Transitional Design

Identifies and considers all stakeholder groups: Understanding and addressing the social roots of a wicked problem demands that all stakeholder groups are identified and their concerns integrated into the problem frame.

Try to imagine interventions at the macro, mezzo and micro levels of scale. How could they be interconnected for greater leverage?

place based satisfiers, embedded in community are likely to satisfy multiple needs simultaneously, and are referred to as ‘synergistic satisfiers’. ‘One size fits all’ satisfiers that are centrally created undermine social and cultural diversity and have likely to have a homogenizing effect on everyday life; satisfiers that are decentralized and ar... See more

This new, emerging paradigm emphasizes empathy, relationship, participation and self-organization, calls for new mindsets and postures of openness, speculation, mindfulness and a willingness to collaborate.

the Chilean development economist Manfred Max-Neef’s (with colleagues) proposed a theory of ‘needs and satisfiers’ that distinguishes between needs and the ways in which people satisfy them. They argue that needs are few, finite and universal, but the ways in which they are satisfied are limitless. They identify ten material and non-material needs ... See more

Satisfiers that are centrally created and therefore decontextualized are often designed to satisfy a single need in a simplistic way. Max-Neef argues that such satisfiers are often inadequate or even damaging, and categorizes these along a spectrum of ‘singular’ ‘inhibiting’ ‘pseudo’, or ‘destroyer’ satisfiers. By contrast, place based satisfiers, ... See more

Transition Design argues that stakeholder relations are the “connective tissue” within wicked problems, and and these nuanced “systemic relations” must be ‘mapped’ and analyzed to serve as the basis for problem resolution