Transition design for sustainability KEYWORDS : Sustainability transitions, practice based design research, co-design, strategizing, everyday lives To be a designer is to be curious about people in their real everyday lives. It is also to be curious about possible futures. Designing is bridging real life with possible futures, and vice versa. In my research I am investigating this bridging practice and with the purpose of sustainability transitions. Sustainability viewed as a continuous process, rather than an achievable end-point (Robinson, 2004), means a focus on learning as a participatory and social activity rather than an individual focus. I use a co-creative design approach (Sanders & Stappers, 2012) involving many different stakeholders, including users, similar to action and participatory research. In my mind, the knowledge about a practice lies within its practitioners. As a design researcher I need to explore this knowledge together with the practices’ practitioners. When pairing this knowledge with design skills, alternative futures can be conceptualised and brought forward. In my research I explore real lives and bridge this learning
Name / Surname
forward into decision-making processes where strategizing takes place. I find a practice lens useful both to
Mia Hesselgren
analyse emerging social practices and strategizing practices. I agree with Feldman and Orlikowski (2011) that practice theories can be useful to explain principles and articulate relationships or enactments. They can also be used as a lens to understand dependancies and dynamics.
Research field/area
My research focus is to explore and develop design strategies that can encourage sustainability transitions. To
Practice based design research for sustainability
do so I have formulated four research questions, each with different processes in focus, which together form my research program - See Figure 1: 1. STRATEGIZING: How can transition design strategizing create changes for sustainability?
Supervisors
2. EXPLORING: How can design interventions be used to explore people’s everyday lives to learn about sustainable practices?
Prof. Sara Ilstedt Dr. Elina Eriksson
3. ANALYSING: How can practice-oriented design be used to analyse people‘s everyday lives to understand how unsustainable practices can be changed to sustainable practices? 4. BRIDGING: How can co-design bridge this learning to decision-making processes to encourage transitions towards sustainable futures?
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DESIGN BRIDGING
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EXPLORING EVERYDAY LIVES
ANALYZING PRACTICES
STRATEGIZING ROADMAPS
Figure 1
Bibliography Feldman, M., & Orlikowski, W. (2011). Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory. Organization Science, (Vol. 22, No. 5, September–October 2011), 1240–1253. Robinson, J. (2004). Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development. Ecological Economics, 48(4), 369–384. Sanders, E., & Stappers, P.J. (2012). Convivial design toolbox: generative research for the front end of design. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers.