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https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/DISCERN-J 
 
ISSN 2184-6995 
 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 
International License. 

 

  

 

 
 
Consuming new narratives: Second order design fictions as transition 
objects for planet-centric consumption habits 
 
Anna Bertmark 
 
Published online: May 2022 
 
To cite this article:  
Bertmark, A. (2022). Consuming new narratives: Second-order design fictions as transition objects for 
planet-centric consumption habits. Discern: International Journal of Design0 for Social Change, Sustainable 
Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 3(1), 1-16. 
 
 
  



 

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Consuming new narratives: Second order design fictions as transition 
objects for planet-centric consumption habits  
 
Anna Bertmarka 

 

aUniversity of Brighton, UK. annamy.bertmark@gmail.com 

 

 

Abstract 

The current dominant narratives of endless economic growth are contributing to unsustainable conditions 

that prevent humans from living within planetary boundaries. Many present sustainable alternatives fall 

short of embodying regenerative and equitable principles, casting doubt on the human capacity for 

mitigating climate change. This highlights the need for options that redirect the future of consumption. 

Second-order design fictions (SoDFs) is a method for reframing our relationship with the entrenched 

fictions that are part of dominant narratives. These half-familiar, tangible artefacts allow for critical sense-

making that playfully provokes questions around the power structures, values and assumptions that uphold 

the consumption patterns that we engage in daily. SoDFs seek to interfere with consensus and allow 

observation of observations on how to address tensions between structures of thinking and formulate 

complexity of reality and possibility. The project builds upon work by Dulmini Perera, ‘Superflux, The 

Liminal Space’ and ‘Do The Green Thing’. 

Keywords: Sustainable design, Second-order Design Fictions, Narratives, Artefacts 

 

Introduction 

My second-order design fictions (SoDFs) relate to speculative planet-centric habits of consumption that 

both incorporate necessary basic needs (healthcare, energy, water, sanitation, clean air) and what can  

be deemed as luxuries (hot drinks, fashion, cosmetics). The Dandelion Latte suite (Image 1) provides  

a potentially locally abundant alternative to the unsustainable and fast-declining supply of tea and coffee 

(Kollipara, 2021). As a discursive artefact, Dandelion Latte integrates the familiar with the unusual, allowing 

the continuation of a comforting ritual and synthetic caffeine to provide stimulus, while rejecting threads  

to historical and modern-time extraction and exploitation of the Global South. Instead, it points to  

a local commons, culture and place. The spring-harvested taproots have a sweeter taste than fall-harvested 

ones, which taste more bitter. An accompanying café menu integrates the actual cost of items into the 

price, tapping into choice editing and nudging literature for voluntarily changing harmful consumption 

behaviours (Vowles, 2019).  

The Advanced Interconnectedness Meter (Image 2) shows real-time data from your household (Catapult 

Energy Systems, 2021) and compares it to the city resident average, highlighting the energy and CO2e 

consumption, sequestration and production. An integrated Cantril scale happiness meter used to measure 

citizens’ wellbeing (Gallup, 2013), allows users to self-anchor themselves according to their mental state.  

It is inspired by Mathilda Tham’s work Me to We to World to Back Again (2022) and her quote “Here Me  

is the person, We a unit of collaboration, and World our home, consisting of the ecological system and 

human-made systems”. The meter provides a wider perspective and sense of co-evolution through which  

a participant may contribute to and follow the collaborative progress to reduce energy and water use. 

National Veterinary Service Card & Council Tax Bill for Co-evolving Mutualism (Image 3) imagines a future 

where the effects generated from inter-species symbiosis and co-evolution are granted greater value and 



 

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therefore converted into abstract financial metrics to possibly justify their decommodification and the 

existence of these artefacts.  

Browser Warning Pop-up for Added-Friction Consumption (Image 4) is inspired by warning labels on 

cigarette packets, seatbelt alarms in cars, Do The Right Thing’s Amazero campaign, highlighted by Popova 

(2009), and Postcards from the Future (Postcard Futurists, n.d.). This voluntarily installed browser pop-up 

activates when you enter websites that sell high-carbon services and products (such as Easyjet, Asos, 

Amazon) and that may also harbour obscure traceability of supply chains, enabling agnotologic or 

unintentionally harmful consumption. Adding friction to a sometimes otherwise frictionless transaction,  

it informs the customer of the potentially harmful repercussions of their purchase and queries whether 

they can meet their need for the product or service in an alternative way. To add emotion to an otherwise 

flat and detached experience, an image depicting the local effects of climate change (to the purchaser)  

is presented and a high-pitch alarm noise plays until you select your answer. The perceived added anxiety 

from this experience by the viewer (similarly induced by seatbelt alarms and cigarette packet warnings)  

can be put in context with the possible precarity and stress felt by the most vulnerable stakeholders in the 

advertised product’s lifecycle. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image 1: Dandelion Latte suite.  



