When you still have to make a business case every time, what gets sustainability or accessibility on the agenda? How do you sell in what we at Path like to call ‘responsible’ design?
Chris Sherwin shared his thoughts in our latest podcast, and we learned more at Clerkenwell Design Week and Deque’s Axe-con Mini event at HSBC. The answer seems to have two components:
1. Say it with numbers. Quantify the impact.
According to Chris, the key is defining commercial value – something he encourages designers to speak up more about. In his words, “It gets to the top of a business if you can tell them how much it makes and how much it saves.”
Panellists at Clerkenwell Design Week’s ‘Design for Social Change’ panel made the same point. Numbers, whether financial or otherwise (e.g. carbon emissions), earn buy-in. Lifecycle Assessments, the Themes, Outcomes and Measures (TOMs) model, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines make sustainability, social value and accessibility respectively measurable, and legislation like the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation and the European Accessibility Act (EAA) catalyse the shift towards quantifying ‘doing the responsible thing’.
2. Say it with narratives. Show the human side.
At her Clerkenwell talk, architectural practitioner Jessie Buckle quoted Brené Brown: “Stories are just data with soul.” Human narratives make people care.
Lived experience narratives make responsible impact tangible and immediate. A person with epilepsy, like Jessie, explaining that a given design could trigger a seizure is more transformative of decision-making than any best practice guideline. This is why the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets involves disabled users in on-site inspections of brands’ EAA compliance, and why HSBC brought software engineers and accessibility analysts with lived experience of disability directly onto their digital accessibility team, as we learned at Axe-con Mini.
Consumer behaviour can also be influenced by more human-centred narratives. Chris Sherwin believes that green technologies need value propositions that consumers genuinely understand and see benefit in. Beyond being “carbon saving things”, we need consumers to see them as desirable and usable to adopt.
Whether it’s the C-suite or consumers you’re convincing, both numbers and narratives are needed to show the impact of responsible design. As Matthew Luken explained at Axe-con Mini, “Anything you can put a number behind, anything you can put a narrative behind… helps tell a story.” Stories open the door to change and to buy-in to better design – for people and planet.