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Guest Author
Following our recent Glass-House Chat, Designing with Empathy, our co-host Melissa Lacide shares a provocation inspired by the conversation.
What happens if we move from designing with empathy to empathising with the design process?
If we take a moment to rethink our collaborative approach and design journey, we have a unique opportunity to build a deeper, shared empathy with our places by shifting from designing with empathy (as a design practitioner looking out) to empathising with design (where communities look in and are part of the process).
The challenge for us as practitioners isn’t just to ‘do’ engagement better – it’s to ask if we are willing to create spaces where communities are active co-designers of their neighbourhoods. By empathising with the design process, we can:
Nurture trust in the language of design
A community needs to feel and know they can trust who is ‘holding the pen’. By investing time to build and sustain meaningful engagement and trust early on, we create the psychological safety needed for communities to truly reflect on – and relate to – the design of their places.
Bridge the stewardship gap
Through active listening, we can translate a community’s aspirations, dreams and hopes into tangible designs. When communities act as stewards and have the autonomy to protect places, there’s a shift in the act of having agency to adapt their neighbourhoods and take on collective responsibility.
Experience of design that’s grounded in reality
Inclusive design is more than an outcome – it’s a kind and considerate response to actual life. When a community sees their own lived experiences, both the challenges and opportunities, reflected and supported by their places, their experience of this relationship changes forever.
Stay answerable to the community
Co-defining what ‘success’ looks like ensures that the ‘how’ of the process is transparent to everyone. It guarantees that local people remain the anchor of a project, ensuring the outcomes serve the community long after designers have stepped away.
Design is a continuous two-way conversation with the people who live, work and socialise in neighbourhoods. When we pivot our approach to empathising with the process, we don’t just design, build and have better places – we design, build and have stronger, more resilient foundations for collaboration.