Educating for Societal Design - A Conversation with Emily Harris and Martin Lorenz

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

What if actually everybody is best placed in the things and the context that they know best to be the person, to be the designer? Surely that's the place that we should start, but how can we use the amazing, like, superpowers of design to bring that about?

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. My name's Tim Logan, and the podcast is produced by Good Impact Labs. There are loads of reasons why well-intentioned work trying to do things differently and shift the way that systems currently operate often struggle and fail. But one of the reasons that I find most interesting is to look at the dark matter or deep codes that are built into our current ways of working. These might be things like the way we do contracts, or the way insurance functions and legal precedents, or the way that value is defined and accounted for, and the way money functions and flows. Most of the time, these things are simply constraints that we're told we just have to deal with in our work. But as you might have heard in a previous episode with Indi Johar and Adam Purvis, organizations like Dark Matter Labs are not accepting this status quo, and in fact are actively trying to work towards redesigning some of these deep codes. But then you might say, well, that's fine for those kinds of organizations who get to do that work, but that's not something that I can get involved with. My guests this week, Emily Harris and Martin Lorenz, are colleagues of Adam and Indy at Dark Matter Labs, but they are taking it one stage further and asking the question, what does it mean to educate for building those sensibilities and capabilities for doing this kind of work? They're calling it societal design. And in this conversation, you'll hear them reflecting on the master's program that they are launching this September in collaboration with Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering. I'll let Emily and Martin introduce themselves, but just to say there are loads of links in the show notes for how you can find out more or apply to the master's programme, but also for the broader work that Martin and Emily are doing alongside the Dark Matter Labs team and other partners.

Hi, I'm Emily. So a long checkered history is that I'm a chartered accountant. I kind of, I grew up at Deloitte in London, City of London in corporate finance. So had like a very corporate start. I was there during the financial crisis and I went on to do international CFO positions around the world and all of this stuff. And then fast forward to having a massive kind of like, oh my God, nothing makes sense. Total kind of dissonance meltdown. And I went to Schumacher College and I studied regenerative economics. And that was my kind of route into working at Dark Matter Labs. And that is where lots of things happened, but very happily I met Martin whilst I was starting to build up the Next Economics Lab. So I was starting to really look at the deep drivers of the economic system and what we might experiment with, or now I think of it as redesign. I don't know if I did at the time. So Martin and I started working together and we'll tell you about that in a bit. But Martin, over to you.

Yeah, fantastic. Amazing. Thank you. Yeah, go for it, Martin.

Yeah, I'm Martin. I'm a communication designer and I worked in the commercial field for many, many, many years. And I always thought I'm a communication designer, but then someday it hit me that, that this cannot be the way, a little bit what Emily also described as this cannot be how the world works and my function in this world. So I started to look around and then happily I got contacted by Dark Matter Labs and they hired me as a conversational designer. And I was telling them, no, no, I'm a communication designer. I'm not a conversational designer. And he was telling me, no, no, I need a conversational designer. And I'm now over 3 years at Dark Matter Labs and I'm slowly starting to understand what he meant by that. And actually I was practicing conversational design since many years. It's just I didn't really value it. I was always looking at the output and never really at the process or design as a process. And together with Emily, I finally could break out of my design silo and look at the world from a different perspective. And this is where I thought, ah, design can do something. It can not just do Instagram posts and nice posters and campaigns to make people aware of the world on fire. It actually can do something, but maybe more in a dialogue. And with Emily, we had this dialogue at Life Enabling Economics and then Life Enabling Design.

Oh, so cool. No, thank you so much. I mean, it's such a pleasure to meet you both and to, yeah, to have you here on the podcast. We've had Indy and Adam on the podcast before, which many people will know, but the particular reason we have come together today is to talk about the Master's in Societal Design that you are both co-creating, which is just super exciting. And I'm really happy to be able to share more about it in a moment. But clearly you are both involved in some amazing other work, which perhaps we won't get a chance to talk about, but I'll put links in the show notes to that work cuz it's all just incredibly important. And also just to reflect, I think there are a lot of people who have had those similar kinds of existential meltdown, professional meltdown moments, right? What am I doing and what is the work? I certainly have. And, you know, I think they're really important reflections on, you know, where can we contribute in our small ways to the things that are needed now? I feel the answers to that question are not obvious. They're really often not obvious. And the things that we maybe think are the work are perhaps not the work or even undermining the real work. So it's super interesting just to hear you both reflect on that. And yeah, no, thank you so much for taking the time to come and chat. This is great.

Thank you for having us, Tim.

