In a world of increasing complexity, inequality, uncertainty and a climate emergency, designers at all levels of experience are being called to shift their practice. The design industry, in all of its breadth, shapes the world in both small and major ways. It holds significant potential, as well as responsibility, to be part of the transformation needed to build a more regenerative future.
“The climate and biodiversity crises, and associated social injustice, are the biggest challenges facing humanity today, and so design must evolve to include these: acting more systemically, shifting towards alternative regenerative systems.”
Design Council
Systemic Design Toolkit
The Systemic Design Framework and System-Shifting Design work produced by the Design Council was created to bring together people from diverse disciplines and sectors, and to better equip designers to design for increasingly complex challenges. The Systemic Design Toolkit builds on this work translating this framework into practical tools to begin putting it into action.
“When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.”
lya Prigogine
Systemic Design Toolkit
Working with colleagues at the Design Council and beyond, we curated and then produced the toolkit to help put the systemic design framework into practice. We pulled together a range of tools and methods for systemic design from other experts, organisations and academics. We also translated some content that existed in frameworks or academic papers into usable tools. The toolkit contains 11 tools that sit across the systemic design stages, helping you to adopt a systemic approach.
“The Systemic Design Framework is our overall, high-level methodology for Design for Planet. It keeps the core premise of the Double Diamond (divergent and convergent thinking) and asks designers to come together to Explore, Reframe, Create and Catalyse. It also expands the design process to encompass the ‘invisible activities’ that sit around it: Orientation and vision setting, Connections and relationships, Leadership and storytelling, and Continuing the journey.”
Design Council
Systemic Design Toolkit
The toolkit is a part of the Design Council’s broader Design for Planet mission, which aims to galvanise and support the 1.97 million-strong UK design community, along with the commissioners of design, to address the climate and biodiversity crises, by putting our planet at the centre. It hopes to support designers in shifting their work further towards acknowledging and working with complexity and interconnectedness, and reimagining and creating new ways of living.
