The Next Decade of Design — for Earth, by Humans.

Thinking and Designing centered around sustainability.

— This article was written-first by me at Shaper Impact Capital. —

For the past decades, companies have been thinking and creating products & services that solve largely a part of social problems. Today, we have companies like Uber that help us get a ride in minutes, Facebook connects us closer to our friends and Stripe helps facilitate payments globally. These are just popular companies but we all know where this is going. As a civilization, we’ve done remarkably well and thrive at each industrial revolution.

It’s time we start looking at the bigger picture, one that we should’ve looked at a long-time ago. How do we start designing products & services that serve our planet and people at the same time? Solutions that revolve around environmental sustainability. Some call this, “Planet Centric Design.”

Planet Centric Design is the next iteration of human-centered design. Don’t get this wrong, we’re not neglecting the fact that the design shouldn’t be about humans at all; this iteration emphasizes heavily on putting our planet as a “stakeholder in our conversations.” Yes, our Planet now needs a seat in every board meeting.

Our social, business and economic surroundings are dependent on our environment. Rising sea levels threaten the habitat of millions of people living in coastal countries (which may cause mass migrations to other countries); Deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest (and other rainforests) impacts the global air circulation and the amount of oxygen being produced into the atmosphere and more. You see the pattern now.

All human activities, whether physical or digital — affecting our biosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere. Unless we can rethink the way we create and invent, this will continue to happen; but we cannot let it continue.

I’m deeply convinced that this starts by changing the way we design our products & services. Chief Evangelist at Tria, Jovan Tan — a sustainable food ware packaging firm told me,

“We have to start thinking, are we trying to do less bad or more good?”