Why take a design-based approach?

“If we don’t change our direction, we’re likely to end up where we’re headed.” Chinese Proverb

If we accept that questions rather than answers, and continuous experimentation rather than lock-in solutions are safer ways to guide us through these turbulent times and into the unpredictable future, then we also have to accept that there is a limit to the extent to which we can design our future in the face of complexity and uncertainty. Nevertheless, taking a design-based approach offers us a practical way to propose and implement solutions in order to continue to learn and improve our guiding questions.

On the one hand we have to accept that the future will remain unpredictable and uncontrollable; and on the other hand we can work creatively with the future potential of the present moment to envision and navigate towards the third horizon. Collective visioning focuses our attention on futures we want to co-create. It can help us agree on what we value and set the intentions that will inform our practice of regenerative design.

Culture change is first and foremost about a collective shift in perspective and consciousness, leading to a shift in values, intentions and behaviour. The technologies we employ and the designs we implement both support these changes and manifest our intentions materially and in the systems and structures we set up. Yet these relationships are circular, not linear. Our awareness and perspectives influence our behaviour, the technologies we employ and the way we ‘design’ solutions; while past designs and past solutions continue to shape our worldview and awareness.

We are all designers! We all co-create the world we live in through our relationships and our behaviour as citizens, community members and consumers. We all have real and perceived needs and we all design our own strategies to meet those needs. We all have intentions about what we would like to do and what kind of change we would like to see in the world; the ways we act (or fail to act) in accordance with those intentions are acts of design. Our intentions influence both our action and our inaction, they shape how we co-create the world.

Every time I spend a unit of currency on anything, I am directly participating in either maintaining past design decisions (possibly without questioning them) or encouraging a shift towards a regenerative culture by supporting ethical and sustainable business practices. The products and services we choose and offer in our work are important ways we all participate in the co-creation and design of the culture we live in. The stories we tell about ourselves, the education we offer our children, the way we share our wealth (of ideas, compassion, experience or money) all influence not just our lives but the culture we are co-creating.

“Every act of knowing brings forth a world […] All doing is knowing, and all knowing is doing […] We have only the world we bring forth with others […]” — Maturana & Varela (1987: 25 & 249)

Design, in its broadest possible sense, can help us to integrate the remarkable wealth of specialized knowledge, skill and shared aspiration that rests within humanity. Design should not be considered a specialized field of human endeavour; rather, it can be understood as the integrative activity that connects human intentions to their material and cultural expression in the form of artefacts, institutions and processes.

A design-based approach will not only help us to integrate many different perspectives and disciplines, it will also remind us that for the transition to be effective it will have to include not just a sound scientific basis informed by systemic thinking, but also ethical, aesthetic, social, cultural, economic and, of course, ecological considerations.

If we define design in its broadest sense, as human intentionality expressed through interactions and relationships, it becomes clear that any change that affects human intentions will redirect the entire design landscape downstream from that shift in intentionality.

At first glance this design definition might sound a little broad, but if you think about it, whether we apply it to a product like a chair that expresses certain functional and aesthetic intentions of the designer, or to a monetary system that is also designed to perform a certain function based on a set of intentions, the definition holds.

In the case of the chair the interactions and relationships are more focused on the different materials, production processes and spatial geometries involved, but also include the way the object, its designer, producer, distributor and user interact with the chair, and through it relate to each other. In the case of services and systems, for example a particular monetary system, design defines and shapes the interactions and relationships between the users of that particular medium of exchange. Design expresses and creates culture.

[…]

—

If you like the post, please clap AND remember that you can clap up to 50 times if you like it a lot ;-)!

Daniel Christian Wahl — Catalyzing transformative innovation in the face of converging crises, advising on regenerative whole systems design, regenerative leadership, and education for regenerative development and bioregional regeneration.

Author of the internationally acclaimed book Designing Regenerative Cultures (this piece is an excerpt from the book)