👍⃢📰 Great News❕’s Post

As we mark #EarthDay2024, Service Design Team Lead Francis Rowland reflects on the role of service design in helping to create a better future for the planet 🌍 "In the service design team, we have been thinking about how we need to adapt our work in the face of these [climate] challenges, but at a scale we can tackle. Because of the versatility of service design practice, we feel we have an opportunity to fit in and provide value in new and different ways...We've been looking at the methods we use, the clients we work with or would like to work with, what academics have to say about the role of design in a more sustainable future and different lenses through which to view our work." https://lnkd.in/es7DU3BR #ServiceDesign #Sustainability #PlanetCentredDesign

3 problems with our design and business that may contribute to climate and social issues... and 5 life-centred design super-powers to start fixing them!

While human-centred design has made some really wonderful differences for many humans, it was always meant to be sustainably-minded and fully inclusive. But it got hijacked by unrestrained capitalism which created a destructive business-focused way of living that now dominates the world. 🤔 3 ways your everyday design and business actions may be contributing to the climate crisis and social injustice: 1. Designing solely for human needs and profit, without considering the broader environmental and social impacts throughout a project's ecosystem and product lifecycles 2. Designing exclusively for a narrow segment of the human population, without comprehensive integration of inclusivity and accessibility considerations, perpetuating biases, marginalisation, and environmental and social injustices throughout business and product lifecycles, exacerbating global inequality and perpetuating systemic discrimination. 3. Designing solely for profit and economic growth overlooks the holistic well-being of societies, environments, and interrelationships, perpetuating a disconnect between economic success and the health of communities and the planet. 🌏 5 ways modern design can transform from being a contributor to problems to becoming a force for positive change: 1. Ecosystem mapping—Zooming in and out during design and business activities to map and respect the greater ecosystem your activities belong to and impact 2. Circular, sustainable, and inclusive design—optimise the circularity, sustainability, and inclusivity of your activities and products to take less from the world and to reduce waste, pollution, and exclusion 3. Non-human and non-user personas—Create personas for the environments, animals, and people impacted by your activities to give them a voice in your projects 4. Global initiatives—align with global initiatives to connect more deeply with the greatest ecosystem we are all part of, Planet Earth 5. Monitoring—stay with your innovations by setting measurable metrics enabling continuous improvement and innovation The Life-centred Design Foundations Online Course teaches you these 5 solutions in just 6 weeks! 📅 Save the Dates: Tue 30th April—Enrolments Open and Free Course Tour Webinar Tue 14th May—Course Starts! 📣 And subscribe now to receive exclusive updates and secure your spot in this transformative journey. Stay tuned for more exciting details! Subscribe for updates: https://lnkd.in/gRazbYpz #lifecentreddesign #sustainabledesign #inclusivedesign #circulareconomy #circulardesign #regenerativedesign #humancentreddesign #designthinking #designer #onlinecourse #onlinecoursecreators #futuredesign #futures #lcdhub #nature #sdgs

Imagine a world - that starts today - where these principles are practiced by everyone engaged in designing for the world: Regenerative practices aim to enhance and restore the natural capacity of ecosystems and the intricate web of life. They go beyond mere sustainability by actively contributing to ecological, social, and cultural systems in ways that expand their resilience and capacity to thrive. Regenerative design is a holistic, ethical, and participatory approach that 🪲 Supports natural flows and long-term systemic change across the entire lifecycle of a design. 🪲 Creates positive ecosystem impacts by integrating "more-than-human" stakeholders (e.g., animals, plants, fungi). 🪲 Resonates with natural patterns and rhythms, challenging extractivist and human-centered approaches. 🪲 Fosters mutual flourishing between human and non-human entities, prioritizing diversity and distributed agency. 🪲 Expands the design role from problem-solving to shaping just and ecologically balanced futures. Thank you to Henrik Lübker and Lotte Nystrup Lund for this - and for all the people who have been contributing to it. I look forward to testing these ideas in the coming months - and reporting back on our experiences!

Design needs to do more than serve us. It needs to heal. It needs to regenerate. 🌍 That is why Lotte Nystrup Lund and I have curated The Regenerative Design Manifesto - a first step toward shifting design’s direction and mindset. We call on designers everywhere to abandon outdated, human-centred approaches and embrace a new way of designing that prioritizes the interconnectedness of all life on Earth and acknowledges more-than-human agency. The Regenerative mind-shift in headlines: 1. We design as a service for something greater than ourselves 2. We design for friction and a renewed engagement with the world 3. We design for interdependence and mutual flourishing 4. We expand design beyond mere appearance and problem-solving 5. We design new narratives embracing more-than-human perspectives The manifesto emerged from a workshop at Design Matters 2024 in Copenhagen, where more than 100 designers joined forces to reimagine design in the age of climate crisis and biodiversity loss. Please dive in and take a moment to reflect on how this shift in direction could influence your own design work. I also hope to gather examples of regenerative design in practice in the coming time to create an inspiring best-practice guide to accompany the manifesto. If you have any good examples, please send them to me. It’s not just time. It’s long overdue. I hope you’ll join me in the mission.