 

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Image 2: Advanced Interconnectedness Meter.  

 

Image 3: National Vet Service Card & Council Tax Bill for Co-evolving Mutualism (derived from  
a Brighton & Hove City Council tax bill).  
 



 

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Context 

The project lies within the context of the urgent need to confront ecological overshoot caused by 

unsustainable consumption habits in the Global North (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2021). Although the 

cause for this issue has been attributed to a growing world population attaining a higher quality of life, 

scientists believe that it is more pressingly caused by the ecological footprint intensity of inhabitants in 

high-consuming countries and the unequal distribution of resources, according to the Global Carbon Project 

(Our World in Data, 2021). Ian Gough (2017) proposes three carbon-eliminating strategies to reach climate 

goals: 1) increasing the eco-efficiency of production and reducing energy demand and emissions, 2) by 

recomposing consumption using low-carbon services and products and 3) by going towards a steady-state 

economy through reducing and stabilising levels of consumer demand. Recomposing consumption refers  

to a shift from high- to low-carbon goods and services without decreasing general consumption 

expenditure. He states that the first strategy is currently dominating the climate discourse, as this aligns 

well with the neoliberal capitalist meme that the most desirable way to gain a better life and to save the 

planet is through “green” consumerism and sustainable business. This will however not be adequate on its 

own, due to the embedded emissions of carbon-intensive consumption. 

The other two strategies are yet to capture the imagination of society, although all three are required to 

meet the agreed-upon climate goals by 2050. According to Lorek et al. (2021), each EU citizen emits 8.2 

tCO2eq on average per year, compared with the global average of 4.8 tCO2eq. To keep within the Paris 

Agreement target of a 1.5°C average global temperature limit, individual emissions need to be reduced  

to 2.5 tCO2eq by 2030 and 0.7 tCO 2eq by 2050. Effectively, each person’s greenhouse gas emissions will 

need to be halved each decade to keep global warming from having challenging effects on ecosystems and 

human wellbeing. Although a carbon footprint is only one responsibility metric with which to quantify the 

Image 4: Browser Warning Pop-up for Added-Friction Consumption. 



 

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effects of human impacts on ecosystems, it can mitigate the other pressures on the planet, according  

to Engström et al. (2020).  

Hubacek et al. (2017) argue that climate equity is vital for reaching climate neutrality because it will have 

the largest impact on the most vulnerable, while high-income groups contribute significantly more to 

climate change through carbon-intensive activities. The Well-being of Future Generations Act (Future 

Generations Wales, 2022), implemented in Wales in 2015, shows the possibility of design justice in public 

procurement and the notion of the “human right not to harm” through consumption. However, according 

to Prys-Hansen and Klenke (2021), as the recent COP26 conference showed, the collaborative efforts to 

reach the goals set out at the recent climate summits are driven by the tensions between different 

countries’ priorities, capabilities and value systems, which in turn form expectations and responsibility 

acknowledgements. Since the current patterns of production and consumption are unsustainable, as they 

are tied to short-term economic goals and the goal of perpetual GDP growth, alternative planet-centric 

paradigms are needed to initiate “1.5-degree lifestyles”. Highlighting the role and responsibility that 

designers hold as creators and “experts” in this regard, Peters (2019) states, “Design creates culture. 

Culture shapes values. Values determine the future. Design is therefore responsible for the world our 

children will live in”. 

