In this episode we have a frank and fresh talk with Jenny Winfield about Trauma Informed Design Research. We discuss Jenny's route into the profession and she provides a clear and concise overview of Trauma Informed Design, and its four pillars:
Jenny also shows how these have been applied in her favourite projects - who knew that death doulas existed?
Links to references in the podcast:
This is HCD. A great intro to Trauma Informed Design.
Practicing without a licence. An academic paper that looks at negative impact of design research turns into therapy, by Tad Hirsch
To learn more about Chayn, a charity supporting those experiencing gender-based violence, (or to support them with a donation) click here.
Jenny's site: www.jennywinfield.co.u
Service Design YAP is developed and produced by the Service Design Network UK Chapter.
Its aim is to engage and connect the wider Service Design community.
In this episode we have a frank and fresh talk with Jenny Winfield about Trauma Informed Design Research. We discuss Jenny's route into the profession and she provides a clear and concise overview of Trauma Informed Design, and its four pillars:
Jenny also shows how these have been applied in her favourite projects - who knew that death doulas existed?
Links to references in the podcast:
This is HCD. A great intro to Trauma Informed Design.
Practicing without a licence. An academic paper that looks at negative impact of design research turns into therapy, by Tad Hirsch
To learn more about Chayn, a charity supporting those experiencing gender-based violence, (or to support them with a donation) click here.
Jenny's site: www.jennywinfield.co.u
Service Design YAP is developed and produced by the Service Design Network UK Chapter.
Its aim is to engage and connect the wider Service Design community.
Welcome to another edition of Service Design, YAP.
As designers, we all like to tackle wicked problems. But what happens when the wicked problems are also human and deeply emotional problems?
Today, we're going to be talking to Jenny Winfield. And Jenny's a specialist in trauma-informed design. This is something that I really hadn't come across before talking to Jenny. Jenny talks about how in trauma-informed design, the tools and the frameworks that we typically adopt when doing design research need to be changed and how this can drive better outcomes for us as researchers and designers, but also for the participants as well.
So without further ado, let's listen to the conversation with Jenny. And if you enjoy it. Please, as ever, forward it on to someone who you think would also like to listen to the podcast. Please do share, like, follow Service Design YAP.
Welcome to another edition of Service Design YAP. I'm your host, Stephen Wood, and today we're joined by Jenny Winfield. Jenny's a design researcher that specializes in trauma-informed research and focuses on trauma and taboo topics. Hey Jenny, how are you doing? I'm doing well, thanks. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing well. Before we start off, I know that Jenny is perched on an antique or vintage chair. which may sound like a pirate ship at sea. So if your core strength is sufficient, I'll make a small donation to charity if there is no sound of creaking chair through the entire performance, which means Jenny will not only be focused on answering the questions, but on keeping us still as possible. Yoga helps. It does indeed.
So we start off Service Design YAP with a quick fire round where we look at six questions. that help us get to know you really quickly. Nice. Are you ready, Jenny? Yeah, I'm ready. Okay, question one, design school or learning on the job? So definitely for me a mix. I studied psychology and then did a master's in anthropology. So I never went to design school, but in terms of kind of bringing in a research perspective to design, I definitely learned about human behavior and how to explore that through university courses. I actually did a really interesting masters at UCL in anthropology that has a special focus on what's called material culture, which is essentially exploring the social and cultural meaning of our belongings.
So that really was my kind of entry point. And I think I learned that there was a role for research in design from being there and helped me to understand that there's like various. really major topics actually that all human beings care about and pay attention to. And if you want to sort of understand different cultures, those topics are where you look. And those things were sex, death, birth, money and power. And it kind of just blew me away to learn that like these things are commonly kind of cared about and there's rituals and routines around all of these things in all cultures. And it's where I kind of got my first idea about studying taboos. So definitely didn't do design at school, but I did lots of human behavior stuff. That's very relevant in what I'm doing today.
Excellent. It sounds like an episode of Succession, sort of death, sex, power, blah, blah. Exactly. And if you think about how things have developed, do you think that people come into the design research profession today? Is it different? Is there a need for people to have gone to design school to get traction early? Or do you think that the profession is sort of open-minded? and looks for a broader set of skills.
