I dream of a future where everyone has what they need and where design supports human and planetary flourishing. This vision fills me with hope while also making me acutely aware of the reality many designers face today. Our work is done within the dominant capitalist framework that prioritizes financial growth above all else, often at the expense of true flourishing. In this system, design has largely been co-opted as a tool for increasing profits, optimizing efficiency, and driving consumption — rarely questioning the foundations of the systems it serves.

As designers, we often find ourselves caught between:

• The practical necessity of working within existing systems to earn a living and have immediate impact
• The moral imperative to imagine and create fundamentally different systems that center human dignity, social justice, and ecological health
• The professional challenges of balancing client expectations with our deeper values and ethics
• The emotional labor of holding hope for transformation while facing the limitations of incremental change

This reality creates a fundamental tension between “within” and “beyond” We recognize the need for radical systems change while needing to function in the current system in order to pay our bills. These tensions aren’t just philosophical — they manifest in everyday decisions about which projects to take on, how to approach design challenges, whose voices to amplify, and what futures we choose to help create. It raises questions about complicity, compromise, and the real possibilities for change within and beyond the systems we inhabit.

As I’ve been thinking about a better future for and through design, I’ve been asking myself:

How can we shift within the current system as we work to a better one?

In my explorations, I’ve found three different ways to shift within the current system: practicing harm reduction, building movements, and centering rest as a form of resistance here and now.

1. Practice harm reduction

I think our role today is to practice harm reduction within the current system and minimize damage through immediate interventions like making existing services more accessible or policies more equitable, while simultaneously imagining and prototyping entirely new ways of organizing society, work, and care.

One of the most accessible and powerful ways designers can practice harm reduction is by asking better, braver questions. Questions that slow down the pace of “solutionism“ and open space for reflection:

• ​​Who benefits from this design — and who might be excluded or harmed?
• What values are embedded in this solution?
• What voices are missing from this process?
• What assumptions are we making about users, needs, or impact?
• What happens when we ask “at what cost?” instead of just “how might we?”

Many of these questions were first introduced through The Design Justice Network. Their work centers principles and practices meant to shift what we work on, who our work is in service for, and how we do the work as designers. Design is often framed as a neutral tool for innovation, but this view ignores the power dynamics and inequalities baked into the systems we operate in. Practicing harm reduction means rejecting neutrality. It means acknowledging that our work participates in shaping the world — often in ways that reinforce existing hierarchies unless we actively push back.

When I think of design and its ability to create change, I think about the dance between possibility and responsibility. Our work can either harm or heal. A few months ago, I posted this on Linkedin “Good design is a dance between curiosity and criticality. As designers, we love asking, “how might we” but we also have to ask “at what cost.” Design can heal but it can also harm. As designers, we must balance possibilities and responsibilities. We must be curious AND critical.”

2. Build movements

Building movement is another way we can create change within the current system. When we take a look around, we see many movements and organizations working to fight the current system and help us live better within them and throughout history movements like Black Lives Matters, Disability Rights Movement, Gay Rights Movements, etc. have paved the way for many of the rights we have today. Within design, Design Justice movements, Trauma-informed design, etc. have made our profession more accessible while questioning the powers at play. Movements are ways to challenge the current systems from within and hopefully dismantle them in the future.

Many movements we champion today exist precisely because the current system doesn’t allow for equality and justice. Feminism responds to gender inequality. Disability rights acts respond to systems that don’t accommodate differences. In an ideal future, we won’t need these movements — but until we get to a liberated future, our job is to reduce harm through movement building.

Movements vs. identity

In her book Hospicing Modernity, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (formerly Vanessa Andreotti) shares an anecdote around movement building. During a panel discussion on global feminism, she was asked what role global feminisms will play in decolonial futures. She responded: “If we still had to talk about global feminisms in a supposedly decolonized future, something would have definitely gone wrong.” She continued, “When I identify as a feminist, I see the point of my role as working myself out of the need for feminist critiques in the future, rather than indefinitely investing in a collective identity.”

Machado de Oliveira highlights an important difference between a movement and an identity. While many movement help us fight for ours and others rights, clinging to the cause as identities CAN limit our ability to let go of the movement when they no longer serve the intended cause anymore. It can also keep us from connecting across differences and reject anymore who does not identify in the same way. As the writer and activist adrienne maree brown writes:

“We live inside of interlocking systems of oppression. These systems only work because we uphold them inside ourselves and between us. Rather than canceling each other for every way that we’re embodying the systems, we need to help break each other out of these systems and find ways to course correct for our country and our species together. When we turn on each other, the systems actually persist and they just go elsewhere. But when we actually heal each other and bring it all into the light, those systems become irrelevant. That’s what we actually need right now. For the planet’s sake and for our life on it, we need to hold on to each other and grow our soul.”

When we create together we transform individual healing into collective progress. By turning toward one another, we can challenge the system and together create something that supports the well-being of all.

3. Rest as resistance

In order to continue to reduce harm and build movements that fight the current system, we need to rest. Poet, performance artist, and activist Trisha Hersey promotes how “rest is resistance”. In her book by the same name she explains that we can reclaim our sense of worth by resisting the grind culture and choosing rest. She positions rest as a human right — not something that needs to be earned. Her book was transformative for me. I found the book in a time where I was working hard to reach new heights while ignoring burnout signs from my body and my mind. It helped me evaluate where I was pushing beyond my own boundaries and how it kept me from being able to fight for others.

Resistance is different from resilience. It doesn’t tell us to push through or become stronger than the system. Rather, it helps us unlearn what we’ve been taught and resist what’s being reinforced about hard work through the larger paradigm. The rejection of hustle culture has been embraced by many. It’s not just a way to reclaim our worth but also a way to wake up and see clearly how the current culture of productivity, capitalism, and speed harms both ourselves and the planet.

Centering rest as a radical act can help us survive with a little more ease in a system that wants to exploit us.

From Within to Beyond: Bridging the present and the future through The Adjacent Possible

Between “within” and “beyond” lies what innovation theorist Steven Johnson calls “the Adjacent Possible” — spaces of possibility that become available from our current position. These are the opportunities that exist not in some distant utopia but in the immediate next steps we can take.

In the book Good Ideas (shop at your local book shop), Johnson writes “The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.” Each moment in our history unlocks new doors of adjacent possibilities.

The Adjacent Possible reminds us that transformation occurs not in sudden leaps but through continuous exploration of emerging possibilities. It’s about finding footholds for change within our present reality that can lead toward more substantive shifts.

Audre Lorde said: “At the same time as we’re surviving in the mouth of the dragon, we also need to be feeding our vision.” Surviving within the mouth of the dragon means practicing harm reduction, building movements alongside others, and resting as a form of resistance. These actions can open up a space for us to free our vision of a better tomorrow. Let’s act together.

Resources & Inspiration

• Adrienne Maree Brown — Author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism, exploring transformative justice, imagination, and movement building.
• Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (formerly Vanessa Andreotti) — Hospicing Modernity: A powerful book on navigating collapse, decolonization, and reimagining systems.
• Bayo Akomolafe — Philosopher, poet, and author of We Will Dance with Mountains: Vunja, exploring post-activism and new world-making.
• We Have to Reimagine Our World with Indy Johar (Louisiana Channel) — A visionary architect speaks on redesigning institutions for systemic transformation.
• The Most Creative Look to the Future from UN Global Pulse — A report on how creativity and artistic practice can catalyze systemic change.
• From What Is to What If by Rob Hopkins — A hopeful manifesto on unleashing imagination to shape more resilient, just, and beautiful futures.
• Liberating Structures — Practical microstructures for group collaboration, innovation, and participatory change-making.