Planetary thinking prompts us to redefine success and our identities
Photo: Juho Länsiharju
What you once believed to be the golden standard for good design is about to be shattered forever. It’s no longer enough to meet the immediate needs of the consumer or to measure success by profit alone. The days of solely user-centered service and product development are approaching the end of their time. The next era will be planet-centric in how we think, lead and design our realities. This means reimagining a world that values the interconnectedness of all life and the ecosystems that sustain it.
Why we need to shift user-centeredness to planet centeredness?
“Let’s give her Netflix so she doesn’t have to get up and pick up a dvd from Blockbuster.”
“Let’s create a healthcare system where she will be called back instead of her waiting on the phoneline for hours.”
“Let’s help her access her account easier with a magic link so she doesn’t have to remember the password.”
“Let’s make a device that has a camera, calendar, phone, music player and social circles in one!”
For decades, “user-centeredness” has been the gold standard in service and product development. This focus on optimising convenience and fulfilling individual desires has driven incredible advancements and made our lives easier. We did well as humans, but that kind of caused some serious problems that we need to talk about. We simply cannot continue producing goods simply because consumers demand them, without considering the consequences of their usage on socially, economically or environmentally. This siloed, short-term thinking has often, not always, lead to exclusion and oversimplifying our natural complex, interconnected systems. The consequences? Climate change, loss of biodiversity, and even war—problems created by human creed.
We need to move from user-centerness to planet-centeredness.
The state of our planetary boundaries by the Stockholm Resilience Centre reveals, that the user-centered, consumer-centered approach has overlooked the broader ecological and social systems impacted by our work. The truth is that every single thing no matter physical or digital we create into this world has an impact, either positive or negative in social, environmental or economical way. We must begin to ask ourselves: are we creating services, systems and tools that align with planetary boundaries? Are our digital systems contributing to a healthier planet—or are they simply reinforcing unsustainable cycles of consumption and waste?
We need to redefine what success and good life means in a planet-centered world
Let’s talk about our identities. Our identities are linked with narratives that tell about the dream, the ideal life and what it means to be a successful person in the 21st century. Our current definitions of success are deeply tied to consumption-based identities. They are tied with narratives that glorify busyness, overconsumption, and superficial achievements. These ideals drive the design of products and services that cater to disconnected lives, reinforcing behaviours that harm both people and the planet. Everyone is getting more or less tired of this. We are more connected to each other than ever before, yet we are seeing ever growing amounts of mental health issues and loneliness. Could we be creating products and services that feed that enable us to be in stronger connection to our inner worlds, to our souls, our authenticity, create connections and enable meaningful and healthy lives?
What is success then? How do we measure that? Traditional metrics like revenue growth, market share, or user engagement are no longer adequate measures of true progress and success. These outdated benchmarks, while important in their time, fail to address the broader, systemic challenges we now face as a global society. The KPI’s need to be linked with how planetary health and human health are rising together. At the moment these both are in an awful state.
Success must be reframed to consider our impact not just on economies but on the planet and all its inhabitants. This means asking new, purposeful questions and reframing what we even ask! Let’s start with a couple of good questions for the new planet-centric reality creators like yourself:
Does this solution reduce emissions or optimise energy use?
How does it actively support biodiversity and promote social equity?
Is it designed to endure, adapt, and contribute to a regenerative future?
Does it create sustainable well-being for both humans and non-human systems?
Is this creating peace?
The metrics we currently value are deeply tied to inherited old solely money-driven narratives and identities that no longer serve us. Many of these narratives are fear-based, rooted in scarcity and exclusion. They tell us to compete rather than collaborate, to prioritise individual gains over collective flourishing. These logics have defined success for generations, but they have also brought us to the brink of ecological collapse and social fragmentation.
To move forward, we need new narratives. Narratives that embrace inclusion, abundance, and interconnectedness. These stories will reshape the logic of what we call the "new world," slowly but surely replacing fear with hope, exclusion with solidarity. Our narratives build realities. The stories we tell ourselves about success will dictate the systems we build and the futures we create. Like Donna Harraway says it “it matters what stories we tell the other stories with”.
Planet-centric design as the frontline of change
The most impactful decisions are made during the design phase. Research shows that 80% of a product, service or infrastructure’s environmental impact is determined on the design phase. This makes design the frontline of planetary thinking. It also asks us to boldly re-imagine possible future scenarios, visions and images of the new world.
But here’s the exciting part: designers already have the mindset, the tools, and the capacity for innovative thinking. What needs to evolve are the lenses through which we approach development. It’s no longer enough to focus on isolated problems or short-term outcomes. Now, every project must be embedded with a systemic perspective, where the interconnectedness of all elements becomes part of the organisational DNA.
Organisations like the UK Design Council are already at the forefront of transformative change, with an ambitious goal to upskill one million designers by 2030 to design for the planet. This is the bold, systemic shift we need to address the complex challenges of our time.
This isn’t rocket science. What you can do is to cultivate your ability to see both the big picture and the intricate details within it. It requires you and I to stretch our thinking, combining critical analysis with opportunity-driven creativity to uncover the best possible solutions. By adopting this dual approach, we can design systems, services, and products that not only address immediate needs but also give birth to a thriving and regenerative new logics of how our lives look like and how we live.
Planet-centric design thinking: how to start in practise?
I was asked to teach design thinking last year for digital design students. After digging deeper into the “alternative way“ I found it extremely hard to teach design thinking in the usual way. I started to create a new course called: Planet-centric design thinking. I created the course structure that I would test with the students and found partnering companies to give real life cases for the students to explore and have as references at the end of the course. The main principles for how to start shifting from user-centeredness to planetary way:
Shift from merely user- or consumer-centricity to deep human-centricity (quality over quantity)
Conduct an in-depth PESTEL analysis to gain understanding of the big picture
Create future scenarios to understand the opportunities and widen your thinking
Adopt a systemic approach, map it to see the wholeness and the interconnectedness (ecosystem and impact-driven)
Transition from short-term thinking to long-term perspectives (future and vision-driven)
Engage in multidisciplinary collaboration to gain widers perspective through diversity
Make non-human stakeholders visible
Explore what a regenerative business model could look like (e.g., circular economy)
Create new narratives
Prototype, prototype, prototype
I will be teaching the course again this year, in 2025, and the above will be again developed further.
The leaders of tomorrow act today
The leaders of tomorrow will be those who act boldly today. Are you one of them? Planetary thinking is not just a framework or a mindset, it’s a way of visioning and shaping the world. It challenges us as humans to rise above the status quo and to use our creativity and conscious decision making for the collective good. We are all part of a larger system, and the choices we make now will determine the kind of world future generations inherit.