As designers, we can learn lessons from the world of community development, and especially from the sub-discipline of asset based community development (ABCD)—especially when it comes to designing for relationships.
Building from the belief that communities are best situated to design and lead change by ‘identifying and mobilizing existing, but often unrecognised assets’, ABCD offers a more sustainable, democratic and ethical approach to design.
Here, I’ve adapted a framework originally published by Nurture Development to explore how we can apply the ABCD approach and ethic to design, guiding us to a more relationship-centred approach. By working within this framework, we’ll discover four modes of design and examine how relationships grow and power flows through each: designing TO, FOR, WITH and BY.
These four approaches are more or less relevant depending on what you’re trying to achieve as a designer. Some things, like refuse collection, are well suited to services that are designed FOR. Others, like social care, can only be effective when designed WITH users, and are most effective and sustainable when designed BY communities themselves.