A slippery cousin to ‘development’? The concept of ‘impact’ in teaching sustainability in design education

ABSTRACT

In design, aspirations of ‘development’ and ‘innovation’ are now scrutinised to redress persistent market-led practice. Socially and environmentally responsive pedagogies can shift students’ mindsets to consider the impacts of design practices on the planet’s complex systems and societies. At the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, four transdisciplinary experiential ‘Impact Lab’ design units actively address this within a reimagined degree. Qualitative action research explores students’ interpretations of ‘impact,’ and results reveal their interpretations are diverse, despite theoretically strong grounds, reflecting only an emergent understanding of the wider sustainability and design justice agenda. The argument is made that ‘impact’ as a loaded term in our context may inadvertently restrict the development of such understandings. This endorses the need for ongoing critical interpretation and usage of the term, and urges that caution be exercised in how it manifests through pedagogies and curricula.

KEYWORDS:

• impact
• transformative design education
• sustainability
• design justice
• regenerative design

Introduction

In the design field, aspirations towards, and claims of ‘development’, ‘innovation’ and ‘progress’ are now rightly scrutinised as part of a movement seeking to redress the persistence of market-led design practice. Globally, this consumer-driven paradigm (Thorpe and Gamman 2011, 217) promotes design practices that perpetuate unsustainable urban lifestyles, social inequality, and large-scale planetary damage (Wizinsky 2022; Monteiro 2019). Behind such practices, design education must accept some responsibility for the status quo, and step up for leading change. Socially and environmentally responsive, relational pedagogies can motivate designers to consider more deeply at every turn, the impacts of their work, its relationship with the planet, and her diverse, complex systems and societies.

This paper critically examines how the term ‘impact’ manifests for design students across four transdisciplinary and experiential ‘Impact Labs’ in the Bachelor of Design degree at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Themed as ‘Place’, ‘People’, ‘Planet’ and ‘Purpose’, the labs align to the School of Design ethos of ‘Change by Design’ and ‘Design for Good’. With enabling pedagogies for collaborative, transdisciplinary experiential learning (Meth et al. 2022) and a holistic and iterative interweaving of people and environment, all four Impact Labs speak to sustainability perspectives. Given design’s role in global unsustainability, corporate greenwashing and institutional branding activities (Watts 2017), scholars encountering the use of ‘impact’ in this way will rightly question what lies behind such a claim, its intentions, and embodied ideologies. Such questions are valid for a curriculum purporting ‘future-focused’ radical change. The term is deemed to be similar to terms such as ‘development’ and ‘innovation’ owing to its ambiguity, links to economic progress, and implicit value assumptions (Misiaszek 2020).

Previous related research on the Impact Labs details the intentions of our curriculum model, the underpinning concepts, and pedagogies, including education for sustainability and recognising the transdisciplinary Impact Labs as a space to explore the possibilities of design related to complex global issues (Brophy et al. 2023 Meth et al. 2022; Meth, Thomson, and Brough 2021). The strategic intent of the design course is overtly linked to academics’ aspirations for empowering graduates with the ‘knowledge, skills, and capabilities to ‘impact’ on society or the world in a positive way’. However, as our use, and our students’ interpretations, of the term ‘impact’ have mainly remained uninterrogated, we are increasingly aware of the complexities and claims embodied within such a course title. We subscribe to the notions of ‘truthing’ proposed by Lin et al. (2023) as necessary for educators to enable their critical examination of loaded terms such as ‘development’ and in our case, 'impact’ in our course. While much of design practice and education related to positive social and environmental impact has good intentions, criticisms of some approaches are beginning to emerge (Costanza-Chock 2020). Examining our aspirations of ‘impact’ more deeply is now more vital than ever.

This paper interrogates notions of ‘impact’ using qualitative data from a course-wide longitudinal action research project. In setting the background, our paper begins by framing the wider ‘impact’ agenda in both design and education, and we consider designs’ role in (un)sustainability and its relationship with justice and ethics. The Impact Labs are introduced as a pedagogic site for the study and the research approach introduced. Findings from a thematic analysis of students’ survey responses on their interpretations and framing of ‘impact’ as it relates to their experience in the labs are presented. This leads to a broader discussion of tensions at play when using the term ‘impact’ in design education, as well as a critical reflection on the implications of this study for design practice, with implications for other contexts using the term in a similar manner. These include a breadth of educational and other institutions and businesses globally where ‘impact’ as a concept and buzzword has become common, similarly linked to addressing sustainability imperatives and queried as value-laden and misleading (Pfortmüller 2023; Soskis 2021).

Background and context

‘Impact’ as a construct in higher education and its connections to sustainability discourses

For Australian higher education (HE) teaching and research, the impact agenda is not new. The Australian Research Council, one of the country’s primary research funding bodies, uses ‘Engagement and Impact’ assessments to evaluate the quality of research conducted by Australia’s HE institutions, and track how that research translates into ‘impact beyond academia including, economic, social, environmental, cultural and other public good’ (Australian Research Council 2021). Since the seminal 1987 United Nations (UN) ‘Our Common Future’ Report (Brundtland 1987), these aspects have long been seen as ‘interlocking’ areas of global crises, forming a foundation for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs 2021), and a wide variety of other frameworks seeking to address sustainability in corporate and community settings. Beyond HE, examples include the UNDP SDG Impact ‘flagship initiative’ (UNDP 2023) that works with the private sector to implement the SDGs, and across the private sector more widely, concepts such as ‘impact investing’ (Barber, Morse, and Yasuda 2021; Soskis 2021).

