Design ethics for climate instability

I just watched a talk on Design for Climate Disaster and completely questioned my assumption about designing in climate. Most designers design for perfect conditions. We assume fast WiFi. Sunny days. Users who aren't panicking. But designing for climate resilience is the opposite of that. In her talk at Figma Config, Megan Metzger talks about her design work for Forerunner's disaster response platform. The features aren't flashy. They're functional: • Mobile-first design with high-contrast screens • Offline functionality that syncs when connectivity returns • Real-time FEMA calculations for immediate decisions The results: Damage assessment time dropped from 3-4 hours to 45 minutes. Over 15,000 assessments completed faster. This unlocked $2.4 billion in recovery funds sooner. Megan's approach: design for effectiveness over elegance. Her three crisis design principles: 1. Trust comes from reliability under pressure Your system must work with low battery. Weak internet. When everything else fails. 2. The right tools make impossible tasks possible Enable people to do hard things under difficult conditions. 3. Clarity enables action Clear design removes hesitation. Give users confidence to act decisively. Climate disasters aren't rare anymore. They're Tuesday. Every month brings new records. Heat domes. Atmospheric rivers. Category 6 hurricanes. The biggest climate companies are finally getting this: • Rivian designs trucks that maintain navigation during wildfire smoke. Not just daily commutes. • Sunrun designs solar systems that work during blackouts. Not just sunny days. • Climavision builds weather radar for extreme events. Not just forecasting. As more companies enter climate adaptation and disaster response, Megan's principles become survival requirements. The same principle applies to climate technology: • Solar panels that work during storms • EV charging that functions in extreme weather • Carbon tracking that doesn't glitch during peak usage As climate designers, we obsess over features. We should obsess over reliability. Your climate solution isn't just competing with other green tech. It's competing with the status quo when everything goes wrong. The fossil fuel system works reliably. That's why people stick with it. If your sustainable alternative fails during stress, you've lost more than a customer. You've lost trust in the entire climate movement. My takeaway: design for the worst day, not just the best day. Test your climate tech during power outages. During heatwaves. During floods. Because that's exactly when we need it to work. But this also begs the question - How do we balance reliability with efficiency?

The Real Problem Isn’t What We Make. It’s Why We Make It. Last week, a student asked if bamboo bedsheets are enough to save the planet. I didn’t know what to say. Every Earth Day, we see new pledges, new packaging, new promises. But behind the green campaigns, the core logic of design remains the same. We’ve had bioplastics made from corn and sugarcane, praised in press releases and wrapped in compostable labels. But most of them only biodegrade in industrial facilities—and still leave microplastics behind. The landfill doesn’t care if it came from plants. If it sticks around for 300 years, it sticks around. Let’s stop pretending this is a material problem. This is a mindset problem—how we define use, responsibility, and endings. Global textile production has doubled in the last 20 years. Garment use has dropped by more than a third. Only 1% of garments are recycled into new clothing. (Source: Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2024) And in the home space? Most “eco-friendly” furniture is made from mixed composites that are impossible to recycle and too toxic to bury. We are still designing for permanence in a climate that now demands endings. Shift from Ownership to Use Products made for a single owner die fast. That’s not opinion. It’s data. Studies by Irene Maldini at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University show that rental-based fashion increases item lifespan up to 400%. Platforms like HURR, By Rotation, and The Lauren Look by Ralph Lauren are pushing this in fashion. In interiors, Feather and Fernish offer modular furniture meant to move between homes—not live and die in one. This changes everything. We can’t treat shared-use design like a niche anymore. It’s the baseline. From Static Design to Environmental Responsiveness Climate is not stable. Why are our products still designed like it is? At Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, researchers are using mycelium, clay, and phase-change materials to make home products that cool themselves, adapt to bodies, and regulate airflow. It works. A single prototype wall cooled indoor air by 6 degrees—with zero energy. This is design as infrastructure. Not decoration. Decomposition as a Design Brief MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab is working on materials with built-in expiry—where time, water, or light can start the decay process. The moment a product finishes its job, it starts its own end. Why are we still training young designers to “make things last forever”? That’s the old brief. Today’s reality needs smart endings. We’ve spent a decade swapping one fiber for another. Maybe this year, we shift something harder: Not what we’re making from But what we’re making for. And what happens after. #EarthDay2025 #DesignShift #ClimateDesign #sustainability #MaterialRethink #ResponsibleMaking #theDesignFuture #Biodesign The first few images are from my village in Uttarakhand. They carry the silence, the smell, and the slow rhythm of home.

‘We haven’t got time to get things wrong again.’ I’m grateful to be in dialogue with FRAME Magazine contributing editor Riya Patel, and Cave_bureau co-founders Kabage Karanja (riba) and Stella Mutegi, on how Indigenous design principles are reshaping the way we think about cities, climate resilience, and long-term stewardship. Our conversation centers a simple but urgent proposition: the most durable, low-carbon, and socially cohesive solutions often already exist—held within ancestral knowledge systems that modern planning has historically marginalized. The task isn’t just technical adaptation; it’s intercultural governance, reciprocity, and accountability. A few threads we touched on: - From innovation to continuation: why “new” isn’t always better—and how reviving TEK can guide next-generation urbanism. - Relational accountability: the ethics and protocols needed to ensure design is done with, not for, communities. - Structural change over optics: moving beyond representation to reconfigure who leads, who decides, and who benefits. - Temporal scale: Indigenous infrastructures are long-view, multi-generational systems—something our climate timelines desperately need. Thank you FRAME for making space for this conversation, and to Riya, Kabage, and Stella for your insight and rigor. Read the full piece here: https://lnkd.in/eBYWaMEN #IndigenousDesign #TraditionalEcologicalKnowledge #ClimateResilience #DesignJustice #InterculturalUrbanism