Publication: Design in Eco-Social Transformation Processes – An Exploratory Examination of Its Impact

How can the impact of design be made tangible when it defies traditional metrics? This question is the focus of the article by Martina Fineder (University of Wuppertal), Carolin Baedeker (Wuppertal Institute), Felix Fastenrath (University of Wuppertal), Katja Kremser (University of Wuppertal), and Christa Liedtke (Wuppertal Institute and University of Wuppertal) as part of the collaborative project transform.NRW. The text has been published in the conference proceedings “What could possibly go wrong?” for the DGTF Annual Conference 2024 at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, edited by Merle Ibach, Andrea Augsten, and Axel Vogelsang.

At the heart of this paper is an attempt to make the transformative power of design, art, and culture tangible. Politics and business tend to focus on impacts that can be expressed in measurable terms. For design, art, and culture, this presents a dilemma: Their social relevance often becomes apparent precisely where traditional indicators of success fall short. This paper addresses this tension and explores how the potential impact of design, art, and culture can nevertheless be made comprehensible without forcing them into a purely economic framework of evaluation.

The underlying assumption is that design projects possess the transformative capacity to highlight existing structures—such as living and production conditions—and to transform them into new, sustainable conditions and patterns. Specifically, the focus is on the process-oriented examination of “good practice” examples with regard to their potential impact. The “Good Practice Breakfasts” format was developed specifically for this part of the collective and interdisciplinary curation process. A combination of Theories of Change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serves as a heuristic framework for classifying the examples.

Using two examples, this article demonstrates that the interplay between method and format opens up a significant space for discourse in which both the dialogic production of knowledge and meaning and collaborative learning are fostered. The ongoing documentation, as a narrative history and repository of knowledge, is intended to contribute in the long term to the development of a shared foundation for transformation and sustainability literacy.

The full article is available here as a PDF and is freely accessible.