Thank you. So maybe if we could just give a little bit of a kind of a sense of where this idea of societal design and the need for that is coming from, I think would be useful. I'd love to talk about the course and what you're trying to achieve with a specific course, but just, yeah, perhaps to set the scene a little bit. Where is this coming from? Do you feel that there is an increasing recognition of the need for this idea of societal design?

Yeah, well, maybe I'll start. We just give you like a little bit of the arc of how we got here, and maybe that answers some of those questions. So building a bit on, I think, what Martin was saying at the beginning about the process, not just like the outputs of design. So Martin and I did not— we didn't sit down together one day and say like, oh, you know, we really think that we're the people to create an entire master's about designing, you know, society. Like it wasn't that arrogant and it wasn't that kind of thought out, if we're honest. It was more like quite embodied. So we started working together and we can tell you on what. And as part of that process, all of these things came up for us and that's what led us to here. But the, so there were two things that we started working on kind of as an experiment for both of us. So Martin trying to figure out what on earth conversational design was as his new job. So he was like leading the conversational design studio and me like stewarding the Next Economics Lab and like, what does that mean? So we set out on two pieces of work and they were both kind of part of Dark Matter Labs' journey as well. So I would say some of this, like societal design is like a fractal of where Dark Matter Labs is going as well. So it's quite interesting.

Yeah.

So those two things were life-enabling economics, which we can tell you a bit about. And that was, you know, what are we shooting for or what's the South Star, as they would say? What would we create as like a way of stewarding our planetary home? You know, if we had free choice. And then also at the same time, we were looking at like, how does Dark Matter Labs organize with its ecosystem to start building parts of that? Like, you know, how can we actually look at the dark matter, like what's going on beneath the surface and what can we work on? And maybe Martin will talk a bit about our process because it was quite interesting. But I think one of the things that we really started to notice was this massive dissonance that we both spoke of in our own journeys, but also with everyone we were interacting with. So We put out a survey, kind of the state of design, and we were blown away by how many designers answered for a start. And then the length and thoughtfulness that they put into their answers was actually quite a big inspiration for us to take some of this work further. But yeah, maybe I'll just stop for a minute, but I don't know if you want to talk, Martin, a bit about like when we first started working on life-enabling economics and how we did that.

Yeah, no, I happily can talk about our process and life-enabling design. Maybe first of all, just like an observation that I made, we are talking here and we were throwing around terms like life-enabling design, life-enabling economics, societal design. And sometimes I feel like language is in the way and it's hard to talk about concepts because you have to name them in a way. But for me, it, the concepts behind life-enabling design, they're completely equivalent to societal design or many other things that we are doing. And if you want to look at it at the concepts beyond our professions, then you will find as well similar deep codes in other professions that people are struggling with. But maybe that's also my designer's perspective and my way of thinking about language and how it limits us and how we need more languages. Like my language is the visual language, but there are certain things that need to be expressed in numbers or in words or in sounds or through other sensory inputs. So coming back to Life in Urban Design and our process, this is— was also our approach. By having dialogues and looking at subjects or concepts from different perspectives, we were opening up a space in between these two nodes or two— these two perspectives. And in every dialogue that we had, we were never really trying to create something static. We were trying to create a space, an invitation as well to others. And the interesting thing is, if you're opening up this space for yourself and for others, then you allow as well completely different things to grow. So when we are talking about the mast as well, this is another dialogue space that we are opening up. Uh, maybe I should shut up now because there's—

it's—

everything is linked, and I'm— my mind is going to the, to the anti-brief.

Yeah, I hear that. And it would be great to get into more of the, more of that detail. But I just wonder, I guess I'm feeling maybe a little bit more of the context of why, like I can hear like the language of design and I would love to talk about that, but like, what is it that you were answering to around why life-enabling economics or societal design or all these different aspects were coming up where you felt like there was need for more of these kinds of spaces?

