Design in the Anthropocene

What should be the role of design working towards a more sustainable future?

Ben Reason & Anna van der Togt

FLA 22’ — Ux & Product Design Week

Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash

Good services don’t happen by accident. They need to be designed. That’s what we do.

21 Years of Creativity & Impact

400 clients

● Business, government & NGOs

● From startups to multinationals

● From healthcare to hoofcare

● From B2C to B2B to G2C

1500 projects

● From sprints to 10 year engagements

● From strategy to delivery

● From innovation to incremental

● From training to transformation

3 studios

● London, Rotterdam & São Paulo

● Working in 30+ countries

● Approx 100 people

● Diverse backgrounds & nationalities

About us

The world of tomorrow is ours to create. We must be ecological

Our focus on industrially designed & produced products and services serving users resulted in an ecological crisis. We must change our ways of acting, thinking and being to acknowledge and address the damage we are doing to our planet. We see this as a fundamental human challenge. A design challenge. The future emerges directly from the things we design. We have to design ecological.

Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash

“These are the kinds of problems you can’t manage your way out of. You have to design your way out of them.”

Photo by Priscilla-du-Preez on Unsplash

Marty Neumeier, The Designful Company

Let’s start with

Who’s who?

Please introduce yourself, the organisation you work for and your sustainability character

Photo by Irina Iacob on Unsplash

Who are you?

Please introduce yourself, the organisation you work for and your sustainability character:

The Sustainability

Dummy

The Sustainability Veteran

The Unacknowledged Sustainability Evangelist

The Sustainability

Skeptic

The I’m-just-goingalong-on-thisride

The Curious Newbee

Photo by Irina Iacob on Unsplash

Design

Human Centered Reframing Contextual Experimental Co-creative

Human centred

Co-creative

Reframing

Contextual

Experimental

Anthropocene

Anthropocene

Increased levels of climate-warming CO2 in the atmosphere at the fastest rate for 66m years, with fossil-fuel burning pushing levels from 280 parts per million before the industrial revolution to 400 ppm and rising today.

The Guardian August 2016

Anthropocene

Doubled the nitrogen and phosphorus in our soils in the past century with fertiliser use. This is likely to be the largest impact on the nitrogen cycle in 2.5bn years.

The Guardian August 2016

Anthropocene

Put so much plastic in our waterways and oceans that microplastic particles are now virtually ubiquitous, and plastics will likely leave identifiable fossil records for future generations to discover.

The Guardian August 2016

Design in the Anthropocene

Re-design Design

Human Centered

Reframing Contextual Experimental Co-creative

More than human centred

“The end of the world is the end of the idea that humans are the only people that have a world on this planet.”

Humankind, Timothy Morton

Hugely co-creative FLA - UX & Product Design Week

“Human beings can choose to remain unaware of their fundamentally co-creative involvement in reality, or they can become mindful and responsible in full awareness of the power of design.”

Daniel Christian Wahl

Reframing prosperity

Prosperity Without Growth, Tim Jackson

“The idea of a continually growing economy is an anathema to an ecologist”

Ecologically contextual

“Now that is agency… It is what makes humans of nature and also the freak of nature.”

Defiant Earth, Clive Hamilton

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.”

Anti-fragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Trying to be : More than Human centric

An example to what designing like this could look like

Photo by Anastasia Palagutina on Unsplash

How do you think design should change?

Photo by Anna, on her hiking trip to the French Pyrenees

What else needs reframing?

Which product & UX-design myths do we need to bust?

Photo by Anna, on her hiking trip to the French Pyrenees

simple efortless

cheap

seamless transparent

intuitive aesthetically pleasing

frictionless Are these still relevant?

convenient

Great (digital) products should be…….

Time for a break ;-)

Photo by Seb Mooze on Unsplash

Objects of design

What is the design work?

Our role in the ecosystem

● System e.g. What leverage points/incentives do we "own" What system change can be unlocked by us?

● Our value chain e.g. How can we reduce the environmental/social impact of our value chain? and how do we get our partners to collaborate?

Our organisation

● Our strategy e.g. How do we move forwards? What are our targets?

● Our set-up & processes e.g. How to orientate and organize ourselves towards more sustainable goals?

● Our operation e.g. How can we reduce the footprint of our digital products, of our systems, or of our offices/shops?

Our services

● Our services e.g. How can we change the services around our products so they are less impactful or even contribute to longevity or circularity (e.g. return, repair, upgrade, recycle)?

Our products

● Our products e.g. How can we reduce the environmental/social impact of our products? (e.g. recycled materials)

● Our value propositions/portfolio

Product Design Week

For example: Mobility

The product: Design a car

& Product Design Week

For example: Mobility

Services: Design mobility app

For example: Mobility

Organisation: Design for organisational change towards strategic goals

For example: Mobility

Ecosystem: Facilitate city and city stakeholders to facilitate greener transport

LW’s design work?

Livework has to understand what a sustainable future looks like in the spaces we operate in:

The Livework’s sphere of influence is mostly in (re)designing:

● The services of our clients

● The organisation of our clients

Plus want to do more work (re)designing: Multi-org ecosystems/client ecosystems

Role in the ecosystem

The organisation

The services

The products

What is the design work?

Where does your design work sit?

What does that mean for the sustainability approach?

Step 1 — Take 5 minutes to reflect & make notes on the handout.

Step 2 — Discuss in groups of 5 and help each other to get to a deeper understanding by asking reflecting questions

Our role in the ecosystem

Re-designing the role xxx plays in its sector

Our organisation

Re-designing how xxx operates to achieve sustainability goals

Our services

Re-designing xxx’s relationship to clients and how they are supported towards sustainability

Our products

Re-designing xxx’s products to address sustainability

Actors of design/ The designer

Translating sustainability to our day to day work

It's not just business, it's personal

It's an unprecedented shift that needs time to process and reflect

Fostering a new kind of reflective mindset/culture to continuously redefine our way of working/thinking and help to structurally look at the bigger picture and beyond BAU.

Tuning in - your role as a designer, human being, team member, employee or world citizen

What does sustainability mean for:

● You personally? And how would you like to bring that to work?

● The world/ecosystem around your business? In what ways is it a topic? Trends? Changes in regulations?

● Your business? In what way does it have an impact on the world and how is that addressed? How is the organisation engaged?

● How does that trickle through to your team/department? What is their role? How do people reflect and evolve their work?

Reflect in groups — What might this mean for:

● The approach needed?

● The processes or governance needed?

● The mental models, tools or templates needed?

Checkout

What will you take away from this session?

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash