“Transition Design (Irwin 2015) or
design for sustainability transitions (DfST) is an evolving area of sustainable design research and practice. DfST combines theoretical frameworks, methods, and approaches from, for instance, transition management, anthropology, design research, and sustainability science with the aim of identifying, analyzing, and establishing processes and collaborations to contribute to long-term societal transitions towards more sustainable societies (Gaziulusoy & Öztekin, 2019). There is an increasing interest by governments and businesses in engaging with sustainability transitions, and as the climate and biodiversity crises have become topics requiring urgent action, demand and supply of sustainability-related consulting services have also increased.
However, currently most services in demand and supply mainly deal with addressing impact reduction in the short-term such as carbon accounting and foot printing in alignment with national targets of reduction. Although this work is crucial and fundamental, there is also an urgent need for transformative action that requires societal actors to collaborate and strategize for long-term and systemic structural change. This kind of change requires intervening in the deep leverage points that deal with intent and design of systems (Meadows, 1999; Abson et al., 2017) and call for measures beyond quantitative reduction targets.”
In the paper "Sustainability Transitions: Reflection on Practice" scholars and practitioners present examples as case studies. These projects include helping the Prime Minister’s Office of Finland to consolidate a sustainability report with co-created input from all Finnish ministries, designing “Nordic Urban Mobility 2050 –Futures Game” –a
gamified process for facilitating mobility transitions stakeholders to co-create mobility futures scenarios– and developing “Sustainable Futures Game” – a gamified process to assist companies to co-imagine desirable alternative near future scenarios in alignment with the intergovernmental ambition to achieve Sustainable Development Goals.
The four authors of the paper, including the CDW researcher Sanna Marttila, share reflections and critical insights on enablers, challenges, and opportunities for implementing design for sustainability transitions in practice and provide suggestive evidence for the contributions of design-led approaches in transitions contexts. If you are curious to learn more about Sanna's work, you can reach out to her via
sanma@itu.dk