Yeah, I can maybe go there. So like into a little bit more detail. So when I was mentioning at the beginning, we were looking at how Dark Matter Labs could organize its work. So for anyone that isn't familiar, like a, a big driver for Dark Matter is obviously the dark matter of society. And by that, we look at something that we call deep codes. And what we're looking at there is these kind of like entrenched systems or norms or structures that stop even the most amazing committed people from being successful in doing things differently. So a specific example might be something like how we determine profit, or the fact that we have private ownership rights. When you start to look at those things, you realize that even if you're trying to like do things that sound amazing, like regenerative investing or whatever else it is, people can't get out of the system. It's like pushing them back into the same thing, right? So it links back to this idea of dissonance, because all these people, not just designers, so like lawyers, politicians, everyone that we're speaking to would be experiencing this feeling of like not being at home in the world. And then they go to their jobs and however well-meaning they are, they can't do things differently. And it's so frustrating, right? So, there were two things going on. One is that for Dark Matter Labs itself, we were trying to break it down so that we could actually get precise enough. So, instead of just talking and diagnosing and saying, "Oh, capitalism and blah, blah, blah," provocations here and there, it was like, "Okay, well, for me specifically, I'm an accountant. So, what could I actually go and do? What could I really get into the detail of and test?" And as part of that, I kept hitting brick walls as well because I'm not trained like that, right? So you give an accountant free will to redesign accounting and they come up with ESG, you know, like, it's just not, you know, and so then I started working with people like Martin and it's just, oh my God, the world like opens into this different space and you're thinking, well, hang on a minute, actually, if I could see this other perspective, what would that mean in the accounts? So it's, this is what we were trying to do and we were trying to do it just for Dark Matter Labs at the beginning. Right? To give us all some structure and some different ways of working with our own ecosystem. And then it occurred to us through like many conversations is like, obviously we can't just do this within the boundaries of one organization, nor would we wish to. And so Life in Open Design came out of, well, what if actually everybody is best placed in the things and the context that they know best to be the person, to be the designer? So, not people who are officially from a design background, but people who are accountants, You know, who are the engineers or who are doing whatever it is, they're closest to the fire. Surely that's the place that we should start. But how can we use the amazing, like, superpowers of design to bring that about? So it was kind of a logical progression from like, what would this economy that, you know, what would it need to contain? What would need to happen? What would be the shifts? What would be the philosophical underpinning was where we started. And then it was like, How could people actually get into that? You know, rather than it just being another lovely story that, you know, who doesn't want a post-growth economy or, you know, but then when in the day-to-day, how could we like support that to happen in a kind of more scaled and distributed way? And I think the thing that really got us thinking was the idea of a boundary object. So Martin and I were talking a lot about that because, you You know, it was like, well, obviously we had some misgivings about like, oh, we're going to redesign the economy. And, you know, it's ridiculous, of course. So it was like, can we create some kind of loose structure that gives people a sense of pulling together, but like really supports their kind of contextual integrity and wisdom? So that's what we were trying to do.

Yeah, amazing. Could you just say a bit more about what a boundary object is? Because that's not necessarily a super familiar phrase to most people, I think.

Yeah. Martin, do you want to come in on that?

Yeah, it's, um, I was seeing the boundary object always as like some sort of cell with a Markov blanket around that allows a certain interaction in between the outside and the inside, but still there's an object that can be described. Like Luhmann, the system thinker, he talks about boundary objects as being necessary to describe something. If something is the same as the background, it's invisible. So you need something that is different to the background. But I really like the Stuart Kaufman reference of self-organizing boundary objects as well, because they develop this kind of dynamics where they start sticking together like oil in water. I really like that image as well.

Yeah. There's something about giving enough structure but flexibility and giving that like sense of being part of something bigger than yourself. So it's like helping people to feel that gestalt of like kind of interconnected embodiedness without having to like spell it out and say, right now we're going to meditate on this. And you know, it gives you that sense, but it also lets you interpret it into your own context is the way that I would describe it. So, we tried to set the course up in that way because obviously we have ideas of what we want people to learn and ideas that we'd like them to experiment with, but at the end of the day, who are we to say what someone sitting in, for example, Barcelona, someone sitting in Calcutta and someone sitting in, I don't know, South America, it's not going to be the same. So, we felt very strongly that we never want to be saying, right, you know, this is the way you should work on it and this is going to be your project. But having said that, we didn't want it to be so loose that it just becomes, oh well, go design for good, right? Because people say that kind of thing all the time, don't they? It's like, oh, let's, you know, design in service of life. I mean, great, but what does it mean?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is, I think what you're describing is so much the core of a lot of people's challenges, right? Is to how to do enough but not too much, or not how to create spaces but not over-engineer. Because as soon as you overengineer, you then fall back into the traps of the previous paradigm, right? And I mean, it's everywhere, that exact dynamic. And I think just a lot of what you're describing of people with a desire to shift things and then butting up against the dark matter of, in my world, the lesson plan, the curriculum framework, the outcomes, the assessment, you know, lots of resonance, whether you're, as you said, whether you're an accountant or a lawyer or a a designer or an educator. I mean, it's everywhere. And again, what is the work of trying to help each other navigate those spaces and doing educational work, which is so deeply trapped in this obsession with outcomes? I mean, I say all the time, it's boring to my listeners by now, but it is such a trap that when we preempt everything and we pre-predict, we pre-plan everything that we want people to get out of it because we need to Yeah. Because we need to create the structure, right? Then we've kind of fallen back into this recipe and this algorithm.

