I’m Michelle Miller and Transition.Kitchen is a resource and collaboration space that I am developing as part of my in-progress PhD. My PhD is focused on researching what creates a transition design practice – and how I might support others to do transition design.
To research transition design in practice I have been working on an action research project focused on transition to regenerative agriculture. That project includes, but is not limited to, a business experiment called ‘TransitionAg’. Read about my regenerative agriculture research on the TransitionAg website.
The resources on this Transition.Kitchen site are for anyone interested in using design skills in social ways to regenerate our communities, economies and places, create system change, and transition to more sustainable ways of living on earth.
What is Transition Design?
There’s a lot of jargon here, and I am working on that. But I’m not there yet! Bear with me…
Transition Design requires an explanation. Transition Design is an emerging design practice that sits alongside more traditional design practices like architecture, industrial design, graphic design, interior design and newer design practices like strategic design, systems design and transformation design. These disciplines are new enough and fluid enough that transition design might be described as systems design or transformation design.
What is different about Transition Design is that it is a design practice dedicated specifically to designing how we humans intentionally make our way to sustainability. And it is fundamentally a design-based practice. The “design” bit refers to how we adapt and apply the core skills and processes of designing to help create systemic change. Core design skills tend to include framing, design research, sense-making and synthesis, imagination and creative idea development, experimentation and iteration, for instance.
Design skills are not the only skills needed to effect change through transition design. Just like with other design disciplines, transition design requires that we adapt, adopt and invent practices specific to the context. Skills and practices needed for transition design are drawn from and overlap with a range of disciplines, like social innovation, systems thinking, complexity science, transformational design, community development, and more. And there will be practices that we still have yet to invent.
Designers cannot bring about change alone. Transition design by necessity is a collaborative effort, in which design skills (even when adapted) are only one of the many skills sets required.
This site will explore “transition design” in practice, the role that transition design can play in creating change, and provide practical guides for taking design-based approaches.
This site aspires to bring together and link resources, put forward a practice framework for anyone trying to do this work, whether you call it transition design or not, and eventually to support an ongoing conversation around our collective efforts.
Experience
I have over 20 years of experience in leading, coaching and facilitating design-based, collaborative approaches to innovation, change and transformation.
That experience began with graphic design and product development. In one of my first roles, over the course of six years, I built and managed a graphics and packaging department for a product development company.
In 2003 I learned that it was possible for designers to contribute to social change and particularly to sustainability. At that time you couldn’t go to school for that kind of design, and “design thinking” was only just emerging as a powerful approach to innovation in a world being disrupted by digital technology and economic challenges. I set out on a journey to develop the skills I would need to be a part of that work, and to find that work. After nearly 20 years, I feel that through my PhD I have arrived at a doorstep of sorts.
Along this journey, I have been privileged to work in service design, participatory strategy, business design, lean startup, organisational development and transformation, social innovation, and now transition design. Work has included commercial, government, institutional, philanthropic, non-profit and cross-sector settings. This has given me experience with a wide range of industries: agriculture, insurance, product development, media, telecommunications, infrastructure, public service, social services, community-led initiatives and more.
The consistent thread over these years is a dedication to building widespread capability to design for innovation and change, and a deep love of this amazing place, Earth, that we call home. Through transition design I hope to bring these two together.
