Tools for environment-centered designers: Actant Mapping Canvas
One tool to consider when making your first steps into the strange land of environment-centered design is the actant mapping canvas. The canvas helps in mapping all the human and non-human stakeholders (“actants”) of a product or service that you are (re)designing, and — ideally — makes you start empathizing with them through actionable items in your decision-making process.
This is the second article in a series about environment-centered design (ECD). To get familiar with my vision for ECD, start with the introductory article, entitled “The time for Environment-Centered Design has come”.
When writing this article I’m speaking to you from a standpoint of a design anthropologist. What is design anthropology and what its practitioners are occupied with? Let me share my explanation with you. I am trained in anthropology. It means that as an anthropologist I am mostly interested in “what people say, what people do and what they say they do”, to quote one of the most famous anthropologists, Margaret Mead. That also means I encompass at least two skills that are essential for survival in the XXI century: the ability to exercise empathy towards “others”, as well as the holistic thinking about how people, events, technologies, ecosystems, and cultures interact with each other and what are the new social and cultural phenomenons arising from these interactions.
For a couple of years now I’ve been working as a UX researcher. To remind you what UX researchers are usually hired for: we are a distributed “tribe” of people, usually with an academic degree in social sciences (eg: anthropology, sociology or psychology), who work hard on making their business “stakeholders” empathize with the needs, limitations, and preferences of people whom they design and deliver products or services for. UX research is one of the competencies of the UX design process, which uses a user-focused mindset (“others”), user research methods, and mostly qualitative data analysis (“holistic thinking”) to make sure “stakeholders” make data-driven and user-centered product decisions.
Being a design anthropologist I cannot stop myself from taking one step further and examine the impact that our designs have on the “users”, people, societies, and natural environment. Design anthropology encompasses it all: people, events, technologies, ecosystems, and cultures as they cannot survive without each other. At least not in the XXI century. This is why I bring the discussion around the environment-centered design and call for making the environment our most important business stakeholder. This is my vocation: to awake all the empathy resources that are out there, for the good of all of us: humans and non-humans alike.
If you’re still reading this, chances are you have already spotted an environmental problem or a sustainability-related challenge inside your existing product or service and want to address it by including non-human stakeholders (“actants”), along with their limitations, needs, and preferences, into the redesign process. If the goal of human-centered design is to maximize empathy felt towards the people we design with or for, then the goal of environment-centered design is to extend this empathy towards both the human and non-human stakeholders of our designs. Read on!
Why stakeholder maps are not enough to design for the environment
You are probably sensing a similarity between the actant mapping canvas and the well-known design tool: stakeholder mapping. Stakeholder mapping is used during the exploratory or discovery phase of the design process. Its great benefit is that it creates a visual representation of all the internal, external, direct, indirect, paying, non-paying, strategic or critical stakeholders who affect how your company, project or product/service might perform.
Nonetheless, it’s a tool developed within a user-centered design framework, which is anthropocentric by default. Type “stakeholder map” into any search engine (when searching the web, consider switching to Ecosia — an environmentally friendly internet browser) and see for yourself: Can you find any example of a stakeholder map that mentions at least one non-human stakeholder? If you can, let me know. The pattern is, however, that non-human stakeholders are left outside of the circles.
Although we leave non-human stakeholders outside of our design exercises, it does not mean that they are not inextricably linked to the stability of our companies, projects, products, services as well as the health and wellbeing of people that we call “customers” or “users”. At the end of the day, no matter how technologically advanced the lives we live, we are still biological creatures who need oxygen to breathe, soil to grow plants and drinking water to survive.
We are used to calling oxygen, soil, water, and other parts of our environment “resources”. We are used to taking them for granted. We fail to recognize the real situation of the world we live in: these “resources” are threatened, and — consequently — so are we. Environment-centered design asks for better, more holistic exercises with empathy towards the “other” (species, landscapes, ecosystems, water, air, soil), and ultimately — ourselves. From now on I ask you to ditch the word “resource” (by the way, do you like to be called a “human resource”?), and start calling them what they really are: “non-human actants”. We can learn how to do that from many indigenous or rural communities:
Now that we know about DNA, you understand that we are only just a few genes apart from the flower. You know that. The DNA of grass and the trees are almost the same as humans. Well we knew that! We knew that long ago. That’s why we said they are our relations, all our relations. What you call resources, we call our relatives. If you can think in terms of relationships, your relatives, you are going to treat them better, aren’t you? So you have got to get back to the relationship because that is your foundation for survival.
(Part of the commencement speech by Chief Oren Lyons of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, delivered in 2005 at the College of Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley)
Ask yourself a question: Will your business or the company that you work for survive if there is no drinking water running in our taps? Will “customers” and “users” that you serve still be interested in the mobile app that you create if they are unable to fulfill their basic human needs?
Imagine the change possible in the business strategy of a petrol retail company if its core human stakeholders would consider air quality as one of their business stakeholders? Whoa, there’s a blue ocean of possibilities! Partnerships with universities working on the cheaper delivery of clean energy? Investments into a chain of charging stations for electric cars? Collaboration with city mayors switching to green urban mobility models? The possibilities for environmentally sustainable business models are endless.