More recently, the construct of ‘impact’ has been brought together with that of sustainable development across all facets of HE – the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings (THE 2021) assesses all areas of institutional performance against the UN SDGs, and while performance indicators are finer grained, they are not dissimilar to those proposed by the Australian Research Council. At our institution, outward facing priorities now commit to addressing the impacts of climate change and reducing the university’s environmental impact, while internally, we measure both research outputs and curricula against individual SDGs. It is clear to see therefore, how ‘impact’ and ‘sustainability’ concepts might bedrawn together in everyday narratives. Cuenca-Soto et al. (2023) outlines a similar dearth of strategic sustainability narratives related to sustainability at their university, yet lacking in a specific focus on social justice, and the frequent ‘narrow focus’ of climate change in institutions is further highlighted by Jimenez and Kabachnik (2023) in arguing for greater connections to place and ‘ecosphere’.

Both the research impact agenda and the SDGs are not without critique. Rogers et al. (2014), echoing the sentiments of many other critical researchers, draw links between the research impact agenda and neoliberal ‘austerity and accountability’ measures in the HE sector. In the Australian Creative Arts space ‘impact’ has been noted as a concept closely related to ‘innovation’ and economic advantage (Gattenhof et al. 2021). Driven by institutional discourses such as the UN SDGs, Tulloch and Neilson (2014, 27) observe the way in which ‘economy and ecology [have] become equivalential’ in the sustainability agenda, where development and capitalism are promoted as the foundations for working towards sustainability. Such narratives negate more radical sustainability discourses that attempt to challenge the ‘industrial growth paradigm’ (31). This point is also put across by Espinet et al. (2023). In a similar vein, Misiaszek and Rodrigues (2023) highlight how ‘development’ is now often disconnected from conceptions of justice-based environmental sustainability (JBES). They say this is playing out through environmentally and socially ‘violent acts and the ‘de-development’ of ‘those socio-historically othered’ (4). This point is endorsed by Jimenez and Kabachnik (2023) who propose that the sustainable development ideology is used to ‘cover up the centuries-long pillaging of the Global South by people, corporations, and governments of the Global North’. Here – mirroring critiques of the design industry – profiteering is prioritised.

More positively, research impact measures sometimes offer a way for engaging in communities (Rogers et al. 2014, 5), and Woolcott, Keast, and Pickernell (2020, 1197) note that ‘deep impact’ in research is possible when the process of research is considered as important as the product of the research.

Misiaszek and Rodrigues (2023) make the point that education is duty-bound to help students deepen and widen their understandings of their positionalities, as well as their praxis. Educators may achieve this by explicitly embedding students’ values in their learning, and thus, in our pedagogic approaches. Gibbons (2020), offers a model of ‘inner and outer sustainability’ (Gibbons 2020, 5) that does precisely this. Inner sustainability comprises ‘unobservable’ elements – worldviews, paradigms, beliefs, and identities, whereas outer sustainability is the more tangible ‘observable’ aspects that arise from the inner – policies, markets, innovations, the built environment. Arguably, for designers, this reflects the full range of design outputs and ‘impacts’. The model sees the inner and outer as integrated with one another and situated within all living systems to offer ‘regenerative development’ processes, as opposed to ‘sustainable development’ as critiqued. For JBES, this link between planetary sustainability and ‘critically problematising anthropocentricism’ is key to de-centring human needs and the foundations for such needs, for example in ‘coloniality, patriarchy, and capitalism’ (Misiaszek and Rodrigues 2023, 7). Models above are not dissimilar to the possible ‘deep impact’ in research noted by Woolcott, Keast, and Pickernell (2020), with a deeper focus on the process itself.

In the learning and teaching context, the term ‘impact’ might most directly be related to individual students, their learning and individual transformations. In comparing the research impact agenda and impact in learning and teaching, Ashwin (2016), notes impact as being more than uni-directional, extending beyond an individual student or academic. Just as Fry (2009) rejects simple linearity in design processes – Ashwin (2016) says there is no straightforward cause and effect but rather multiple impacts along a chain of many translation devices that include curricula and pedagogies. These, in turn, impact on interactions between learners and teachers, or from peer to peer. There is an impact on students’ development and understanding, which, when incorporated into their design projects and emerging practice, ultimately impacts on, for example, a community or an aspect of society, the economy or environment. This sits in contrast to the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2023) definition of ‘impact’ as ‘an impinging or striking especially of one body against another’ ‘a forceful contact or onset’, and ‘the force of impression of one thing on another: a significant or major effect’. Here, the uni-directional action is implicit, and in relation to the discussion above, at odds with the way in which the term is being used in design education spaces.

