DESIGN FOR HUMANITY from Quantity to Quality

Tomorrow the COP26 will start in Glasgow. Another attempt of the world leaders to take decisive climate steps. Despite many past promises and despite an even greater amount of corporate and governmental initiatives, the future of our children and grandchildren does not look gloomy right now. Total global CO2 emission levels keep increasing and as an effect global warming is pacing up. With the current warming up the country of Bangladesh will see more than 100 million climate refugees over the next decade (Brilliant, 2007).

"We need to act now, we don’t have time anymore".

That is the most heard statement in many conferences, election campaigns and corporate strategies.?

So why did we, humanity, wait so long to awake, to accept and to act (if any)? The signs are undoubtedly severe enough to neglect them, the consequences are day-to-day news broadcasted through all (social)media. And even felt close-by (my ice-skates have stayed packed in my basement for years now).

Do we need to suffer more severely from climate change, do immigrants need more despair, do we want to accept more global in-equality or will we really act?

The answer is at one hand easy, as it is a choice for one or the other scenario. Strategists know that strategy is about making choices then executing on them, nothing else. The answer is at the other hand is not easy, as the challenges being created by human beings have become very complex to solve. And human behaviour does play in as well. Only a collective understanding, agreement and none-egoistic mindset and execution will succeed.?

The 70 years after the second world war has given the Western and parts of the Eastern world a never seen before increase of GDP and consumption. At the same time the world population doubled and we managed to ban some devastating deceases.

Recently we start to witness a tipping point of this seamless and unconditional growth.

As repetitively and precisely predicted by the Club of Rome (Limits of Growth, 1972) and recently by the UK-based All-Part Parliamentary Group in 2016, we will have to accept our planetary boundaries and the economic challenge of secular stagnation. The important lessons from the studies is that early responses are absolutely vital as limits are approached.

It is clear that all humans are in the same boat, unfortunately the developing countries much more than the Western and emerging regions of the world, who are the cause root of many of our challenges.

Corporations, politicians and academics have started to take (or more so, to discuss) action and are urged to take faster and more action. But what is with the consumers, as they form an important part of the system of consumerism. How can we motive and activate consumers to behave differently and more sustainable? And what role can design play to drive a more responsible consumption?

Let me start with a little story (being aware this is on global consumption scale an exceptional story).

"Once up in a time there was a Dutch family that enjoyed an annual holiday in the South of France. Money was saved, the Route National was prepared, the car was packed. We were all super happy, excited to discover the French culture, the language and being together, helping each other to celebrate that precious moment in the year. Quality time, quality relationships, quality (mostly fresh, self-prepared) food from the local market, quality weather (yes it was heated already then). Returning to the Netherlands again the family started already fantasizing about their summer holiday next year. Rested, relaxed, satisfied they returned home, home sweet home, enjoying the great memories".

In contrast, today I met a friend who complained about his recent 4-day stay in Venice. It was over-crowed, filthy, the local Italians unfriendly, irritated and the air was polluted by heavy oil burned by the many cruise-ships queuing up in Venice port. The flight was not well served by the low fare airliner, the whole “holiday” was a stressful experience for his family. But in four weeks the next trip to Copenhagen is planned, so for better and hopefully more exciting experiences. One can feel the shift from quality to quantity.

More is more instead of less is more, seemed to be the mantra of the last decades.

Quality of food, quality of fashion, quality of tourism and quality of healthcare to mention a few has been sacrificed for quantity.

Source: Miss.at, website assessed, October 2021.

But still, economic progress equals growth, growth of income and growth of consumption. However, looking at the net income of an average German worker between 1991 and 2014 (Grabka and Goebel, 2015), inflation, increases in tax and social security contributions (except for the top earners, which contributions were reduced), indexed only a small next income increase of 8% (the lower net incomes decreased in the same time with 5%).

So more can only be of lower quality.

Companies such as H&M, Easy Jet and Aldi have educated the consumer, to consume more and fast. Operational Excellence and profit optimalization drive costs of goods, costs of supply chain and costs of human capital. Hence they drive quality down. We have got used to get flights nearby for free, we have got used to upgrade our wardrobe every month, we have got used to eat when-ever and where-ever we want to eat. Pollution, extravagance in usage and burning of raw materials (30% of all garment produced worldwide are never sold; Rudenko, 2018), dramatic increase of obesity, 30-40% of food waste (Footprint, 2021) are some sad facts.

“Resource limits and planetary boundaries aside, these factors offer a very real possibility that, future economic growth may gradually sputter out. In these circumstances, of course, there is an absolute premium on any strategy that will help us to protect human welfare and deliver social progress.” (Jackson and Webster, 2016).

Longtime the big corporations have been and are still finger-pointed to take action and increase their responsibility and become?trusted and sustainable citizens.

That means that designers have to take their responsibility as well. We can not longer just serve the large and smaller companies and do our job as asked. We need to step up and help to make the needed change happen within the planetary boundaries and challenge the definition of growth.

Renowned economist such Roger Martin (When more is not better, 2020) and Kate Raworth ( Doughnut Economics, 2018) direct us to the concepts of circular and regenerative economy that certainly will help us to be more efficient with our resources.

Source: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018.

On a large scale, I think we need a shift from quantity to quality to have real and sustainable impact.

We need a shift from human-centered design towards humanity-centered design.

There is nothing against human-centered design, but it has made us designers think to create solutions for consumer needs, needs that unfortunately are mostly defined within the concept of more is more, not less is more.

What does this mean for the future design strategies?

