Health Design Lab

2020 healthdesignlab ca HDL

Design cares.

The Health Design Lab uses participatory design methods to catalyze, support and amplify initiatives that address complex health challenges.

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 may seek to foster new ideas, uncover needs or opportunities, improve systems and services, and amplify voices and stories.

Our collaborators

Design is inherently collaborative — we never work alone. The Health Design Lab is a dynamic team that adapts to meet our project and research needs. At our core, our team includes a range of design students who work as research assistants, and are led by HDL staff, design faculty and design research associates. Together, we form collaborative teams with our partners and the communities they serve.

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. We seek partners and collaborators that want to incorporate participatory design methods and tools into their initiative by including people with lived experience in the process.

Current research interests:

  • Collaborations to support Indigenous-led projects and initiatives
  • Projects related to ageing and dementia that are inclusive and participatory
  • Projects that gather, centre and highlight stories as research knowledge/evidence
  • Projects that seek to engage people and communities that are often missed and that may benefit from creative strategies for collaboration
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Research Assistants

Our team is constantly expanding to meet new project needs, bringing on new team members and integrating new students into our projects as paid research assistants, or through course-based projects. Most of our students are enrolled at ECU in the Master of Design Program, or one of three Bachelor of Design programs (Communication Design, Industrial Design or Interaction Design). Students bring design skills and new perspectives to each project, often playing critical roles as co-design facilitators. On average, our team includes 10-20 research assistants on various projects.

Faculty & Design Research Associates

Projects in the Health Design Lab are led by HDL Director, Caylee Raber and HDL Coordinator, Otilia Spantulescu, along with a team of faculty and design research associates brought on board for specific projects to provide project leadership and design expertise.

Mindset + Methods + Collaborators

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 view designers as collaborators, story-listeners and facilitators, and seek to work with people with lived experience through participatory co-design methods
  • We use creative strategies and hands-on activities and making to support self-expression, story-sharing and dialogue with an understanding that these approaches can help draw out ideas, insights and valuable experiential knowledge
  • We value ways of working that are inquiry-based, exploratory and relational.

The Health Design Lab values new connections. Get in touch:

Caylee Raber, Director
raber@ecuad.ca

Otilia Spantulescu, Project Coordinator
ospantulescu@ecuad.ca

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