‘Impact’ in design: confronting a problematic identity through design ethics and justice

Just as the impact agenda is not new, criticism of designs’ role in perpetuating social and ecological injustices is also not new. While exploring the cultural and philosophical background of designs’ ways of thinking and being, and the potential redirection of the field, Colombian-American anthropologist Arturo Escobar says, ‘the majority of design treatises still maintains a fundamental orientation that is technocratic and market-centred, and do not come close to questioning its capitalistic nature’ (Escobar 2012, 4). Decades prior, in his seminal work, Victor Papanek (1974) labelled designers ‘a dangerous breed’, responsible for nearly all our ‘environmental mistakes’. Despite the well-documented ‘increasingly transformative’ nature of design (Escobar 2012), Papanek’s criticism is still relevant today.

In ‘Ruined by Design’, leading design practitioner, Mike Monteiro (2019), opens his book with a phrase from the medical Hippocratic oath, ‘Do no harm’ (16), and elucidates harm that has been done, and is possible by designs and designers. In relation to the concept of impact, Monteiro highlights design as a ‘discipline of ‘action’’ where all designs have ‘consequences and a legacy’. He draws attention to the impact that a designer’s work and attitude has on others within the professional community, proposing that a designer should value impact over form or aesthetics.

Deepening Monteiro’s code of ethics are the principles of the Design Justice Network (2022). Introducing these, Costanza-Chock (2020, 6–7) notes the role that design plays in mediating ‘our realities’, society, and planet – particularly highlighting the ways in which those who are most impacted by designs are so often excluded from the design process. The case is made for collaborative design with communities to re-centre people who have historically been marginalised from the process. Like Monteiro’s ‘impact over form’, the principles outlined by the Design Justice Network implore designers to prioritise ‘impact on the community over the intentions of the designer’. By decentring the designer in this way, the design justice principles elevate the ability of design to ‘sustain, heal, and empower … to reconnect to earth and each other, and liberate from exploitative and oppressive systems’ (Design Justice Network 2022). Echoing Woolcott, Keast, and Pickernell’s (2020) impact with attention to process over product, the principles view ‘change’, or impact as arising from an ‘accountable, accessible, and collaborative process’ and not only the ‘point at the end of a process’ (Costanza-Chock 2020, 7). The design justice principles are careful to distinguish from concepts of ‘design for social impact, or ‘design for good’, noting that whilst they are well-intentioned, may not necessarily be ‘driven by principles of justice … and can perpetuate the systems and structures that give rise to the need for design interventions in the first place’ (Design Justice Network 2022).

We note that in both the principles and ethics introduced above, there is a strong theme of designers working in partnership with communities, clients, and employers, and importantly, including all those being designed ‘for’ – who will be most impacted by the designs. This shift in focal point from designers as self- and product-focused to more empathetic and ethical collaborators, working with open and inclusive practices is a sentiment encapsulated by Abram, Milstein, and Castro-Sotomayor (2020) who make a case for a necessary shift from our ‘narcissistic’ tendencies to approaches showing restraint and ‘humility’ (9).

The overt shift in design narratives introduced above, and including criticism of modernity, capitalist ideas and ontological dualism, (where humans have been separated from nature), (Escobar 2012; Research Center for Material Culture 2020, 21.08), converge on notions of justice. Related to wider use of ‘impact’ in business and industry contexts, Soskis (2021, 2) notes how the term’s usage in ‘philanthrocapitalism’ masks any real conversations about justice and power, and ‘cannot be an agent of radical, transformative change’. Related to design specifically, whether social design justice (Costanza-Chock 2020) or environmental justice (Menton et al. 2020), the call is for more equitable, intersectional approaches – regenerative design, and relational ways of thinking and doing that mirror messages to move beyond anthropocentric foci (Misiaszek and Rodrigues 2023) towards ‘more-than-human futures’ (Abram 1996). This notion of ‘design for sustainability’, is one where design is for both human and planetary health (Wahl 2016). Embodied within this too, lies the critical work to be done in countering hegemonic western, colonial-led design pedagogies and practices (Mareis and Paim 2021), and ways of working to elevate voices that have long been ‘othered’. A relational designer must practice ‘in relation with the structural, geographical, cultural, ethical, political and custodial dimensions’ (Grocott 2022, 244).

It is specifically through the educational and design contexts described above that draw together ‘impact’ as a construct with JBES and design justice and ethics, that we move to interrogate the ways in which students’ understandings of ‘impact’ in our labs might reflect such sentiments.

Introducing the case site and research approach

The design ‘Impact labs’

In 2019, four new transdisciplinary ‘Impact Lab’ units were introduced across a reimagined Bachelor of Design degree at QUT, Australia (Meth, Thomson, and Brough 2021). As a scaffolded suite of units spanning the three-year QUT design course, students from seven design disciplines (architecture, fashion, industrial design, interaction design, interior architecture, landscape architecture, visual communication) undertake labs one to four, titled ‘Place’, ‘People’, ‘Planet’ and ‘Purpose’ through a combination of lectures, studios, workshops, and design intensives.

