Using planetary boundaries and social needs as a design lens

Why Doughnut Economics should be designers' go-to tool

As designers - of products, services, places, organisations, systems, cities - we are no longer just shaping user experiences. We are shaping livable futures.

In a world facing interconnected environmental collapse, resource scarcity, and growing inequalities, the old models of design are not just outdated, they're dangerous. We can't afford to design for convenience, aesthetics, or profit alone.

Designing wihtin the Doughnut, the safe and just space for humanity

Enter Doughnut Economics - a compass for people and planet centered design.

It maps the safe and just space for humanity:

• The inner ring: ensuring every person’s essential needs are met (food, health, housing, equity, education, peace).

• The outer ring: staying within the ecological ceilings of the nine planetary boundaries that keep our planet liveable (climate change, biodiversity, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, fertilizer use, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, air pollution, etc.).

The doughnut shaped space in between is where regenerative, distributive, and responsible design lives.

This isn't just theory. It's a design lens for:

• Rethinking product life cycles

• Mapping your ecosystem to understanding interconnected relationships between elements of your value chain, systems dynamics and leverage points

• Assessing how your organisation’s products and services are contributing to the problem

• Questioning your organisation’s capacity to adapt and simply survive in this uncertain and risky context.

• Designing regenerative business models

  
  

How to design for a thriving future

The urgency is real. Every design decision you make has positive and/or negative implications on planetary boundaries and people’s abilities to fulfill their basic needs.

First, ask yourself these questions before you start (re)designing anything

1. Does your solution meet core human needs?

2. Does it push us further away from the ecological ceiling of the planetary boundaries?

3. How is your solution impacted by overshot planetary boundaries such as climate change, biodiversity collapse or freshwater availability?

4. What ecosystem does your product or solution depend on?

5. Do we have enough resources to build this solution?

   
   

Collaborate with other stakeholders to find the answers to these questions using the Doughnut (Check out our Doughnut mapping workshops for more practical information).

Then (re)design, redistribute, regenerate. Repeat.

Whether you’re a UX designer, policy maker, architect, founder, or strategist—if you have the power to design anything, you have the responsibility to design within the Doughnut.

Join our webinar: How to design environmental data solutions