Designing For Sustainability — Why Is It So Hard?
“The capitalist model is now so efficient, it’s eating away at the burning platform on which we all so delicately balance”
Not sure if you have noticed on your Linkedin feed, but my feed, post new year is awash with messages from designers leaving their jobs and starting something new. I guess it’s typical this time of year, but this year it feels more like a movement, a wave, a sea change in motivation, a middle finger to the toxic culture of corporations and their empty purpose. The pandemic, is of course a big trigger for this, but one other thing seems to be an instrumental driver for this change — Sustainability.
Sustainability, it’s the hot topic in the design world and also the latest buzzword in the business world. Speaking to designers, I know it’s a topic they feel passionate about, and one that is making them question the impact of their corporate design job and to begin the search for more meaning and fulfilment.
Design for sustainability in my opinion is sadly still an emerging field. Companies do not yet fully grasp the value a design approach can bring in helping to deliver sustainable business strategy. This comes as no surprise as the design industry for the last 10 years has been trying hard to convince C-Level leaders that design has a wider role outside UX/UI and Visual.
So why is it so hard to be a sustainability designer, and why does it feel like we are swimming upstream when trying to catch the attention of C-Level leaders and Chief Sustainability Officers?
It’s hard because it goes against everything we have been taught as product/service designers and everything other people in business perceive the design role to be. Most challenging is that it goes against some of our own personal desires, motivations and insecurities.
I’ve categorised the main barriers into what I call the 4 C’s and here they are:
- Capitalism
- Consumerism
- Consumption
- Corruption
From my designer perspective, here’s a take on each of those.
- Capitalism.
The root of all evil or just the way things are? It’s hard to bite the hand that feeds and this is the biggest challenge we all face in the transition toward sustainability. Capitalism is the foundational model for how business has been done in the west since before the industrial revolution. You have to agree that it has brought us many incredible innovations and a quality of life that is unparalleled. However it’s difficult today to dismiss that the capitalist model is now so efficient, it’s eating away at the burning platform on which we all so delicately balance. Remember what happened on Easter Island?
For designers it’s our pay check. Business leaders see design as an essential cog in the capitalist machine. Our role as been to understand the consumer, design products, services and experiences that engage them and maximise economic value for the company and its shareholders. Designers have become really fucking good at this. Too good in fact!
2. Consumerism.
The inner workings of the capitalist model exposed. It’s no secret that companies fuel consumerism. They build it into their business models from day one. They spend billions on seasonal marketing campaigns. They design obsoleteness into their products. Digitalisation has accelerated the rate of product/service redundancy and hooked us all onto the new thing, before we even knew we needed it.
Take for example your car (electric or other). It’s a huge task to produce such a complex product and at great environmental cost. Yet consumers are typically encouraged to trade in their new car after only 3 years for the new better, more efficient model. I have to wonder though if it would be more sustainable if we stopped making new cars, and invested more in maintaining the ones we have so they last us for 25 years or more?
Your mobile phone too. What model iPhone do you own? I’ve stopped counting and I’m stuck on iPhone 8. It’s not so much for me about the obsolescence of the physical product, but the rapid cycle of software updates that drive us all to “keep up” in fear of our devices slowing down or not working with a perfectly usable version release of our most used social media platform.
Design has played a significant role in this global retail addiction pandemic. We’re experts in making products and services delightful, convenient and intuitive. We play with human desire, teasing consumers with the promise of a higher level experience and drug like optional extras that claim to elevate our social status in a world where awareness of our digital footprint has become the new materiality.
3. Consumption.
Still within the mode of operation for consumerism but dropping down a level to our own consumption behaviour. I can’t remember a time when society was so wasteful in the everyday. We have become victims of the consumerism game and the companies are winning hands down. Watching the videos of crowds storming US shopping malls on Black Friday is truly frightening and shows how far we have come. A 50% discount on a TV was never worth trampling underfoot your fellow shopper.
Digital consumption is no different, I regularly binge watch Cobra Kai and The Witcher on a week night until 3am. Our digital behaviour as consumers is out of control. I have 8000 images on my iPhone and can never find the one I want at the time I want it. We store data in the “cloud” that we pay real money for and we know that 90% of that data we’ll never use again. That’s like having a freezer full of food and never eating any of it. WTF?
How many times have you lost 5 mins of your life staring at some useless social media video, or took part in a pointless and time consuming online debate that you could have settled in no time at all, if it were F2F?
Design is a great enabler of choice in product and service experience. It’s given us personalisation, control and opportunity. But without an ethical framework and a shared understanding of moral and communal boundaries, it works to empower some of our worst human traits, selfishness and greed.
4. Corruption.
Well what can I say about the last of the 4 C’s? I’ll keep it short.
There are many leaders (if not the majority) whether in government or in business who like the way things are and are fighting very hard against any kind of change. Some make millions of dollars every minute from this model and have no intention or willingness to try something new. The elites are calling the shots at great expense to human wellbeing, the planets wellbeing and all the beautiful animals and plants that live on it.
So…
All in all, the sustainability transition is a journey and design as a methodology and way of working is a great way to help us navigate. As designers, part of us needs to fight hard against the 4 C’s and the other part needs to work with them.
That’s why it’s so hard to be a sustainability designer.