Understanding Transformations through Design: Can Resilience Thinking Help?

Abstract

The interaction design community increasingly addresses how digital technologies may contribute to societal transformations. This paper aims at understanding transformation ignited by a particular constructive design research project. This transformation will be discussed and analysed using resilience thinking, an established approach within sustainability science. By creating a common language between these two disciplines, we start to identify what kind of transformation took place, what factors played a role in the transformation, and which transformative qualities played a role in creating these factors. Our intention is to set out how the notion of resilience might provide a new perspective to understand how constructive design research may produce results that have a sustainable social impact. The findings point towards ways in which these two different perspectives on transformation the analytical perspective of resilience thinking and the generative perspective of constructive design research - may become complementary in both igniting and understanding transformations.