Design for Global Challenges and Goals

Emmanuel Tsekleves, Rachel Cooper, Jak Spencer, Emmanuel Tsekleves, Rachel Cooper, Jak Spencer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Economics
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000356748
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Design for Global Challenges and Goals charts the developments, opportunities and challenges for design research in addressing global challenges facing developing contexts focusing on the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

The book explores the role that design and social responsibility play in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and how design works in developing contexts. It presents 10 design-led case studies addressing different Sustainable Development Goals ranging from reducing poverty and hunger, improving health and wellbeing, promoting gender equality, developing more sustainable cities and communities, encouraging more responsible consumption and production, and tackling climate change. Design for Global Challenges and Goals also addresses the future, offering foresight into the research in global challenges by identifying the opportunities and emerging trends for researchers.

Providing a guide to the state of the art of design research that addresses the Sustainable Development Goals, this book will be of interest to researchers, practitioners and students who want their research to address global challenges.

Part I
Global challenge design in context

1
Introduction

Emmanuel Tsekleves

Why a book on design for global challenges and goals?

The aim of the book is to chart the developments, challenges and opportunities for design research in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations (UN).

The UK, along with other developed countries, is leading research in the global challenges facing the developed world and, more crucially, the developing world. Design research is starting to contribute to this field and there is a need for more design research to be directed towards addressing the SDGs, ranging from reducing poverty and hunger, improving health and wellbeing and promoting gender equality to developing more sustainable cities and communities, more responsible consumption and production to tackling climate change and several others.

Design’s ability to engage real people and communities, understand everyday problems and implement the ‘right’ solution, not just the ‘newest technology’, enables it to act as a bridge between other disciplines. It is an important and growing voice in this field that helps to bridge the gap between the rapid advancements in science, technology and engineering with real people, challenges and contexts on an everyday level. Despite this, research into the role of design in tackling the SDGs is disparate and detached. As such, there is a need to understand the role of design and promote a more cohesive strategy to tackle the SDGs. In the chapters of this book the reader will find a wealth of information that helps fulfil this need. Furthermore, design researchers, who have never done research in a developing country context (also known as the Global South), will find this book a good starting point for finding how their research can help tackle global challenges and make a difference beyond the discipline of design.

Before proceeding, it would be useful to provide a few definitions of terms that are used extensively throughout the book, such as low- and middle-income countries, Global North and Global South.

Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are countries whose income is classified as low or middle based on gross national income (GNI) per capita as published by the World Bank.¹ These countries are also recipients of official development assistance² (ODA), which is government aid that promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries.

In the 1980s, the Brandt Line was developed as a way of showing the how the world was geographically split into relatively richer and poorer nations. According to this model richer countries are almost all located in the Northern Hemisphere, with the exception of Australia and New Zealand; whereas poorer countries are mostly located in the Southern Hemisphere (Solarz, 2012). According to the Cambridge Dictionary,³ the Global North is the group of countries that are in Europe, North America, and the developed parts of Asia. Global South is the group of countries that are in Africa, Latin America, and the developing parts of Asia. However, inequality within countries has also been growing and the literature employs the terms Global North and Global South to refer respectively to richer or poorer communities which are found both within and between countries. Some also refer to these as the Global South in the Global North. For example, whilst the UK is considered a Global North country, there are poor and deprived communities in the UK which face similar challenges to those often considered in the Global South.

Design for global challenges and goals in this book

The book is divided into three parts. Part I provides the context for design for global challenges, looking in more detail at the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the role of design and social responsibility within that, and how design can work in developing contexts. Part II presents a series of case studies of design-led projects across different SDGs. The selected case studies are indicative of the type and range of projects reflecting the state of the art in this context. Part III focuses on the future, offering a glimpse into the research in global challenges by identifying the opportunities and emerging trends for researchers.

Part I

In Chapter 2, Jak Spencer provides a brief history of the Sustainable Development Goals, exploring how they emerged and developed over the past 50 years. He then outlines each of the 17 SDGs, providing a brief update on their progress to date. The chapter highlights that the SDGs have not only managed to galvanise policymakers and economists at a global level but also non-governmental organisations, the third sector and businesses, with leading management consultancy and accountancy firms using these as key performance indicators for their business and key objectives on their projects.

In Chapter 3, Jak Spencer outlines the process of design and its role in tackling global challenges. The chapter presents design thinking within the context of the SDGs as a process of tackling major global challenges. Furthermore, it demonstrates the differences between design and other disciplines, outlining diverse types of design research methods that require different levels of contact with people. The chapter highlights that design research methods are now more than ever required to shift their focus. As design projects that tackle global challenges and focus on communities, cities, countries and even entire regions, design research methods need to reflect this shift. They need to include methods for community-centred and group behaviour in the ever-growing toolkit of research methods available to the design practitioner. The chapter concludes that as design is still a relatively new discipline, especially at a strategic level, further work in research methods and design thinking tools can help to establish it as a core component for tackling the global challenges set out in the SDGs.

