Those looking to history to shape our future innovations should be wary of the conclusions they draw. Remember the Roaring Twenties? Maybe not in life, but in film, literature, and all of the nostalgic art that has glorified that period of history – that era immediately after the First World War and the Spanish Flu …
Evaluation is the longest four-letter word in the English language. Kidding aside, what is evaluation? Why should we all care? Evaluators are an existential bunch, which might surprise you. Evaluation is not a popular word with people. Too often it’s associated with things that are done to us not with us or for us or …
Social innovations are judged by their impact, but in the quest to assess what it does we can miss the way it does it and that is where justice and the emotional connections that justice deals with come into play. Unless we consider social justice a part of social innovation we are likely to exclude …
Social innovation, social justice and the emotional link between them Read More »
Empathy is a central feature of good human-centred design, yet is often practiced narrowly. Visualization with systems thinking and mindfulness are three additional features that can transform empathy from a simple tool to a vehicle for transformation by connecting us less to absolute problems and more to relative ones. In today’s Globe and Mail newspaper …
Empathy: The Ultimate Design + Systems Challenge Read More »
Just as we create path dependencies for one set of values, so too can we do the same for others and with other people. The focus on the outcomes of systems rather than their design is problematic if we want change. Starting with design and values at the outset, being conscious of who we invite in and how we engage them and by remaining contemplative about how these systems unfold and the emergent patterns that shape them, designers of all stripes may be better positioned to create social change rather than just for social norms.
Poverty, racism, access to health services, mental health and wellness, and education are all issues that are complex. They cannot or will not allow themselves to be understood in simple terms, yet are issues that speak to the wellbeing of society. Slutwalk was about rights and freedoms for more than one half of our population. It was about respecting people for who they are, honouring their sexuality, and educating everyone about the prevalence, consequences and risks associated with unwanted sexual advancement and assault. When it becomes a Rebecca Black Friday issue, it is about things like the salacious use of risque’ language and when it is a McLuhan issue, it takes a library to understand it.
Surely with our amazing tools we can find some middle ground to make the complex accessible, and the simple more sophisticated.
Design employs the language of problem solving and features a great deal of tools that encourage participation in solution generation, yet what problems get solved and what solutions are generated for whom are, too often, left untouched.
