Participatory Design Strategies for Equitable Environments

Rebekah Radtke (University of Kentucky)

Sustainability in design practice is often concerned with reduction of resource consumption and energy efficiency, which is critical to the resiliency of future cities. But to create a more inclusive definition of sustainability for design, intentional integration of community members must be involved in the design process. By including community members throughout the design process, it creates resiliency for projects through shared ownership and joint investment in the lifespan of a design. Using the principles of generative design, one graduate design research course explored how community members can address the issues of their town through an immersive design workshop using a co-design process. Generative design allows designers and stakeholders to have a means to express ideas through tools and stimulus items that explore new ideas to benefit others beyond design as a product. Generative design focuses on a shared process that leverages co-creation, valuing the expertise of community members rather than the expertise of designers or content experts (Buxton 2007, Postma & Stappers 2006). Utilizing this approach, students created a workshop to understand existing cultural assets and opportunities for a town by collaborating local government officials and community stakeholders. Students were challenged to create a meaningful immersive experience that engaged a diverse representation of the community through a series of activities targeted at sensitizing participants. The methodologies explored participants’ current community, revisited past narratives, and envisioned the future community through color, text, imagery, and graphics. Focusing on inclusive measures, the process looked to sustainable futures using methods that were collaborative, connective and human centered. The approach implemented democratic techniques to amplify the voices of community stakeholders to create transformative designs in the spaces in which they live. The presentation will discuss the development of methodology and the resulting data from the workshop.