Yeah. And we do it, we do it all the time. We have to constantly remind ourselves. This is why I enjoy working with Martin so much. It's because even though I've been working on this kind of stuff now for years and I know it, right? I know it deep down, but I'm trained for certainty. I'm trained to be sure. I'm trained to bring it back to something that I can like put into like a, concise table and tell you, this is what will happen and this will be the return and this is the decision you should make, you know.

That's why we hire the accountants, right?

Right. And you want us to be sure. You don't want us to say, well, hang on a minute, let me just scratch my metaphysical itch and then, you know, I'll come back to you. No. So, but Martin is like the most curious individual that I've ever had the pleasure of working with.

Chaotic.

It's impossible for me to stay in there, you know, even if sometimes I'm kind of like, oh, I just need to, you know, he'll just like poke the spot and then kind of wake up again. So I think it's really important to be around these people because I'm not sure you can do it for yourself.

Yeah.

And it's what I see as well in you is, I mean, you're also calling yourself the curious economist, no? And I think curiosity and trying to create generative spaces already demands loose boundary objects or frameworks. So I really see a strong link to education. There because this is the way as well how I like to teach. I go in the classroom thinking I'm just one of 30 people and now I'm getting older and older and older and there's so much stuff that I'm not seeing that it's normal for them. So it would be totally wrong to go in there with a plan of what they have to do. I mean, I have to have, I have certain experience in my field and I know what I think would be useful to them to achieve. But yeah, we need this open structures as well to give them the space to develop something that might be even more useful than you thought they should know. And this applies to teaching, but as well to the way how we like to work together. So it's nice. I mean, Emily has a much more structured brain and a much better brain than me, so she's always the one that can bring it back to something someone else can understand while my brain is drifting off in so many different directions. But I think we share this curiosity and as well this, yeah, the need for creating generative spaces. I was just reading yesterday the part in The Systems View of Life from Capra and Luisi, and they were writing there, I mean, I'm just paraphrasing here, but basically that all living systems are learning systems, otherwise they cannot evolve. And in contrary, this means that if you don't generate spaces to learn, then you're creating dead spaces. And I find that— I mean, they were saying this from the perspective of biology, but I find that such a good definition of what we try to need to take into account in everything that we create, that we create generative spaces.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that totally resonates. I think educators who are asking these kinds of questions are feeling exactly the same thing. We generally, institutionally, we are not inhabiting living learning systems, right? We're inhabiting institutions that were built for another time that are, I mean, dead is a highly pejorative term, but they certainly don't move very quickly if they move at all, right? They're rigid, they're stuck, many adjectives we could use, right? But just, I mean, talking of that, I'm really curious. You have found a home for this work, right? In Elisava, in Barcelona. How was that experience of finding a home for this? Because that is also a challenge, is finding a legacy institution that is open to this kind of way of working. That's not everybody. So I don't know, was, is there a, yeah, what's the story there about finding that home?

Well, that's actually quite an easy one, right? Because Martin, Martin's been working there for a long time.

So yeah, I mean, I have taught at many universities, but I'm, with Elisaba since 2006, so a very long time. And yeah, and it's— I have— I live now in Hamburg, but every time that I come back to teach there, it's like coming home. I meet there people that I know for 20 and more years, and there's, um, a trust as well in these people. And they, they know me, I know them. And it's an interesting space as well because it's quite traditional in the sense of that they teach the craft of design. And what we are proposing is quite different. I think we, on purpose, we invite a lot of non-designers because from our experience, what has been a problem in the past for designers, that design was either commissioned, so they come in with a certain brief and then they have to do something, they have to function within a system that they cannot change, or a design movement is turned into a product, something very rigid as well that you just want to use like a, like a tool. And our approach, seeing design as a dialogue or design as a relational craft, needs a different setup. Cannot be commissioned, cannot be a product, cannot be just a tool. It needs to become a relationship. It needs to become something very intimate where you also are able to play with intangible languages that you can't really find words yet for.

Yeah, I love that. And I mean, I read in the anti-brief that you shared, which I just love. There's so much good stuff in there, but that's available and I'll put the link in the show notes. But you talk about in your section, Martin, you said, talked about design making promises that it can't keep. And I mean, I think that was a provocation rather than a statement as such. A question, maybe it is. But yeah, I mean, can you open that up a bit? How do you see that design needs to, I mean, it's some of what you've already been saying, I think perhaps, but I've had conversations about systemic design with people and I know Dan Hill's strategic design. And so there's all these kind of adjectives that you put on the front of design to make it something else, right? So I don't know, how do you hold I suppose you're doing the same with societal design, right? To an extent.