I think there's more kind of obvious courses now that you can take in things like UX design, which wasn't really a thing like maybe 15, 20 years ago when I was going to university. So I think, you know, having researchers come through who have studied the human sciences is always going to be relevant. I think there are more courses now, which are specially kind of labeled things like UX research and design, which give people that kind of. knowledge that this is a path that they can go into. I had no idea really until I did my masters and I was already about 25 that the role that I do was even a job. So I think it's a little bit easier for people to see now that it's something that you can go on to do. Yeah. It's this idea of asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. It seems to be a bit ambitious, especially as most people leave university still not knowing what they want to do. And many get to mid-career and don't know. But it's something that evolves. Yeah. And I've just always done what I've been interested in. So I've always followed like the things that I've just found fascinating rather than thinking about a specific job. And I think that served me pretty well and allowed me to kind of stretch into different directions and study different things. So it's worked for me. Yeah, absolutely. I think if you can focus on things that you're curious about or you're passionate about, actually that ends up meaning that you deliver better on the job. Yeah. And I'd say sort of. So from the other perspective, so I did all this kind of like deep grounding in what it means to be human at uni and doing these courses and then very much on the job, I learned what it means to be a researcher, so how to conduct interviews and how to synthesize insights. And that was very much something that I did in work. So many, many years, I was doing research about all kinds of commercial things, like how to make big companies more future-proof and more successful, whether it was kind of Ford or Ikea or a big hotel chain. So I'm happy to say that I had sort of hundreds of hours of research under my belt through work before I even ventured anywhere near trauma-informed design or taboo issues. And I'm really glad of that because I do see younger researchers coming through now who are already focusing quite early on in their careers on like really sensitive issues and you know, methodologies that are quite complex and you know, really take quite a bit of getting your head around. It's really cool to see that, but I'm kind of glad that wasn't my first foray. Yeah. And the impact of misinterpreting things, if you're thinking about trauma informed design, is probably larger than if you're thinking about designing an experience for maybe a consumer brand. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Brilliant. So moving on to question two, what was your first job? What's been your favourite job? So my first job was picking dandelions at my mum's garden for two P each. So yeah, there was four of us kids. She used to make us do these hilarious random jobs around the house. I think basically to keep us busy very cheaply. Another one was organizing our clothes and toys for each for which we'd get like paid one pea per item. So that was quite funny. My first actual job was working in a cafe in the village where my parents lived in the Peak District. And I got that job at age 12. The official rule was that you had to be 13, but I sort of lied so I could get a job there with my best friend who was a little bit older. And I remember the pay was £2.25 an hour, which like felt like absolutely loads at the time. So that was my first entrance into proper employment. So in both of those examples, the British approach to child labour and minimum wage were breached fantastically. Definitely. So moving on from those moments of exploitation. What's been your favourite job? So I'd say like honestly, like freelancing has been my favourite thing these last seven years. I've done so many cool projects and different things. I was having a think about this the other day and there is a gig that I did that does stand out as having been like super interesting and fun. And that was working with an organisation a few years ago called Farewell. So they're a start-up and they're innovating in death care. So they do things like providing people with support when they're writing their will. Um, they provide support with things like probate and funeral and cremation services as well. They're kind of re-imagining the way we deal with death and they're kind of a tech focused startup. So really, really cool organization. And my brief working with them was to explore and understand what it means to people to have a good death. Cause they had this kind of strategy that was about kind of celebrating life and. being kind of uplifting and hopeful and positive whilst dealing with death, which I thought was really cool. And as a tech startup then, did they think about the digital person? So I know that some research has been done into what happens to all of your data and your profiles when you die. Yeah. So supporting people to think through like, you know, ownership of that kind of thing. Essentially like how you prepare for death was super interesting. And as part of that project, I interviewed. somebody that I didn't even know that this was like a job before, but I interviewed someone called a death doula. Um, and it's essentially someone whose job it is to help people on their journey between life and death. And she just completely blew me away. So they're sometimes called like soul midwives and they're the companion to support people through the dying process, as well as their families. And this, um, it's an analogy of like a birth doula. So like the journey, you know, into the world. And it's also like you have. one at the other end of the process as well, but when you're exiting the world as we know it. And she was just amazing and one of the most interesting interviews I've ever done because she actually just took control right at the beginning of the session and was like, right, I want to hold some space for us to honor the fact that we're going to connect over this super profound topic. I'm going to share some stories. We're going to go on this adventure together. And it was amazing because it completely helped me to see that when you're exploring some of this