Highlighting Digital Designer William Chaumeton

Be brave and stick your neck out, people appreciate it and you’d be amazed how many opportunities or secret innovation hubs companies have started to set up. The hunger for change is out there, just go and find it!

William Chaumeton is a Senior Digital Designer, part of a climate hive at EGGS Design, a digital design and innovation agency based in Oslo, Norway. He has been working in design for over half a decade in a variety of disciplines from product and packaging, strategy and graphics and in more recent years, UX/UI, with a focus on complexity.

What has motivated you to proactively take climate action at the place you work?

My final year master’s degree project was a bin designed to compact recyclable waste into bales. The idea was to make the process easy and fun to encourage students to take a more active role in recycling. Since researching the problem for that project, it has become a more prominent concern in my mind. In the last few years, with the global attitudes towards climate shifting, I have taken a more active interest in involving it in my work. This has been consolidated by moving to a country that takes a very active role in encouraging recycling and low emission behavior. EGGS also takes an interest so it was easy to get motivated.

How did you start? What things did you do in your effort?

I started by understanding what EGGS does. Turns out, a lot: reducing air miles, recycling and sorting waste, and looking for projects in sustainability. We were also encouraged to use the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals to try and transform our world. We used these and our own internal tools to inject the discussion into our projects. I also made it an active priority to try and include these discussions and considerations into our work and focus on finding projects and companies that are interested in making a difference. I also encouraged people to go to the gym, walk and cycle to work but most people already did that and the coronavirus situation made people realize that public transport isn’t always necessary to get to work.

How did your company and office react?

Very well. Like I said, EGGS does things right. They made it an active part of the discussion from the get-go and are always open to new ideas and supporting people that make sustainability a focus.

What were the outcomes? Were there any changes?

We’ve reduced the air miles used by the company, choosing to only do company trips domestically. We’ve made our recycling policy clearer. We’ve found a number of clients willing to take on the challenge of sustainability and made it a goal for the next few years. EGGS has always focused on making the future a lovable place, so sustainability and EGGS design go hand in hand.

What worked best?

Internal discussion on these topics is invaluable. Once we were all educated, we were able to go out and use what we knew to convince clients of the importance of these considerations.

What did not work so well?

Encouraging further change can be hard. In Norway, people already make a lot of effort when it comes to the environment. There’s a good community and discussion here so finding a place to create meaningful impact can be difficult when people are already trying things.

When it comes to project work, adding a sustainability angle to already tightly constrained and technically challenging products and services can be a big ask. Ive found the best way to include it is by building trust and then slowly making it a part of the discussion from a position of respect.

What is your advice to someone starting out?

Focus on finding clients that have an active interest in engaging with sustainability. These days people pay more attention than ever to a company’s ethics, products and impact on the planet. In most cases, many large companies are already well aware and making efforts to improve things themselves. Figure out who would benefit from support and design processes and go after them! Be brave and stick your neck out, people appreciate it and you’d be amazed how many opportunities or secret innovation hubs companies have started to set up. The hunger for change is out there, just go and find it!

What would you like to see happen in the coming years- what is your wish list for climate action?

I hope that we will be able to share more of our learnings cross-company. Many agencies working in design and design processes know how to gain a fundamental understanding of the way their clients work, think and feel as well as appropriate ways to challenge not just business but also culture. This in turn affects change and even after leaving a client, you can see the lasting impact of the processes and learnings they have gathered from design.

I also hope we can harness more research and insight from youth interested in sustainability and the environment. There are so many people out there hungry to work on this stuff, I hope it gets more funding and support globally. The time is now to make a difference, and we as designers have the knowledge and responsibility to empower those we work with to change the way the work, and in turn change the world.

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William Chaumeton can be found at LinkedIn.

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This article was first published on the Hive Initiative Medium account.