Designed a new designation method for Marine Protected Areas in the UK, integrating community participation
Year
2025
Role
Service Designer
Design at
Royal College of Art X Imperial College London
Design For
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
This project was developed as part of the Wicked Acceleration Lab, a cross-institutional initiative between the Royal College of Art (RCA) and Imperial College Business School. It was conducted under the Wicked Problems, Systems Dynamics, and Entrepreneurial Innovation module, a unique space where design meets policy, business, and systems thinking to tackle some of today’s most complex challenges.
Our multidisciplinary team included students from:
Guided by Dr. Cristóbal García-Herrera and Steve Blank, the module explored how to design solutions and ventures that respond meaningfully to wicked problems, challenges that are deeply interconnected, socially complex, and resistant to linear solutions. Through a combination of systems dynamics, venture design, and policy innovation, we were encouraged to identify root causes, prototype interventions, and work closely with real-world stakeholders.
As part of this module, our team was assigned to collaborate with Dr. Gene Massion from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), a global leader in ocean science and technology.
Our brief was to explore the future of ocean health in the face of escalating ecological pressures. With oceans becoming more acidic, biodiversity declining, and multiple socio-political and economic tensions surfacing across marine systems, we were asked a critical question:
What can we do to safeguard the ocean in the long term?
Rather than focusing solely on technology or conservation, our task was to take a systems approach, uncovering root causes, identifying leverage points, and proposing actionable interventions that reflect both human and ecological needs. This involved field research, systems mapping, stakeholder engagement, and speculative design method
As we began investigating the future of ocean health, our team gravitated toward the topic of fishing, a system deeply entangled in ecological, cultural, and economic dimensions. What began as an environmental inquiry quickly unfolded into a wicked problem, where interventions in one area often triggered unintended consequences in another.
To better understand the full scope of the challenge, we used the STEEPV framework (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, and Values-based) to map the forces shaping the fishing system in the UK
From this scan, one pattern stood out:
The most resilient and adaptive initiatives were those where local communities were not just consulted — they were empowered as co-stewards of the ocean, working alongside policy bodies rather than beneath them.
This realisation led us to investigate how community-led ecological knowledge and policy can be meaningfully integrated, forming the foundation for our intervention.
After conducting extensive research, interviews, and fieldwork, one core truth became undeniable:
The way MPAs are currently implemented in the UK often creates more tension than trust.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), while designed to safeguard biodiversity, are frequently perceived as top-down restrictions rather than community-driven solutions. This results in a breakdown of legitimacy, especially in tight-knit fishing communities where marine livelihoods are generational.
This diagram presents a systemic view of the barriers to meaningful engagement in marine planning, not just logistical or financial, but also relational and epistemological. It reinforces that effective marine governance isn’t only about tools or structures, but about trust, fairness, and shared ownership of knowledge.
To better understand the systemic complexity of engaging local fishers in Marine Protected Area (MPA) planning, we conducted a Wicked Problem Analysis, scoring the issue across key dimensions of wickedness. The resulting score of 34/40 confirms this is a highly wicked problem, one that is resistant to simple, linear solutions due to its systemic, political, and social entanglements.
After testing early concepts and surfacing core tensions around participation and legitimacy, it became clear that technical fixes alone were insufficient. What was needed was a shift in how relationships, power, and ownership were structured within marine policy.
Our solution evolved into a three-part service ecosystem, blending relational, experiential, and incentive-based interventions. Together, they form a pathway for coastal communities to actively shape, experience, and benefit from ocean protection.
To ensure our solution didn’t simply "look good" from one stakeholder's perspective, we built a Value Exchange Map that traced how Desk to Deck interacts with multiple actors across the marine policy ecosystem.
By placing fishers, scientists, communities, and government agencies into shared physical space, this intervention serves as a translational bridge, transforming ecological knowledge into mutual trust, regulatory compliance, and community buy-in.
To move beyond ideation and into operational relevance, we developed a Policy Blueprint, mapping how each of our three interventions could embed into the official UK Marine Protected Area (MPA) policy cycle.
Rather than disrupting the system from outside, our goal was to introduce low-friction, high-impact entry points within the existing policy structure. This allowed us to show that “Desk to Deck,” “Hack-A-Boat,” and “Tokens for Stewardship” were not just desirable, but deployable.
To bring clarity and alignment to our intervention within a wicked, multi-stakeholder landscape, we used the Wicked Canvas, a tool co-developed by Steve Blank (lean startup pioneer) and Alex Osterwalder (creator of the Business Model Canvas).
Unlike the traditional Business Model Canvas, which focuses on commercial viability, the Wicked Canvas is built for systems change, helping teams visualise how their solution addresses root causes, scales impact, and fits within institutional constraints.
To assess real-world relevance and buy-in, we sought early validation from both community members and institutional actors. Our focus was on gauging:
To transition from concept to implementation, we scoped out a pilot program to test Desk to Deck in a live, real-world setting. This pilot would validate operational logistics, stakeholder dynamics, and impact potential before regional scaling.
Test the feasibility, usefulness, and perceived legitimacy of Desk to Deck as a trust-building mechanism between fishers, policymakers, and scientists, in an operational marine context.
To ensure long-term impact, we developed a plan to scale “Desk to Deck” from a one-off pilot into a sustainable model that can be adopted by coastal communities, NGOs, and government agencies across the UK and beyond.
Scaling this intervention requires not just replication, but strategic adaptation, ensuring that the program remains locally relevant, logistically feasible, and institutionally supported.
This project began as a systems challenge, but it evolved into something far more human. Working with communities, scientists, and policymakers around the future of ocean health taught us not just about governance, but about humility, empathy, and the unpredictable nature of wicked problems.
1. Reframing Without Blame Enables Participation
Calling it “overfishing” immediately triggered defensiveness. But when we shifted the framing to ecosystem resilience, something shared and hopeful, people were more willing to engage.
2. Presence Builds Legitimacy
The most powerful conversations didn’t happen in meetings. They happened on docks, beside fish boxes, and on the deck of fishing vessels. Physical presence created honesty that policy documents never could.
3. Wicked Problems Require Flexibility, Not Fixed Plans
We started with a structured workshop idea. But it was the adaptability of our team, responding to trust, resistance, and context, that made the intervention land.
“Being present changed everything. It wasn’t the tools that shifted trust, it was showing up, listening, and sharing space.”