Yeah, I would maybe just add one thing and then we'll answer that question. But just in terms of Elisava being the home and how we came to that, because Martin was saying it's quite a traditional craft, like university school of design. And just for non-designers like me, when he said that, he means like it teaches things like graphic design, you know, like industrial design, product design. So like very kind of, I suppose, siloed. I don't mean that in a negative sense, but, you know, very specific types of design. But a lot of designers obviously now very worried because of things like AI, because the context is shifting, people are losing their jobs. So part of the need that we're meeting with Elisava is like, what does that mean for the future of design, right? So as everything's changing, and even the people who aren't wanting to necessarily create a regenerative economy or any of these other things, they're still really worried about what's going to happen. And so what we kind of proposed Elisava and what we're obviously trying to do is to really take all the different types of design, so all the different fields and disciplines, anyone's welcome, and then look at how it can be like reimagined. So it's like rebirthing design from the inside. So instead of coming in and saying, right, here's this new thing, it's strategic design, or, you know, that's not really the point. It's like, how can we use all of this amazing knowledge and skill sets that, you know, that's been built over centuries and more? You know, it's not for us to change all of that. We don't want to, but how can we actually pair people with non-designers? And then what happens? What happens when you put a graphic designer with an accountant? Or what happens when you put a spatial designer with a, you know, policy innovation expert or something like that? And so the whole master's has been built in that way. So on every single module, we have a design-non-designer duo teaching it, and they're like stewarding the arc of that particular module. Um, and that's been like very intentional. So although the students are designers, they're like right from the start living the kind of what we would call transdisciplinary, not just interdisciplinary. So it's not just, oh, you know, you put this skill with this skill and then you get something else. It's like, no, what actually happens in between those things? So I think that's probably, you know, where we're doing something really quite different, but also just trying to move away from the arrogance of— so strategic design did incredible things, and Martin can add more about that. Like, they really— the Helsinki Design Lab, and, you know, amazing. We're obviously standing on their shoulders. But I think it also got to a point for someone like me where I got a bit fed up with people coming in and sticking Post-it notes all over my whatever and saying, oh, you know, this is how the financial system should be redesigned. And I'm thinking, you know, really? Have you ever worked in the financial system? Or— so we kind of wanted to take the best of that And then actually like, you know, ask the people that do work in that system.

Yeah, absolutely. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, I, I could speak a little bit to this as well because you were, Tim, you were mentioning Dan, Dan Hill.

Yeah.

And Emily, you were mentioning right now Helsinki Design Lab. And I, I did not say that, but I was the visual designer at Helsinki Design Lab working as TwoPoints.net. We were designing the visual identity for them and their publications and So we were in close contact with Brian Boyer, Justin Cook, Marco Steinberg, Dan Hill, and they were telling us about their plans to do something else than design thinking, something that is more like design doing. And that turned into strategic design. And I think it's great. I think it's still super valuable what was developed at the Helsinki Design Lab. And also the continuity in the, what I saw then in, in, in Dark Matter Labs. But what I noticed as well is that there are a lot of architects in this field. There's no one that I would call a designer.

And is that controversial to say?

I'm, I'm completely fine with it. But what I recognized is that they have a certain way of thinking about the world, which makes totally sense to where architects are coming from. But I think that all design professions, they can add something. They can add a different perspective to the world. So I think the, the smart architects, they see it. The not so smart architects with a God complex, they don't. But I, I also didn't mean anything negative by saying Elisaba is rooted in the design, traditional design crafts. I, I think craft is very much necessary. I think it's It's very important. That's why we wanted to include all of them as well.

Yeah.

In our concept for the master. But you need as well to either elevate to the meta to have a look, an overview about what you're actually doing there and that you only have partial knowledge and perspective and that you need to work together or go down to the deep codes wherever you prefer to go. But there has to be a space where you can meet and organize and collaborate.

Yeah, it's super interesting cuz I would say even in, in the deep codes and in the meta, they are coming from somewhere. Like they are deeply rooted in a tradition or in multiple traditions and multiple kind of weaving of history. Right. And so it's, that really connects with me because I think too often there's, we do get people with God complex coming along saying, I've just figured some stuff out and here's a new idea and this is gonna solve everything. And that's just such a pattern that keeps repeating whatever world you're in, right? Architecture or education or whatever. And it's just, I mean, it's nonsense and it's dangerous nonsense actually, because it leads people to this, well, no point going down that rabbit hole right now, but there is, sorry, Emily, you wanted to come back in?

