Design for Emergence: A Hive to Thrive
Real needs, authentic action
July 7, 2022
By Peter Worth, D4E Hive Member
Complex problems bring an opportunity for transformation. The Healthy Novato Initiative (HNI) was working to reduce alcohol, tobacco, and drug use in Novato, California. They wanted a strategic plan rooted in the real needs their city’s youth were experiencing. It would have to encompass policy recommendations, ongoing stakeholder engagement, and ways to assess impact.
They needed a trusted and critical collaborator to work alongside them and push them in ways that activated their design abilities and imagination for what could be, rooted in lived experience and equity expertise. With that in mind, they reached out to Design for Emergence (D4E).
Through a responsive strategic planning process that melded Liberatory Design methods, participatory decision-making, and strategic planning, HNI and D4E dug into a significant design opportunity: “How might we work together to facilitate an experience for young people that cultivates a sense of belonging, care, and wellness so that they are able to self-actualize and make healthy choices?”
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The collaboration with Healthy Novato Initiative is an example of Design for Emergence’s vision in action: to build systems that support the needs of now while shifting toward the possibility and complexity of tomorrow — all in the service of a more human, inclusive, and equitable world.
D4E is a community-led and collaborative network of experts at the intersection of social impact, equity, and design. Through Liberatory Design, Emergent Strategy, and facilitative coaching, D4E helps clients build capacity to tackle complex challenges and create transformative social impact. But that’s not just the outcome of their work; that’s also how they work: flexible, grounded in principles of equity, and always learning.
Collaborating through crisis — an origin story
The seeds of D4E were planted when Darry Strickland, Morgan Vien, and Mike Strong — educators and school leaders with decades of experience among them — met as coaches and advisors to School Retool, an initiative of IDEO and Stanford d.school with support from the Hewlett Foundation among many others. During the pandemic summer of 2020, Morgan, Mike, and Darry sought one another at a crossroads. They were longing for a place to learn, gather and co-create. They were hungry for a community of “our people” — people of color, creatives, experienced educators, and change-makers — looking to leverage the power of design to counter the crisis of the pandemic and change the world.
They gathered virtually across distance and difference and got to work. They read, collaborated, and created. It was a time of intense productivity and joy as they designed for the present and imagined new realities for the future while cultivating a collaborative community through what can only be described as a creative alchemy.
At the same moment, the merged Teachers Guild x School Retool program was imagining a future outside of IDEO, in the hands of its community of educators and designers. Morgan, Mike, and Darry were ready to nurture that growth into something new.
Learning and leading together
That “something new” is a community of learners, adapting and growing while leading purposeful projects. There are three elements of D4E that work together in synergy, nurturing one another to fuel lasting change:
THE HIVE is a source of constant learning. In the Hive, designers find and create ways to practice emergence and ways of working that are soulful and humanized, while gathering and co-creating tools and experiences. They learn together, build together, lift one another up and tend to the hard parts of being in collaboration.
THE STUDIO is the client workspace. It’s where D4E designers help organizations and teams tackle complex challenges. They draw on various toolkits, practices and creations to meet the specific needs of the challenge at hand.
THE NEST is the learning lab, where D4E invites novices and experts to come and learn together. Whether it is School Retool-aligned, Liberatory Design for Designers or a dip into Futures Thinking, this is where D4E hosts learning experiences for the Hive and the greater community.
Components of Design for Emergence, Image by D4E, 2022.
Working in that emergent space in a sustainable way means that both designers and clients can show up as their whole selves, ready to co-create adaptive solutions to complex challenges.
Join the movement
Connect with us. Join us. Let’s accelerate the transformation and tackle complex challenges. Together.
Say Hello at www.designforemergence.org
