worth mulling on...Thinking in Systems: Design and Otherwise

Thinking in Systems: Design and Otherwise
Part 1
by DK Holland

Since its founding in 2007, The Accord reaches over 200,000 signers in all design disciplines encouraging them to adopt the guidelines. Those who have signed on at this writing, include 643 design firms, 34 educational institutions, 32 corporate adopters in 100 countries on 6 continents.

The Accord is not prescriptive and calls for self-regulation. It asks that designers⁷ publicly declare participation in six ongoing actions:
•    Initiate a dialogue about environmental and social impact and sustainable alternatives with each and every client.
•    Rework client contracts to favor environmentally- and socially-responsible design and work processes.
•    Provide strategic and material alternatives for sustainable design.
•    Undertake a program to educate your teams about sustainability and sustainable design.
•    Consider your ethical footprint. Understand the environmental impact of your firm and work to measure, manage and reduce it on an annual basis.
•    Advance the understanding of environmental and social issues from a design perspective by actively contributing to the communal knowledge base for sustainable design.

The hope is, by taking The Accord to heart, these actions could become habitual, and professional designers may indeed affect change.

The Accord hosts town halls, and has a robust Web site. It has several key strategic alliances and advisors. Amazingly, Casey leads the strategic vision and finds time to handle the day-to-day operations. She also writes a column regularly for Fast Company called Networked Culture, through which she gets the word out to a broad audience in the form of case studies and commentary. New York-based Core77 hosts a free online directory of all adopters to the Accord. Other partners include Design Ignites Change and The Biomimicry Institute (included in part two of this article).

However change does not happen because a designer signs a manifesto. We have seen that before: the First Things First Design Manifesto circulated for decades and touted all of 33 signers⁸ including some of the usual design icons. The challenge is to understand what it is you are adopting at such a profound level that this causes you and your process to actually change. The bottom line question is, will The Accord be any more effective in this way than First Things First was? 

Casey’s point is to get the conversation started, not to be “the be all and end all” of change agents.

LIVING BY PRINCIPLES
Like the 1960s, the Bay Area is at the center of change. Out of the Compostmodern Conference in 2009 in San Francisco sprung The Living Principles for Design, an integrated sustainability framework that strives to go into depth about the process designers need to adopt to affect change. The Living Principles says sustainability is the Golden Rule (e.g., do unto others as you would have them do unto you) applied to the global marketplace. The Living Principles is in a nascent stage, being shepherded by Tomorrow Partners in Berkeley with the AIGA Center for Sustainability and other design-related organizations.

OPEN QUESTIONS
How do you affect positive change in anything? Conditions have to be intolerable so that many people are compelled to act—and get involved, not just at a surface level, creating a paradigm shift. Besides designers, corporations, thought leaders, schools and institutions need to be engaged. Are we in the user empathy phase? Who is walking the walk or are more just talking the talk? Who is a designer? What does the title mean? Where are the comparable design thinking models that have worked? Part two of this article in the September/October Design Annual will delve into all of this. CA

via commarts.com

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales