Highlighting Service Designer Live Kvelland

When raising the [climate] question and discussing it, it was truly inspiring to see how many of our colleagues were passionate about this.

Live Kvelland is a service designer that is part of a climate hive at Making Waves, a digital design agency in Oslo, Norway.

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

The main motivation is that I want to use my skills as a designer to create positive impact and confront the biggest challenge of our time.

Many years ago, when I first mentioned to a friend that I wanted to study industrial design, he confronted me with “you’ll just contribute to consumerism”. But in my head I had this secret dream of designing windmills, as then I thought that would be what would save the world.

Soon after I discovered that design could be about changing systems and nudging behavior — not simply designing products. And the climate stayed as something I engaged in on the side of my studies: I was part of a working group in a youth organization where we lobbied for more ambitious climate politics. Until then, I had trusted the international work but after attending the Warsaw summit in 2015, I was very disappointed. The top-down approach seemed too inefficient to confront the crisis on its own. When all the worlds’ countries (all with completely different interests) have to agree on policies, they often turn out extremely vague and non-binding.

Since I started working, I have tried to figure out how to combine the passion for climate action with my job as a designer. The spring of 2019 with Greta Thunberg and the school strikes provided momentum for change. Climate went from something rather niche to a topic on everybody’s lips. From being looked upon as rather strange when choosing the train instead of the plane, suddenly flying became an activity for shame.

I read a book about climate psychology, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming, by Per Espen Stoknes, and got very inspired by his approach. He basically provides principles for how to create climate action in the most efficient way. Three words stuck in my brain: actionable, social and positive.

One of our biggest social networks of influence is at work and this is where we spend the most of our time. At work we also have the organizational structures to make change happen. So here we had a huge opportunity to change culture. I started to believe that a culture shift bottom-up is what’s needed to give politicians the support they need for taking high impact decisions. By taking action in the companies where we work, we would reduce the carbon footprint, but just as much send strong signals to politicians and hopefully keep the climate top of mind in our private lives.

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

A group of us first organized an internal company meetup to kick off climate work. We brainstormed ideas on four themes, related to internal “hygiene” and more external actions linked to client projects. After the kick-off, we formed a climate action team where we started working on implementing some of the ideas. Then COVID came, and things got a bit slowed down.

How did your company and office react?

The company was supportive and open to it. It helped that we pointed out the business value of the initiatives. That seems so evident now, but it wasn’t before.

What were the outcomes? Were there any changes?

There have been many. I have seen discussions move from reducing paper cups to analyzing how we do business and the services provide. I’m so happy with this shift! It’s not either or, but let’s face it: some measures have more impact than others, and I really try to be an advocate for daring to tackle challenges with the biggest impact. We should have a climate friendly culture internally, but there’s also so much potential to make positive change out there by working with our clients.

Illustration by Zhi Wang

What worked best?

Talking with people. Period. When raising the question and discussing it, it was truly inspiring to see how many of our colleagues were passionate about this.

The kick-off meetup also worked well, as well as promoting it internally with a catchy concept with a clear direction. It did the job as a conversation starter.

What did not work so well?

The list is quite long, to be honest. We just had to try a bunch of different approaches, and I still don’t think we have found the magical key. Organizations are complex and so is the the climate topic, and we are all busy with our everyday work.

I think the biggest challenge has been to balance the climate work with our work as consultants. And also figuring out a meaningful approach on how to work on the climate. The link is not always evident, and there are many ways to do it. In our climate action team we decided to focus on internal actions, project process and new projects. As climate is complex and we are not experts in the field, it is still hard to figure out how to integrate it in our project work.

I also believe this is work that should be led by someone with dedicated time and a dedicated mandate. It has shifted how much time we felt we could put into this, and when COVID hit this became especially true.

What is your advice to someone starting out?

Locate people who are passionate about working for the climate. Talk and spar with people and ask for introductions.

Create a concept you want to test, make a deck, and pitch it to someone interested in management — show how it impacts the business positively.

Ask for some dedicated time from your manager.

Just give it a try! And learn from that.

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

I would love for all companies to have the climate top of mind. That environmental impact and people value are considered the most important criteria in projects. And that business and design become powerful tools to make that happen.

I would also like more knowledge on how to do climate-friendly business, more data-based actions and a deep understanding of climate psychology to nudge us all in the right direction. In brief: A data-based and humane approach to prioritize the big impact actions and avoid greenwashing.

I would love for politicians to feel such a strong support from their citizens that they dare to take bold measures — and those measures result in them getting reelected.

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Live Kvelland can be found at LinkedIn.

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