Transitional Design

The Niche : this micro systems level consists of individual actors, technologies, and local practices.

In the modern era, the satisfiers for needs have often been appropriated by large centralized organizations such as the nation-state or multinational corporations. Such satisfiers are decontextualized — they are not unique to place and culture and their ownership, management and control is not embedded in the communities who depend on them. Satisfi... See more

in mapping the historical evolution of a wicked problem, we must identify the events, beliefs, attitudes, innovations and norms within the landscape, regime and niche levels, but we must also learn to understand the complex systems dynamics at work within the whole.

Transition design focuses on everyday life in place as the primary context for intervening in wicked problems. Everyday life can be understood as an emergent property of people going about the activity of satisfying their needs. Understanding how people define their needs, and go about satisfying them (or failing to do so) is a key strategy for dev... See more

What would an economy based upon cooperation rather than competition, and a framing of prosperity based on well-being rather than growth look like? What are some of the ways in which everyday life would change? How would it change the way designers work?

Transition design is distinct from service design or social innovation design in its deep grounding in future-oriented visions, its transdisciplinary imperative, its objective to initiate and direct change within social and natural systems and designers’ heightened awareness of the temporality: solutions are intentionally conceived within short, mi... See more

the Chilean development economist Manfred Max-Neef’s (with colleagues) proposed a theory of ‘needs and satisfiers’ that distinguishes between needs and the ways in which people satisfy them. They argue that needs are few, finite and universal, but the ways in which they are satisfied are limitless. They identify ten material and non-material needs ... See more

In what ways does design contribute to encourage or discourage practices of commoning?

Center people and relationships at every point in the process to build public trust.