Toward Donut‐Centered Design: A Design Research Toolkit for the 21st Century

Abstract

The social and ecological challenges of the 21st century require a design research process that contributes to viable economic solutions. This paper proposes donut centered design as a hybrid of service design and ecological design that works within the donut economic model. It describes how private and public sector ethnographers can weld the best of these two processes by providing a holistic, empirical research foundation that seeks to provide distributed service innovation value to all within the limits of the planet. Donut‐centered design addresses lacunae of the current innovation models by advocating multi‐site assessments, multi‐species ethnography, ecosocial blueprints and holistics metrics as important components of a regenerative design research practice.