Podcast: Women Talk Design with Danielle Barnes

Creating and maintaining an inclusive environment that makes anyone feel welcome requires conscious and consistent effort. Whether it’s presentation, operation, or curation—incorporating your team’s voices in a healthy and organic manner as a business practice requires thinking outside the box.

In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, you’ll hear from Danielle Barnes, CEO of Women Talk Design, as she and Lou discuss the fundamentals of designing meetings and conference presentations that are more inclusive.

Key points Danielle and Lou address include:

• Remolding non-inclusive systems to which women and non-binary folks are forced to adapt;
• Assigning rotating facilitator roles, and how those roles can promote inclusivity;
• How truly “listening” to those who are speaking can give facilitators the insights they need to curate a fantastic meeting;
• Raising awareness for the consequences of being talked over, and how to drive safety and accessibility in meetings for team members; and
• Tips to improve your natural stage presence when giving a talk.

You’ll also hear insights in how to create more inclusive environments by empowering those whose voices are not heard—and how safe spaces, when done right, help make this happen.

Podcast: Radical Participatory Research—Decolonizing Participatory Processes

Although large areas of the federal government focused on design as a practice do not closely involve the citizenry in their design processes, Victor Udoewa, Chief Experience Officer and Service Design Lead, NASA, has taken a vastly different approach to end user design methodology in government.

In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Victor brings us up to speed on participatory design and its pros and cons. He also explains his radical approach to it—a meta-methodology he’s used in service and system design—and how his radical approach enables people to participate in and influence high-level government design projects.

Victor shares his insights around key areas of participatory design, including:

• A redefined approach to “radical” participatory design, and how this difference meaningfully distinguishes his work from a socio-human perspective
• A focus on his department’s efforts to help develop the economy in support of small businesses
• Weighing the impact of “power” in design organizations as they shape methodology from a higher-level perspective
• How incorporating end user insights can holistically influence design outcomes despite existing power dynamics that may have previously stunted those opportunities
• How methods such as the collaborative design studio can derive a wider range of insights from end users
• Demystifying participatory design by bridging the gap between old and new perspectives
• Rethinking how information is shared from a socio-economic perspective
• The benefits in shifting research from an investigation-based methodology to a more humanistic approach, such as navigating a socio-human system
• Rethinking poverty as the lack of relationships from which money flows, and how this parallel can be drawn with information/research initiatives

Learn more from Victor’s talk, “Radical Participatory Research: Decolonizing Participatory Processes” at our upcoming virtual conference, Advancing Research 2022 (virtual, March 9-11). Register today! rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research-2022/

Apply for a Scholarship to Advancing Research 2022

Apply for a Scholarship to Advancing Research 2022

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Advancing Research 2022: We’re shifting from hybrid to virtual

The bad news, then the good news

Bad news first

Sadly, we’re reverting Advancing Research 2022 to a virtual only event; it’ll run three days (March 9-11) instead of two.

It’s heartbreaking—we had an incredibly innovative hybrid event designed for you. We desperately wanted to host you here in NYC. And three years in, we’ve still not had a chance to meet in person!!

But these are uncertain times, and we don’t want you, our speakers, or our team risking exposure to COVID. Let’s hope we’ll go hybrid in 2023.

Now the good part

If you’ve attended any of the seven COVID-era conferences that Rosenfeld Media has produced, you’ve seen (and helped) us tune the virtual experience to the point where it’s on par with great in-person events. From facilitated attendee cohorts and social events to incredibly engaging Slack discussions and our emcee Bria Alexander’s bad dad jokes, we’ve truly designed our way past Zoom fatigue. And you’ll walk away with notes, sketch notes, the decks, resource lists, and of course access to the recordings.

The speaker roster and program are coming together nicely, and the workshop lineup will be announced very soon. Ticket prices go up January 12; if you’re confident that our curation team of Jamika Burge, Jem Ahmed, and Chris Geison can deliver an amazing program along with our fantastic virtual experience (I think you should be!), you might want to register now.

We hope we’ll see you virtually at Advancing Research 2022!

Best,

—Lou Rosenfeld and the Rosenfeld Media team

Life and Death Design by Katie Swindler is available now!

Grab your copy of Life and Death Design: What Life-Saving Technology Can Teach Everyday UX Designers today!

Katie Swindler’s new book will help us redefine how we might view a core human function—specifically, the stress response—and how stress can be an informative tool for designers.

As an experienced presenter who has spoken on UX topics internationally at industry events, Katie believes that brands who wish to truly connect with consumers must expand utility through emotion. She illustrates how leveraging stress-informed design enables users to perform optimally during high-stress or traumatic experiences.

Important questions Katie tackles in her book include:

• How does understanding the stress response help designers deal with high-stress situations?
• How can designers leverage redundancy and biomimicry to enhance a final product?
• How stress-informed design can support experts in a way that preserves an organic workflow?
• How did conscientious attention to detail in design help save the lives of heroic users?
• What is “abusive design,” and how do we avoid it?
• And much, much more!

Life and Death Design contains these and many more fascinating examples that serve as beautifully counter-intuitive resources for designers. Life and Death Design is available to order!

Learn more about Katie here.

Life and Death Design by Katie Swindler is available now!

Grab your copy of Life and Death Design: What Life-Saving Technology Can Teach Everyday UX Designers today!

Katie Swindler’s new book will help us redefine how we might view a core human function—specifically, the stress response—and how stress can be an informative tool for designers.

As an experienced presenter who has spoken on UX topics internationally at industry events, Katie believes that brands who wish to truly connect with consumers must expand utility through emotion. She illustrates how leveraging stress-informed design enables users to perform optimally during high-stress or traumatic experiences.

Important questions Katie tackles in her book include:

• How does understanding the stress response help designers deal with high-stress situations?
• How can designers leverage redundancy and biomimicry to enhance a final product?
• How stress-informed design can support experts in a way that preserves an organic workflow?
• How did conscientious attention to detail in design help save the lives of heroic users?
• What is “abusive design,” and how do we avoid it?
• And much, much more!

Life and Death Design contains these and many more fascinating examples that serve as beautifully counter-intuitive resources for designers. Life and Death Design is available to order!

Learn more about Katie here.

We’ve launched the Civic Design Library

Are you a design practitioner or researcher interested in case studies that capture the details and impact of design projects in the public sector? If so, look no further—we’re excited to share news about the Civic Design Library with you!

Curated by the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University and Rosenfeld Media, the Civic Design library features case studies that provide examples of ways of working, deployed or speculative solutions, and areas of impact that may be reproduced by other organizations seeking to do similar work. Learn more!

Podcast: Meet Ariel Kennan, Civic Design Co-curator

Ariel Kennan is a service design and product development leader who has worked across the public, private, academic, and nonprofit sectors. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University. We are pleased to announce that she has joined the curation team of our new Civic Design conference and community, which will be launching soon with our first monthly videoconference. Sign up here to be notified: rosenfeldmedia.com/civic-design-2021/

In this Rosenfeld Review episode, Ariel discusses the myriad of public service projects she’s had a hand in, and particularly the ways in which Civic Design can improve peoples’ lives, especially those who are underprivileged (for example, the application for unemployment benefits during the covid-19 pandemic.)

Ariel recommends:
Creative Reaction Lab — building capacity in historically marginalized communities and training designers to work in new ways. www.creativereactionlab.com/

Podcast: Meet Charlotte Lee, Civic Design Co-curator