In recent years, designers are increasingly active in dealing with societal transitions, using design and social innovation to drive systemic change. Transitions are long-term processes of systems change toward more desirable alternatives. In transition design, designers conceptualise and implement transition interventions to influence the behaviours, practices, and lifestyles of people and society. However, little is known about the design processes that lead to such interventions or the reasoning patterns that support a design process toward conceptualising transition design interventions. In this paper, we explore how a transition design rationale—a design rationale tailored to the complexities of transition challenges—supports designers in making design decisions and clear argumentations for how proposed interventions foster desired transitions. We present two studies that investigate the development and application of a transition design logical framework. The first study was a grounded theory study on design reasoning, in which designers in a consortium working developed interventions to foster the transition of the Dutch food system to less food waste. In this first study, the designers applied the transition design logical framework to strengthen the design reasoning for the intervention proposals. The second study consisted of two evaluative workshops with designers who applied the framework to design interventions that foster desired systems change. Our findings indicate that our transition design logical framework supports designers in framing the transition context in a way that makes it manageable to design for, increasing confidence in the efficacy of proposed transition interventions. We found that a key challenge for designers reasoning toward transition interventions is articulating individual and system behaviour change integrally. We conclude the paper by reflecting on avenues for methodological development to further support transition design reasoning toward interventions. Additionally, we call to the systemic and transition design communities to continue refining and expanding a shared repertoire of behaviour change mechanisms that can effectively drive systemic change. @en

In recent years, more designers have been engaging in transitions, for which design expertise is used to develop visions of long-term desirable futures. However, little is known about how design expertise is positioned in transition visioning processes. In this case study, we follow a design agency in envisioning a future food system for a consortium working on the food transition. Based on our findings, we unpack several tensions that emerge between the transition context and design expertise. Such as the tension for designers to explore alternative futures that challenge the current system yet support stakeholders in seeing their place in the future. We conclude by reflecting on avenues for methodological development to optimally position design expertise for visioning in transitions.@en

In recent years, designers have increasingly engaged with sustainability transitions, using design and innovation activity to drive systemic change. Yet, we still have a limited understanding of how designers can best frame complex system dynamics to understand what innovations will foster desired change. This study aims to better understand how design decisions are made when innovating for transitions and how to support this process. We take a research-through-design approach to explore the dimensions of scale and time and propose a conceptual framework to specify how to include these dimensions in framing transition challenges for design. In our view, exploring and specifying 1) systems principles that drive the future system, 2) organisational roles stakeholders can play in the transition, and 3) changes in people’s behaviour and capabilities that drive the transition is key to identifying what future practice(s) to design for to foster desired transitions. We discuss the design activities and process artefacts developed and used to support our investigation into framing for transitions in a way that aligns short-term innovation efforts with long-term systemic change. Our contributions advance our understanding of framing in transition design, and we hint toward some of the design activities and process artefacts to support this. @en

In recent years, more designers have been engaging in transitions for which design activity is used to develop innovations that steer change. However, little is known about how designers develop innovations to foster change along a desired transition path. In this short paper, we explore how designers can develop joint innovations that steer a transition of the Dutch food system to embrace flexibility and cater to enough. We present a new practice called Adaptable Consumption, which aims to realign food safety, quality, and sustainability. Based on our preliminary findings, we discuss how our process inspires reflections on the transition and reveals key indicators for collaborative change. We conclude by reflecting on areas of the process that need further exploration in order to stage the process and design expertise effectively in this highly complex transition context.@en

Designers are increasingly tackling complex societal challenges and fostering system transitions. Transitions are long-term, multi-level, multi-phasal system changes involving numerous actors, requiring innovations that develop new relationships within the system. Therefore, the process of designing for transitions requires new ways of bridging system analysis and system synthesis. This paper explores the concepts of ‘transition readiness’ and ‘value conflicts’ as valuable indicators to bridge this gap and support designers in fos-tering system transitions. Synthesizing insights from literature and previous experience, we propose a first step towards an integrative model for mapping a system transition in a way that inspires design. Our model, called the Transition Readiness Profiles, anticipates the dynamics of a system transition and helps identify how and where design can inter-vene to accelerate the transition. It analyzes the transition at the individual-, organization-, and system level to understand the system dynamics and reveal what organizations can bring forward to foster the transition relative to others. The Profiles capture the relational dimension of a transition by mapping readiness, value conflict, and stakeholder relation-ships and dependencies. @en