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The Health Design Lab (HDL) is a research and design centre at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. We use participatory design methods to catalyze, support and amplify initiatives that address complex health challenges.
To us, health is more than healthcare. Health is about community, culture, equity, agency, and much more. As a team of designers, including faculty, research associates and students, we work collaboratively with communities through storytelling, visualizing, making and co-design. Collaborations and projects seek to foster new ideas, uncover needs or opportunities, improve systems and services, amplify voices and stories.
How we work is informed by our mindset, participatory design methods and our collaborators on any given project. We adapt our methods and approaches to each project, context and community – working in flexible, emergent and exploratory modes. We centre lived experience and community-based knowledge as expertise. We work to intentionally seek, listen and amplify voices through a design justice lens.
We believe creative strategies, hands-on activities and opportunities for expression through images, objects and metaphors can help to draw out ideas, insights and stories. We use participatory design methods to support self-expression, story-sharing and dialogue. We support sense-making through visualizing to map and share knowledge. and value ways of working that are inquiry-based, exploratory and relational.
Who we collaborate with, shapes who we are. At its core, the Health Design Lab team includes a range of design students who work as Research Assistants led by HDL staff, design faculty and design research associates. We form collaborative teams with our partners and the communities they serve. We seek partners and collaborators that:
Our partners are often community and not-for-profit organizations, academic researchers, health authorities, or local businesses. We collaborate via direct funding from our partners, or through grants.
The Health Design Lab is situated on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
We acknowledge that the health system in which we work traditionally and currently disadvantages, excludes, and oppresses already marginalized communities, and presents systemic and structural barriers to health. With our commitments to co-design and community-centered collaboration, we seek to rethink and move beyond the dominant systems of health and healthcare.
