graphic recording liberatory design Tania Anaissie keynote RRU. Tania Anaissie Keynote: (Re)designing Design for Today’s World: Aligning our design practice to our liberation values In design’s translation from the for-profit to social sectors it brought with it some harmful practices that no longer serve us. Come learn about an emergent field of practitioners who are redesigning design to serve as a powerful tool for liberation and explore how you could better align your own practice to your values.
Royal Roads Design Thinking Educators Conference - Judy Mellett Keynote As Director, Service Design & Strategy at TELUS Digital, Judy’s current focus centers on engaging in purposeful design and delivery of end-to-end service experiences that reinforces TELUS’ brand proposition and sustains customer loyalty. illustration of the talk by drawing change
keynote by George Ayes George Aye Keynote: Understanding design’s relationship with power means rethinking what good design means Conventional design has principles for what good is, from luminaries like Dieter Rams, but when the design work serves non-profit organizations instead of business organizations, we need a new way to evaluate what good is. Form and function aren’t going to cut it when you’re working with issues like recidivism, systemic racism, or the social determinants of health. Whether you’re a changemaker inside of a non-profit or a for-profit organization, designing change is hard to do, especially when the change involves people and their behaviors . graphic recording by Drawing change
graphic recording keynote by Ledia Andrawes Keynote: A new bottom line: It’s time to radically reframe the ‘Return on Design’ for social good Is design a force for good? Sometimes! When practiced with care, design can help build trust, sustain ownership, reduce risk, increase equity, and challenge dominant power relationships. However, achieving such requires us to navigate a variety of ethical dilemmas, go beyond the conventional value frameworks of business, and embrace new terms toward a ’Return on Design’ for social good
Royal Roads Design Thinking Educators Conference graphic facilitation. what are the shadows of design thinking? what are the strengths of design thinking? what are our questions?
Design Thinking Doreen Arrowmaker keynote Doreen Arrowmaker Keynote: Looking Beyond the Surface To adopt a design attitude in Design Thinking is to embrace challenges with a sense of confidence, optimism, acceptance of ambiguity, and persistence. The solutions to these challenges may appear to be impossible to solve. In tackling these challenges, one must start to dissect all the reasons and to start constructing with how. drawn by Drawing Change
graphic facilitation RRU Design Thinking panel equity and design for good

DEI and Design Thinking Educators Conference

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Design Thinking Education - Royal Roads Conference

Royal Roads University's 2022 Design Thinking Educators' Conference Theme was about Design, Equity, and Power. "Design Thinking holds enormous potential to serve the interests of a more just world within classrooms, organizations and society. Design Thinking can serve to replicate and even exacerbate existing inequities if practiced without attunement to power and privilege." Keynotes and expert panelists considered “How might Design Thinking act as a force of good?”

Design Thinking Education and Graphic Facilitation

One of the practices of Design Thinking is to connect visually – and graphic facilitation was woven in the RRU conference process. On the conference opening night, a graphic facilitation template helped document emerging questions. It was a rhizome metaphor – gingerroot stretching laterally across the page, with a place for participants could write down Design Thinking strengths and also the shadow side. The plant leaves reach up with questions that connect between stalks, connecting between the different stems. Participants in breakout group conversations used MURAL to add their insights with post it notes, and then graphic recording helped to distill and summarize the themes in real-time. That image – and the link to the MURAL – was emailed out overnight to all conference participants so all participants would be oriented at-a-glance to the themes on day 2.

Looking at Power, Diversity and Equity in Design Thinking

So many conference highlights! Tania Anaissie spoke about ‘re-designing design’ and aligning Design practices to Liberation values – and there’s a great toolkit to help. George Aye spoke about how design can be restorative -but we also have to acknowledge the harm. A shift can be to look at how “Good design honours the reality of today, creates ownership, and builds power.” Judy Mellett from Telus showcased a Service Design pilot project in long-term care that put new technology in the hands of residents with great outcomes. Ledia Andrawes (Australia) showed how it’s time for a new bottom line – where the real ROI is with citizens (the voice of experience), implementers (the voice of expertise) and funders (the voice of intent). Chief Doreen Arrowmaker (Gamèti) talked about how design thinking’s focus on empathy and prototyping is helping her address housing issues and more in the North. And a great panel brought many themes together.

Connections with Graphic Facilitation and Design Thinking

Graphic recording and graphic facilitation is both a practice and a mindset. I personally appreciated the 3 dimensions of design thinking written by Hassi and Laakso (2011): practices, thinking styles, and mentality and see how it relates to graphic facilitation in similar ways. The practice of this public listening and mark-making is by nature a human-centered approach. It’s both visual and active as we stand at the wall or show our drawing process on screen. As a thinking style, graphic recording can be used as a reflection process (participants can reflect on the images created by someone else, or the practitioner can be reflecting-in-action while drawing). It’s also an integrative process (using the images to spark conversation and new ideas), and a holistic way of being (using artmaking instead of only the written word).

design thinking dimensions RRU equity conference 2022 drawing change

Graphic Recording for Keynotes

On the main day of the conference we used graphic recording to engage all conference participants. The visuals documented keynote themes, highlighted questions, and made visual more connections in the field of Design Thinking education and equity. We uploaded graphic recording images after each keynote so participants could use them for reflection and to prompt other thinking.

Using MURAL for Co-Creating Meaning

The MURAL continued to be a place where conference attendees could share resources, give feedback, see all graphic recording images as a gallery – and co-create meaning.

Thank you to conference convenors and organizers especially Dr Amy Zidulka, Faculty of Management at Royal Roads University.

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