Mid Sweden University

To move toward sustainable societies and achieve the United Nations Global Goals changes are necessary at many levels and in many dimensions of human society. New creative methods in the design approach are necessary. The magnitude of change that is needed can be imagined by the fact that the world is so impacted by human activities that some discuss our present era on earth as the “Anthropocene”. To keep up and expand human wellbeing all over the world, it will be necessary to design new products and processes that are better adapted to fit within the planetary boundaries of the Earth. The ‘squary shape’ of most city components are badly adopted both to human body and our cognitive for stimulation. At the same time, social sustainability requires the development of these new products and processes in ways that are inclusive. In other words, our solutions toned to be available for use by as many individuals as possible worldwide.

The design stage is when there are many degrees of freedom compared to later production and use phases of products or services. Unsustainable properties included at this stage are often hard or expensive (or both) to correct later on when infrastructure for production has been created.. Thus the design stage is one important area that can help create movement towards more sustainable societies.

There are several development processes available to create more environmentally friendly products. These processes can be good in some cases but often are the requirement settled before designer are involved.  Therefore they are not inspiring designers, and release of the expertise of designers can not be used in a significant way [1,2]. For example, in the corporate sector there is often a lack of clear vision and goals during specific design tasks, which can hamper leapfrog development.

To develop products and solutions that are inclusive to large parts of the population is a challenge for sustained and increased human wellbeing, especially with an expected aging population. To meet such challenges design methods and approaches has been developed under the concept Design for All [3]. The Design for All approach is often thought of as handling human ergonomic challenges, but if used correctly this approach can also be helpful for inclusion of individuals facing a wide range of physical or cognitive challenges.

Since more environmentally adapted design and more inclusive design are two parallel developments that is needed for the future, it is of interest to merge the thinking of such approaches. A widening of thinking regarding Design for All to take into account not only the ‘weakest humans’ but also the ‘weakest links in ecosystems’ could be such a road forward to design that fits in a future sustainable society. It has the possibility to be set up in a way to release and utilize the expertise of designers and thus opens for truly creative solutions for the problems of today and tomorrow.

A new creative way to solve city, and other design issues by starting from the most demanding peoples and nature species needs instead of re-designing artefacts originated from industrial production indicates hope for sustainable solutions in the future. This is a possible starting point for a new era of creative cites.

References

Gunilla Clancy; Morgan Fröling; Gregory Peters (2015): Ecolabels as drivers of clothing design. Journal of Cleaner Production, ISSN 0959-6526, Vol. 99, p.345-353.

Gunilla Clancy; Morgan Fröling; Magdalena Svanström (2013): Insights from guiding material development towards more sustainable products. International Journal of Sustainable Design, ISSN 1743-8284, Vol. 2, no 2, p. 149-166.

Lena Lorentzen; Johan Eklund (2011): Design for All (Published in Swedish: Design för alla: En ny metod för att bedöma produkters, tjänsters och miljöers användbarhet). Design Research Journal, ISSN 2000-3080, Vol. 1, no 1, 46-53 p.