I just totally agree with that. And I think it's part of the journey that we're hoping we can take people on a bit quicker than ours, right? So, like, you know, my personal journey actually started in medicine, right? So, I started in medicine and then accounting and then economics and then, you know, all of this stuff, then kind of into the world of design. And all of the time I was just thinking, "Oh, you know, if I could just understand this next bit or whatever, I could think of something better. I could come up with a solution." And it took me, like, I'm embarrassed to say, almost like 30 years to kind of get my head around the fact that that was ridiculous, as you were just describing. And so I think, you know, part of the motivation for this is to help other people get there quicker, right? Because we actually need people, all of us, to be doing things differently and to be really doing it in collaboration, not to pay lip service to collaboration. Exactly. And so, yeah, sorry, I just got a bit excited with what you were saying. It feels so much my experience.

Yeah, well, me too. Absolutely. And it takes a lot of people a long time to come to some of those particularly when we've been socialized into a particular mechanistic system that is full of the dark matter of we're just one good idea around the corner from salvation or something, right? Or it's just, let's take this part or fix this part and then everything will be okay. And again, it's just, it's dangerous nonsense, unfortunately, but it really is sticky and it persists. And I mean, It's fascinating. But I mean, one of the things I read in the anti-brief that you said, Emily, there was good design can help to slow things down to surface the less visible and unexpected perspectives.

Yeah.

It helps me to do my work from a different worldview with more curiosity, integrity, and richer sense of purpose. Like, that's a beautiful thing to say. And if design can do that, then Yeah, let's have more of that, right?

Yeah, I absolutely think it can. And maybe we can talk about, because Martin and I are like working on a kind of walking the talk project on the side that we, which speaks to that exact sentence.

Okay. Oh, good.

I also wanted to say that I think with the deep code and everything we're talking about, our identities are so tangled up in it as well that it makes it almost impossible without conscious, like, practice of really living a different way in your work and outside and everything. To like pull that apart enough to really be able to do anything differently. And we had a really interesting collaboration where Martin and I did a conversational publication with Apolline Roger from ClientEarth. She's an extraordinary lawyer and a very humble, brilliant, brilliant thinker. But as we were doing that, we were basically doing the anti-brief, as you were just describing, with her, you know, around the topic of lawyering. And the thing that just kept coming up was like this identity, this posture of being a lawyer that was like making it so difficult for them. You know, there's, there's kind of a big movement of lawyers now, particularly in the kind of rights of nature, but then trying to go broader into how they could actually redesign the deep codes of the law, which is obviously exciting because that has such massive leverage. But it, you know, it's the same old patterns. So, and just speaking to the like surfacing different perspectives and helping, you know, obviously me personally, but other people to go about their work differently. So Martin and I right now are working on a project with another colleague who's brilliant, Linea in Sweden, and that's exactly what we're doing. So, well, we got funding from Joseph Rowndree Foundation and the kind of, you know, thing behind it was like, could we find a way of bridging conversational design with what we are calling polycapital accounting, but new ways of accounting and bringing those things together to help surface different perspectives, different values, you know, not just different outcomes, but different contributors. And by doing that, can we like, obviously we are looking to change the way that, that money flows, but also how can we have entirely different conversations? And it sounds a little bit esoteric as I'm describing it, but it's a very, very like gritty detailed project. We are working with a municipality in Sweden and we're like literally kind of having conversations with the social services, with the police, with, you know, with the teachers, with, and like trying to see what's going on. And then visualizing it with all these different languages. So there are numbers involved, but there are also going to be like comics, and then there's like, you know, systems mapping and value, like conversational cards. And we're trying to put it together into a process that other people can use. So one of the reasons that I feel strongly about that, about us doing this kind of work as well, is a question that comes up a lot, understandably, from prospective students is like, you know, what's the career pathways for this? Because it's It's a little bit new. It's like, you know, we're gonna, what, we're gonna spend €14,000 and then, you know, apart from working at Dark Matter Labs, what are you gonna do?

Exactly.

And so I think one of the things that's interesting that I feel about this, and when we were describing the boundary object, is we're also trying to push out into future careers, right? So it's very much reciprocal by bringing non-designers in. So I'm kind of a foot in each camp, but I know that I need these kind of designers in my work. And as this work ripples out, I'm not going to be the only one that needs help with these numbers. And so, it's like this kind of push-pull of, it's a very vocational course, but we're also, you know, threading into the future with it, but not us, obviously, with all the different people who are starting to challenge those deep codes and then go, "Well, hang on, I see that, right? Like, I see the systemic issue and I see the deep driver and I see how it's like making me show up as a professional." But I just don't know what I can do.

Yeah.

