Compared to user-centric design, planet-centric design is not merely focused on what is best for the user, but for the planet too. One could also refer to planet-centric design as planet-serving design. In this workshop Alain Dujardin (Creative Director, Greenberry) and Paulien Hosang (Designer, Greenberry) together with Google Creative Lab’s Vice President Robert Wong and the audience explored and defined a framework for planet-centric design. We’ve summed up the ten highlights for you below.
By Ellis Marsman
1. Be humble, accept that you can’t fix it alone
The biggest mistake you can make is wanting to try and do it alone. To change societies’ dynamics, or to at least have an impact on it, you need to appeal to its different foundations. To design a tool that facilitates responsible stoking, we joined forces with municipalities and the ministry. Find stakeholders or parties that share your goal, make them your partners and co-design.
2. It is okay not to know where you are going
When you start exploring a problem, you might not know where you’re headed yet. You might end up with a plan to lobby with politicians, you might end up with a consumer-facing app. Make sure you take different stakeholders along on your journey.
3. Use your lovers, learn from your haters
Realize that there are people who are reluctant to hear your message. These, for example, could be parties that benefit from the problem you’re trying to get rid of, or whose jobs are under pressure from technological development, and are thus unwelcoming towards your solution. Involve both these haters as well as your lovers in an early stage for feedback and comments.
4. Don’t finger point and tell people what to do
You can educate people on what’s wrong with a certain type of behavior without telling them they are guilty of that behavior. Don’t finger point. Finger pointing will trigger a defensive reaction and stop people from listening to whatever you have to say.
5. Make it visible
Visuals over words. Visualizing a problem works better and faster than telling or writing about it. Raise awareness for the issue at hand by designing something that becomes part of the day-to-day life and serves as a visual reminder. Think of a building that responds to air pollution.
On stage (from left to right) Paulien Hosang, Robert Wong and Alain Dujardin
6. If you take, give something back
When your design educates on something the user shouldn’t do, for example not lighting their fireplace or not using plastic straws, it helps to provide an alternative, like Greenberry’s Stookwijzer. What is the need or job to be done that lies within the behavior you’re trying to eradicate? Can you design something that meets the specific need in a more sustainable way?
7. Power of incentives
To create solutions with a positive approach, try a design that rewards good behavior. Reversing these incentives sounds smart, thinking of punishment for bad behavior, but it will most-likely push users away. So let’s say one shouldn’t punish, but should design to make bad behavior less appealing.
8. The user is always right, but what it wants isn’t
Sure, you should listen to what your consumers have to say. Incorporate useful feedback into your design. But remember consumers – and you and me for that matter – are lazy. They want the most for the least amount of effort. Which means they won’t easily take into account the environment within their day to day habits or product choices.
9. It’s okay to break some rules
Design can offer a new perspective on the system in place. Which means you sometimes crack or disrupt that system. Greenberry’s Powerpeers app, for example, was a world’s first, allowing people with solar panels to share their energy. To execute this idea, the agency had to outsmart current legislation and become a part of the ecosystem of politicians, entrepreneurs and climate change fighters.
10. Write the worst potential headlines
What kind of impact you would want your design to have? Write down the headlines your design could create. This will help you to think big, but also to explore the potential negative impact your design could have on society – like Uber, opening up a closed market and benefitting a wide audience, but also putting hard-working people out of work.
Ellis Marsman is copywriter at Greenberry