In broad terms, transformation design is a human-centered, interdisciplinary process that seeks to create desirable and sustainable changes in behavior and form – of individuals, systems and organizations.
They then prototype small-scale systems – composed of objects, services, interactions and experiences – that support people and organizations in achievement of a desired change.
Though academics have written about the economic value of and need for transformations over the years7,8, its practice first emerged in 2004 when The Design Council, the UK's national strategic body for design, formed RED: a self-proclaimed "do-tank" challenged to bring design thinking to the transformation of public services.1 This move was in response to Prime Minister Tony Blair's desire to have public services "redesigned around the needs of the user, the patients, the passenger, the victim of crime".3 The RED team, led by Hilary Cottam, studied these big, complex problems to determine how design thinking and design techniques could help government rethink the systems and structures within public services and possibly redesign them from beginning to end.3 Between 2004 and 2006, the RED team, in collaboration with many other people and groups, developed techniques, processes and outputs that were able to "transform" social issues such as preventing illness, managing chronic illnesses, senior citizen care, rural transportation, energy conservation, re-offending prisoners and public education.
People such as, but not limited to, policy makers, sector analysts, psychologists, economists, private businesses, government departments and agencies, front-line workers and academics are invited to participate in the entire design process - from problem definition to solution development.6 With so many points-of-view brought into the process, transformation designers are not always 'designers.'
Though varying methods of participation and co-creation, these moderating designers create hands-on, collaborative workshops (a.k.a.