Design Intelligence #30: Principled pragmatism
Back to reality; there goes gravity. This month: making change work while everything else is changing.
The idea: Designing for co-benefits
Demographic analysts have noted a shift in young people’s attitudes. They are moving on from the romanticising of everyday life and self-care that have defined the past few years of online culture (via trends like ‘main character energy’ and ‘soft living’), to focus on ‘locking in’. The new mindset represents a return to reality, to making tangible long-term goals, and devising and then enacting a plan to achieve them.
This growing mentality has parallels in global politics. When Canadian prime minister Mark Carney addressed Davos 2026, in a speech that’s already gone down as historic, he spoke of the need for the world’s “middle powers” to work together to build a more co-operative and resilient world. “Our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, has termed value-based realism,” he said, “or, to put another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic.”
Pragmatism doesn’t mean watering down climate action or ignoring human rights or rejecting inclusivity and equity. It means facing the future and designing, incentivising and implementing the right solutions. And when “every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse” - according to an official assessment of national security that has just been quietly released by the UK government - it’s necessary.
Environmental responsibility doesn’t fall off the agenda. Instead, the agenda becomes multi-point. The aim becomes engineering focused co-benefits that work across different layers of a system at once, or paths forward that offer multiple benefits to incentivise change. Co-benefits provide a clear ‘win-win’. In Ikea’s People + Planet 2025 Trends report, which surveyed 30,000 adults across 30 countries, the top motivator for people taking positive climate action was if that action also helped them save money (at 54%). Actions that were also good for their health and their family’s health provided the third biggest motivator, at 41%. Both of these motivators were more important to them than the climate action being easy to do.
There are multiple examples of co-benefit strategies and systems emerging at the moment. In food systems, innovators are offering a just transition to farmers: Finnish oat-based dairy Mö Foods uses conventional dairy equipment, making moving to plant-based production more efficient and more feasible for new suppliers.
In circular economy strategy, Netherlands-based company UBQ Materials makes thermoplastic composites from mixed household waste (organic and non-organic), meaning that its pitch is ‘recycling without any sorting’. It’s a pragmatic solution that meets people where they are.
Bold political bets are being made from a similar perspective. In Europe, ten countries have agreed to link up their offshore wind projects to create the world’s largest “clean energy reservoir” in the North Sea, in a landmark pact that will build 5GW of capacity every year from 2031-2040 - enough to power 143m homes. There are multiple co-benefits at work here: decarbonisation, energy security, job creation and regional political cohesion, plus a positive image of the future at a time when many people feel their governments are out of good ideas.
In design terms, principled pragmatism means designing systemically for co-benefits and joined-up solutions - from multi-use product functionality to material specification and end-of-life reprocessing. As Aarathi Krishnan, founder of risk intelligence company RAKSHA Intelligence Futures, points out: “we do not get to choose whether we live in an interregnum. We only get to choose what we do with the sight we have, and how little time we waste before we act on it.”
🎤 My work
I’ll be speaking about my approach to futures thinking, including Designing Hope, at Creative Mornings London on 27th February. This community of creatives has been growing since I studied design at university; it’s an honour to be speaking there
🗒️ Research notes
Car-free neighbourhoods are growing in number as Utrecht begins construction on a new one (see also: Culdesac in Tempe and The Phoenix in Lewes). And they’re popular: 18% of car owners in the US are “strongly interested” in living car-free
Furthering the case that cities are leading where countries don’t, Amsterdam has banned adverts for meat products and fossil fuels (including air travel, cruises and petrol cars) in public spaces and on public transport starting in May. Advertising giant JCDecaux reportedly informed city councillors via email that this will provoke “far-reaching financial and legal consequences” - it takes real civic courage to do this. Florence has followed suit by banning fossil fuel ads, bringing the total to more than 50 cities
More positive tipping point news: sales of fully electric vehicles (at 22.6%) overtook sales of petrol-only vehicles (22.5%) in the EU in December, for the first time. Hybrids made up the biggest group, at 44% of new registrations
Researchers at the University of Glasgow have developed a new type of circuit board that is 99% biodegradable, made by printing zinc-based circuits onto paper or bioplastic. The circuits can be either composted in soil or dissolved using vinegar at end-of-use
All of these developments stand in contrast to dystopia-bait, a growing trend noted by Protein researcher Sophia Epstein that sees tech companies marketing their products using dystopian provocations, presenting “worst-case futures” for our titillation. They emerge from a culture where, as I’ve written before, dystopia is default, and reflect exactly what Donna Haraway describes as tech-infused futurism’s “affects of sublime despair and politics of sublime indifference”
🗣️ Interesting products
Contribute to Mozilla’s Common Voice project, like I did, to add your accent, intonation and other verbal characteristics to an open dataset for use in inclusive tech development
The facade of Oxford University’s new Life and Mind building is based on a brainscan taken of researcher Sage Boettcher as she visualised the department’s future
AntiRender is a new tool for architecture that allows you to “see through the architectural BS and get back what it’ll actually look like on a random Tuesday in November”
📱 Reading
“Designing responsibly in this era requires more than inspiration. It requires ethical foresight: the willingness to imagine not only what could go right, but what could go wrong, and for whom.” Ashleigh Axios writing in Design Observer: Innovation needs a darker imagination