In contrast to discipline-specific skills units, the overall pedagogic aims of the labs are to draw together for students, their knowledge, skills, and mindsets for a deeper understanding of themselves and their design practice, including beyond their own disciplinary and personal contexts. These are the fields of ‘knowing’, ‘acting’ and ‘being’ (Barnett and Coate 2005, 70) so often seen in isolation or imbalanced in education. This holistic approach is a key benefit of transdisciplinary learning spaces, offering opportunities for the diverse student cohort to undertake design challenges as wicked problems and ‘socially relevant issues’ (McGregor 2017, 7). The model ensures that these are introduced early in students’ first year of study, each lab serving as a learning scaffold to the lab following. In this way, behaviours and practice become ‘habits of mind’ (McGregor 2017, 12) across the degree, sustaining spaces for design that are more than ‘disciplinary’. Blevis (2016) notes that transdisciplinarity in design often relates more closely to notions of ‘transcendence’ than ‘discipline’, where considerations of the design relate also to a designers’ positionality, values and actions, and in this way, the labs are seen as ideal for harnessing such transformative learning approaches (Mezirow 2000).

The labs make conversations on unjust and unsustainable practice explicit, to move beyond shallow engagement (Boehnert 2018). Concepts of privilege, the influence of the designer’s own perspective, place-based consciousness and practice that consider more-than-human needs (Abram 1996) and regenerative design processes (Wahl 2016), are explored from the outset in Impact Lab 1: ‘Place’. Intensive design workshops draw on these groundings, with design challenges, devised in partnership with community and industry, providing problem-based collaborative learning in authentic contexts; that is, experiential (Kolb and Kolb 2005) and situated (Lave and Wenger 1991). Nabi et al. (2017) made the connection between experiential constructivist pedagogies and deeper impacts on personal, social, economic, and environmental factors. So too are our aspirations for deeper connections in using such pedagogies across the labs.

Design tools and approaches employed include participatory methods, systems thinking, the Positionality Wheel (Noel 2021) and backcasting methods to define desirable futures. These are not dissimilar to the disruptive methods proposed in Young and Malone (2023) that seek to disrupt ‘default thinking’ and consider ‘speculative futures’. Brophy et al. (2023) offer a more in-depth exploration of the pedagogic techniques, tools and concepts used to foster a socially responsive design education. This pedagogic ‘package’ of content, tools, and learning approaches enables the exploration of sustainability concepts alongside design methods that facilitate student designers’ iterative thinking and doing (as tangible design outputs or concepts) (Meth et al. 2022). Threaded through this too, are principles central to design ethics and design justice introduced above (Monteiro 2019; Costanza-Chock 2020).

Research approach

Since 2019, a course-wide longitudinal action research study has explored aspects of the new course, including design portfolios, design visualisation skills development and design tools for transformative learning. This critical qualitative research method offers the opportunity to simultaneously generate ‘robust actionable knowledge’ and effect change in practice (Casey and Coghlan 2021, 68), as an ongoing and iterative process. Also serving as a means of systematic course evaluation, data have been collected via institutional surveys, themed surveys, student focus groups, and staff reflections. Over this time, there has been a strong emphasis on the new suite of Impact Lab units given their pedagogic complexity and aims introduced above.

This paper relates specifically to results from a student survey focusing on the Impact Lab units only (run annually, 2020-2022). Knowing our aspirations for the labs (articulated above), which have become more apparent with each iteration, students’ voices were considered vital as a highly effective ‘mirror’ of the reality of experiencing the labs, their learning experiences, and their development as designers. While the survey captured a breadth of views in open or free text format related to students’ learning experiences, career aspirations and development as designers, this paper draws on one specific data set, that of students’ open text responses to the survey question:

Please describe what you understand by the term ‘Impact’ as related to the Impact Labs and any ways in which you see evidence of this.

A total of 235 open text responses to the specific question were received (out of 393 survey responses in the data corpus). Initial coding and thematic clustering was undertaken in NVivo ^TM, with further analysis and development of themes as iterative (Mason 2018, 203), and informed interpretively by a critical reading in the research literature of concepts such as ‘design justice’ and ‘impact’ explored above. Questions for consideration during our analysis included:

1. How are students interpreting the term ‘impact’ as it relates to their studies in the impact lab units?

2. Do we see any similarities in the research literature to the frames embodied within such interpretations, for example, considering where and how impact is deemed to occur, on what or whom, and by what intentions, processes, or mechanisms?

3. Linked to (2), and our aspirations for embedding design justice and JBES in students’ design practices, do we see evidence in students’ interpretations that the Impact Lab units move students beyond the frames of ‘design for good’ to consider design as more than ‘good intentions’, also recognising designers’ roles in reproducing existing inequalities as urged by Costanza-Chock (2020, 6)?

Results presented below reflect the steps of thematic analysis, where initial early-stage codes relate to more explicit or semantic content of students’ responses, with the analytic process gradually progressing towards identifying latent themes through connection to the research literature and interpreting the ‘underlying assumptions and conceptualisations’ that may have shaped the responses (Braun and Clarke 2006, 84).