So then, you know, intentionally, so Client Earth, who we mentioned, they've just recently hired a visual designer, which is like a really amazing confirmation that this kind of process is working and is expanding. So I feel that in a way, coming out of it, like a master's like this, it's like your career pathways are almost infinite because what Martin's teaching you is to be a contextual designer. That context can be anything.

So interesting because then you're then now in the process of creating the job or co-creating the job, you know, your future job. While at the same time, that's quite a precarious situation to be in if you're about to take the plunge and invest a significant amount of money in a master's course. But I think it makes me think of, I've done some work with Ray Ison, who's a long-time Open University professor of systems thinking and practice. And he talks about the fact that a lot of graduates from that master's course had almost a kind of an existential crisis when they come out of the course because they go back into the job they were doing and they then had to, as a faculty, really consider— and then he talks about it being a design turn actually. So bringing in design to say, to take a design turn when you go back into your organization because maybe you already have a job and maybe your employer has funded the master's, but then you find yourself meeting up against these deep codes that we've been talking about when you go back in. And what do you do with that other than have some kind of existential crisis and leave? And so they were kind of forced to engage with this idea of a design turn to say, what constraints or what affordances can I work with back in my organization to help to shift the possibilities of where I am in this often possibly quite rigid space that I find myself back in? So I think it's, again, it's a really common predicament that people find themselves in. And so, to have a skillset that you are supporting seems like vital, right?

Yeah, right. And I think to embed it. So, I think, you know, some degrees do, they kind of put it at the end. It's like, "And now how will you do this in your work?" And that's good and it's better than nothing, but I think it's not possible just to make that transition. So, we really wanted to weave that in right from the start. So, you are thinking about it right from the first module. So, even when you're thinking about, Why should I even want to use design, maybe for activism? Or, and as you're starting to think about the craft and how that could surface perspectives, and, but you're also thinking as you're looking around your local context, because it's an online master's mainly, you're also starting to think, hmm, but then what would I do with that? And if I did want to do that, who would I talk to? And what if they just laughed at me? What would be my, you know, toolkit for like having a second conversation? And so we want that to be part of not just the process, but also almost like the worldview, you know, it's okay to keep like looking for different angles and just listening. And then, you know, we call it listening to the system and zooming out, like what's happening there. And then like coming right back in and then having a practice and then obviously talking to your fellow students and just honing down until you find something that works.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. Amazing.

I think it would be maybe at this point it would be interesting to talk a little bit about the different modules because In the beginning, I was saying that my personal evolution was as well from design as a craft that creates outputs to something that can help in the process. I learned that design, there are many different ways to work as a designer, and maybe the less obvious one is the one that supports processes. And in our modules, we are also, it's a learning path that we have built there. So it makes sense from the academic point of view, but it also makes sense as a model of the profession where designers could work. So Apolline, you were mentioning Apolline from ClientEarth. It's fantastic that ClientEarth has a visual designer now, but even before having a visual designer, Apolline was working with design tools to organize her team and to give them a different perspective and to learn how they can coordinate better. And she was using the Horizon model. So this is just like one example of how designers could also work within teams. And maybe not such an obvious one because we always think about something visual when we think about design. But you could also use visualization to explain something or to understand something or reflect on something. And in each module, we are dedicating time and classes on understanding where design could be helpful in a group that is mixed. Between designers and non-designers. So it's right from the start, it's this kind of searching what would be a new definition of design and where design could be really helpful. And we were also talking about the rigid models and, and the God complex. And, and when you were talking about this, I was having in mind like, oh shit, I'm a complicit in this rigid worldview that we can change the world with a theory or a model because designers are really good at making something look perfect. Like something makes sense. No, I mean, just look at money, you know, like you look at a banknote, no, and it's so nicely designed. It must be worth something, not just the paper. So design can trick you into a lot of things and models. I mean, Donna Meadows says it, that she has a very flexible understanding of what a model is. It's to reflect on something. And visualize something, explain something, but it's not meant to be like something that we pray to. Um, so it always has to be checked as well with reality.

And false idols, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

We were always having a giggle about this, Martin and I, because, you know, sometimes when we were like running workshops about the anti-brief and about our work, people would look at us a bit like, hmm, it's not really like a tool though, is it? You know, it's not really And we were laughing thinking, you know, between the two of us, we could have made such a marketable product, right? Like the economist accountant and the designer.

Yeah, dream combination, right?

We definitely could have done that, but would you really have trusted us or wanted to use it, you know? But it was quite funny. It's like, we know what they're saying, but it's almost, that's why we called it the anti-brief.

