DesignShifters: Archetypes for a better future.
New design roles responses for a shifting world.

For decades, designers have been defined by the output of their work. Pixel-perfect interfaces, innovative user flows, and striking visual systems have shaped both our education and our professional recognition. We have been categorized as interaction designers, fashion designers, communication designers, and more.

These roles have served us well. They helped shape industries, create access, and bring beauty and clarity into people’s lives.

Yet as we find ourselves in the middle of climate collapse, inequality, democratic erosion, and a mental health crisis, these roles now feel narrow, and in many cases, even complicit in fueling the very problems we claim to solve.

About the workshop

As we navigate an era of shifting economies, climate collapse, and AI technologies, designers face an essential question: what is our ~~role~~ response in a world already full of things? How can we continue to create within the constraints of our current systems while imagining and shaping something fundamentally different?

Together with Design Futures Aotearoa, we’ll explore how designers can shift their current role in order to meet the moment we’re in and create the change we want to see.

Join us to:

Reflect on the roles we currently hold
Discover 10 new archetypes as responses to the current reality and a post-consumption future
Discuss how we can incorporate these responses into our daily work and future vision.

As we imagine how designers can stop adding more things and start creating lasting change, we are also imagining a new world that fosters regeneration, healing, and resilience for people, communities, and the planet.

This session is hosted by Design Futures Aotearoa in collaboration with Ida Persson — founder of DesignShifts — a critical design lab, community, and learning platform advancing non-extractive design methods for systemic transition.

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About Ida Persson

Ida Persson is an independent systems designer, creative strategist, and design leader born in Sweden and based in Munich. She works globally across social innovation, regenerative futures, and social impact. A lot of her work comes to life through DesignShifts; a critical design lab, community, and learning platform advancing non-extractive design methods for systemic transition that she founded in 2024. The work is less about product and more about process; less about the individual and more about the collective.

Before going independent, Ida spent 15 years leading innovation projects internationally — most recently as Communications Design Lead at IDEO, where she led global initiatives in healthcare, DEI, leadership, and more. She also held creative leadership roles at Media Cause and Modo Modo Agency, driving strategy and creative direction across climate, education, healthcare, and social transformation.

Her practice is in service of human and planetary flourishing and draws on systems thinking, participatory design, speculative futures, and storytelling to bring an intersectional, interrelational approach to complex challenges.

About DesignShifts:

DesignShifts is a community, experimental lab, and learning platform where we research and practice non-extractive design methods for times of systemic transition.

We explore how to shift away from traditional design and capitalistic paradigms focused on efficiency, individual consumption, and product output. Instead, we invite designers, researchers, organizations, and communities to explore design as a force for healing, equity, and collective wellbeing.

Learn more at: https://www.designshifts.org/

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About Design Futures Aotearoa:

Creating spaces and relationships for futures thinkers across Aotearoa New Zealand to connect, collaborate, and be visible. We host a wide variety of speakers; thought leaders in the futures and foresight space, who share their insights into tools, methods and mindsets. We are here for groups and individuals interested in foresight & futures tools to explore possible futures for Aotearoa New Zealand.

Learn more at: https://www.designfutures.nz/

About WE-FORM:

A proud supporter and collaborator, WE-FORM blends over 20 years of experience design practice to inform, reimagine and innovate better futures for people, place and planet.

Learn more at: https://www.we-form.co/

Contact the host of DesignShifters: Archetypes for a better future

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