Results: students’ interpretations of ‘impact’ and the complexities revealed

First stage coding in NVivo^TM clustered extracts into themes including:

• where impact is defined ‘as’ something

• how students are impacted in general, as future designers and in workplaces

• how impact is ‘on’ various aspects, including the world and future world, environments/ecosystems, communities and society, and specific design outcomes

• impact as it relates to students’ learning.

While these initial codes are useful, a deeper thematic analysis, clustering and interpretation of the codes was aided through our understandings of the context for both ‘impact’ and ‘design’ introduced through the research literature above. The following section is thus organised through overarching themes emerging from analysis (and incorporating earlier codes), linking back to the research questions posed.

Impact as a complex, multifaceted and multidirectional concept

The overriding message from analysis of students’ responses is the breadth of interpretations and the complexity embodied within ‘impact’ as a term or concept. Table 1 details those instances where students have described impact ‘as’ something, and interpreting these responses more deeply, it is notable that, in relation to JBES and underpinning design justice aims of the labs, students are recognising that change is not always necessarily for good, and sometimes felt indirectly or at a later stage after the design action has taken place. Notable too, are some students’ recognitions that ‘understanding’ of impact is an important aspect.

Table 1. Summary keywords and phrases interpreting the term ‘impact’ as something.

Affect in positive and negative ways; change for the better; creating meaningful change; designing for good; direct and indirect; effect; influence; making a difference; modify; not always foreseeable; positive changes; something changing as a result of an action; the flow on effect that each decision and action has; the permeation of design in culture; to make a mark … the mark is to change; understanding

Source: Extracts from students’ survey responses within the code ‘defining impact as something’

Table 2 collates key words from students’ responses where students interpret impacts as being both multidirectional and multifaceted, in most instances, specified as impact ‘on’ something. This reflects the dictionary note that when defining impact as an intransitive verb, ‘to have an impact’ is ‘often used with on’ (Merriam-Webster 2023). The word ‘growth’ is often used by students, in terms of impact being ‘on’ their personal growth and growth as emerging design professionals. For example, one student noted: ‘the impact it has on both our knowledge and understanding, but also the impact our design outcome would have on society and the environment’ and another, ‘what this term means in a professional context and also what this means to me personally. Growth in both aspects are [sic] essential’. Results in Table 2 are clustered according to these two aspects.

Table 2. Summary keywords and phrases describing impact ‘on’ something, clustered by initial codes and aggregated into broader themes of design students’ personal (left) and professional (right) aspects.

PERSONAL – in relation to the student	PROFESSIONAL – in relation to students’ designs and future practice
GENERAL – actions; changed perspective; designs; empathy for user groups; ethical considerations about our work; knowledge and understanding; learning; one’s personal growth; work; strengths and weaknesses; mindset and thinking	BROAD PRACTICE – anything; concepts; current issues; the design; the design thinking; design process and outcomes; different elements; everything; the future; ideas; projects; themes; things; topics; working with other disciplines; workplaces and relationships; the application of design
RELATED TO WORK – behaviours and mindsets as a designer in the real world; connecting students with the workforce and reality that surrounds their discipline; growth as a designer; how we see the world as designers; my place as a designer in a broader field; shape us as designers as a whole; transition to the real-world working environment; using learned and applied knowledge to actually get you into the field/industry; your future as a designer;	SPECIFIC ASPECTS – animals; building; community/ies; connection to place; culture; each other; environment; flaws of society; inequality; its users; lifestyles; lives of people; nature; natural and built environment; place/s; planet; real-world; poverty; product; sense of belonging; spaces and places; stakeholders; system; the client, their surroundings and status; the world; website; your industry

Source: Extracts from students’ survey responses across codes and sub-codes where impact has defined as being ‘on’ something.

The two columns also reflect our pedagogic intent of ensuring students develop notions of ‘being’ in addition to ‘knowing’ and ‘acting’ (Barnett and Coate 2005, 70), and mimic to some extent the concepts of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ sustainability proposed by Gibbons (2020) as necessary conditions to shift notions of development from ‘sustainable’ towards ‘regenerative’ and forming a critical foundation for designers’ ethics and beliefs. Those aspects of personal growth noted by students that serve to develop ‘being’ and ‘inner’ sustainability constructs are seen in the left-hand column.

Students’ interpretations in the main reflected holistic appreciations of the potential consequences of their designs and connectivity to wider systems. One student described impact as ‘the flow on effect that each step of the design process will have on the world and society around us’ another, ‘real-life consequences of design decisions and application’, and another, ‘deeper implications of design’. Reflecting the multidirectional effects designs might have, as well as the fact that designs and their impacts live on beyond their production, one student’s response interpreted impact as the: ‘effect design has on the surrounding environment both past, present, and future as well as negative and positive effects’. In one instance, a student has overtly noted how ‘careful consideration’ should be given to potential consequences:

The term ‘impact’ is the result that comes from a particular action or decision from the past of present but can also be a controlled action that occurs after careful consideration of the future implications it may hold.