Yeah. But I mean, there's so many interesting dynamics, aren't there though? Because even the good-looking anti-brief is becoming a kind of almost potentially a co-opted design move to be alternative to the mainstream. And so, I mean, it, it, everything moves as quickly as everything else, right? And so it's, it's a fascinating dynamic to be a part of. And just on, on your point of tools, I was with Nora Bateson last week in The Hague and, um, I see her shudder every time warm data gets referred to as a tool. So, but just one question, just briefly I'd love to ask you is how you see this This is one of the things I find super exciting personally. For example, I've interviewed Ben Rawlins about Black Mountain College and the amazing work they're doing. I've interviewed Ed Fiddow about London Interdisciplinary School, and there are these emerging institutions that are trying to do things differently. And obviously, you know, this is part of Elisava and a bigger institution, but I just, I find it a really interesting thing to notice across the landscape educationally in higher education that there are these is people like you doing really ambitious and exciting things to offer different experiences to prospective students. So I don't know whether you've reflected on how this fits into that broader picture, but it certainly is an exciting thing that I think.

I mean, my first reflection is that I think we'd feel humbled to be part of that ecosystem of people. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm personally not an educator by background at all. Martin is, but if anything, it just feels confirmatory. It feels like, Yes, you know, other people are thinking about this too. That's pleasing, right? That doesn't feel like competition. That feels like, okay, good. We've all arrived at this place. And if we can look at it from like different angles and bring in different students and different interests, then maybe we've got a shot, right? Because that's what all of us are trying to do, isn't it? Connect these small sparks of something different. And, you know, whatever your beliefs about social tipping points or different ways of understanding that, it feels encouraging. I think that's my reflection mainly. Like, I look at all of them, they all look amazing. I just think, great, you know, the more people that can experience and learn in this way, then the better.

Yeah. I also don't really want to define our place. I would like to go back to this image of the oil in the water, and I hope that we are all can free ourselves of the names that we were given. The name of the institution or the name of the master. And we are looking at what we are trying to do, what is behind our work, our motivations, and we can self-organize like the oil on the water. So I don't see them as a competition or as a linear trajectory. It's more like, yeah, really happy that there's so much going on and so much interesting going on.

Absolutely. Now, I mean, that's an interesting reflection. Because I very much agree, but it's also interesting that in our current situation, we need— it messes with your oil and water metaphor, but we somehow need a container to invite people into, right? And like the aspiration to help people have the capabilities to self-organize around these kinds of questions, like absolutely. But I think also currently there's a real value in having some containers we can point to and say like, there's some really exciting, interesting things happening here where people are questioning and trying to stay agile around, like, not being complacent about that they figured stuff out, but staying curious and staying humble and questioning, but continuing to collaborate and, and try and do meaningful work. It's like, it's not easy, but I, I think it's important that we can point to some things, actually.

Yeah, no, definitely. But I would like to see— I feel more comfortable seeing time as a container. So the master, it means that you're dedicating yourself to something that tries to do things differently in a more purposeful way. And you're— it's the dedication behind it. Like, you're reserving this time for building your new future. Not the future, but your new future. And then this is again like the space that you, you give yourself, the time, no? And, and you will see what happens in this time. But yeah, I feel more comfortable using time as a container and not output or outcome as a container.

Yeah. Yeah. Good. No, I love, I love that. Keep it. Absolutely. I had a great conversation recently with Carey Facer about time and education and it's, yeah, super interesting. Really, really important. We can get trapped in the credentialing, right? Of like, now I've got a master's. Who cares? Has the world changed? Has your, you know, but, but yeah, no, I, I definitely hear you. It's fascinating.

Amazing.

And then maybe finally, just to wrap up, how can people find out more? Obviously I'll put lots of links in the show notes, but what is the invitation that you wanted to share with people now?

I would say twofold. I mean, obviously we'd love people to sign up to the master's. It starts in September, so you can have a look. You guys will put it in the show notes, but Societal Designer, Elisava. But obviously we also realize that not everybody can just, you know, stop work for a year or, you know, do a master's. This isn't like a one-time thing. It's not like we're just going to do this one program at LSAB. So if people also are interested and have ideas about how they might want to be involved in different ways, then we're really open to that. So we will create other offerings in different formats as well. So yeah, just please feedback.

Fantastic. Yeah.

And it's the anti-brief website as a book that is a living organism, a bound object. Yeah, it's, it's I'm making it too complicated, but it's our home and we are publishing their stuff that we think is relevant and our contributors too. And I think it's a good place to check every now and then.

I agree. That's where I really kind of connected with it actually, reading some of the stuff you were posting in the AntiBrief. So yeah, I would highly recommend it as well. But no, thank you so much, Martin, Emily, just such a pleasure to be able to have the conversation.

You're welcome. Thank you for having us. Gracias. Thank you.

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