Artefacts for enhancing our powers and comforts have become increasingly accessible since the Great 

Acceleration, primarily for the nations that have benefitted from global extraction and exploitation, 

according to Steffen et al. (2015). Johar and Raworth (Design Council, 2021) observe that living within the 

ecological carrying capacity will require a distinct set of values for governing transactional activities. The 

challenge then is to design a future that ensures well-being for all and fair allocation of resources. My 

drawing (Image 5) shows a combination of Voros’ Futures Cone and Di Giulio and Fuchs’ Consumption 

Corridor model to illustrate the context and the speculative future “corridor space” where my designed 

artefacts belong. The Futures Cone provides a simplified model with which to facilitate exploring ideas 

about the future. The Consumption Corridor concept describes the space within which people may get their 

basic needs met and dwell as they wish within planetary boundaries; it is illustrated by Lorek et al. (2021)  

as having the minimum consumption standards as the floor and the maximum ceiling to equally protect 

others’ ability to live well. While minimum basic consumption standards are present in many countries to 

mitigate poverty, Tham and Fletcher observe that the concept of “less” is the largest provocation 

associated with the transition to sustainability (CFS+, 2020). I believe this may be also true for implementing 

rather paternalistic consumption ceilings.  

While the consumption corridor concept provides opportunities for designing much-needed references for 

planet-centred consumption narratives, this provocation fosters temptations to veer into “techno-fixes”. 

The belief that we can consume ourselves out of unsustainable consumption is perhaps the greatest 

tension and cause of cognitive dissonance. In the present absence of consumption corridors and prevailing 

climate anxiety amongst young people, according to research by Crandon et al. (2022), I believe that design 

plays a critical role in providing positive references for recomposed consumption. 

 



 

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The actual cost and agnotology of consumption 

Despite an increasing awareness among citizens about unsustainable consumerism, scholars have identified 

several barriers to curbing over-consumption. These can be attributed to the increasingly frictionless nature 

of hyper-consumption by the perceived normalisation of affluent lifestyles and to the value-action gap, 

which is the contradiction between values and behaviour. Anthropologist Graeber (2001) defines values  

as “the way people represent the importance of their actions to themselves”, which highlights the 

complexity of human behaviour. Also, the ideologically condoned social condition of affluenza, according  

to Denniss (2017, p.10) can be increasingly recognised. It refers to socially and economically privileged 

citizens’ insatiable pursuit for more and their inability to perceive the consequences of their actions.  

The harmful impacts of our day-to-day activities can easily be ignored, either knowingly or unknowingly, 

according to Anti-Slavery International (n.d.) and True Price (n.d.), as the concealment of the actual impact 

of our demands, considering factors such as social and environmental impacts, benefits the economic 

growth logic, illustrated by Tham and Fletcher (CFS+, 2020).  

 

Agnotology describes the study of culturally generated deliberate ignorance. This framing can be applied  

to the obscurity with which the products and services that we consume daily are produced and disposed  

of (see Image 6). Modern consumption is upheld by obscure supply chains and complex geopolitical market 

forces which sustain considerable vagueness and knottiness around “Who is responsible?”. Betancourt 

(2010) argues that this agnotology allows for the prevention of the possibility of dissent to this system in 

society, where this question does not need to, nor can, be answered. He posits that agnotologic capitalism 

is a feature, not a bug, in that it “enables the economy to function as it allows the creation of a "bubble 

economy”. This poses the question: is it humanly possible to (even imperfectly) know through whom and 

how all the things we consume come to be? 

Efforts to establish transparency within supply chains of products and services through technology are in 

their infancy and are yet unviable, as current blockchain technology requires all actors involved in a supply 

chain to have the means to interact with the system to achieve transparency, according to Sunny et al. 

(2020). As the current discourse within sustainable business management now focuses efforts on shifting 

the narrative from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism, the possibilities, challenges and 

limitations that the dominant paradigm offers are being examined. As sustainability is not inherently valued 

Image 5: Author’s drawing derived from the Futures Cone by Candy (2010) and Hancock and 
Bezold (1994), and the consumption corridor by Di Gulio and Fuchs (2020).  



 

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in Western culture, strategies to shift harmful production processes need to align with companies’ 

purposes and goals, which are predominantly revenue-based. Considering this agnotology of production 

and consumption and the invisible threads that bind the tight knots that keep the sometimes ambiguous 

violations against human rights, dignity (Slavery Footprint, n.d.) and ecological collapse in place, according 

to Pinto (2017), does the dominant narrative give consent to consumerism as an indirect act of violence 

and (eventual) self-harm? (Carrington, 2021). The ontological aspects of everyday design objects and the 

importance of being a good ancestor come to mind. 