Across students’ responses, there was overt recognition of the ‘interconnectedness’ of multiple elements within a complex system, for example ‘to think about impact in broader, linked up terms’. In part, this may also reflect their understandings of the transdisciplinary aims of the labs, and our educational intent in using such approaches to explore complex global issues. Views reflecting the need to move from traditional western/colonial-derived design approaches and also depart from anthropocentricism towards more-than-human needs, included for example:

I especially understand the connection between human and non-human and in particular marginalised people (inclusive design)

and

done in many ways … understanding the client, knowing and showing empathy and recognising perspective.

This way of viewing the context in a more holistic and relational way, is also seen as coupled with the way in which foundational theories and learning activities in the labs engender students’ deeper understandings. One student noted:

I think a lot more about the broader picture now, and impact lab has helped me to identify aspects that I may not have considered, and to think more deeply in a theoretical sense

Designers’ agency and role in impactful practice

Another important concept discussed by students reflecting sentiments in design justice principles and ethics introduced earlier, is the students recognising their agency and role in the results of such impacts i.e. students having some sense of the influence they hold as designers, with one student noting ‘impact’ as the ‘influence you leave on places or people’, and another stating:

Impact, being the change we can effect and the individual contribution each of us will bring to the industry as a new generation of designers

Table 3 offers sample student quotes reflecting recognition of their own role as designers in effecting change, for people, ecosystems, the world, and concepts reflected in Table 2. Students’ ownership of these changes is seen through their use of pronouns (including personal and possessive) such as ‘we’, ‘our’, ‘my’ and ‘us’.

Table 3. Summary of quotes interpreted to reflect a theme of student designers’ recognitions of individual agency and the influence of their design practice.

STUDENTS RECOGNISING AGENCY & INFLUENCE THROUGH:

A way our designed outcomes can increase the quality of life for people and our ecosystem Be mindful of the impact that our designs have on the world around us Consideration of my impact through my design choices on the environment, the people that my designs will affect both directly and indirectly Deliberate creation of anything Finding ways we, as a designer can ‘impact’ on the world through our carefully thought design solutions How us as young designers can make a difference How we as designers can create change or take action Influence and changing global and individual perspectives Our … choices/projects; individual contributions; responsibility as designers Taking notice of the environment around you and focusing on how you can make a difference To be aware and critical of our work for wider benefits Understanding deeper implications of design You can choose to have positive impacts that change the way we live, interact, consume, for the better of people, place, planet

Source: Extracts from students’ survey responses across codes and sub-codes.

Another critical reading of students’ comments relates to how pedagogies used across the labs engender students’ practices in effecting changes described above. Words and terms within their comments, such as ‘understanding’, ‘recognising’, ‘careful thought’, ‘well-researched’, ‘considered’, ‘mindful’, ‘taking notice’ and ‘collaborate’ show the important techniques that might aid in justice-led design processes and practices. Students’ comments reflected an appreciation that this deeper thinking helped to clarify the fact that design is more than just about a creative process or product, one of the ‘impact over form’ principles central to Monteiro (2019) and the Design Justice Network (2022). One student noted:

Impact lab enhances critical thinking, beyond the creative aspects of design. It taught me to research and broaden my knowledge beyond design and recognise the influence it holds.

Another student endorses this point saying:

that design isn’t just for creative creation or consumption, it can be used as a tool for change, for a greater cause.

This comment shows the student's recognition of the need for design to move from its somewhat exploitative past. We recognise students’ consideration of issues of privilege, inclusion, relationality and thinking beyond the human, towards an ecosystems approach and wider planetary health. As key to their design processes, many students also mentioned the importance of working with the people who will be most impacted by the design, an important precursor to shift design towards relational and regenerative.

Market- and self-focused designer attitudes

However, a small number of students’ responses shine a light on counter-narratives, offering important windows into the tensions underlying this endeavour. It may be noted from Table 2, that some students’ responses tend towards more instrumental interpretations linked to their employability and workforce only. For example, one student has interpreted ‘impact’ as: ‘making an impact in projects and my own cv/branding’ and another:

impact refers to connecting students with the workforce and reality that surrounds their discipline. … the point of connection between the study environment and the work force landscape.

It would be inappropriate to infer from this that they do not see impact as most students above have described it – something that might only be gleaned from further research, for example, through interviews or focus groups. Nonetheless, it is essential to note that this interpretation came to mind for these students, rather than the more JBES narrative that impact labs intend to engender.

Summary of key messages from arising from thematic analysis

Overall, we see positive messages in the results regarding the pedagogic and curricular aims of the labs and some evidence that students are considering impact from perspectives of design justice and ethics as described earlier in this paper. Students seem to link the lab themes (place, people, planet, and purpose) conceptually, with some overtly recognising these as relational, and generally, students recognise the consequences and long-term potential effects of their designs. This is important and links to Monteiro’s strong caution: ‘We need to fear the consequences of our work more than we love the cleverness of our ideas’ (2019, 20).

