Designing for Holistic Progress

Design can be considered as the systematic navigation of progress. Designers analyze present conditions, co-create and visualize visions, facilitate discourses and enable actions. Though, what is the concept of progress that designers work with? Most often, even if developed through participatory formats, designers create relatively narrow visions. These narrow visions ignore the many possible and often unintended side effects that interventions towards them might produce. When intermediate goals are reached, design projects are considered as progressive, but often completely ignore the effects on the context within which they are embedded in. The question is always, for whom, for which living entities, is something progressive and for whom might it be regressive? I would argue that progress through design has to be conceptualized differently. Such other conception could be the idea of designing for holistic progress. This would imply the design of broad visions and interventions that engage with the full complexity of their context. Progress narratives should represent such an approach. Though, the structures within which most design projects are initiated often require the measurement of progress. For measurement you need an observable system and therefore have to set system boundaries. But once you set boundaries, what is considered as progress, is not holistic anymore. Hence, how do design projects and their surrounding structures need to be reconsidered to enable progress that serves all living entities?

Dec 14, 2024