www.frog.co/designmind/envisioning-and-designing-a-planet-centric-future
[ii] https://www.wearecollins.com/ideas/stakes-design/
[iii] https://www.frog.co/designmind/envisioning-and-designing-a-planet-centric-future
[iv] https://www.frog.co/designmind/envisioning-and-designing-a-planet-centric-future
[v] https://aware-theplatform.com/planet-centric-design-from-egoism-to-ecosystems/
[vi] https://www.frog.co/designmind/envisioning-and-designing-a-planet-centric-future
[vii] https://aware-theplatform.com/planet-centric-design-from-egoism-to-ecosystems/
[viii] https://www.frog.co/designmind/envisioning-and-designing-a-planet-centric-future