With the growing importance of resonating products with human behaviour, the upcoming field of Design for
Sustainability (DfS) is reorienting itself from a ‘technical and product-centric focus towards more socio-technical
systems’ wherein people, their interactions and behaviour play a crucial role. Scholarships in DfS have introduced a
multitude of frameworks for sustainability-orienting design such as Methodology for System Design for Sustainability,
Circles of Sustainability and LEED. However, during our experience of teaching these methodologies to Design
undergraduate students, we observed that the frameworks, often fell short in fostering a “designerly way” of thinking
and doing amongst novice designers. They struggled to see open space within these guidelines to explore, experiment
and tinker. Hence, we designed a method, LaMPS (Locally available Materials, Practices and Skills), which
could be used as a precursor to the more system oriented DfS course and can be introduced to students during their
1st Design Methodology course at the undergraduate level. LaMPS integrates observational studies and material exploration
and characterisation using the Material Driven Design method, and translation of the same into products.
LaMPS stresses on identification and incorporation of local materials, local skills and local practices, the three keystones
of Distributed Economy (DE), in the designed system. Hence it serves as an introduction to the DfS course
in the lines of DE.

Authors: Prarthana Majumdar, Sharmistha Banerjee, Purvish Mahendra Shah, Vidushi Singh Pundir,  Ankit Chowdhury, Simran Agarwal, Suneet Shukla, Jan-Carel Diehl, J.M.L.van Engelen