Jun 4Advocating for Better Futures: 5 actions to make your vision realAs advocates for social justice, we know that a better world is possible. But many people lose energy and commitment when faced with so much uncertainty. How can we share visions for a better world in ways that motivate people to stay involved? …Future4 min read
Jul 23, 2021Instructions for a Future-Backwards activity: Backcasting to shift the status quoHere I provide instructions for an activity of backcasting called Future-Backwards. Imagining a path backwards can be a powerful tool to inform strategies to move forward. Future-Backwards uses ideas about long-term futures as a creative — rather than analytical — assessment. Future concepts are vehicles to explore, generate, and engage…Future5 min read
May 12, 2021100 Social Justice audio books available from your public libraryI keep recommending that friends download and use their public library card to listen to audio book for free (!) on the Libby app. So I thought I’d share a list of the books I’ve been inspired by. …Racial Justice5 min read
Apr 8, 2021Five orientations to envision and evoke better futuresFor my Design dissertation, I am exploring the idea of clarifying and engaging people in the long-term outcomes of social justice work — visions of the worlds we can achieve. Walidah Imarisha (2010) writes about this as she defines Visionary Fiction. In Design we want to make these visions tangible…Future9 min read
Aug 12, 2020Anti-Oppression Actions for Designing in Collaboration“The more we understand about our histories of both oppression and resistance to it, of injury and resistance, the better we come to know our real capacities, and the better able we become to act powerfully and build real alliances.” (Morales, 2019, p. 65) A new paper, Anti-Oppression Mindsets for…Design Thinking4 min read
Jul 10, 2020Member-onlyApproaching Everyday Racism through Fiction in Co-Creation WorkshopsEveryday racism is entwined in the technology that we design, yet we have few tools and techniques to engage participants in solutioning. Participatory Design is an ideal method for bringing people from marginalized positions into the design process. It is a powerful way to imagine solutions with those directly involved…Participatory Design6 min read
Jun 9, 2020Diversifying your Design Syllabus: Recommended Readings by Women, Non-binary, and Culturally Diverse AuthorsMy PhD dissertation is focused on anti-racism and design, so people sometimes ask for advice on more diverse or socially-oriented readings for course planning. As a student in the classroom myself, I have felt the frustration of a syllabus filled primarily with white men. …Design9 min read
Published in Transition Design: Racial Inequity in Pittsburgh·May 11, 2020Designing System Interventions for Racial Equity in PittsburghTransition Design Approaches — Written by Team Resilience: Hillary Carey, Alex Klein, Nandini Nair, Yuchuan Shan Racial Inequity in Pittsburgh, Transition Design Seminar 2020, CMU Hillary Carey is quarantining in Oakland, California. She has now completed her first year of the PhD in Transition Design at CMU. …19 min read
Published in Age of Awareness·May 7, 2020Prototype: Microaggressions GameResearch through Design INTRODUCTION I have been taking Stacie Rohrbach’s class, designing learner experiences to do some hands-on exploration for teaching about racism. …Racism10 min read
Feb 21, 2020Designs for interdependence: inspiration from Arturo EscobarIn Transition Design class today, we engaged in a video lecture with Arturo Escobar, activist and author of Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds (2018). In this book, Escobar proposes a way of designing, Autonomous Design, that is similar to Carnegie Mellon’s Transition Design…Transition Design4 min read
