Design skills for environmental risk communication. Design in and design of an interdisciplinary workshop

Effective environmental risk management and risk reduction requires an inherently interdisciplinary and cross-sector approach to communication design. The challenging global impact of this area can only be addressed by increasing skills capacity in communication design across disciplines, a challenge which itself requires the design and delivery of new expert training. This paper reports on the design of and findings from an interdisciplinary, problem-based workshop to build risk communication skills, held at the World Bank’s Understanding Risk 2018 conference, Mexico City. The workshop combined high competence interdisciplinary participants (including designers) with detailed real-world scenarios in a 24-hour ‘pressure cooker’ working environment, designed by a team of interdisciplinary young professionals. The results show engagement from participants across the disciplines involved, who produced outcomes with a community education and user-centred focus. The workshop highlighted that more direct, critical, engagement from the design community is needed in educating about, and delivering, environmental risk communication.

The Design Journal: An International Journal for All Aspects of Design,
Volume 22, 2019 - Issue sup1: Running with Scissors: 13th International Conference of the European Academy of Design, Dundee, 10-12th April, 2019, edited by Louise Valentine, Joanna Bletcher and Leon Cruickshank