Deep dive: Transition Design

Transition design provides a framework for navigating long-term systemic change, combining visioning, experimentation, and structural interventions. At 1508, we use it to help organizations move from today’s challenges toward futures that are more just, sustainable, and regenerative.

What do we mean by Transition Design?

Transition design is a design-led approach to systemic change. Where systems thinking helps us understand complexity, transition design helps us act on it – by creating pathways, coordinating interventions, and mobilizing stakeholders around shared visions of the future.

It’s less about analysis, and more about deliberate transformation: guiding organizations step by step toward preferred futures.

Why it matters

Most organizations are already trying to navigate complexity – but too often, efforts are fragmented, short-term, or focused on symptoms. Transition design matters because it provides a structured way of connecting today’s work with tomorrow’s aspirations.

• Complexity needs direction: Understanding a system is not enough – organizations need structured methods to shift it.
  

• From short-term to long-term: Transition design ensures that immediate actions are anchored in future visions, avoiding scattered initiatives.
  

• Beyond products and services: It looks at deeper layers of change, such as structures, policies, and cultural patterns.
  

• Shared transformation: It mobilizes diverse stakeholders so transitions are co-owned, legitimate, and durable.

Key Facts and Concepts

Transition design is still an emerging field, but it already rests on strong foundations:

• First proposed in 2012 and formalized in 2015 at Carnegie Mellon University.
  

• Builds on systems thinking, design for social innovation, and futures studies.
  

• We have created Foundation workshops that are a core method for mapping systems and creating shared visions.
  

• Operates across multiple levels: individual, organizational, cultural, and policy.
  

• Uses visioning and backcasting to connect preferred futures with present actions.

Principles of Transition Design

A few principles make transition design distinct:

1. Vision-led - defining preferred futures to guide today’s choices.
   

2. Systemic interventions - working beyond products to influence policies, institutions, and cultural patterns.
   

3. Multi-level change - acting across individual, organizational, and societal scales at the same time.
   

4. Iterative experimentation - using small-scale initiatives as prototypes for larger shifts.
   

5. Stakeholder mobilization - building coalitions across sectors to create momentum and legitimacy.

How we help organizations apply Transition Design

Transition design is both a discipline and a service. At 1508, we make it tangible by combining systemic methods with hands-on design.

• Foundation workshops: We facilitate collaborative sessions where systems are mapped, dynamics are analyzed, and shared visions of the future are developed.
  

• Pathway building: We design strategies that connect short-term initiatives with long-term systemic goals, creating direction without losing agility.
  

• Intervention design: We co-create initiatives that shift behaviors, cultures, and structures, not just surface-level outputs.
  

• Anchoring change: We help organizations embed transitions into governance, policies, and partnerships so they can endure beyond individual projects.
  

• Mobilizing networks: We bring stakeholders together across silos and sectors, ensuring systemic change is supported and sustained.
  

Our role is to make transition design actionable – so that it moves off the page and into the everyday practice of organizations.

Glossary

Anchoring
Embedding new practices or interventions into organizational structures so they last over time.

Foundation Workshop
A participatory method to map systems, identify dynamics, and co-create visions for transition.

Intervention
A targeted action designed not just to solve a problem, but to shift systemic patterns.

Multi-level Change
Acting at different scales – individual, organizational, cultural, and policy – to reinforce transitions.

Pathway
A strategic sequence of actions that connects today’s efforts to a long-term vision.

Transition Design
A design approach that guides long-term systemic change by linking visions, pathways, and interventions.

Visioning
The practice of creating a shared, desirable image of the future to guide decision-making and strategy.

Sources & further reading

• Carnegie Mellon University: Transition Design framework

• Irwin, T., Tonkinwise, C., Kossoff, G. (2015)

  Transition Design: An Educational Framework for Advancing the Design Profession toward a Sustainable Future

• Donella Meadows:

  Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

• 1508 Morgenboosters: Designing For Ecosystem Transitions

• 1508 Morgenboosters: Designing For Systems Change