Students recognise the role their worldviews play in impact and their own agency and influence (and therefore potential to have an impact). In general terms, they acknowledge and appear to grasp the importance of Monteiro’s ‘impact over form’ principle (2019) and the potential consequences of their designs. The necessary connectivity of systems, including human-planetary/natural (more-than-human) and holistic/relational approaches needed are also acknowledged.

There remain, however, elements of design justice (encompassing JBES) where we believe students’ understandings and practices are still relatively immature and fall short of design justice notions and our educational aspirations linked to JBES. Though we see some consideration of inclusive practices, connections to regenerative sustainability and development, encompassing co-design (as defined by Gibbons 2020), and notions of empowerment, liberation from injustices, and with respect to planet in general are still relatively absent.

While students acknowledge that the nature of the change or impact can be critical (as opposed to the design itself), their focus remains closer to ‘impact’ interpreted as being ‘on’ or towards one thing, either themselves, or a product or solution, where they are seen as the designer responsible for that change (by Abram, Milstein, and Castro-Sotomayor 2020 definitions, tending towards more narcissistic). Moreover, terms such as ‘focus’ or ‘target’ in relation to students’ design outputs tend to entrench this interpretation more deeply. Together, these messages reveal that students focus less on notions of ‘working with’, a key element to shift the often-uneven power dynamics in design. This shift is necessary for relational design practice, which reframes the designer as ‘co-actor’ and ‘responsive’ (Thorpe and Gamman 2011, 219) and grounded in the ‘situated knowledges’ of the community (Grocott 2022, 244) rather than as manager or leader.

While the findings above serve to answer the three analytical questions posed, the discussion following seeks to explore the significance of these and some underlying reasons for these results.

Discussion

Can we escape the loaded interpretation of ‘impact’ in everyday language?

Recognising students’ interpretations predominantly being as impact ‘on’ something, we can draw similarities to the dictionary definition of ‘impact’ (Merriam-Webster 2023) where additional to the action being predominantly directed at one thing, also embodied withing this language are notions of force and power. Adding weight to our central argument for critique of the term ‘impact’, one student has interpreted it as ‘some word chosen to sound impressive’ (Morrish and Sauntson 2020, 124) have noted the dramatic rise in ‘positive’ words in the academic discourse due to institutional urges to ‘appear outstanding’. For the teaching team, seeing students who believe us to be guilty of such usage, further reinforces the need to undertake this research.

As educators, we are duty-bound to consider whether by naming the labs as such, we are inadvertently entrenching a more narcissistic and self-referential angle of interpretation, limiting students’ understanding and practice as grounded in ‘a relational environmental ethic’ (Young and Malone 2023, 1077), as well aspotentially restricting a move towards notions of humility, working ‘with’ for community empowerment and emancipation – a more genuinely justice-led design.

We are not there yet: education seeking a critical way forward

The marketised, neoliberal pull remains dominant in contemporary HE, including professional design education. Many curricula remain uncritically founded on knowledge that is still predominantly western, European and colonial-led. In their analysis of constraints against JBES, Ajaps (2023) highlights the presence of such contradictions in HE, noting the many ways they inhibit holistic pedagogic approaches. We, too, acknowledge this as a problem and through our new curriculum that includes the Impact Labs, have sought to introduce critical design pedagogies that counter this, for example, through regenerative design principles, co-design practices and First Nations’ perspectives and partnerships. Integrating place-based Southern knowledges and Indigenous perspectives into courses to oppose hegemonic industrial growth-focused solutions and address epistemic inequity is key to developing pedagogies for JBES (Ajaps 2023; Jimenez and Kabachnik 2023). From the outset, we have sought to engage community and industry partners seeking to solve challenges that relate closely to issues of JBES, for example homelessness, inequality, mental health, and poverty. Through this process of critical action research, we too seek to critique our practice and iterate (as designers) and accordingly adjust our curriculum and pedagogies so that they might tend more closely towards notions of ‘ecopedagogical praxis’ (Misiaszek 2020, 621) in constant critique of the ideological context within which we live and work.

We are not there yet: design in practice and a ‘real world’ education seeking to emulate this

Initiatives and educational collectives like the Design Justice Network (2022), overtly seeking to define codes or principles of practice for design, are part of an emerging discourse where life, politics, and design, are imagined in more ‘radical, relational’ ways, including attempts to counter anthropocentrism. Escobar says this way of thinking is fundamental for ‘resisting the onslaught of development and neoliberal globalisation … so that we exist all within the earth as a living system’ (Research Center for Material Culture 2020, 21.08). In a similar way, Espinet and Llerena (2023) notes new epistemologies possible in teaching the environmental sciences, through the opening of spaces for diversity and plurality, and Lin et al. (2023) offers contemplative pedagogic approaches that aid in drawing learners away from anthropocentric worldviews to ‘normalise the interconnection of human beings with nature in creative ways’. Jimenez and Kabachnik (2023) further note how ‘Indigenous sustainabilities’ offer exemplars in relational and diverse ways of knowing oneself, working with others while also sustaining a close relationship to place.

