Transitional Design

What is the role of the designer in drawing together matters of concerns, rather than mere matters of facts, and help articulating individual interests in such a way as to constitute common interests? What would it mean for designers to embrace differences, even conflict, as inherent to the political project that is design?

The roots of many wicked problems are connected to relations of conflict and power imbalances among stakeholder groups. These complex stakeholder relations are also barriers to societal/organizational transitions

How will the shifts from ownership to access, but also from productive to reproductive work affect society at large and design in particular? How will these shifts redefine the notion of the individual, community and society, and their respective relations?

Try to think of both material and non-material interventions; some interventions might involve new technologies, new narratives/communications, new policies etc., while other interventions might involve changing behaviors, practices, assumptions, cultural norms or even worldviews (non-material). For non-material interventions, how can Transition De... See more

How can you imagine balancing the implementation of multiple ‘interventions’ with periods of observation and waiting? Should this process be staggered, so that transition designers are observing the results of some interventions, while implementing others? How can this process be choreographed and adjusted quickly when necessary?

everyday life is an emergent property of people meeting their needs

mindsets and postures often go unnoticed and unacknowledged but they profoundly influence what is identified as a problem and how it is framed and solved within a given context. Transition Design argues that it is important to understand the dominant worldview which underpins many wicked problems in order to envision new socio-economic- political-e... See more

Remember that some stakholder groups will be non-human (other species) or even non-living (such as rivers, mountains, soil, etc.).