Gough’s (2017) need theory helps us to differentiate between needs and wants. What we feel that we need 

and what we want are often blurred, as our needs are often contextual, and our wants frequently relate to 

whom we consider our “consumption peers” to be. Deranty and Breen (2021) link this “new consumerism” 

to the self-perpetuating work-spend cycle of precarious work lives and hyper-consumption driven by 

increased inequality, as summarised in a quote by Juliet Schor (1998): “the more people consume, the 

more people must work”. Blowfield (2013, p.273) suggests three ways to meet future demand for products; 

“expanding supply, increasing productivity and altering the nature of demand itself”. Johar (Bristol+Bath 

Creative R+D, 2021) believes that the notion of “growth” requires careful handling and the singular word 

hides a lot of injustices and nuances. He posits that while some parts of the world will need to grow to 

meet the basic needs of their populations, together with our intangible economy, the richest 20% of the 

world population needs to “de-grow” and reach a state of regenerative homeostasis. 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe that citizens’ everyday tensions lie in the fact that, although there is an increased demand for 

sustainable consumption (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2021), the current paradigm does not provide 

diverse alternatives, according to O’Neill et al. (2018), nor many positive references for consuming 

differently. Meeting the required level of dematerialisation of society requires the notion of less to be 

decoupled from the association with hardship and loss of social status. As Kimmerer states (2013, p.111), 

“In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity 

undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires”. I believe that bearing the capacity to stay 

with, and work from, this understandable resistance, is critical when designing explorations for positive 

references and alternative ways of meeting our needs. Krippendorff (2012, p. 74) suggests that “designers 

need to question prevailing ontological beliefs”, and that “designers need to explore what it takes to 

unfreeze cherished habits or convictions, or to get people to learn something new”. 

A change of narrative 

Kuhnhenn et al. (2020) believe that it is possible to stay within the global carbon budget of 1.5°C warming  

if today’s consumption levels are reduced, but that this reduction in production and consumption requires 

Figure 6: Author’s sketch of the notion of the obscurity and lack of supply transparent information in 
chains, awareness and understanding, contributing to the agnotology of consumption. 



 

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a “democratically planned socio-economic transformation with the satisfaction of people’s needs at the 

centre”. The global carbon budget looks at all nations’ carbon emissions and the amount of reductions that 

is needed to reach the Paris Agreement goals (Future Earth, n.d.). However, Riedy (2020) highlights the 

point that most historical discourse shifts were not planned but were the product of many ideas that 

aligned and knotted together over time, strengthened by adversity, and that resonated with and benefitted 

increasing numbers of people. Research shows that social tipping points for overriding social norms happen 

when a minority group, dedicated to a specific cause, reaches a certain size (“critical mass”). This in turn 

gives rise to wider acceptance of the minority view across the broader population, as research by Centola 

et al. shows (2018). The critical mass of the minority group required to reach the tipping point depends on 

the cause. In cases such as the UK smoking ban, the minority group grew after scientific papers were 

published that presented proposals for educating the public and offering options for voluntary shifts, 

eventually reaching legislation and compulsory compliance. Soaring evidence of the negative effects, 

together with offering options for change, led to further growth of the initial minority group (Institute for 

Government, n.d.). Mont et al. (2013) argue for a more considered framework for communicating, 

policymaking and prioritising and placing new ways of generating wellbeing as the primary strategy for 

recomposing consumption (Image 7). Could this model be a guide conducive to “consumption corridor” 

innovation and design?  

Haidt’s (2006, p. 4) simplified model of the “elephant, driver and path” for behaviour change offers a 

snapshot of the conditions that designers can draw inspiration from. However, Riedy (2020) argues that 

storytelling is recognised to be a powerful driver for social change and can “inspire and persuade people to 

adopt new practices”.. It is interesting to think about how Riedy’s plural discourses and Gough’s proposed 

strategies might affect society, work, leisure, business, production and which new stories we must now tell 

ourselves? As I believe our habits of consumption shape the narrative of our future(s), by enabling the 

coexistence of diverse economies, a larger number of alternatives may allow for equitable planet-centred 

living. Putting different limits on the ways we meet our needs may allow us to discover new possibilities  

of entangled value flows within a planet-centred paradigm. Capitalism has worked well for some of the 

world’s population over a relatively brief period in human history. However, it has proven to be 

an insufficient model for the pluralistic facets of humanity and life-giving systems that we share and need 

to consider going forward, taking inspiration from the mitigating impacts generated by the Montreal 

Protocol, the smoking ban and the plastic bag charge, to name a few policy changes that have saved lives 

and shifted narratives. 

