Abstract

Today’s climate crisis can be attributed to contemporary consumer culture, in which consumers in the Global North are consuming far beyond the planet’s spatial and temporal capacity, threatening our collective future. While the discipline of industrial design was born from industrialization and consumer culture, it will need to adapt with the ecological challenges to address the growing concerns of overconsumption. This research examines the role of the future industrial designer through a speculative design exploration within the framework of post-growth. It addresses how designers might reframe the design process to empower consumers with agency, skill, and responsibility over their objects.
Through research-creation, the research investigates methods of making across artisanal, industrial, and digital processes to envision what design practices might look like in a post-growth future. It proposes a framework of shared responsibilities of care between consumers and designers to aid consumers in re-engaging with their objects to reshape their relationship with them, and ultimately their relationship with consumption. Designers then act as translators of manufacturing knowledge from the producer to consumer, rather than the modern role of a translator of desires of the consumer to the producers, to reduce overall consumption habits and prolong the life of existing objects. Through rethinking how objects are designed, made, and maintained, it positions design as a mediator in the transition toward a post-growth future.