Design practice that helps not harms

Trauma is common within society at large and is particularly prevalent amongst vulnerable populations, First Nations peoples and people with Lived Experience of mental health issues. Trauma informed practice is a strengths-based framework that supports responsiveness to the impact of trauma, enabling physical, psychological, and emotional safety for both providers and survivors.

Jax Wechsler, as part of her human-centred design practice, often conducts research with people who have lived experience of trauma.  She strongly felt that she needed to become more trauma informed in her design practice and is completing a Certificate in Trauma Informed Care holding the question; ‘How might I make my Design Research practice more trauma informed’, so that she can conduct her Design Research, Service Design and Co-design practice in a way that helps not harms.

In this class you will learn about the five guiding principles of trauma informed practice; safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment and learn how to apply them within design contexts. You will learn some mindsets and practices you can apply within your own practice when working with people who may have experienced trauma. Together we will co-create a Trauma Informed Design Research Charter and reflect upon how we can make our practice more trauma-informed. Join the conversation!

Current Sessions

Tuesday June 15th, 9:00 am – 11:00 am (AEST (Australia – Sydney, ACT, Melbourne) which is
Monday June 14th, 4:00pm – 6:00pm (PDT (USA – Los Angeles)

OR

Wednesday June 16th 4:30pm – 6:30 pm AEST (Australia – Sydney, ACT, Melbourne) which is
Wednesday June 16th 7:30 am – 9:30am GMT (UK London)

This workshop is also being offered to teams.
Get in touch if this is of interest.

Check out Part 2: Trauma informed design research methods class

About Jax Wechsler

Jax Wechsler is a strategic designer and change maker based in Sydney Australia. She has 15 years design related experience and is passionate about systems change and enabling better futures for people and the planet. Jax has a Masters by Research in Design (UTS) and her academic research explores the enabling and mediatory roles of design artefacts for organisational transformation.

Jax consults as Sticky Design Studio where she draws on multiple influences in her practice such as Human-centred Design, Systems Thinking, Futures Thinking and Community Development approaches. Professionally, Jax is passionate about change doing, learning and capability building or sharing. She teaches and mentors people interested in social design and change practices, and has founded two communities of practice, Social Design Sydney in 2013 and more recently the Systems Change Salon aimed at supporting change makers to do social and systems change work. Learn more about Jax’s projects and publications at jaxwechsler.com or on LinkedIn.

SOME TESTIMONIALS 

“As a former mental health counselor, i was incredibly impressed by the depth and breadth of knowledge in the presentation and especially loved the breakout group activity” – Anonymous via feedback form

“Attended Jacqueline (Jax) Wechsler workshop a few weeks ago — strong recommend! Trauma-informed research should be considered essential training and part of all DR practice.” – Megan Elyse Bontempo, Design Research Lead, ideo.org

“Thank you for bringing this topic of conversation to the table in such an informed and articulate way – it has been needed for a long time. I got so much out of it and highly recommend this workshop to my peers who work in design research, co-design and/ or HCD.” – Laura James, Insights & Design Lead, Smith Family