 

I am interested in how design may renegotiate current values and change the discourse in tangible ways. 

Examples where design has been used to intentionally shape societal shifts include the “acceptera!” 

manifesto, world expos and media campaigns where preferred future narratives have been curated, 

although they have often been inevitably paternalistic. Some present radical shifts in the dominant 

work/consumption ontologies are emerging through initiatives such as the “4 Day Week Campaign” 

(Platform London, 2021), “Tang Ping” [lying flat] (BBC News, 2021) and the “Buy Nothing” movement, 

according to Telford (2021).  

Ecological economists such as Kallis et al. (2012), believe that change cannot happen within the dominant 

economic model. I believe that rather than dismissing it, new discourses will have to work from the 

dominant ones to un-tame the wicked problem of overconsumption and shift societal and behavioural 

patterns of participation. A certain degree of compassion is needed to sit with these tensions.  

Co-participatory storytelling through interaction with new artefacts may help generate previously  

unexplored possibilities.  



 

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In Bergthaller and Mortensen’s work (2018, p.6), the sustainable communications agency Futerra states 

that “we must build a visual and compelling vision of low carbon heaven“. If positive references for 

dwelling well within planetary boundaries in the Global North are lacking, a gentle shaking of the 

ideological tree may be the most ethical and effective way of shifting the story of our future. Let us explore 

artefacts with which to tangibly play a new story into being. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second order design fictions and wicked possibilities 

Oxman (2016) declares that “Good Design, for example, is good exploration: it questions certain belief 

systems—physical and immaterial—about the world. Then it releases some embodiments of these 

speculations into the world, contributing to the build-up of what we know as culture”.  

At the heart of design collective Superflux’s (2021) practice lies critical sense-making and speculative 

storytelling to enable future uncertainty in choices in the present day. Their conceptual film The 

Intersection highlights the importance of co-future with humility, a wider consciousness paradigm, and 

acknowledging the potential and power of agency. I believe that this demonstrates qualities coincident 

with us as adults of a species, of a deeper way of knowing. However, their featured artefacts may feel far 

removed from most people’s contexts and other relatable objects, which may hamper their desired impact 

on their audience. According to Tharp and Tharp (2019, p. 217), discursive design artefacts “experiment 

with the relationship between objects and the stories they support and are supported by”. Tomorrow's 

Home exhibition by The Liminal Space (n.d.) showcases how embedding healthcare technology in 

household objects may shape homes of the future, through translating academic research into tangible and 

accessible interventions. This aligns with my fascination with how World Expos and design manifestos have 

enabled societal change in the past. 

Seeking to label my work within the design discourse, I would describe it as adversarial, since it concerns 

the political perspective of agonism, as described by Di Salvo (2015, p. 2), and highlights the potential 

positive outcomes of a conflict or tension. Going beyond the questioning qualities that define critical 

design, agonism emphasises the importance of having compassion for the problem in design struggles;  

Image 6: “A suggestion for a consumption hierarchy (in order of priority)” by Mont et al. (2013). 



 

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to celebrate and acknowledge a productive and good struggle. This echoes Haraway’s (2016) notion of 

staying with the trouble; not being paralysed by fear or eager for solutionism. I've designed these artefacts 

to help make sense of the present and articulate tangible alternatives for positive narratives about the 

future, both for myself and for others. We must remember that the future does not yet exist, but actively 

emerges from the basis of a society’s hopes, fears and images of the future. As Mouffe states in Benhabib’s 

work (2021, p.255), “conflicts and confrontations, far from being a sign of imperfection, indicate that 

democracy is alive and inhabited by pluralism”. 

