Civic Design for the Next Seven Generations—A Discussion on Sacred Civics (Videoconference)

In Sacred Civics: Building Seven Generation Cities, Jayne Engle and Tanya Chung-Tiam-Fook assemble visions for how spirituality and sacred values are essential for reimagining how we live, organize and govern ourselves, determine and distribute wealth, inhabit and design cities, and construct relationships with others and nature. Join us for a discussion with Jayne and Tanya on what it looks like to design for the next seven generations. 

Optional: read Sacred Civics: Building Seven Generation Cities in print or open access!

A Proactive Approach to Inclusive Design with Zariah Cameron

Zariah Cameron is Co-Director of Community + Research and the founder of AEI – Advocate, Educate, Innovate Black Design. She will be a speaker at October’s DesignOps Summit on streamlining an inclusive design practice.

Many companies and corporations have good intentions when it comes to inclusive design. But too often that’s where things both start and stop. Zariah helps companies operationalize their inclusive design principles and ideals by looking at design from all angles and instilling effective processes.

When exploring ideals of equity and inclusivity, many confuse inclusivity with accessibility. Accessibility is a fine place to start, but it’s just the beginning. Accessibility tends to be passive while inclusivity is active. Inclusive design proactively seeks out the marginalized, the underserved, and minority groups. It doesn’t make assumptions but seeks input, feedback, and follow-through.

For many companies, the most effective way to pursue inclusive design is to work with grassroots organizations. Partnering with such organizations provides corporations access to a diverse pool of participants. It’s a process of co-creation and involves a long-haul-relationship mentality.

Zariah mentions a variety of organizations that design teams could partner with to access diverse talent:
Creative Reaction Lab
Pause and Effect
Aroko Cooperative – seeking equity, liberation, community healing, and ecocentricy

What you’ll learn from this episode:
About Zariah’s talk at the upcoming October 2024 DesignOps Summit
How inclusive design differs from accessibility
How companies can proactively partner with organizations to access a wide range of underserved and marginalized participants

Quick Reference Guide
[0:00:37] Introduction of Zariah
[0:02:04] Inclusive design
[0:04:11] An example of a principle that needs to be operationalized
[0:05:25] How to take a more operational approach to inclusive design
[0:08:04] Inclusivity is active, not passive. It’s also relational.
[0:14:18] Inclusivity is relational and communal
[0:15:03] More on the AEI organization
[0:17:24] Other work with HBCU students
[0:19:40] A reminder about the October 2-4 DesignOps Summit
[0:20:48] Organizations to partner with to advance inclusivity and equity
[0:24:21] Zariah’s gift for listeners

Fireside Chat: How Design Addresses a World on Fire (Videoconference)

In this Civic Design Community call, we heard from Lesley-Ann Noel, PhD., and Jennifer Strickland, Senior Human Centered Design, Accessibility Engineer. 

Jennifer and Lesley-Ann chatted about how they approach equitable design through language, frameworks, tools, methods — and self-care. The conversation will cover how Lesley-Ann created The Designer’s Critical Alphabet, and introduce the new book she contributed to,The Black Experience in Design: Identity, Expression, & Reflection.

The Other L Word—Addressing Workplace Loneliness with Kat Vellos

Kat Vellos, author of Connected From Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You’re Far Away and We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships, is our opening speaker on day one of the DesignOps Summit this October 21-23, 2020.

Here, she discusses the issues of loneliness in the workplace, and how managers can support their teams—especially in the time of remote work and added stresses from a global pandemic. In addition to supporting employees’ humanity, a manager who keeps their staff happy enough to stay can have a major impact on a company’s bottom line—at the average national voluntary turnover rate of 25%, a company of 100 people with an average salary of $50,000 will spend between $625,000 and $2.5 million dollars on staff replacement costs in one year.

A Cultural Approach: Research in the Context of Glocalisation

During this talk, the audience will be guided to reflect upon the common innovation approaches we have used in recent years, and be inspired to step into the future of the innovation landscape.

A cultural approach will be introduced that focuses on the importance of combining local and global cultural perspectives to give broader and deeper understandings of the breadth and depth of human experience.

Adopting such an approach supports the design of products and services that are accessible to real people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.

Practical Principles of Inclusive Research

Many of us are interested in executing research in a more inclusive way – but don’t know where to start. Drawing from real-life examples, we’ll cover how you can start doing more ethical and inclusive research.

Advice for Establishing Research (Videoconference)

As research grows its influence, organizations are increasingly aware that they need a research function. More and more of us are taking on the challenge of establishing a research practice as an organization’s first researcher. It’s a compelling challenge—it’s exciting to create something new without the baggage we’ve been saddled with elsewhere. But organizational change is hard. Among other things, first-researchers have to figure out how, piece by piece, to integrate research workflows into the organization’s current context.

Empowering Designers to do Good Research

Designers are not just interested in research; they’re the driving force in today’s research landscape. In this workshop, Hannah Hudson, Director of Design and Research at Twilio, and Prayag Narula, CEO & Co-Founder of Marvin, will discuss how good design is a competitive advantage and can impact the customer experience when research is done often and well by everyone on the team. Learn how design teams can use the tools and methodologies of trained researchers so the whole company can get the maximum impact from the investment in design.

Turning Research Ripples into Waves

Growing organizational research capacity requires both bottom-up and top-down changes that can be daunting to tackle. Hana Nagel will examine the challenge of scaling research ops through the lens of social change theory, showing how service design and systems thinking can be used to create a strategy to increase research’s impact on product. By building collaboration, connection and community, you can bring enough people together to turn research ripples into waves.

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