#10 Relations between temporary acts for a permanent systemic change!
Cross Change Curated: Issue 10
We do not want to give up any of our habits. We don't want change. We want to make the same decisions but also not cause climate crisis, social injustice, and environmental pollution. Change is a process that demands strategic moves in the face of resistance and temporary experiments that carry us to the goal. By its very nature, this ever-evolving process requires flexibility and creativity from us. The relationship between temporality and change begins here.
We have a tendency to become increasingly polarized. This concept, which we are accustomed to hearing in political circles, has increased the speed of its spread into daily life and social culture as our fields of expression have diversified. (See #cancelculture).
Temporary design proposals, also known as "prototypes," provide experimental areas that will open up space for the actual solution proposal to deepen. It is valuable and full of learning. In addition, short-lived outputs deepen the importance of the steps before reaching your goal and enable you to internalize the learnings you gathered from your users and transform those into tangible facts. IF it serves a purpose in the big picture. Otherwise, it will be trash. (See: #lineareconomy)
I came across the project that inspired this newsletter a few days ago. As part of the collaboration between Samsung and a design platform, 6 curated designers have designed various products from television packages that are already recyclable. (which will probably make recycling those cardboards more difficult in the end). Moreover, they named the project eco-packaging.
They would take it a little further if it was about improving packaging and spotting DS Smith. The company provides packaging solutions to world giants and announced its Circular Design Metrics a few years ago. They could even mention RePack, which provides reusable circular packaging services as a "systemic approach." Maybe they could go even further and talk about policy-level solutions that completely eliminate packaging needs by shopping from places within walking distance, such as the local production and consumption advocacy of the Amsterdam Donut Coalition. But they didn't.
This project is a metaphor for thousands of temporary (even feeding greenwashing) projects realized within the intersection of ecology, design, and brand. These types of temporary projects that claim to serve brand reputation in the big picture and do more damage, I think, are everywhere. I even did such projects years ago. I designed a stage and spatial elements from packaging waste, unaware of the effect I created.
Actually, this is the reason why I talked about polarization in the first place! None of us are just right, not just wrong. Every issue has a learning curve, and every mistake has a journey of change. Many things we name as "wrong" today were actually right, and even great works we gave awards. (See: Gustav Martner News)
I believe we can facilitate the change journey by making good options more accessible and by sharing quality information with users that will influence the basis of their decisions. Because there are millions of things that an individual has to worry about these days, it is unrealistic to expect him/herself to become self-conscious about each and every one of the thousands of products s/he uses in her/his daily life. I would like to share with you a few behavior change-focused institutions working on holistic solutions.
Reframing Studio is a design and innovation consultancy inventor and implementor of the Reframing Method, which advocates the contextual transitional design to help companies and organizations develop and maintain relevance for the future. I really admire their approach, especially after reading their book VIP, full of case studies and visible impact. In their methodology, they develop future context based on the insights, design interaction, and then the product that fits within that predicted future and interaction models. Therefore the design solution becomes natural to the user and easier to embrace. It's not wrong to say, their approach's main bases are behavior, rituals, and the daily flows of humans. Check their academy and the projects.
Zwart means black in Dutch. The platform ignited with a mission to boost the representation of black people on Dutch TV and Radio. And they are succeeding! Their intelligent collective social media campaign attracted very much attention and won awards, pushing the boundaries of decision-makers in the TV-film industry in The Netherlands. Today they provide a space for black people who want to share their voices. This example shows the power of communication and good relations between temporary acts for a permanent systemic change!
Clean Creatives is a project for PR and ad professionals who want a safe climate future. This open call and initiative invite professionals of the PR ecosystem to ban fossil fuel clients that thread our future. As I mentioned at the beginning, polarisation is one of the threats to change, but in this case, we should realize this is not a witch hunt; this is a future conscious step to take against the fossil fuel industry that we all know it can't harmlessly be part of future. We signed the call. You are invited to be next! Would you?