Cultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and Collaboration
Summary
“How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale” (Adrienne Maree Brown). To truly put humans in “human-centered design,” we must be care-centered. And how we practice care in our own teams or the “small scale” will influence the downstream impacts of our design work. This session is an invitation to explore how we practice and build ecologies of care, community, and collaboration to shift towards mutual power and symbiotic relationships throughout the design process. Drawing from a perspective of trauma-centeredness and harm reduction, we will all engage in deep (sometimes complex) reflection about what it means to care for yourself, with others, and develop an ethics of care to guide design teams. If the purpose of DesignOps is to build systems, processes and tools to support stronger design teams and individuals, this is the case for care: to show up as humans first, before we are designers, researchers, employers/the employed, technologists, or however you define your role.
Key Insights
-
•
Viewing an organization as an ecology reveals fluid, interdependent relationships beyond rigid hierarchical charts.
-
•
Decentralizing power is essential to foster genuine care and collaboration within organizations.
-
•
Care is a relational and reciprocal practice that moves beyond transactional exchanges.
-
•
Collective care and interdependence are crucial for the health and wellbeing of any organizational ecology.
-
•
Care looks different for every individual, making autonomy and self-determination foundational to inclusive workplace cultures.
-
•
Small-scale behaviors and relational practices can scale up to systemic change by following the principles of fractals of change.
-
•
Pod mapping helps individuals and teams visualize and reflect on their care networks and relational needs.
-
•
Implementing care practices in corporate settings requires intentional conversations and sometimes challenging established power hierarchies.
-
•
Practicing anti-urgency and setting boundaries are acts of care that improve wellbeing and productivity.
-
•
Care-centered relationships enable safer, more accountable, and more just workplace communities.
Notable Quotes
"What would a personal cheer team that wants you to grow and blossom look and feel like? Is that the future of design ops?"
"An ecology is about examining relationships among humans, more than humans, and the environment."
"Decentralization of power is really important because power impacts how we practice care and collaborate."
"Knowing that you love the earth activates you to defend and protect, but feeling that the earth loves you transforms it into a sacred bond."
"How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale—our personal care practices scale to community care."
"Care is a relational practice, a form of reciprocity, and a way of being in community and kinship."
"Care can go in multiple pathways; it’s not always one-way. There’s multiplicity and duality in how care is practiced."
"In corporate settings you have to get buy-in for care—it’s strange to think about, but that’s part of decentralizing power."
"We practice care by being anti-urgency—questioning if things really need to happen when we think they do."
"You need to show up as humans first before we show up as employees."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Awareness leads to feeling stuck because we don’t know what to do or don’t feel empowered to act."
Victor UdoewaBeyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion
March 26, 2024
"Engineering’s number one goal should be to enable learning."
Bill ScottLean Engineering: Engineering for Learning and Experimentation in the Enterprise
May 14, 2015
"It's not the demographics or names that should drive personas, but what people are really trying to do."
Lija HoganContexts of Use: A Framework for Connection
December 9, 2021
"Product managers often see design work as a black box and want transparency and accountability."
Aurobinda Pradhan Shashank DeshpandeIntroduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts
September 9, 2022
"Travel is impactful to let your remote teammates experience your context, which helps build empathy."
Jilanna WilsonDistributed DesignOps Management
February 26, 2019
"Tool use lets the model decide itself when to call external APIs or services to get needed information."
Peter Van DijckBuilding impactful AI products for design and product leaders, Part 3: Understand AI architectures: RAG, Agents, Oh My!
July 30, 2025
"Management consultants sell solutions to problems, not just research data, which is why they command high fees."
Nicole Aleong Michaela Mora Prayag Narula Brianna SylverWhat UX research can learn from other research practices [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
September 14, 2023
"The gap between what the output says and what the intention was is what we're going to call the reasoning gap."
Beth ChappellLeading through ambiguity: Supporting a design team relearning their craft
June 9, 2026
"It’s a love-hate relationship with AI because it can make us more efficient but also devalue our work."
Llewyn PaineDay 1 Using AI in UX with Impact
June 10, 2025