How to start mapping non-human stakeholders: Introducing the actant mapping canvas
While the words “map” and “canvas” are easy to comprehend, you may still be wondering where the word “actant” comes from in the name of the tool I’m about to present. Let me quickly cover why I’ve decided to exchange “stakeholder” with “actant”.
In my opinion, “actant” is a semantically more capacious alternative to the term “stakeholder”. Whereas “stakeholder” basically means a human party that has an interest in the project or company (and can therefore affect or be affected by how the project or company performs), an “actant” can be both human or non-human that affects or is affected by actions performed by same the company. Moreover, actants who were thus far called “resources” are — from the ECD perspective — granted real-world agency. That means that the presence, as well as the shortage, of a given actant can dramatically reshape the company’s business performance.
The term “actant” was originally introduced by Bruno Latour in his Actor-Network Theory (ANT). His theory provides a non-anthropocentric explanation of social, technological, and global events, where each “actant” (meaning: both human and non-human actors) are granted equal agency and the power to change the shape and direction of events. Explaining how “things are happening”, ANT considers all surrounding factors which create a network of interdependent actants. It seems legit to me! Now, straight to the actant mapping canvas!
This actant mapping canvas is free to use. It’s open for collaboration and next iterations. If you’ve tried using it and have ideas on how to improve it, let me know! You can download it from HERE.
Step-by-step instruction: Where to start
- Start with a challenge or a problem: Which part of your product or service is struggling to survive now? Is it the supply chain, or the brand image? Is it the delivery process or the production plant? Your challenge or problem may sound like one of these:
- Our target audience values truly green and sustainable products more than ever before. They know what an ecological footprint is!
- Our production plant scored very low during the latest sustainability audit.
- Our designers and engineers are protesting the company’s air pollution practices.
- There is more and more plastic in our oceans, that is threatening the livelihood and survival of our coastal communities.
2. Move on to mapping your direct actants of the stated challenge or problem. Direct actants are those human and non-human actants that will be or could be directly impacted by the challenge or problem that you’re aiming to solve.
For example, if we were to map the first challenge listed above (depending on the industry):
- Your direct human actants could be: particular segments of your target audience, product designers, supply chain specialists, product owners, but also scientific organizations or NGOs that are working on tools for measuring the stated environmental footprint as well as strategies on lowering businesses’ environmental footprint.
- Your direct non-human actants could be different environmental or ecosystem elements that have a direct impact or are being impacted by your product development process, such as: lakes and rivers near your production plant, local fauna forced to breathe, drink or eat pollutants you’re emitting, or the enormous amount of water that you use to produce whatever you produce (the same water that is crucial to the survival for human and non-human beings).
3. Once you’ve mapped your direct actants, it’s time to move on to mapping less obvious, indirect actants. This requires adopting a science-driven “everything is connected” mindset. This can be developed step-by-step by exposing yourself to scientific resources covering the state of different elements of our global and local ecosystems that I’ve mentioned in the opening article.
Other resources that can help you understand the “interconnectedness” of environmental, social, economic and cultural factors shaping our Earth-based reality, and therefore extend your designer empathy onto non-human actants, are for instance:
- Doughnut Economics, a book by British economist Kate Raworth working as a Senior Research Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.
- Books, learning materials, online courses and conferences on the circular economy and circular design, published by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and its academic and business partners.
- Scientific papers on Planetary Health available at one of the most prestigious and impactful medical journals, The Lancet.
4. Once you have finished your mapping activity it’s time to search for cause-effect relationships between various human and non-human actants. This will help you realise said “interconnectedness” of human and non-human actants and their impact on your project/product/service. Ask yourself: How will your target audience be socially and economically impacted by the blackouts and the lack of electricity caused by hurricanes or severe droughts? How will these so-called non-business-factors impact the stability and performance of your business? How can you adapt to these volatile and unpredictable circumstances?
This actant mapping canvas is free to use. It’s open for collaboration and next iterations. If you’ve tried using it and have ideas on how to improve it, let me know! You can download it from HERE.
Remember that this environment-centered design tool is recommended for the exploratory or discovery phase of a design process. If you want to refresh your knowledge on the design process itself (with the Framework for Innovation, a.k.a. evolved Double Diamond, in mind), I strongly recommend you read the article written by UX professional Dan Nessler titled “How to apply a design thinking, HCD, UX or any creative process from scratch”.
Remember that actant mapping canvas is a design tool-in-the-making. It aims at sparking your empathy towards those non-human stakeholders that you have never considered as entities with real-world impact on the product or a service that you contribute to with your design, research, or business superpowers. At the end of the day, great design comes from great empathy. The more empathy we exercise towards humans and non-humans, the better we design for the environments we all live in.
Special thanks go to Cory Streiff for proofreading this article and to Marta Lewan for helping me with the canvas’ graphic design.
