For the past year, Team Braiding has been in a design challenge process to develop a prototype to encourage youth to become more actively engaged in creating and implementing climate adaptation strategies. The product was ‘Resilience!”, a mobile app that simultaneously addresses climate anxiety and climate action at the family level (kids and parents). The road to get to this product was not easy and at times frustrating but Team Braiding (wait for it) was resilient and developed a concept that is very much needed in our current world.
Our initial concept went through many iterations and was transformed completely through the design process. In the beginning, we focused on the school system with the concept of youth leading their own design challenge and being connected with other youth doing the same all over the world potentially. However, in the ninth-month Team Braiding redesigned the concept to focus on the family unit since there are growing concerns of climate anxiety being felt by kids and parents needing resources to help their kids to deal with it (Marks et al., 2021; Stevenson et al., 2016). This decision was based on feedback given by instructors and interviewees, other course learning, and our research. This process was truly a transdisciplinary process (see previous blog post for definition of transdisciplinary) because we incorporated new information to transform our thinking and the direction of our prototype to become a unique product.
Resilience! app would encourage psychological resilience on an individual and community level through daily challenges (action section) that use coping skills, decolonial knowledge, place-attachment, and collective action for the climate crisis which would be tailored to the users’ interests and preferences. The community section would allow the user to view initiatives and events dealing with climate change within their own community, post about initiatives and events they are organizing, and to connect with the wider online community. Another key feature would be the push notification options that share hope stories that reframe the climate crisis into moments of positive transformation with success stories and victories. The features incorporated into the app were heavily influenced by our learnings in CALS 502 – Communication for Climate, CALS 503 – Climate Risk Management, and CALS 504 – Modelling the Business Case for Climate Action such as the decolonizing concepts, storytelling, understanding your audience, connection to place, acting on impacts and risks climate change, and incremental adaptation to name a few (Alexander et al., 2011; Gram-Hanssen et al., 2021; Whyte, 2017; Hodson, 2019; Krauß et al., 2020; Lonsdale et al., 2015; Stevenson et al., 2016).
The iterations that Team Braiding went through can also be applied to real-world projects or program development. The process of developing ideas, testing/consulting with your users (communities), tweaking the design, and re-testing/consulting with your users (communities) again will ensure a project/program that respects the priorities of the community, has community buy-in, and will be successful.
I also wanted to end my design challenge reflection with a big congratulations to all my fellow students and their prototype outcomes. It was also somewhat surprising that the four CALS501 groups developed different prototypes and processes to respond to the question of how to encourage users to become more actively engaged in creating and implementing climate adaptation strategies. Even though the four prototypes were different, they would complement each other.
References
Alexander, C., Bynum, N., Johnson, E., King, U., Mustonen, T., Neofotis, P., Oettlé, N., Rosenzweig, C., Sakakibara, C., Shadrin, V., Vicarelli, M., Waterhouse, J., & Weeks, B. (2011). Linking Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge of Climate Change. BioScience, 61(6), 477–484. https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2011.61.6.10
Dam, R.F. (n.d.). The 5 stages in the design thinking process. Interaction Design Foundation. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process
Eppig, M. (n.d.). How to frame your design challenge. Tools for social innovators. https://toolsforsocialinnovators.com/2018/11/27/stage-2-of-design-thinking-define/
Gram-Hanssen, I., Schafenacker, N., & Bentz, J. (2021). Decolonizing transformations through ‘right relations’. Sustainability Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00960-9
Hodson, J. (2019). An ecological model of climate marketing: A conceptual framework for understanding climate science related attitude and behavior change. Cogent Social Sciences, 5(1), 1625101. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2019.1625101
Kippenhuck, S. (2021). Better together – inspiring YOU into climate action blog.
Krauß, W., & Bremer, S. (2020). The role of place-based narratives of change in climate risk governance. Climate Risk Management, 28, 100221. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212096320300115
Lonsdale, K., Pringle, P. & Turner, B. (2015). Transformative adaptation: what it is, why it matters & what is needed. UK Climate Impacts Programme. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:40000abd-74a0-4a3e-8e73-34374852474c/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe_filename=UKCIP-transformational-adaptation-final.pdf&type_of_work=Report
Marks, E. et al. (2021). Young People’s Voices on Climate Anxiety, Government Betrayal and Moral Injury: A Global Phenomenon. The Lancet. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3918955
Stevenson, K., & Peterson, N. (2016). Motivating action through fostering climate change hope and concern and avoiding despair among adolescents. Sustainability, 8(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/su8010006
Whyte, K.P. (2017). Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene (February 28, 2017). https://ssrn.com/abstract=2925514