50 questions for designers as Earth Day turns 50

It’s the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day and the world is (mostly) sheltering-in-place amid the COVID-19 pandemic. With a crisis before us, the future unknown, it’s time to call on designers to get beyond the graphical representations of the climate crisis and engage in systems thinking, intersectionality, and a plan for transitions, shifting paradigms, and regenerative futures.

Today, many designers are celebrating with posters, graphics, and gifs. While I recognize that Earth Day posters are important artifacts in the history of the day, the movement and activist calls in general, we need to move beyond this. Posters are often the easiest assignments to give in design classes and almost mandatory for teaching certain software. Recent trends (and needs to stay home) have shifted over to making Earth Day Instagram graphics, stories, and filters. These visuals have value, but they also keep designers in the realm of image-makers instead of actively engaging with the community to change behavior, interaction, structures, and systems. So as we “design from home” this Earth Day, I call on designers, design educators, design students to consider the following questions for how designers can actively be part of the change.

The coronavirus pandemic is laying bare many flaws in our systems — all of which intersect with environmental impact and furthering our climate crisis. How can we as designers look at these? How do we (re)design health care, education, food production and distribution, work/life balance, consumerism, systems of oppression including racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, and others?

1. What are the systems your design practice interacts with?
2. What are the leverage points for creating change in those systems?
3. How can designers create actions that change the behavior of users?
4. How do you measure the impact of design?
5. Who are the stakeholders who need to be consulted? Who is included? Who is excluded?
6. How does privilege apply to environmental impact?
7. What privileges does one have when tested for coronavirus and receiving health care?
8. How can we design a system for healthcare that doesn’t center on privilege?
9. How might we design a new network of healthcare facilities to be more adaptable in crisis to prepare for future climate crisis epidemics?
10. How do you design protective gear for healthcare workers that still presents them as people, creating compassion and connection for patients?
11. What role does human connection have in how we approach the environment?
12. How does messaging and comfort change when masked?
13. How can crucial health care and environmental information be delivered to those who don’t speak English, or don’t read, or can’t see or hear?
14. How can new forms of essential communication be more inclusive?
15. Why are certain racial and ethnic groups wrongly blamed for this virus, and how are these same stereotypes impacting the climate crisis?
16. What role does design have in furthering or changing narratives in racism?
17. Why does this virus (as well as pollution and environmental danger) affect certain racial and ethnic groups more?
18. How can designers reimagine living conditions, urban planning, and development that would not create disparities in environmental dangers?
19. What role does design play in the obesity epidemic (which is prevalent in 50% of coronavirus deaths) and how can designers address this?
20. What overlaps are there between obesity and environmental impact that designers can leverage?
21. If you had to re-design Amazon from the perspective of a warehouse worker — where would you start? What about a delivery driver?
22. What is the environmental impact of receiving daily Amazon deliveries? How can that be reduced?
23. What are new ways of obtaining consumables with less environmental impact?
24. How can systems be designed that don’t rely on buying but instead on sharing, trading, and swapping?
25. How many stops does your food make from farm to table, and how might that be reduced?
26. Given we are seeing school lessons shift to remote learning, what are the most important lessons in K-12 education as related to processing the crisis and preparing for the next?
27. How are social-emotional skills taught in the classroom that are harder to duplicate at home? How could designers create tools for this?
28. What social-emotional skills are going to be the most necessary for climate resilience and how is that taught to kids and parents?
29. How would you redesign K-12 education to embed environmental impact into every subject?
30. How does the education system help to equalize privilege in the classroom, and what happens when that classroom is at home?
31. How can designers rethink educational environments, curriculum, and experiences with equity in mind?
32. What additional skills and support do teachers need beyond lesson plans and how can designers support that?
33. How should we teach emotional resilience in the climate crisis and how do we train future teachers for this?
34. How might we create a new system for K-12 education that incentivizes new careers in K-12 education while in crisis?
35. Why is there a gender imbalance in healthcare workers and teachers (whom we are relying on more than ever right now)? How was this designed? Can it be redesigned?
36. What skills should higher education be teaching to prepare designers for global pandemics in the climate crisis?
37. If we are gendering the planet by calling it “Mother Earth”, and we continue to overwork and undervalue both mothers and women, it’s no wonder the climate is in crisis. How can designers address gender inequity on a global scale?
38. How are gender roles and stereotypes reinforced while sheltering in place? How can this be redesigned? What needs to be redesigned?
39. Women’s reproductive rights are being taken away using the coronavirus as an excuse. How are women’s rights directly related to the climate crisis? How can designers communicate this to those who will make decisions?
40. How are LGBTQ+ communities affected by the crisis, sheltering in place, and climate crisis? What can designers do to learn from this and make a change?
41. How are homeless communities affected by coronavirus and the climate crisis? What solutions can designers create to address both?
42. What happens to migration and immigration in pandemic and climate crises?
43. If the Green New Deal were in effect, how might the response to the coronavirus been handled differently? What role can designers play in advocating for the Green New Deal?
44. As work/life balance is exasperated while sheltering in place, how can designers create new ways to take care of ourselves and each other?
45. What is the value of community and how do designers build up or tear down community?
46. What is the impact that the coronavirus and environmental crisis have on mental health? How can designers create efficient and effective mental health systems?
47. What role do designers have promoting mental health care?
48. What can designers learn from Indigenous people who historically have lived through many pandemics, infectious diseases, and environmental catastrophes caused by white people, the US government, and capitalism?
49. Who do designers need to be connected to, in conversation with, and working collaboratively with to make these changes?
50. What will you do today, not to celebrate Earth Day, but to design for a better one?

I could go on, there are many more questions to ask and intersections to explore. Our lives, while currently separated, are also more intertwined than ever. The underlying issues behind the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis are no different and must be addressed with intersectional solutions. The systems that got us into this pandemic, while perhaps not done using the Adobe Creative Suite, were in fact, designed. Designers must take up the call to action to redesign where we go next.