Human-centred design picks at Melbourne Design Week 2022
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Melbourne Design Week is taking over showrooms, galleries, museums and public spaces in Australia’s design capital to celebrate design with a wide-ranging program of events.
Melbourne Design Week asked designers to consider how they could collaborate to create a healthier future in 2021. The theme ‘Design the world you want’ continues in 2022 to celebrate the diverse ways design can work towards a better future for people and the planet.
Two pillars – civic good and making good – delve into this theme further. Civic good encourages participants to think beyond the individual and look to the buildings, designs and services that make people feel part of a community. Making good looks at the many ways that ideas and experiments rethink processes, production and materials to create ethical and sustainable design practices.
To help you make the most of your experience at Melbourne Design Week, we’ve put together our team’s top picks of talks, exhibitions and workshops that focus on human-centred design.
When digital government meets design
Human-centred design and user-experience design are becoming better recognised terms in organisations across Australia. Design perspectives and methods are being used to ensure government services are aligned with the needs and expectations of citizens.
In the panel discussion When digital government meets design, Tim Kariotis, Lecturer in Digital Government at Melbourne School of Government, is joined by four experts with diverse experiences in design to explore how user-experience design can be applied to transform the complexity of government and the public sector.
Local Peoples’ founder Pino is looking forward to engaging with this conversation. “Public services present such a great opportunity to create amazing people-centred service outcomes and there are many examples of this being done well. Our work at Local Peoples with both state and federal government is focused on creating inclusive, people-centred services that are a joy for all to use.”
Age-friendly design: Who are we designing for?
Age-friendly design is being applied across local councils and cities in Australia and internationally. This conversation curated by Young Seniors + Co explores how the needs of older-aged citizens overlap with the needs of other groups in our community and considers an all-age inclusive approach to urban design.
Up to Us: Bringing women together to design the world we want
Up to Us asks female collaborators from a range of disciplines to produce a creative response to the question: “What if it is up to us?”
“Utopianism is fuel for transformation. It has long inspired women and collectives to come together, to create movements for change,” the program reads. “At a time with extreme social, political and ecological uncertainty, it’s instinctive for designers to dream of utopian solutions. Being impractical can shift the impossible to inescapable, and is the only way to design the world we want.”
Make change: Decolonising design
The Make change: decolonising design workshop will focus on how Indigenous values can help us to reimagine how to care for people, community, and Country. It’s for anyone who is wondering how to incorporate a decolonial and value-driven design methodology within their practice.
Ella, one of our designers here at Local Peoples, is keen to take part. “As designers living and working on Indigenous Australian land, we have a genuine responsibility to be informed in Indigenous knowledge and to actively engage in reconciliation through our creative practice.”
Prototypes, systems, potentials: Self-build housing
How can designers help tenants take control of their dwelling space to improve comfort, reduce cost and minimise carbon footprint? Prototypes, systems, potentials: self-build housing delves into the potential of design to support quality self-build housing systems that are affordable and sustainable.
Make inclusive: Public spaces with Monash University XYX Lab
Data provides the evidence designers need to make powerful, well-informed recommendations and interventions in public spaces yet data and statistics usually remain buried in reports and policy documents.
Make inclusive: Public spaces with Monash University XYX Lab creates an opportunity for participants to build a design response to urban spatial inequality by making the experiences of women and gender-diverse people in outdoor spaces visible. The workshop will also show how design can shift us towards more inclusive communities.
Benefiting everyone: Good design features for healthy ageing
An exhibition of photographic, research and educational content, Benefiting everyone: Good design features for healthy ageing will demonstrate a range of good design principles that create a better and healthier future for everyone.
The exhibition will present physical (public spaces and buildings) service (healthcare, disability support, aged care, community services), and social infrastructure (friends, family) that aid in health and wellbeing to consider and celebrate the diverse ways design can work towards a better future for all.
Hero image credit: Image supplied by Space Furniture, Photography by Haydn Cattach, Digital Art by Tom Hancocks, Set build by Feather Edge and Consulting Art Direction by Nat Turnbull.
