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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,…
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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 …
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…
I will admit, it's been a strange year to begin writing to you all on a weekly basis. Across each week, my emotions oscillate from despondent and bummed out, to hopeful or at least reminded of how grateful I should feel. I won't name all of the things going o…
This week, I'll begin with an Instagram post. Now, maybe you're older than me, or just well-versed in 1970's architecture, but this was my first time hearing the term, "conversation pits." Having pretty much only seen these on Mad Men, I've never taken a mome…
Power is defined as the capability of doing or accomplishing something (noun). Like many definitions, this doesn't exactly cover all the nuances of 'power' – how it shows up in relationships, what it means to share it, and why we need to talk about it when we…