In Chapter 4, Rachel Cooper and Yoori Koo explore the introduction and rise of design for social responsibility, or socially responsible design. They provide a historical overview of how socially responsible design emerged within the last 50 years and describe the role of the designer. In light of the SDGs, the chapter draws on how designers have become activists, working with and for global communities, to take action into their own hands and reset the way we conceive of the world and how we inhabit it responsibly. The chapter concludes that the next challenge for designers lies in reframing the role of design globally to catch up on the SDGs and to act with total responsibility for the future of humans and the planet.

In Chapter 5, Emmanuel Tsekleves explores and discusses the challenges and opportunities associated with applying design research methods in the Global South. These include challenges in conducting design fieldwork, engaging research participants and employing design research methods, as well as developing North-South partnerships and considering the impact and legacy of research. It argues that conducting design research in the Global South introduces a new context where cultural, social, religious and administrative practices often pose challenges but can create new opportunities for researchers. Applying design research that addresses SDGs in Global South contexts requires cross-disciplinary collaboration, navigating cultures, diversity, ethics and the habits of different design communities. Furthermore, as most of the design research methods have been developed for use in the Global North, opportunities emerge for design researchers in adapting their methods to better suit different Global South cultural, linguistic, ethic and environmental contexts.

Part II

Ten case studies are outlined in Part II. The case studies demonstrate the breadth of design research in terms of the SDGs, country of focus and research methods. As we can see from Table 1.1, the 10 case studies have tackled 13 of the 17 SDGs, covering four continents and 18 different countries and employing a range of design research methods. It is also noteworthy that all case studies have engaged with researchers and experts from other disciplines beyond design.

Table 1.1 Analysis of case studies included in the book

Chapter	Research topic	Primary SDG	Secondary SDGs	Country	Research methods	Disciplines beyond design
6	Tackling antimicrobial resistance in the home environment	3: Good Health and Wellbeing	11: Sustainable Cities and Communities	Ghana	Survey, design ethnography, cultural probe, personas, co-design, microbiological analysis	Social epidemiology, microbiology
7	Investigating gender transport poverty in LMICs	5: Gender Equality	11: Sustainable Cities and Communities	Pakistan, Malaysia	Design ethnography, personas, participatory design	Development studies, human geography
8	Engaging communities in emergency sanitation facilities design	6: Clean Water and Sanitation		Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Iraq	Participatory design, survey, community engagement	Humanitarian studies, engineering
9	Improving access to sustainable energy for displaced people	7: Affordable and Clean Energy		Burkina Faso, Kenya	Design ethnography, interviews	Social anthropology, humanitarian studies
10	Generating employment opportunities through materials-driven supply chain	8: Decent Work and Economic Growth		Indonesia, Kenya, Turkey, Uganda	Design/material audit, co-design	Management and business studies
11	Exploring key dilemmas for design in industry, innovation and infrastructure	9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure	3: Good Health and Wellbeing 4: Quality Education	Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Vanuatu	Service design, participatory design	Policy, innovation management
12	Engaging citizens in policymaking via creative ways	10: Reduced Inequalities	16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions 4: Quality Education	Malaysia	Participatory design, speculative design	Policy, psychology, computer science
13	Co-designing interventions for safe, resilient and inclusive city space	11: Sustainable Cities and Communities	3: Good Health and Wellbeing	Northern Ireland	Design ethnography, participatory design	Anthropology, mental health
14	CoLaboratory Kitchen: food as co-creative catalyst in realising SDGs	13: Climate Action	2: Zero Hunger 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth 15: Life on Land	Mexico	Co-design, research through design	Arts, ecology, gastronomy
15	Exploring spatial modelling for urban stability in postwar cities	16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions	11: Sustainable Cities and Communities	Lebanon	Spatial modelling, workshops and focus groups, design ethnography	Social sciences, political science

Chapter 6, by Andy Darby et al., presents a case study forming a design-led collaboration between academics from the UK and Ghana that explored hygiene practices across different home environments in Ghana, in order to tackle the diminishing efficacy of antibiotics. The project employed design research methods along with microbiological analysis to develop an understanding of the home as a source of infection stemming from dust-carried bacteria that could carry antimicrobial resistance. These insights were then used by householders to co-design context-specific cleaning practices that sought to mitigate the impacts of pathogen exposure and antimicrobial resistance. This case study outlines the Dust Bunny project and draws on reflections and interviews with the wider research team to offer insights into the challenges and opportunities for design research exemplified in this project, which may be applicable to other Global South–Global North project collaborations. It concludes that in order to address emerging challenges in such collaborations, it is critical to provide Global North researchers sufficient time in situ with Global South researchers in the pre-design phase of a research study to establish collaborative working practices and in doing so to consider how methods work in, and are adaptable to, Global South contexts.

In Chapter 7, Komal Faiz et al. explore the mobility challenges women face in Pakistan and Ma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of editors
• List of contributors
• PART I Global challenge design in context
• PART II Case studies
• PART III The future
• Index