ABSTRACT
The complexity of humanitarian relief and the inability of the system to fill the needs of suffering populations requires us to pull out of our toolboxes everything we know about designing for challenged infrastructure and development contexts; yet to design for the humanitarian emergency setting requires a mind-set and a deep understanding also of the holistic system at play. There is not ‘one problem’ to solve or any simple means of doing so. This chapter describes the complexity of humanitarian relief and design’s role in it. Both as a practice in the traditional sense, and on a more analytical level, design has untapped potential when it comes to improving and transform humanitarian action. Designers working in development contexts have broad experience with resilience focused projects. By including local partners and spending time understanding local service-systems and customs, but also envisioning whole-system bridges, designers have the possibility to bridge the short-term focused efforts of humanitarian actors with longer-term resilience factors in context. However, as designers, the authors argue that the value of design lies in the onboarding designers as humanitarians, and not solely as project consultants. If at all, the minimalization of design practice through simplistic toolkits is harmful and inefficient use of resources in humanitarian aid.