like. outside of the norm stuff, should we say, you know, you can really enjoy it and just meet as two human beings talking about this like very, very human thing. And yes, it's the work, but it was so fun and enjoyable and interesting anyway. And actually I happened to be joined in that interview by the CEO of this organization and it's not often that you get the CEO to come along to research interviews, but I was so glad that he joined that specific one, cause it was one of my favorites ever. It's interesting you talk about death as a topic. It's kind of an out of the ordinary topic. If we think about taboos like sex, sex has been commoditized and almost permeates everything, especially in the digital realm. But sex isn't inevitable, not for many people. Death, on the other hand, which is inevitable, hasn't at all been, let's say, opened up. And it's something which you'd have thought because everyone has to at some point or other experience it as someone who's bereaved or someone who is heading for it themselves. It's one of those things that you think, well, that's the ultimate denial. Yeah. And it's very difficult to get people to think actively about their own death because it feels so uncomfortable personally, but also to have those conversations with friends and family, even though that's what so many of us know we need to be doing, especially if we want to have wishes that we might have fulfilled. So it's a tricky one. I do think there are organizations that are starting. to innovate in this space and to open up, especially if you think about things like green funerals and more kind of eco led approaches to end of life. I'm actually just about to start doing some work with another funerals organization called Poppies based in London and they have a really kind of refreshing approach to dealing with death care as well. So there's some cool stuff going on in this space for sure, but it's definitely still a taboo. It's definitely still tough to talk about with people. Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. So you've talked a little bit about your background in design providing you with almost like a slipway to move towards having those more difficult conversations or the difficult research conversations around taboo subjects. The next question, question three is around data-driven design versus visionary led design. Where do you fall on that spectrum? It was interesting when I was thinking about this because there's the Henry Ford quip, isn't there? You know, if you'd have asked customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses, as in people can't imagine the future, so you just have to be a visionary and ignore what everyday people say. And I think this question, I mean, I would say this because I'm a researcher, but I do think it needs a little bit of unpacking because I've seen this idea come up again and again across my career, this idea that, you know, normal everyday people can't tell you. what the future is, they can't tell you what to design. And I think what's most interesting about that is that it tends to be the people with the biggest egos and the least curiosity that fall back on that kind of thinking, and I'd say to those designers like, aren't you curious though, like, don't you want to know what's broken before you create this new thing that's in your head? I think often it tends to be people that say like, don't listen to people when it is that they've got an idea in their head about what they think they should do and the customers aren't telling them. anything that's helpful to, you know, in that direction. And I think the real issue with asking people what they want is that it's a bad research question, right? So like, of course people aren't a magic gateball that can imagine the future. And actually no one person is visionary enough to say like, this is what you should do, it's always a, like a multidisciplinary hybrid approach that gets you to those great kind of solutions. But good research really is about uncovering what's challenging. about people's lives and like what opportunities can actually be addressed with innovative thinking. So like, it's silly definitely to ask people to invent the future for you, but it's like even more stupid to not ask users anything because they're not going to tell you the answer. Yeah. I think the only people that have ever got value out of asking people what they want are the spy skills. When you even talk to people who see themselves as visionary designers, if you rephrase it to talk about, and what signals did you pick up on? that helped you to work out that this was an area that was emerging. Then they'll sort of talk about actually the things that have led them to that conclusion, which is like, okay, so there is some data there, even though you want, you don't want to say, actually, I was just interpreting data that was there, it was like, actually, I was picking up on signals and then using my skill to interpret that moving from signals towards solution. Yeah. And I think as well, like, you know, data. As research is another thing, it kind of in itself, it doesn't really provide people with like the truth. So like all research is subject to interpretation, including data and the idea that any of it as objective is actually nonsense. And that's why you've got to have really good research researchers and designers who you can trust to explore what data and stories actually mean and identify the most important aspects to sort of pay attention to. build confidence in rather than sort of saying, this is the answer. It's more about like, this is the direction that we should probably pursue. And I have an X amount of confidence in that because anybody that says that they have ultimate objective confidence and truth in any kind of direction is probably not a great researcher. So it's interesting that the more experienced you get in research, the more comfortable you become at saying you don't know things. And the easier is to be transparent about what you do and don't know. And the fact that there might be holes because you kind of, you get the fact that like, it's all a bit of a guessing game and you know, data can always be interpreted in the way that people want with, you know, various different stories or whatever. And it's all about a synthesis of like a few key points from like hundreds of data points. So the idea that it's an