The pre-design conversation: a brief before the brief

As a design manager I use a set of tools under the heading ‘Making Design Work’. Those tools help me explain how design is good for business. How design can be used to address common challenges, which are often related to sales, competitiveness, engagement and profile. And this is very powerful, because design is great for business and evidence shows that ‘design-led’ businesses outperform others.

The tools help me convey how design can be structured – they define stages, offer logical steps, and support action plans. In short, they help me to convey how the creative practice of design, which is underestimated and misunderstood by many organisations, can be strategically managed toward their success and growth. My clients are many and varied, and I love doing this.

But in recent years, I’ve become increasingly concerned – because this isn’t enough to participate fully in the times we live in. Difficult, uncertain, scary times – a ‘polycrisis’ where there isn’t just one major issue to respond to, but lots of them all intertwined.

Designing for sustainability is of course on the table and features in my work. Many organisations I work with have social or environmental issues at their core, which is great, but many more are still trying to fold it in. So when we start applying design, most of the big parameters have already been set – the business vision, the target audiences, the market potential, and the intended purpose of a product, service or brand.

This means we’re missing an opportunity to have a different design-led conversation – one that opens-up the bigger issues before we start. A space where there aren’t clear answers and I can’t offer a set of tried and tested tools. Instead, it’s a messy and confusing space, where the complexity brings contradictions and even a sense of disorientation and overwhelm. But for all these reasons it’s the most important conversation and it must be had at the very beginning.

This is where the ‘Design Serving Life’ materials came from. It’s not a fixed set of tools, and it offers no easy answers or step-by-step solutions. It’s a set of posters to stimulate debate and raise questions about the dilemmas that we face when designing. There is some structure, with six key headings, six core questions, and an inter-woven selection of exercises, models, and diagrams that mostly come from outside the world of design. Together, these offer a starting point for facilitated sessions to see where the conversations might lead…

The aim is that with these ‘pre-design’ provocations, new conversations can unlock more environmental and social innovation. The opportunity I want to support with these materials is for more designers to feel prepared to guide clients that have probably already made some steps on the journey toward sustainability but could be taken further. In this way, I believe in the ability of (and necessity for) designers to lead as facilitators of change toward sustainable futures.

The six connected provocations 

ISSUES - what problems are we solving?
// Because if we are solving the wrong problems, we are wasting creativity.

MONEY - how much is enough?
// Because if design only makes rich people richer, we contribute to inequality.

VALUES - are we doing good?
// Because if we are not striving to do good, we are doing harm.

PEOPLE - who are we missing out?
// Because if we only design for certain people, we create exclusion.

NATURE - how do we replenish?
// Because if we are not protecting the environment, we are destroying it.

TIME - what will be our legacy?
// Because if we only design for now, we endanger the future.