Educating for Societal Design - A Conversation with Emily Harris and Martin Lorenz

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May 9, 2026

Martin Lorenz, communication designer and conversational design lead at Dark Matter Labs. Emily Harris, chartered accountant turned regenerative economist at Dark Matter Labs. They discuss educating for societal design and launching a new master's to build systemic practice. Conversation covers deep codes that shape systems, dialogue-based design methods, boundary objects, and practical projects blending conversational design with alternative accounting.

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ANECDOTE

From Accountant To Societal Design Through A Meltdown

Emily described her personal career arc from chartered accountant through a regenerative economics course at Schumacher to joining Dark Matter Labs.
She framed that shift as a 'dissonance meltdown' during which she sought different frameworks and met Martin to begin next-economics work.

ANECDOTE

Designer Who Refused A Title Became A Conversational Designer

Martin told how he moved from communication design into conversational design at Dark Matter Labs and discovered design as a process.
He recalled resisting the job title initially, then realising he'd been practicing conversational design unconsciously for years.

INSIGHT

Hidden Deep Codes Lock Good Intentions In Place

Deep codes are hidden systemic constraints that keep well-intentioned change efforts trapped.
Emily used accounting examples (ESG, profit rules, ownership rights) to show how professional practices push people back into existing systems.

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There are lots of reasons why well-intentioned work, trying to do things differently and shift the way that systems currently operate, often struggle and fail. But one of the reasons that I find most interesting is to look at the "dark matter" or deep codes that are built into our current ways of working. These might be things like the way we do contracts, the way insurance functions, and legal precedents. Or the way that value is defined and accounted for, and the way money functions and flows. Most of the time these things are simply constraints that we are told we just have to deal with in our work. But as you might have heard in a previous episode with Indy Johar and Adam Purvis (https://www.goodimpactlabs.com/podcast/indy-johar-and-adam-purvis), organisations like Dark Matter Labs are not accepting this status quo and, in fact, are actively trying to work towards redesigning these deep codes. But then you might say: “Well that's fine for those kinds of organisations who get to do that work, but that's not something that I can get involved with.” My guests this week are colleagues of Adam and Indy at Dark Matter Labs, but they are taking it one stage further and asking the question, what does it mean to educate for building the capabilities and sensibilities for this kind of work. They are calling it “societal design” and in this conversation you'll hear them reflecting on the Masters programme that they are launching this September, in collaboration with Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering. Applications are open until July 15th 2026. For further information about this and Emily and Martin’s other work, check out the links below.

Martin and Emily’s ‘Anti-Brief’ website: https://anti-brief.org/

Further links about the Societal Design Master Degree Programme at Elisava, Barcelona at UVic: University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia.

https://www.elisava.net/en/masters/master-in-societal-design/

https://anti-brief.org/about/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/societal-design-master-at-elisava/posts/

Martin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmartinlorenz/

Emily on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-harris-fca-3b381565/

Dark Matter Labs: https://darkmatterlabs.org/

Life-Enobling Economics microsite: https://lee.darkmatterlabs.org/

Cornerstone Indicators report (2023): https://drive.google.com/file/d/176CNiZYM1v2xcEzDVO4SHuEfRQoosCVL/view

Cornerstone Indicators microsite: https://cornerstoneindicators.com/