A Service Designer and UX Researcher,
a Systemic Thinker, and a Curious Explorer.
Cultivating Reciprocity
Dip your toes
Entanglement space:
Embedded competitiveness mindsets present in hierarchical organizational structures turned a gardening space subject of controversy at Emily Carr University. This resulted in shutting down the program and revoking everyone's access to one of the few outdoor spaces on the campus.
Reframed:
Choosing collaboration instead of opposition to turn the missed opportunity of a community garden into a mutually beneficial experience for all ECU members.
Proposal:
Considering the garden as an independent entity instead of an obtainable territory can enable all university members, including the faculty and staff, to participate in the gardening and enjoy the fresh air space.
In this project, I proposed creating an organizational structure based on mutualism by designing reciprocal interactions in a horizontal structure.
Methodology:
-
Persistence, or Staying With the Trouble, when faced with obstacles in the system
-
Reframing as a technique to change perspectives on a controversial issue
-
Risk-taking by initiating the change we desire in the system to disrupt the dominant mindsets
Design deliverables:
-
Service Blueprint & Service Visual Communication
Co-Design Workshop, Dec 2022
What is Roots Union Community Garden?
The Roots Union community garden at Emily Carr University (ECU) grew through a collective effort to defy the prevailing competitiveness mindsets at the university. I contributed to this collaborative project by planning and writing proposals to obtain necessary permits, designing the required tools and techniques for collective decision-making, facilitating co-creation workshops and gardening, and creating an ever-evolving organizational structure for a lasting future.
I started this project when my initial research interest during my Master's (food systems) led to finding out about the student union's need for help maintaining four planter boxes. They were given to the student union (on the 2nd-floor north-east-facing patio) after the official gardening program (on the 4th-floor south-facing patio), led by the student wellness centre, was shut down, allegedly due to student littering. Though my instructors, knowing the story behind the scenes, warned me against the idea, I persistently investigated to find out about the possibility of moving the boxes to their original location on the sunny south-facing patio on the 4th floor and relaunching the gardening program for all ECU members.
.jpg)
A dye club was born from The Roots Union when our need of harvesting dye plants emerged, 2022
In search of the underlying causes of the garden shutdown, instead of relying on one narrative, I tried to listen to different parties' stories and see the problem from varied perspectives. Gradually, I realized ECU's hierarchical structure was the hidden cause, and student littering was a limiting narrative blocking views on the actual problem. For instance, bureaucratic procedures demanded a single department undertaking the responsibility and accountability, leading to territorial competition over recognition through the gardening program. These restricting perspectives made collaboration, or in other words, sharing the duties and the credits between all departments, unimaginable. This is an example of Either/Or thinking that the COCO centre refers to in White Supremacy Culture in Organizations, which limits our range of philosophies and, therefore, our opportunities for other ways of being and acting.
To address this systemic entanglement, I used a technique I call Reframing (one of my many learnings from the CFIL project) to disrupt stuck mindsets that prevent a challenge from being perceived as an opportunity. This helped me co-create a mutualism-based and horizontal organizational structure for the Roots Union Community Garden with a loving group composed of staff, faculties, and students.
Simultaneously, a group of library staff involved in the university's Climate Action Task Force was trying to get access to the garden. This lucky coincidence was working to my advantage as it was a chance to show other ways of working and growing in the university that were not explored before. Collaboration with ECU staff helped establish the garden as an open and inclusive environment that welcomes all ECU members, including students, faculty, and staff.
However, the university permitted us to use the space with a challenging condition, obligating us to move the soil in the planter boxes located on the north-facing second-floor patio to the south-facing fourth-floor patio ourselves. Even though this was unexpected and hard manual labour, my peers and a few library staff helped me carry out this task. And this formed our original founding group in the spring of 2022.
