Designing for Resilience: Spring 2021

More and more, organizations rely on designers to help create more resilient organizations that can adapt to changing circumstances. The Designing for Resilience project challenged xd’ers to design resilience into an existing organization. Students researched and selected organizations that may be vulnerable when contextual factors changed. Students then developed outcomes that would enable their organization to remain resilient as the situation surrounding them changed. During the process, the course instructor threw a “wrench” into each project—a circumstance specific to their selected organization that tested its resilience.

Products, services, and systems that cannot adapt and respond to changes will crumble and fail. These failures can have a high human and material cost. If we can design for resilience, we can help our stakeholders reduce or even avoid these damaging consequences.