The Impact Plan

The Impact Plan is a detailed decision-making framework that guides industry professionals and academics to quickly assess the future impact of their creative projects.

While formulated with designers in mind, the method elaborated within this book will help industry and academia professionals cycle through potential contexts and project influences in order to determine the impact these may have on both the individual and humanity. Moving through the fundamentals of decision-making and impact-centered thinking, The Impact Plan gives the reader a playful framework for planning and prioritising project-based activities and experiences.

Structured over four main sections which follow ‘The Hero’s Journey’, touching on introducing the journey, explaining adversities, deploying the tool, and reflection, moving through this framework will help drive the user to sharpen the craft of thinking. Balancing multiple contexts and providing room for personalization, this adaptable text will become the reader’s go-to impact-making tool when faced with a pool of different calls and possibilities.

Anyone who pays attention to the news knows that the world is facing multiple crises. Many of us ask, what can I do to help? If you are one of those people, The Impact Plan is the book for you. It provides you with powerful, yet easy-to-use tools that guide you through the hero’s journey, so you can successfully attack some of the world’s major problems, while still being yourself, an ordinary person in extraordinary times.

Don Norman

Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science, director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego. Author of Design of Everyday Things and Design for a Better World (2023)