The Proof of the Pudding: Introducing quantitative testing in transition design reasoning
Written by Hannah Goss (me), Rick Schifferstein, Jotte de Koning, and Nynke Tromp
The urgent challenges of climate change, inequality, and declining societal well-being highlight the inadequacies of existing systems to meet sustainability goals. Transition design—a field at the intersection of design, sustainability science, and transition studies—has emerged as a response to these systemic issues. Despite growing interest in its practice, there remains a gap in understanding transition design processes, particularly regarding the effectiveness of resulting interventions in fostering systemic change. This study addresses this gap by proposing a conceptual framework that connects five essential transition design activities—navigating scales from micro to macro-level systems; considering temporality from the present to far future; engaging and repositioning actors from individuals and groups to networks; framing and designing from single solutions to portfolios; and practising reflexivity from activities to outcomes—to three evaluative qualities for its outcomes: desirability, plausibility, and networkedness of interventions. Using this framework, we assessed a portfolio of 21 proposed interventions that were designed to transition the Dutch food system to reduce food waste. Each intervention was presented as a drawing of a product-service system and was accompanied by a narrative of a user engaging with the intervention. The interventions were evaluated by consumers, companies, and experts through an embedded mixed-methods approach in which quantitative research was complemented by qualitative insights. Our findings reveal that while consumers and companies tend to favour near-future interventions that adapt existing food consumption practices, experts prefer long-term interventions that disrupt existing practices. Additionally, the results indicate that primarily quantitative evaluations may not sufficiently capture the complex, systemic qualities of transition design interventions, suggesting a need for a more balanced mixed-methods approach that incorporates context-sensitive insights. We conclude by reflecting on avenues for methodological development to improve evaluation as a (reflexive) transition design activity.
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