The context-setting at the opening of our paper makes clear that despite design’s ‘transformative nature’ (Escobar 2012), many industries and businesses encompassing design processes and products remain driven by market forces and profit, often to the detriment of genuine ethical practice rooted in justice-based sustainability principles. For many design-led business innovation practices, ‘agility’, ‘sprints’ and ‘rapid’ prototyping are the order of the day. In striving to mirror this ‘real world’, our ‘intensive’ labs model similar principles. This is at odds with justice-based narratives where time, pace, and linearity are important touchstones. Here, there is a need to spend more time in process, with less focus on the ‘product’, and more space to deeply explore context and concepts, and connect effectively with all stakeholders, voices and contexts, also appreciating the impacts of our actions long into the future (Long Now Foundation 2022; Fry 2009). Are we missing these opportunities for ‘deep impact’ as Woolcott, Keast, and Pickernell (2020) outlined? Arguably, we are limiting the depth to which students might explore such concepts.

Furthermore, we acknowledge that due to the large size of our classes, much of students’ work with partners can never truly be ‘with’ the communities for whom they are designing at all. Again, are we inadvertently glossing over this fundamental expectation of design justice? Thorpe and Gamman (2011) recognise that it is not always possible for designers to work directly with communities, and that additional to designers recognising their own agency and actions, there should be a recognition of meaningful agency being attributed to those communities. This is key to true co-design and moving away from ‘paternalistic’ approaches (220).

In some senses, the theme of ‘pedagogical inconsistency’ plays out as a possible constraint for our work in the labs (Ajaps 2023), though we believe that most of the pedagogies and tools employed, and supported by our findings, do help to meet the sustainability education objectives noted by Ajaps (2023). To fully offer a holistic and unconstrained path forward for JBES in design education that is truly transformative, should we ultimately be considering models of ‘subversive’ unlearning (Tlostanova 2021), ‘unschools’ in disruptive design (see unschools.co) and ‘undesign’ sentiments (Coombs, McNamara, and Sade 2018, 3) that attempt to free learning from the constraints identified in both our study, and more systematically by Ajaps (2023).

Confronting our role as educators in constructing the narrative

As critical action researchers, we must also consider our role in influencing students’ constructions of their interpretations. Additional to the points above, we are conscious that student sentiments may also reflect the language and framing of a large teaching team (8 academics and as many as 50 different tutors over this period), each with their own discourses and value systems. Curricular materials across the labs are also observed as often focusing on individual actions, employing phrases such as ‘impact on’. We recognise aspects that work well, but start to recognise also, that the way we have constructed some lab elements, is antithetical to the slow, considered, and collaborative approaches needed for a design process grounded in justice-based approaches. This is set up from the outset through the very naming of them as ‘Impact Labs’. We consider, therefore, with the aid of the analysis this paper offers, whether we are inadvertently stifling development of the very thing we are aiming for? Such is the complexity embodied within our curricular intent.

Conclusion

Our study offers a critical reading of the term ‘impact’ – a term intricately linked through the global sustainability agenda to ‘development’, a term explored by Misiaszek (2020) in relation to ecopedagogy and more recently by Misiaszek and Rodrigues (2022). Results reveal a complexity embodied within the term ‘impact’, and the ways in which we use the term to connect sustainability and justice to design in our educational setting. We note how, despite theoretically strong groundings and the intentions of course leaders, students’ understandings of the challenges within the sustainability agenda, and their interpretations of impact itself, remain diverse and bound by the limitations of novice perspectives. We acknowledge that ‘impact’ as a term – and as applied by us in the context of design education – is, at least to some degree, in conflict with what we are aiming to deliver. We note the causality of using such a term, seen woven within our pedagogy and curriculum, but also externally driven by ‘impact’ as it appears in wider HE, design and industry discourses. Therefore, as also observed in HE and sustainability discourses, we conclude that it is just as problematically applied as its close cousins, ‘development’, ‘innovation’, and ‘progress’ that have been shown to often embody narrow and disconnected practices, fuelled by marketised agendas. If such a term is to be used, we further contend that as argued by Misiaszek and Rodrigues for development (2022, 3), consideration of ‘impact’ must always be grounded in JBES.

This paper focused on students’ interpretations of ‘impact’, and as action research, the knowledge gained is context specific. Beyond the ‘action’ we might now take to address findings in our course, the study holds valuable messages for use of the term across design, HE and industry sectors seeking to quantify and consider their outcomes more critically. While the sectors in which the term is used vary widely, the considerations become contextually comparative by virtue of sharing similar groundings for the usage of the term in the UN SDGs. This allows for similar critical conversations in these other contexts but with different stakeholders and communities. Results endorse definitions by others on the multifaceted/directional nature of impact in teaching and research, immediately offering caution to those attempting to measure it. Findings could be tested by further detailed research with students on their evolving worldviews across three years of the labs and with academics and designers on their broader interpretations and practice concerning impact.

Ethics statement

Ethical approval (including participant information and consent processes) to undertake data collection through surveys for this research was gained from the QUT Human Research Ethics Committee – Reference Number 1900000236.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the critical work of our external, community-based partners and our dedicated team of colleagues. Their involvement and contribution are essential to delivering and developing this approach to design education and practice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).