Designing Inclusive Communities

Designing Inclusive Communities is part of Crabtree’s “Design Thinking for a Better World” series. Each book in the series uses a six-step design thinking process to explore one aspect of communities:

1. Empathize
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test
6. Reflect

Emphasizing collaboration, respect, and innovation, Designing Inclusive Communities explores three projects for social change to make communities more inclusive. Each project then presents three cases and asks students to choose a ‘case’ to explore more fully using the design thinking process. The case studies give the students choices among very concrete examples.

Which person would you like to help? Choose either Richard, Lucy, or Hannah’s case and use the design-thinking steps to create a solution to their problem.

The projects in Designing Inclusive Communities look at “Unequal Access to Information”, “Isolation in Communities’ and “Challenges to Participation”. The cases are equally applicable to Canada and the United States, and to many other countries, but the details given in the cases are all American. This even includes the case “Cost of Joining In”, about Julia whose parents can’t afford her equipment and team expenses to play ice hockey. “Julia is 12 years old and lives in Minnesota.” Any of the cases could have included some Canadian details, but this one seems like it would have been so easy to say she lives in Winnipeg, for example.

Each book includes several highlighted Change Makers. The first change maker in “Designing Inclusive Communities” is Luke Anderson. Luke is a Canadian who was paralyzed in an accident.

He realized how people with different physical abilities were affected by the lack of access to certain buildings and places. He used this empathy to design the Stop Gap, a simple, portable ramp that can be easily placed at the entrance of any building that is not wheelchair-accessible.

Interestingly, Luke is the only one of the five change makers highlighted in the book whose nationality isn’t identified. It doesn’t change the value of the information. All students can be inspired by Luke’s example no matter where he is from, but it is a missed opportunity to include some Canadian content, especially because the nationalities of the other change makers are all specified.

The photos are well-chosen to illustrate the text and engage the students in the topics. The layout of the text is easy to read with clear text, highlighted text boxes, and attractive visual aids to draw attention to various aspects of the organization of the information. For example, Designing Inclusive Communities includes text boxes with American and Canadian statistics.

Like Hannah, many adults live alone.

• One in seven American adults live alone, and that number is increasing.
• According to loneliness researcher John Cacioppo, 40 to 45 percent of people report feeling lonely.
• Census data showed that in 2016, 28.2 percent of Canadian adults lived alone – making a single-adult home the most common type for the first time since the census began.

Also included are instructions for how to empathize, suggestions for how to pick the best idea to move forward, getting started, “Mindset Tips”, and many more very concrete strategies for each step of the design thinking process.

Designing Inclusive Communities encourages and supports students to become change makers in very concrete ways. Although I have a couple of small quibbles with Designing Inclusive Communities, such as some awkward phrasing and the failure to include more specifically Canadian content, overall, if you are interested in using a design thinking process to explore community issues around access to information, isolation, and participation, you should have a look at this book.