Let's Slow Down
Western design culture often prioritizes speed over depth—design sprints, efficiency metrics, rapid brainstorms, and so forth... That sense of urgency is inherited from capitalist and white supremacist systems, where moving fast is equated with progress.
But when we’re working toward social justice and systemic change, moving too fast can mean reproducing the very injustices we’re trying to disrupt.
- What if we resisted these time pressures altogether?
- And, what happens when we slow down and let things naturally emerge?
These are the questions I had been asking while revamping the former Design Changemaking Playbook (which has now evolved into the Grove: Foundations of Design Changemaking).
And through these questions—my willingness to slow down—I was unknowingly embodying what become one of our core Design Changemaking Principles: honoring emergence.
The fruits of honoring emergence
In early 2023, I set out to map different design approaches for change, bringing them together in what I called the Design for Social Change Ecosystem. Using Figma, I built a geometric system—nodes connected by solid and dotted lines. It felt efficient, familiar. I even structured an entire playbook and card deck around it.
But earlier this year, while playtesting the card deck, a liberatory practitioner pointed out something I hadn’t seen: the system felt fixed, closed-off. I had unknowingly replicated rigid boundaries—"closing doors" with straight lines and perfect shapes.
That moment forced me to pause and look deeper. Modern (i.e., Western) design tools—blueprints and journey maps,for instance—train us to cut complex, relational systems into neatly structured parts. But real-world change isn’t so neatly contained.
Over the course of two months (rather than the 2 weeks I had given myself), I decided to honor emergence instead. A new vision took shape: a wildflower field — where approaches flow, nourish each other, and evolve organically. This gave rise not only to a new visualization of the ecosystem but a new way of conceiving the ecosystem itself: as a living system.
This shift has unlocked new ways of understanding how social and environmental change interact. You can see the full ecosystem in our free Design Changemaking Portal and explore a deep dive with rich insights and case studies in The Grove: Foundations of Design Changemaking, a learning immersion.
Putting emergence into practice
I invite you to think about the concepts and solutions that you're designing through this lens. What are small ways that you can honor emergence in your design process? Where can you let go of the rigidity of timelines?
