In early 2020, organisations across the world did something that they had long resisted. They trusted employees to work remotely, adopted telemedicine and digitized services in weeks. These ideas however, were not new. The technology existed, prototypes existed, the research existed. What changed was that not adopting them was no longer an option. The risk perception shifted from “if we allow remote work, the productivity would reduce” to “if we don't allow remote work, the company would shut down”. Crisis does something powerful. It makes experimentation socially acceptable and increases the collective willingness to do so. From the evolution of aviation and communication after wars, to digitized public services after COVID, transformation has often accelerated under threat.
But if threat is what forces adoption, then design isn’t leading the change, crisis is. This talk questions: How can we design systems that won’t require disaster, pain and suffering to find its courage?
The session invites participants to reflect on why systems so often hesitate and wait for urgency and disruption before they are willing to act. Through frameworks and real-world examples, we look at how early frictions evolve into systemic strain, when design interventions can become critical and how tools like speculative design, foresight and game-based interventions can help shift mindsets, inspire action and shape more adaptive futures.