I initially dubbed my designed artefacts “transition objects”, as they embody a liminal space in the 

necessary transition we need to make in our consumption habits, bridging the familiar present to an 

equitable and regenerative future of planet-centred consumption. Upon learning about second order 

design fictions (SoDFs) through Perera’s (2021) work, I realised that my understanding of my “transition 

object” aligned better with this concept. Perera (2021) sees the methodology of design fictions as a way  

of interfering and playing around with consensus, as “they go beyond the neo-liberal design logic notions  

of fact and fiction, blending the familiar and different, and offer a stimulating tactility to facilitate the 

questioning of complex tensions”. Fry (2021, p. 3) states that second-order design fiction can contribute 

towards "redirective practices” and a renegotiation of values. He posits that second-order design fictions 

have appropriated “lessons of observations” from second order cybernetics and that “the conceptual 

essence of second-order design fiction is the observation of observation”. Second order cybernetics is used 

here as a tool to generate the desired effect of change through interaction. These are more than mere 

artefacts for provoking dialogue but are objects of interrogation that “invite recursive re-engagement”. 

The household context provides additional context and meaning to the artefacts, and the tangible 

characteristic of the artefacts is an important aspect. This makes the observation “real” and gives the 

objects authority, as if this alternative narrative is established and these artefacts make sense in that 

parallel reality. Interacting with these artefacts-as-conversation contributes to the effects of participatory 

design and puts the participant in the scenario to co-author a new story. Krippendorff (2012, p.75) argues 

that “because design becomes real in communication with others, inquiries into what makes a proposal 

compelling are inquiries into how people understand and act on narratives pertaining to desirable worlds”. 

I would argue that this is the desired outcome of my design fictions: a new insight or shift in perspective, 

generated by the observation from the “conversation" between participant and artefact. The detritus that 

might be generated by the interaction with an artefact can be taken away and used to build upon existing 

culture. Although these SoDFs allow me to research through design, I have not yet developed the resources 

to measure the potential success of this research.  

SoDFs play with both product semantics and the definition of design as a sense-making activity. Inspired  

by Donna Haraway’s implosion method of analysis through various value dimensions as described by Dumit 

(2014), I have considered using this methodology for designing artefacts to explore and ensure how these 

might belong in a planet-centric future. The implosion method highlights the messiness and knottiness of 

stories and worlds that artefacts hold, analysed through the following dimensions: symbolic, professional, 

labour, material, technological, political, economic, textual, bodily, educational and historical. This is not  

to attempt to design “crisis-management models” (Perera, 2020) or utopian solutions for problematic 

everyday objects, nor to merely raise awareness of issues. It is important for the designer to make this 

implicit information apparent and contextual, as Tonkinwise and Lorber-Kasunic (2006) remind us, 

“because the knowledge embedded within an artefact is rarely made explicit, it can only be accessed and 

communicated by those who can interpret it”. 



 

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The problem of recomposed and post-material consumption is a wicked problem, as it cannot be predicted, 

nor measured to be solved. By adding to, rather attempting to tame wickedness, designers acknowledge 

the uncertainty, plurality and diverse paradigms in which all stakeholders dwell and act. People’s needs, 

values and motivations are contextual, fluid and irrational. Tham (2022) also highlights the importance  

of these tensions and cruxes, positing that “if we don’t encounter this friction, change is not taking place”. 

These may be a gentle provocation to imagine safe ways of living with both compulsory and voluntary 

demateriality, low-carbon and overall sufficiency in ways that are not primarily associated with hardship, 

precarity or loss of status by the participant. I am, however, aware of the subjective notions of these 

concepts and the ethical consequences of imposing my own beliefs about what is considered safe and 

precarious. As SoDFs are artefacts that belong to a different narrative, encountering and interacting with 

these may generate new ways of seeing, knowing and valuing. It poses the question “If this object exists, 

where do I exist within this narrative?”. However, Tonkinwise (2015) and Tham (2022) remind us why 

discursive design artefacts need to remain unpolished and open to participation, to avoid merely 

normalising “a pretentious taste regime”. Hence why I have focused on designing artefacts of the 

mundane. 

Each of my exhibited objects presents a structure for playful exchanges, aiming to engage diverse 

participants in imagining and making sense of the changes needed to mitigate crises with a less precarious 

outcome. It suggests a “hopeful continuation” to counter the dominant defuturing (Fry, 2021) narrative 

that has been generated within the cognitive dissonance of capitalism’s failure to provide. According to 

Lorek et al. (2021), “1.5-degree lifestyles can be diverse as long as they stay within ecological boundaries”.  

I look forward to further exploring how design can provide reference and innovative ideas for all to dwell 

well.  

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