Azure Magazine
More Than Human: How Can We Design for All Planetary Life?
Designers Zahra Ebrahim and Ariel Sim confront the limitations of human-centred design and explore the contours of a multispecies paradigm shift.
Lead image by Milica Prokic. The photograph depicts Scotland’s Cove Park, an artist residency embedded deep into the coastal region’s natural landscape.
by Ariel Sim and Zahra Ebrahim
December 5, 2024
Picture the last time you were immersed in nature. If you close your eyes, maybe you can tap into what it looked like, sounded like, even how it smelled. In your mind’s eye, maybe this picture has you on a trail, surrounded by forest and brush, rocks covered in moss, and decomposing logs that were once majestic trees amidst the forest canopy. You may have even thought how nice it was to be alone, to have some quiet away from the frenetic rush of urban life. We escape into nature seeking solitude, and breathe a sigh of relief at the sense of peace we feel when there’s “nothing” around.
But the truth is that these natural worlds are metropolises in their own right, hubs of more than human life — where hundreds, sometimes thousands of species of flora and fauna are busily communicating with each other. They’re sharing news of changes in weather, passing resources through their networks and coordinating emergency responses to new pests, threats and toxins. They even share news of our approach, as we humans — unaware — wander their world.
Open Global Rights
Decomposing as a Social Process
by Ariel Sim
April 16, 2024
For practitioners working through social change, reconciliation, and reparation processes, decomposing as a social process invites us to disintegrate outdated colonial and industrial value systems that have guided the field’s sense-making, psychology, and behavior, regenerating the ways we think, what we create, how we communicate, and the rules that guide us.
Lead image by Alejandro Ospina depicting a surreal illustration of three bodied beings among decaying leaves.
JustLabs
The Constellations Toolkit
A self-guided tool for social change agents to reflect, time travel, and co-create as individuals and communities
by Ella Scheepers, Ishtar Lakhani, Ncedisa Nkonyeni, Jordan Jones, Ariel Sim
2022
Within the world of social justice and human rights, human rights practitioners, advocates, and activists often speak about social change. We believe long-lasting, farreaching, structural change will better the lives of the communities we represent, serve, and advocate for.
Our theory of change is that if thoughtful work is done to question our context, the narratives that inform our lives and communities, and how we see the world, then any social purpose work done after that will be deeper, more impactful, and more effective. The Constellations Journey is a toolkit that is comprised of six sessions with respective activities that facilitate deep (and often uncomfortable) reflections about our relationship to self, to others working on shared goals, and our relationship with the world we’re trying to change.
Cover art by César Andrès Rodríguez
MaRS Discovery District
Design at MaRS Handbook
An introductory Guide to Systemic, Behavioural, & Visual Design Practices
by Ariel Sim, Tegwen McKenzie, Hyun-Duck McKay, Mark Abbott, Alex Ryan, Sofie Poirier
May 2021
Every company, every team, every person has their own understanding of what design is, and what the role of a designer should be. In simple terms, design is the craft of planning and creation. Design comes in various types. From service and product design to behavioral, system, and visual design (to name a few), design is a broad term that can be applied to the planning and creating of structures, environments, interfaces, products, services, features and processes.
Design also moves through iterative phases, generally beginning with the concept development phase, moving into the design and technical development phase, and ending with the planning, launch, and management phase. You too will move through phases. Regardless of your current skill level, with practice and the right tools in your toolbox, your critical eye for design will evolve to see through new lenses. May this Design Handbook exist in your toolbox, and be an indispensable part of your growth.
Cover art by Tegwen McKenzie
UX Collective
Butterflies, not moonshots
by Ariel Sim
June 2021
A “butterfly” is a flexible idea that can easily move around and adapt to different situations, spreading awareness and inspiring new actions. Just like real pollinators, butterflies are ideas and concepts that are designed to fertilize and generate a new wave of growth. Moving around all areas of a system, they regenerate themselves by leaving traces of an idea that can be adopted by the receiver. It’s hard to know an idea came from the pollinator; they are eventually lost in a sea of similar ideas.
Cover art by @_drz_ from Unsplash depicts blue butterflies on a background of pink bricks
Munk School of Global Affairs
What Motivates Citizens to Participate?
by Lucas Robinson & Jennie Phillips with Emma Brett Bishop, Saleem Daya, Nicole Gladstone, Vanessa Ko, Peter Loewen, Ariel Sim, Claire Wilmot, Samuel Wollenberg
March 30, 2016
Rapid technological increases in digital communications have allowed individual citizens to mobilize, engage and influence in new and powerful ways, most markedly in the beginning stages of the Arab Spring or in global digital response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. However, as activists, journalists, humanitarians and international observers soon discovered, this form of civic participation often proves as short-lived as it is powerful, with social media tools and campaigns seeing greater success in generating short-term impact than in sustaining the extensive, in-depth and prolonged engagement that necessitates lasting change. The Digital Public Square is interested in understanding the motivations around civic participation online as it seeks to engage large numbers of people in discussions around transparency and accountability. From a digital diplomacy perspective, how online citizens can be motivated to participate in civic action is a critical precursor to developing platforms for engagement that are interesting, accessible, and informative.
Munk School of Global Affairs
Reaching the Hard to Reach
A Case Study of Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program
by Joseph Wong, Ariel Sim, Nicoli Dos Santos, Alexa Waud, Nina Da Nobrega Garcia, Sarah Ray
2016
It has been said that development is about delivery: the will and ability to deliver interventions to very poor people in order to improve their lives. The development “s pace” is filled with great ideas and innovative solutions, from technological interventions to new policy initiatives. But the effects of these potentially game-changing ideas are severely mitigated if they do not actually get to the people they are intended to benefit. We think of this challenge in terms of “reach.” Solutions can only solve problems if they reach those who need them most.
Those who live at the base of the pyramid – the poorest of the poor – are also the hardest to reach. Many are homeless or live far in the countryside; they might lack formal identification; or they are socially marginalized because of their ethnicity or gender. As Anthony Lake of UNICEF puts it: “Disaggregate the data and we find that our statistical national successes are masking moral and practical failures. People are left behind simply because they live in rural communities or urban slums, in conflict zones, as part of indigenous groups, with disabilities or because they are girls.”
