Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Reflect and Chart Forward

Gold
Friday, December 10, 2021 • Civic Design 2021
Share the love for this talk
Reflect and Chart Forward
Speakers: Bria Alexander , Ariel Kennan , Charlotte Lee , Sarah Brooks , Emily Lessard , Gordon Ross and Joanne Dong
Link:

Summary

Join us to reflect one what we’ve shared and learned over the past three days at this first gathering of the global civic design community. We’ll consider together where our field is headed and our hopes for the future. Come to share your reflections and charge up on how you’ll take what you’ve learned back out into your work and practice.

Key Insights

  • Systemic design, ethics, and inclusion underpin the future directions of civic design, weaving through all sessions.

  • Governments globally face similar challenges in equitable design, highlighting shared struggles and opportunities.

  • Designers must first do internal work, including recognizing their power and biases, before shifting power to communities.

  • Inclusive usability testing benefits from compensating diverse community members to participate meaningfully.

  • Scaling civic design impact requires understanding structural policies and intervening at systemic levels, as shown by Public Policy Lab's approach.

  • Trauma-informed design requires years of investment and challenges designers to avoid re-traumatizing research participants.

  • Radical participatory design reframes design as a communal iterative process that redistributes power sustainably.

  • There is a paradox in civic design between maintaining expert rigor and democratizing design literacy broadly.

  • Future civic design needs to be localized, turning design to serve place-based communities for sustainable impact.

  • Ongoing community connection and co-creation via Slack and monthly calls are vital for maintaining momentum post-conference.

Notable Quotes

"Everyone, both speakers and participants, understood the assignment of civic design from day one."

"Our job as civic designers is to bring government needs and community needs into alignment."

"Everything can be designed – ourselves, relationships, processes, policies, systems."

"How do we know how to evaluate radical participatory design? Has there been a sustained shift in power?"

"Future-facing regulatory structures can avoid post-traumatic innovation by anticipating technology’s social impacts."

"Being a positive deviant means confronting challenges with limited resources but innovative, community-based approaches."

"We need to slow down decision-making processes so that ethics and systems thinking scale with project scope."

"The future of civic design will be localized, designed for and by communities rather than dictated top-down."

"Designers must do the internal work of self-awareness and reflection before shifting power to communities."

"Working on a different word than empower: People already have power, we have to respect it."

Ask the Rosenbot
Wendy Johansson
Be a Product Boss!
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Alexis Lucio
Scaling Accessibility Through Design Systems
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Alla Weinberg
Healing Toxic Stress
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Mackenzie Cockram
Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live
2022 • QuantQual Interest Group
Shawna Hein
Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
John Calhoun
Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Lada Gorlenko
Theme 3: Introduction
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Alla Weinberg
Workers Are Sick of Change: The Cure is Psychological Safety
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Rachael Greene
Building a Design Ops Practice that Really Works (Most of the Time)
2025 • DesignOps Community
Jesse Zolna
Inviting the Whole Org to Come See For Yourself
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
JD Buckley
COMMUNICATE: Discussion
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Dem Gerolemou
Climate technology fundamentals
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
Kristen Guth, Ph.D.
Out of the FOG: A Non-traditional Research Approach to Alignment
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Joerg Beringer
Scaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Llewyn Paine
[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Mariah Hay
Ethics in Tech Education: Designing to Provide Opportunity for All
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold

More Videos

Eric Shumake

"The integration of AI into clinical workflows is creating urgent demand for sharper UX thinking, not less."

Eric Shumake

Diagnosis UX: Building Influence in Healthcare Design

April 9, 2026

Kit Unger

"Growth boards are a more advanced tool that require breaking down walls between disciplines and focusing on outcome-driven metrics."

Kit Unger Jackie Ho Veevi Rosenstein Vasileios Xanthopoulos

Theme 2: Discussion

January 8, 2024

Chris Geison

"The ladder of engagement for stakeholders could range from watching videos to becoming co-researchers with us."

Chris Geison Dr. Jamika D. Burge Jemma Ahmed

What's Next for Research?

June 17, 2021

Megan Blocker

"Triangulate, triangulate, triangulate — use multiple data sources and secondary research to build robust insights."

Megan Blocker Marieke McCloskey Renee Reid

Positioning insight: Structuring teams, roles and careers for a changing research landscape

March 13, 2025

Jules Monza

"Broadening design beyond UX/UI into service and content disciplines reflects growing sophistication in design teams."

Jules Monza

Use These Words and Count These Things

September 25, 2024

Ruzanna Rozman

"Getting everyone involved early helped reduce the need for me to explain why we do things."

Ruzanna Rozman

Getting in Flow with Your Team

January 8, 2024

Uday Gajendar

"Lauren Cantor is a heavy hitter gathering all the really good resources and putting them together."

Uday Gajendar Louis Rosenfeld

Day 2 Welcome

June 5, 2024

Lavy Kumar

"The future of work is about making the user the hero—humans and machines working together."

Lavy Kumar Kat Temple Shan Sebastian Tara Jensen Jenn Chou

Future of Work

June 9, 2021

Dave Malouf

"Agile was built for speed and recovery but often misses depth, purpose, and vision needed for design."

Dave Malouf

Closing Keynote: Amplify. Not Optimize.

October 24, 2019