Design needs to redefine its belief system. A belief that all design must have a positive social and environmental consequences must become the norm. This means that design must challenge the companies to do business as usual. Scope Impact from Helsinki, is a social impact company, accelerating social change at scale. Their work in health, equality, and climate change spans Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Joe Wright and Mari Tikkanen founded Scope in 2008 (under the name of M4ID) after having worked for?two decades?in the international development and health sector. Their goal was to leverage creativity, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and people-centred approaches for real, lasting change in underrepresented communities globally.????

By weaving together the best of non-for-profit and private sectors, they have built a mission-led, independent, and sustainable social impact company.?This agile, lean model enables Scope to, in addition to client-led work, also fund and execute own social innovation projects in which create new services and campaigns for a fairer world.

Source: scopeimpact.fi, website assessed, October 2021

These are great examples where new forms of collaboration can lead to innovate socio-economic models.

Design needs a humanity-centered practice. Meaning that design must claim collective ownership of problems, and co-create solutions across disciplines, organizations and industries. Design needs to develop strategies to educate consumer behavior towards quality. This is the cross-over between design and environmental psychology.

Consumer behaviours can be positively influenced by designers such as Nina Skarra, the fashion designer from Norway and Spark Sustainability from Finland. Both have created their educational platforms Identitet and Carbon Donut, that help individuals discover emission-reducing solutions and measure their positive climate impact. By featuring only truly climate-smart products, Carbon Donut makes climate action easy for individuals, while increasing the market share for future-friendly businesses — all to make the transition to carbon-neutrality smoother.

Identitet makes women to make the right sustainable fashion choices with long-lasting quality and offers trainings.

Source: Carbon Donut App, downloaded, October 2021.

Design will need to broaden its scope of output. End-to-end design of the total eco-system will become the differentiator between good and great. Design will certainly further develop circular design and regenerative design practices, which are not easy but need to implement. Circular Design in combination with products that last and are designed to be repaired are possible solutions. The Dutch mobile phone company Fairphone is a social enterprise company which aims to develop smartphones that are designed and produced with a lower environmental impact.

Source: fairphone.com, website assessed, October 2021.

Design leaders are in the perfect position to drive these strategies, and certainly have started to do that. We need a collective of Design Leaders that influence the corporations but also creates a common practice, conducts research on the topic of design for humanity and shares best practices, and hurdles to make those strategies come true. For these strategies to become successful I think there are a few key jobs to be done for design leaders.

Embrace the concept of life-long learning and invest in development of their design teams and their capabilities that now need to shift towards circular design, system design and social design that foster qualitative community life in the long run, instead of solving people’s everyday problems. Designers need to simulate natural systems, which are adaptive, complex and have a systemic structure.

And if your design department or design agency can not pace up, which will be challenging for many, join partnerships with specialists such as Pien Jager, Frank O'Connor, Professor Martin Charter or educational and research institutes such as the Delft University and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Linking ?internally and externally. The complexity of the future design challenges will dramatically increase and needs design to balance the pressure for more efficiency with friction to limit its damaging extremes. The polymathic mindset of a designer need to expand over time on a growing number of subjects and complex bodies of knowledge to be able to create living systems. So, to design systems and system of systems successfully we need design leadership that encourages interconnectivity, non-hierarchical organizations and linking business with society and our planet. We move from Design Thinking to Design Linking (Barraclough, 2021). Design Leaders must enable connectedness to drive out transaction costs and unnecessary rework. At the same time design must balance connectedness with separation (Martin, 2020) therefore it must create firebreaks.?

“The practice of design is inherently optimistic and serves its noblest purpose when it improves the quality of life. Our modern interconnected world demands, however, an increasing emphasis on a systemic approach. There is a realization and mounting evidence that design practice, which blends a rational understanding of science and technology with creativity, intuition, and empathy, has the potential to effect fundamental change at a global level”.

Ravi Naidoo in Philips Designing with Purpose, 2020. Founder of Design Indaba, a think tank and do tank since 1995.

Source: philips.com, website assessed, October 2021.

Evolve the value proposition of design. Leaders have started to reimagine strategy by creating new modes of differentiation, embedding societal value into products and services, re-imagining business models for sustainability, managing to new measures of performance (ESG), and reshaping ecosystems to support these initiatives. While this is a tall order for any management team, the future of organizations, our environment, and society depends on doing so.

PARK has developed a four step Design for Humanity model for design leaders that can leverage the value proposition (both internally as well as externally) from compliance to championing a regenerative approach. We are piloting the model with clients and are interested in their motivation, responsibility and approach they need to develop to move up the ladder.

Exhibit 1. From Compliance ?to Regenerative Leadership. Source: PARK, 2019.

Finally, be realistic and servant. Design has proven to be able to be a professional partner in changing the face of businesses, governments and educational institutions. The future I think is bright for design, but we need to stay realistic.

When design leaders are going to push for Design for Humanity they must use their emotional intelligence at its best. I have seen too often heroic efforts by design leaders without thinking to push the agenda for all. Design for Humanity is too important to leave it to the individual design leader, it needs reflecting, listening, sharing, mentoring and collective learning to become successful. We need servant design leaders (Greenleaf, 2007) that shares power and puts the needs of the people and the stakeholders they work with first and helps them to develop and perform as highly as possible. ????

It is an exciting time we live in. As said at the beginning, we start to clearly see the boundaries of our natural and secular systems. It is (and was) time to act now. And good things are evolving. We start to develop design practices and design competencies that can give answers towards a world that strives for a better humanity.

Design leaders around the world are stepping up. Let us create a world of connectedness and adaptiveness. Let us collectively agree on the way forward, let us take our responsibility as professional partners and share our power to serve humanity. Let us start with quality research, thinking and practice building, together!

Pls comment this LinkedIn post + apply for the Design for Humanity Leadership Forum.

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