abstract
What does design mean for me?
Transforming realities
For me, design is the action of bringing to the world something that transforms realities. I think it is not necessarily about coming up with solutions but rather creating the right environments to give space for others to think and create desirable futures.
These “environments” can take different shapes: from physical spaces to communities that can interact physically or digitally. I like to see design as a way to create systems rather than things.
Systemic approach
The climate emergency we are facing today is the consequence of many choices we made as a society and in which designers play an important role.
To address this, designers should take a systemic, holistic approach and take into account all dimensions affected by their project : time (what about future generations?), space (what are the impacts in other parts of the city/the region/the world?), species (which humans and non-humans will be affected by this?).
I started my professional practice of design with User Centered Design but last year, at the company I was working at, we started developing frameworks to include social and environmental impacts into each project as well as new ways of mapping ecosystems to include non humans into the picture. In that sense, I see also as a role of design the creation of tools that enable us to see the world from a different perspective.
New narratives - How words create worlds
“The twenty-first century has an analogue: it’s easier for most people to imagine the end of the planet than to imagine the end of capitalism.” (Jason W. Moore). This sentence resonates a lot for me because there is an inclination of humans to think in terms of fiction, narrative, storytelling and I am convinced that design contributes to creating these new narratives.
How can design help me achieve my purpose?
My purpose is to reconnect humans to nature, and promote more sustainable and resilient ways of living especially in the way we produce and consume food. For that purpose, many actors should be involved and collaborate to make a shift in the traditional vision of the food system.
Design as I see it can be an enabler to achieve this purpose. Taking a systematic approach, starting from a first person perspective and not focusing on some “user” leads to more honest and authentic proposals, giving agency and autonomy to those who were traditionally expected to be passive “consumers”.
How can design be used to transform my world?
All designers?
Using technology and digital fabrication techniques, we can make accessible the tools to empower citizens to find and create their own solutions at a local scale. This is the idea behind distributed design and in a way it makes us all designers. In that sense, the role of “expert designers” does not disappear but is even more important (as also shared by Ezio Manizini in Design, when everybody designs). Design here enables new forms of collaboration between communities to develops meaningful projects that transform the world from a local to a global scale.