Summary
Civic design has achieved much success in recent decades by focusing on delivering better public services and designing interactions between government and residents. However, to meet the complex challenges humanity and earth face, civic design must evolve so its full potential as a practice and community can be harnessed to address today’s wicked problems, such as mental health, inequality, and climate change. Join us as we explore the paradigm shifts and practices we believe are urgently needed to maximize the impact and relevance of civic design: from human-centered to life-centered; from design thinking to complexity thinking; from ego-systems to eco-systems… and beyond.
Key Insights
-
•
Civic design has evolved from business-centered to more human-centered and is now positioned to shift towards life-centered design that includes plants, animals, and ecosystems.
-
•
Current design methods like design thinking often focus too narrowly on immediate and predictable futures, missing long-term systemic impacts.
-
•
Expertise-led design can inadvertently replicate harmful power dynamics instead of empowering communities.
-
•
Zane’s 22nd century Civic design team exemplifies a decentralized, community-led, interdisciplinary approach using complexity thinking and AI to manage ecosystems and address hyperlocal crises.
-
•
Transitioning to a new design paradigm requires stabilizers to maintain current systems, housekeepers to manage endings, and trailblazers to create emergent new patterns.
-
•
Radical participatory, regenerative, trauma-responsive, relational, emergent, pluralistic, and commons-focused designs are key patterns in evolving Civic design practice.
-
•
Restoring human senses and reconnecting to nature is foundational to effective sense-making for addressing complex civic challenges.
-
•
Visual tools like Wicked problem mapping and Giga Maps help communicate systemic relationships and incentivize holistic, long-term thinking across silos.
-
•
Addressing intertwined crises like climate change, mental health, and inequality requires moving beyond symptom-focused solutions to systemic interventions.
-
•
Designers hold a unique responsibility to shape culture and values that will determine the future of humanity and all life on Earth.
Notable Quotes
"Design creates culture, culture shapes values, and those values in turn determine the future."
"Is this enough? Can Civic design do more? There’s a crisis and pressing need for us to evolve our practice."
"The pale blue dot, that tiny speck in the vast universe, reminds us of our precious, unique responsibility to take care of this planet."
"Zane’s team works life-centered, collaborating with plants, animals, and ecosystems, expanding Civic design beyond human systems."
"Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions."
"How might we empower communities to initiate, lead, and design solutions that impact them directly?"
"Regenerative design is about healing and nourishing instead of exploiting and destroying."
"Relational design privileges relationships and reciprocity not only between people but also with rivers, mountains, and animals."
"Emergence means that something new arises through simple interactions; we design interactions so systems find their own desirable solutions."
"What role do you want to play in helping save us and our beautiful planet from ourselves?"
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"In large complex systems, the dots are scattered across silos and time zones, making progress feel elusive."
Gina MendoliaTherapists, Coaches, and Grandmas: Techniques for Service Design in Complex Systems
December 3, 2024
"My hope for you is to come away re-energized and ready to lead change."
Kit UngerTheme 1 Intro
June 8, 2022
"Having your CEO and CPO spend two days a month in the field with customers without any agenda is critical."
Tatyana MamutOpening Keynote: Breaking Conway's Law--or How to Work Differently and Not Ship Your Org Chart
June 3, 2019
"Tracking blockers and pain points is often more useful than just tracking time for tasks in inclusive research."
Kavana RameshMeaningful inclusion: Practicing accessibility research with confidence
September 24, 2024
"Through the expertise of our speakers and your engagement, we forge the future of our industry."
Bria AlexanderTheme Two Intro
September 8, 2022
"There is no unbiased creation of machine learning or artificial intelligence; the idea of agnostic algorithms is a myth."
Ovetta SampsonManaging the Human Engagement Risks of AI
June 10, 2025
"Scaling change starts at the margins and ripples from the periphery into the center of a system."
Hana NagelTurning Research Ripples into Waves
November 8, 2018
"We made a system that wouldn’t work if any part of the code or any team disappeared or refused to cooperate."
Husani OakleyBias Towards Action: Building Teams that Build Work
June 14, 2018
"Who are we excluding? That is the better question to ask when talking about inclusive design."
Saara Kamppari-MillerInclusive Design is DesignOps
September 29, 2021
