CRAFTING A FUTURES FOR INTERSPECIES DESIGN

Day01. Wednesday, July 07, 12:15-12:50 EDT

Earlier in 2020, I ventured to an indigenous community in Mexico where I collaborated with biomaterial designer and artist Fernando Laposse. Fernando is the founder of Totomoxtle, a craft enterprise working with the Mixte community in Tonahuixtla that creates a textile from rare heirloom corn varieties at risk of extinction. Using his business as my testbed, I went out to explore how craft enterprises could develop viable businesses without compromising on integrity to place, people, and culture.

In this presentation, I will propose a practical call for change to mainstream design paradigms - a future of interspecies design. Originally going in with the mindset to offer my tools to support the craft enterprise, I soon realized that there was much more that I could learn from them - from the indigenous community and surrounding ecosystems. Thousands of years of collaborating respectfully with nature have shown us that the most successful systems are those where all contributing actors give and receive meaningful value without jeopardizing their own survival. In knowing this, we start to understand that we as humans, communities, businesses, and economies are inseparable from the natural world. Together we exist in integrated systems of wholes made up of a spectrum of living organisms joined together through webs of value exchange. Challenging paradigms around customer centricity, the interspecies design proposes the development of a method that considers the intersecting needs of multiple stakeholders - both human and non-human. A call for an approach that acknowledges the wider systems at play identifies the needs of all contributing actors and works to find intersecting pathways of value (ie. customer x business x employee x natural resources). It does not disregard the needs of the customer or business, but rather uncovers and invites the needs of the natural resources, employees and communities to the same line by harnessing the underlying logic of existing tools (ie. human-centered design and business design) through a new lens. Embedded logic in our natural systems along with ancient knowledge shows us that we humans can work innovatively with and through nature --- after all, we are nature — so long as we pay our dues in return to our fellow inhabitants.

I am a strategic design consultant. Operating at the intersection of design, culture, and futures, I love to imagine thriving world scenarios - and then build tangible roadmaps to get us there. With a multi-disciplinary background, I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in International Development Studies from McGill University, as well as an MSc in Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Management from Imperial College London. Working across industries to serve clients at various stages, I first developed my practice at Futurice innovation consultancy, where I consulted the C-Suite in Pepsico, Fujitsu, Plan International, and more on how to navigate a fast-changing world through technology and design. In 2019, I founded Studio Cosmati. The studio is dedicated to democratizing strategic tools built for big players to empower ethically driven brands, startups, and initiatives. Some of my current projects include consulting companies such as Norlha Atelier (Tibetan social enterprise), La Difference (Congolese social incubator), and Big Night (London delivery startup for independent restaurants). Rooting my practice in foresight, I have generated research and trend reports on topics spanning across the Future of AI, Voice, Travel & Hospitality, Retail, and Governance. In this capacity, I also serve as Co-Director of Speculative Futures London, bringing together a community of more than 1,000 members to host guests such as vHM Design Futures and the School of Critical Design. Always experimenting with new methods and applications for inclusive design, I regularly run speculative design workshops, as well as continue developing my ongoing project @futures_archive.