Design With
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More than just a room
Therapeutic spaces in schools are rooms (or, unfortunately, sometimes corridors) where adults offer a protected space for students to explore difficult feelings. This might be through counselling with a trained member of staff, or, simply letting a student ha…
How we remember
While I'm on a break from work, I open my computer a lot less – usually to do something mundane or overly meticulous, like, make a list, update a spreadsheet or organise photographs in my drive.One of my lists tallies how many days of the month that I've surf…
Considering endings
Before you continue, I'd like to note that this issue mentions death. If that isn't for you today, I'd encourage you to skip this one. Take care.Tomorrow I'll finish my current job. I'll leave the United Kingdom soon, too. Amongst a number of recent (and pend…
"You’ve just got to get with the lingo"
It's exciting to be in design at a time when the diversity of voices and perspectives is ever-expanding.From the Design Justice Network and Constanza-Chock's Design Justice to McKercher's Beyond Sticky Notes. I'm seeing the term 'inclusive design' everywhere,…
What it means to take part
I think part of being interested in designing with people is trying to understand what this might look like.There's more than one way that participation can show up or be defined. As Sarah Fathallah has said, "participatory design, in its definition, really d…
Designing with care
Where I am in the world, the end of winter is approaching slowly. Which takes a mental fortitude I only claim on rare days. It's not a harsh winter – but complaining helps me get through a lot of rain and a bit of darkness.There are other things that help. Re…
Out of our heads and into the world
It's not uncommon to feel like an imposter. While I was enrolled in an industrial design course, having never really made anything, imposter syndrome was my close friend.Fast forward a couple of months and I was stuck into learning about participatory design …
A participatory internet
Maybe it's because I've been reading New Public a lot lately, or potentially because I saw this post on Instagram... but I can't stop thinking about how we all relate to and trust the internet.When the internet was first created it was primarily for use by go…
What do you think of this newsletter?
I thought I would use this month's issue as an opportunity to hear your thoughts on this newsletter. Your feedback and ideas will help inform the future of Design With, such as, who contributes, how often you hear from us, and what we choose to discuss.If you…
The futures we make
This year has brought new meaning to what it means to think, worry, predict, and imagine the future. Whether we call ourselves 'futurists' or 'designers' or something entirely different, thinking about the future is a universal practice.In Donna Goodman’s A H…
Happy Black History Month
It's Black History Month in the United States and Canada, so I'm hoping like to spend this month's issue celebrating the contributions of Black people within participatory design.To start, many of the resources featured in past issues of Design With are initi…
Is this co-design?
This past week, I was in a meeting with many people across many disciplines. We came together to talk about research. And, without going into any specifics, we landed on the topic of "is this co-design or...?"I'm sure quite a few of you have heard this questi…
Imagining a better world (and a happy new year)
One of my favorite things about human beings is our ability to imagine new worlds. In some ways, I've talked about this before. It's that ability to see a new way of doing something that, quite literally, keeps us going.In January, Covid-19 was declared a glo…
Maybe I'm biased, but
I've often heard bias described as a lens. Each of us walks around with our own lenses, our ways of seeing the world. Throughout this newsletter, we've thought about how things like power or attribution are inevitably weaved into participatory design processe…
What do we mean by community?
I saw a tweet this week (above) – I'm, regrettably, back on twitter now that the presidential election is over – and then I went down a rabbit hole thinking about what community means.A couple years ago, I was working on a project in London co-designing marke…
A few good things
I went back and forth this week, wondering if I felt up to writing and/or if you felt up to reading.Personally, the last 48 hours of my life have been spent refreshing pages and re-checking results, logging off Twitter (do yourself a favour), and feverishly c…
Many different versions
A few years ago, I had the chance to become a certified yoga teacher. Besides doing a whole lot of downward dogs, my teacher training required me to consider what it really means to 'hold space.' How you create – and maintain – space for a group of strangers …
What love looks like in public spaces
The last time we spoke, I was buzzing after hearing a series of talks at the Restorative Design Conference.In lieu of turning this into a newsletter about that-one-conference-I-attended, there is just one more thing I can't get off my mind. At the event, Brya…
Moving beyond rapport
Last Friday I had the chance to attend Greater Good's Restorative Design Conference. In the before-world, I likely wouldn't have attended an event taking place on a different continent. And although I probably would have had a glass of wine, it wouldn't have …
Attribution in co-design
I was watching Enola Holmes this past weekend, when I learned about the whole suing debacle that's happening with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's estate. Essentially, the estate is arguing that the Netflix movie (and Nancy Springer's novels) take key elements from D…