Design for planet

The urgency presented by the climate crisis demands unprecedented coordinated actions that span every aspect of life as we know it. Every industry and sector will need to respond to this crisis, however in the design sector, the knowledge and skills needed for such action are currently lacking. The Design Council's Design for Planet mission calls for a rethinking of design to help address the climate crisis and transition the UK's design economy towards regenerative futures. Three key focus areas (materiality and circularity, biodiversity and care, behaviours and technology) hold significant potential for designers to contribute to the realisation of necessary transitions towards circular economies, regenerative places and emissions reduction. However Design Council's recent research indicates a gap in designers' skills, knowledges, and capabilities that must be addressed to meet this ambition. This gap is characterised by a legacy partnership between business and design, the result of which is a design profession that centres 'problem solving' that depends on simple, given problems rather than the complex (and 'wicked') problems presented by the climate crisis. To meet the complex challenges presented by a world in crisis, designers need new ways of working. This proposed Innovation Scholar secondment seeks to address this gap by building on the significant prior research and work of the seconder (The Design Council) and the secondee (Dr Niki Wallace) to deepen understanding of and enable skills for trans-disciplinary collaboration for systemic design interventions. This aim will be met by core objectives that focus on increasing the understanding of specific skills in trans-disciplinary collaboration and systemic interventions first by defining what constitutes a 'systemic design intervention', second by clearly outlining the skills and capabilities for their performance, third by documenting demonstrations of the 'how' and finally, by packaging the outcomes in ways that enable action. The anticipated outcomes of this research will culminate in a suite of resources that support and enable a deepening of designers' understandings of trans-disciplinary collaboration for the co-creation of systemic interventions. This research will inform the Design Council's Green Skills Framework, (to be launched in September 2025), will provide case studies of systemic interventions and will position these within an ecosystem of action to demonstrate their systemic impact. Additional resources that enable action will be produced and their formats will emerge from the project. These resources will benefit the design sector, where there is a real need for abstract knowledge to be converted into working knowledge that can inform critical pragmatic action.