Rosenverse

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

The Unspoken Complexity of “Self-Care” with Deanna Zandt
Thursday, July 21, 2022 • Civic Design Community
Share the love for this talk
The Unspoken Complexity of “Self-Care” with Deanna Zandt
Speakers: Deanna Zandt
Link:

Summary

At the July Civic Design Community call, hear from Deanna Zandt (she/her).  The term "self-care" is thrown around a lot these days but there's a more complicated picture than just taking a bubble bath and hoping for the best. In this call we talk about what's missing from our conversations about self-care. We also discuss how human experience is fundamentally messy, but designers (and coders) like to make everything clean and neat. We've got to start reckoning with that. Our goal is that you walk away with a sense of the care structures that you have and need in your own lives, and a sense of what designing care into our systems could look like. About our speaker: Deanna Zandt is a writer, artist and award-winning technologist living in Brooklyn, NY. She spent 15 years working at the forefront of social justice, technology and media; after she burned out for the third time, she realized that maybe that work didn’t suit her particularly well. Currently, she spends her time: supporting other very impressive people and organizations behind-the-scenes with their technology; writing & drawing when she feels like it; walking and playing with her two dogs and their friends; connecting with humans near and far; and figuring out how to exist with meaning, fulfillment and as many giggles as possible. We’ll be talking (and very likely giggling) about her zine that traverses the constellation of self-soothing, self-care, community care and structural care.

Key Insights

  • Self-care and self-soothing are distinct: self-care supports long-term wellbeing, while self-soothing addresses immediate distress.

  • Community care acts as a vital bridge, allowing individuals to support each other's capacity for self-care and self-soothing.

  • Structural care involves systemic reforms that enable sustainable wellbeing beyond individual or community efforts.

  • Capitalism’s exploitative nature fundamentally conflicts with genuine care systems.

  • Communities of color often embed care practices into social movements more deeply than mainstream white-led movements.

  • Burnout is tied to outdated values of sacrifice and hustle; newer generations prioritize healthier integrations of work and care.

  • Activism encompasses diverse roles—direct action, support, financial contributions—and no role is insignificant or lesser.

  • Toxic optimism oversimplifies human experience and can hinder authentic coping and systemic change.

  • Movement-building includes practices like grief work, body movement, and relational culture to sustain activists holistically.

  • Long-term collaboration, like Deanna’s 17 years with Jim Hightower, demonstrates how relationships and joy sustain social justice work.

Notable Quotes

"You can never be sick enough to help the sickest people."

"The hustle does suck, and Gen Z is doing this other thing over here, arranging in healthier ways."

"Self-care became a commodity where buying things was mistaken for healing and support."

"Everybody does better when everybody does better."

"If we don’t do the work, the world won’t be on fire—it already is."

"There’s no insignificant work in activism; all roles are critical."

"The design of our systems should make room for messy, complicated human realities, not just positive illusions."

"Movement building requires healing, grief work, and physical movement to sustain people."

"I finally started saying, I understand your budget, but I have one too, and I deserve to be paid."

"Sometimes significant change happens in a heartbeat because one person said something unexpected."

Ask the Rosenbot
Mike Oren
Design Research Strategy & Strategic Design Research
2022 • Advancing Research Community
Toby Haug
Discussion
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Smitha Papolu
Theme 3 Discussion
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Irina Tikhonova
Small Wins, Big Impact: Leveraging and Elevating User Engagement
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Alëna Iouguina
Designing Systems at Scale
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Verónica Urzúa
The B-side of the Research Impact
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Patrick Boehler
Fishing for Real Needs: Reimagining Journalism Needs with AI
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Andy Polaine
What is the role of service design in product-led organizations?
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Christopher Noessel
AI of the now: Designing for Agents
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Tamara Kartoziia
Think global, adapt local: how service design accelerated B2B market entry by 6 months
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Conference
Tutti Taygerly
Videconference: How to Work with Difficult People with Tutti Taygerly
2020 • Enterprise Community
Jon Fukuda
Storytelling for DesignOps
2023 • DesignOps Community
Kim Holt
A Salesforce Panel Discussion on Values-Driven DesignOps
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Amy Thibodeau
Opening Keynote: Process and Ambiguity
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
John Donmoyer
Shipping your code generation experiments to production
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Benjamin Real
Showing the Value of DesignOps by Not Having a DesignOps Team
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold

More Videos

Matt Stone

"We gave away the recipe with no fee for entry – immediate value first, then learning the process."

Matt Stone

Scaling Empathy, A Case Study in Change Management

June 11, 2021

Aditi Ruiz

"This work does not fit our product program."

Aditi Ruiz Christian Crumlish Farid Sabitov

A PM State of Mind: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 1

December 6, 2022

Dave Malouf

"Not every Design Ops person is the same, and Design Ops is going to look very different at every company."

Dave Malouf Meredith Black Farid Sabitov

The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 1)

February 17, 2022

Sheri Byrne-Haber

"Accessibility defects are bugs. If it’s a P1 blocking bug for an accessibility issue, treat it like any other P1 bug."

Sheri Byrne-Haber

Accessibility at Scale

June 9, 2021

Nidhi Singh Rathore

"We have to set expectations that what we discuss might be a blue sky vision and won't necessarily be implemented immediately."

Nidhi Singh Rathore Amber Davis

Embracing participation to unlock deeper truths in commercial research

March 12, 2025

Laine Riley Prokay

"If something was unclear or uncomfortable to even one person, it was a sign it needed editing."

Laine Riley Prokay

How DesignOps can Drive Inclusive Career Ladders for All

September 30, 2021

Ariba Jahan

"When the pandemic hit, those in the resilient 'yellow' zone had enough reserve to readjust and come back."

Ariba Jahan

Team Resiliency Through a Pandemic

January 8, 2024

Noreen Whysel

"Trust was so key to the product-UX relationship and it was further built by putting structure in place."

Noreen Whysel Katie Saindon

Short Take #4: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers

December 6, 2022

Rittika Basu

"It’s good practice to offer one-on-one interactions with older adults due to their learning preferences."

Rittika Basu

Age and Interfaces: Equipping Older Adults with Technological Tools

February 23, 2023