Creativity is often misunderstood, much like design. People think of both as pathways to creating beautiful art or products. But in reality, they are about anticipating the future and shaping the world we want to live in. At its core, creativity is simply problem-solving. Design, however, carries a lot more weight. Approximately 80% of the world's climate-related challenges stem from the design phase. This reality underscores the urgent need for designers to better comprehend their work's impact on the future. Design is not just a tool for meeting human needs; it is a platform for considering the broader implications of those needs. What do people do with the things we create? Single-use plastic is a poignant example of how human-centred design, in its pursuit of convenience, has inadvertently created one of the greatest inconveniences of our time. Human-centred design is not a static concept. It, too, needs to evolve. It should transcend the products we create for people and account for the impact of human behaviours on the places we exist, the communities we live in, and the ongoing challenges of the climate we continue to shift. Designing for humanity (rather than humans) feels more important to me. As Steve Jobs said, we can't connect the dots looking forward, only looking back. But looking back gives us a good insight and a better understanding of how we can re-design the future.🌍✨ #SustainableDesign #FutureFocused #ImpactDesign #design #humanity #climate #future #inhabitus #creativity #designthinking #humancentreddesign #hcd #impact

Creativity is often misunderstood, much like design. People think of both as pathways to creating beautiful art or products. But in reality, they are about anticipating the future and shaping the world we want to live in. At its core, creativity is simply problem-solving. Design, however, carries a lot more weight. Approximately 80% of the world's climate-related challenges stem from the design phase. This reality underscores the urgent need for designers to better comprehend their work's impact on the future. Design is not just a tool for meeting human needs; it is a platform for considering the broader implications of those needs. What do people do with the things we create? Single-use plastic is a poignant example of how human-centred design, in its pursuit of convenience, has inadvertently created one of the greatest inconveniences of our time. Human-centred design is not a static concept. It, too, needs to evolve. It should transcend the products we create for people and account for the impact of human behaviours on the places we exist, the communities we live in, and the ongoing challenges of the climate we continue to shift. Designing for humanity (rather than humans) feels more important to me. As Steve Jobs said, we can't connect the dots looking forward, only looking back. But looking back gives us a good insight and a better understanding of how we can re-design the future.🌍✨ #SustainableDesign #FutureFocused #ImpactDesign #design #humanity #climate #future #inhabitus #creativity #designthinking #humancentreddesign #hcd #impact

What makes me cringe...? Seeing old, used products in the trash bin. Most designers are conditioned to neglect the long term implications of the products they create. Their focus is on creating something marketable. And once it's been sold to a customer, it's "out of their hands". This shortsightedness is rooted in coloniality. We tend to fixate on innovation and market dominance - churning more and more product, while exploiting land and labor. We fail to view ourselves as nature - interdependent and interwoven within our ecosystem - so we ignore what happens to our products once they're sold. The amount of waste we accumulate and discard every day is astonishing. Most customers have no idea how to safely and responsibly dispose of things we buy. Once they're worn-out, and unusable (in their current form), customers end up carrying the guilt and responsibility for how they choose to dispose of these products. And this is intentional. Corporations and governments have been masters at shifting the burden of accountability. When designers adopt this colonial mindset it not only contributes to environmental degradation, but perpetuates conditions where we place the burden of responsibility onto consumers and marginalized communities, who end up bearing the brunt of the consequences of unsustainable consumption and waste disposal. Imagine if the products we use were not only designed with representation and accessibility in mind - but with the recognition that the very communities we seek to include are disproportionately harmed when we ignore long term thinking. We are always shaping the future in the present. And through our practices, we can either reinforce the status quo, or design in ways that move us towards more relational and liberatory futures. --- To learn more about how we work with design and research teams to build a relational praxis and disrupt coloniality, send me a DM. #InclusiveDesign #Regeneration #RelationalDesign #DesignJustice

Jo spoke to Rob Alderson, Editor of Design Week about the next Design Declares event. The event on November 22 – Design & Climate: Changing Perspectives – is part of Design Declares’ work to “break that cycle.” It will focus on changing behaviours, mindsets and practices in the long-term, with a panel discussion and a speculative design workshop to get people thinking “10, 20, 30 years in the future.” Read more here https://lnkd.in/euWZxuH9 #sustainabledesign #designstrategy #designfuture

Yessss 💚! This article perfectly describes the role and magnitude of importance that design plays in mitigating climate change. "We are living through the decisive decade, and designers have urgent decisions to make. Our considerable skillsets can be transferred from enabling a take-make-waste culture to accelerating a reduce-redesign-reuse culture." Women and Climate Michelle Li RegenIntel Chad Frischmann Brian Stancheski Maarten Statius Muller