Original post on LinkedIn here.

As transition design approaches—approaches focusing on the design of interventions and processes that facilitate societal transitions within complex socio-technical systems—continue to gain urgency, designers need to question whether they take the appropriate perspective on—and approaches to—trauma.

The Lacanian insight that trauma has always already occurred might expand our perspective to account for those traumas—often collective, often repressed—resulting from the disruption of social structures, routines, and symbolic frameworks.

With this expanded perspective taken, Tad Hirsch’s call for a trauma-informed approach to design research broadens our concern to mitigate the emotional risks undertaken by research participants beyond those who may have experienced obviously (exceptional) traumatic events.

Read Hirsch’s paper ’Practicing Without a License: Design Research as Psychotherapy’ here.