10 Principles for Designing Platforms with Purpose

Fires, floods and pandemics. Economic and political turmoil, and surging civil unrest. The early decades of the 21st century are characterised by global social, economic, and ecological problems, and it is evident that we require global-scale solutions. But how do we design them without replicating the pitfalls of the past?

Digital technology has been a boon for the social impact sector, enabling the creation of more accessible online tools, services and education in the communities most impacted by wicked problems like climate change, or access to clean water and sanitation. At the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic, across the world we saw the rise of local and regional mutual aid networks coordinating the flow of resources more effectively and equitably to their communities, largely using tools like Whatsapp and Facebook, Slack, and Google Sheets. A year later, many of these networks, projects, and programs have quietly disappeared. And it’s not the first time.

While innovations in product development have caught up to the social impact sector, many of these new platforms are being informed by the same design logic that has also defined the creation of many of the of the most popular, and also most extractive technology companies of our time. Methodologies like Human Centered Design, while focused on creating a design process of deep listening and empathy, also puts the focus on the user or consumer achieving their individual goal, rather than acknowledging them as active participants in the achievement of a much larger global goal.

As a result, the social change industry has inadvertently proliferated a variety of “technologies for good” that often exacerbate the social challenges they seek to address, by extracting valuable information from communities, and trapping this value in silos in an ever-growing collection of proprietary platforms — such as the 155+ impact investing platforms at last count.

Design without principles produces unprincipled design.

Design without principles produces unprincipled design. Building products and platforms with purpose requires a new way of thinking of product design, one that recognises the sovereignty of the individual, their data, and that maximises opportunities for collaboration, cooperation, and coordination across a broad ecosystem of aligned organisations and initiatives.

In our work with a number of social change initiatives over the past fifteen years building technology for impact has informed a set of design principles intended to help collectively shape the emergence of a more open, democratic, and distributed digital ecosystem that more effectively and equitably mobilizes capital, innovation, and people at the scale and speed necessary to address the wicked problems of our time.

Thrivable

Solving humanity’s greatest challenges is the work of generations, and requires more than status quo sustainability — it requires (re)building better. Technical, financial and legal systems must align with regenerative, living systems, and be geared towards all forms of value flows.

A term coined by author and culture hacker Jean Russell, thrivable replaced the previous design principle of “investable”. While one of the things we’re focused on is how to move trillions of dollars into solutioning, the systems that support this flow don’t themselves necessarily need to be investable. Focusing upon thrivability radically shifts our core orientation to one of continuous improvement and growth.

Humanity-Centered

Focusing on what’s best for individuals does not result in better social outcomes, as history has shown. Focusing on what’s best for humanity, however, provides an opportunity to serve everyone equally, transcending cultural, organisational, and political boundaries.

First defined as “citizen-centred”, we updated this principle to reflect the need for solutions to be of benefit to humanity as a whole, not solely the individual. Shifting this point of focus is particularly important within societies that are prone to elevating individual rights above collective ones.

Equitable

It’s time that we re-engineer our economic, social, and cultural systems for justice. Equitable systems rectify historic injustices, shift power, create opportunities for all, ensure that all value created is appropriately compensated, and provide stakeholders with participatory governance.

Cooperative

Commitments to collaboration alone aren’t enough to solve our most immediate systemic challenges. We need to go further, faster, together. Truly cooperative systems are designed for mutual benefit, and as such must permit us to work together across organisational and operational silos.

Adaptive

Planet-sized problems are complex adaptive systems that will not be solved in a single iteration, or by silver bullet solutions. We must be willing and able to respond to environmental and market feedback, and rapidly adapt and adopt new information and approaches.

First defined as ‘agile’ we had concerns about confusing an agile development approach with the broader requirement to be able to rapidly adapt to an ever-changing landscape.

Distributed

Distributing data means distributing power; breaking the stranglehold big tech and governments have over what is done with our information. Systems must acknowledge that equity cannot be achieved without ownership and control. Digital sovereignty is an inalienable right of all humans.

Modular

The greatest challenges of the 21st century cannot be solved by heropreneurs. Solutions must be modular, incorporating inputs and outputs from multiple sources and stakeholders, depending on context and availability, ensuring the reliability of the system as a whole.

Robust

Much ‘tech for good’ fails in environments that lack reliable access to power, telecommunications, and modern computing equipment. Robust systems must function regardless of these constraints, and be capable of withstanding enormous stress.

First defined as ‘scalable’, we recognised that the ability for a system of this nature to be able to scale in any direction was an indicator of the robustness of that system.

Ubiquitous

Modern tool sets are often imperfect combinations of web and native applications bound together by hacks and human interventions. Systems must be consistently available, and should permit interaction with any part of the system from any other part without tool-switching.

Originally defined as ‘persistent’ we knew that what mattered more than the system being always ‘on’, was that it was always accessible, by anyone, anywhere, even if in a scaled back form.

Measureable

We currently value what we measure, rather than measure what we value. Systems must be designed to value outcomes over outputs, as well as all forms of value — particularly in areas lacking effective metrics — to support better sense-making, decision-making and capital flow.

These principles are intended to evolve to meet the moment, and have already gone through several iterations. Originally released in 2018 as part of a framework for tackling complex adaptive problems, we’ve recently revised and resequenced these principles — expanding upon their definitions, altering some, and replacing others altogether. We hope that they prove useful to those engaged in building social impact products and platforms, or similar endeavors.

If you’re interested in learning more about the principles, join us in a series of virtual events where we explore each of them in depth, starting September 9 with a discussion on Thrivability.

Thank you to Simone Hutsch for the cover photo (via NounProject)