Designing for transitions and transformations: Resistance, recovery, reflection, and reimagination

Abstract

Our Conversation at DRS2024 involved around 130 participants in-person and online, exploring Design for Transitions and Transformations through the lenses of four themes aligned with the DRS2024 themes: Resistance, Recovery, Reflection, and Reimagination. In this paper, we share some of what emerged from our group discussions, in terms of emergent questions and ideas. In considering Resistance, we examined how we (as designers, researchers, educators, and practitioners) can transition from design that reproduces unsustainability. In Recovery we looked at how we can transition from unsustainability, but also what has become lost, that we want to recover. Reflection prompted discussion of how design can be transformed to enable strategic thinking and practices towards regeneration and flourishing, while Reimagination gave us the chance to address what new practices and education might look like—and how we can support new forms of imagination. We end with some reflections on ways forward.