exact science is just not a thing to me anyway. Yeah. Anyone who says they're a hundred percent sure of the way to go. typically they're not spending their own money and they become a little bit more reticent when it's like, well, actually, okay. Do you mind funding this? Is that, oh, well, no, maybe not. Brilliant. So moving on to question four then Jenny, what is your go-to source for inspiration or what source do you recommend most frequently? Interesting one. I think... When you say source, do you mean like a book or a podcast or something like that? It could be anything. I think when we talked to a last interviewee, he mentioned the Count of Monte Cristo because it was a fantastic tale of revenge and he felt that revenge was a big theme in careers in design. But it doesn't have to be a podcast. No, I just, I think rather than kind of like leaning on a specific kind of book or a specific podcast or anything like that, I tend to just kind of explore something that I'm fascinated by and learn all about it and sort of really cross pollinate ideas across different sectors. So like, if I'm interested in, I don't know, like I was working on a project about opioid addiction recovery last year and I was like watching the Dope Sick TV show and I was reading Patrick Raiden Keefe's Empire of Pain. I was watching Nan Goldin's documentary about the Sackler family. So I'll try and look for interesting things that are going on in culture that are related to the topic I'm interested in and use that to enhance and inform my work. And then I'll quickly move on to something else and be like... Okay, so now I'm interested in, I don't know, it might be something about the death industry. I started reading loads and loads of books about that because I'm just really fascinated by how that's changing. So my sort of tip would be just hone your kind of instincts in your design work by like learning a lot about the topics that you're working on and usually outside of a design context but more in a sort of cultural context. And there'll be some really interesting stories to get inspired by and you just learn so much when you're enjoying learning. maybe design book or podcast that you bought for someone or shared with someone. I mean, ooh, this is great. Something that I share quite often is a podcast by, I think it's called the HCD Network. And this is about trauma-informed design specifically. And there's a couple of people who are like fantastic practitioners in this space. There's an article written by a really interesting guy who teaches design at Northwestern. university in the States and he wrote a paper called Practicing Without a License. And it's about the kind of dangers of the crossover between like design research about sensitive topics and psychotherapy and how sometimes participants kind of misread all of the signals quite understandably and experienced design research as a sort of therapy session. And he talks about how harmful that can be for both the participant and the researchers or designers. And there's a really good podcast, which basically discusses and unpacks that paper with him and a couple of other great practitioners and just helps. You know, I recommend it a lot because it really helps people to understand the, this is a very exciting new topic, trauma informed design, but it's also kind of not one to take lightly. And you kind of really need to understand what it is you're getting into if you decide to explore these methodologies. That's a really good one. That sounds fantastic. The fact that the misinterpretation of the purpose of the interaction can actually lead to not only the research being skewed, but also to the person that you're interviewing taking the wrong things away or maybe even being harmed by the session. Exactly. Moving on to the fifth question, I'd like to ask you either what's the best interview question you've ever been asked or you can choose to say what's your favorite interview question to ask a candidate. I haven't actually been for that many job interviews where I've been asked those typical questions. I've tended to get into different work situations by contacting someone and saying, I think what you're doing is really cool. Do you need anybody that does this kind of thing? So I probably haven't been asked anything very interesting in an interview myself. I think when I interview other people, the first thing... I actually always do these days before we even dive into the gnarly taboo topic is I always ask people like, what makes you feel good? And we end up having a conversation about the things that they do in their life to, you know, relax and find joy and have fun and feel good in their sort of bodies and minds. And I really love that question because it helps me to get to know people. So it's like a good substitute for one of those kind of quite boring warm up questions that you might ask like, what are your hobbies? But it also kind of creates a really nice sense in the session. You know, the person is thinking about and relaying the things that bring them joy and that they love. And I think that creates a really nice vibe between you and them at the start of sessions where like they maybe feel more relaxed or happy because they're just thinking about good stuff. And the reason I think that's so important is oftentimes when people come into user research interviews about, you know, difficult things like trauma, they are quite nervous and they may be expecting that you're going to ask them all about this traumatic thing, which we absolutely never do. And I can talk more about that. But often it's just really nice to kind of set the tone at the beginning that like you're just two people and you're going to have like a good chat and then there's space for it to go into like sad or happy spaces. But you're setting the tone that like you want to hear about them as a person. And does anyone ever struggle to answer that question? I'm thinking about people like Stephen probably have to go off for a year to experiment about different things, just to try and work out what would make him happy. I usually say what makes you feel good. And so I think I haven't, I haven't found so far that anybody has struggled to answer that, but maybe I'll need to read, address my methodology. It should be easy. Fantastic. The last question, Jenny, what questions you wish I'd asked that I haven't. Probably like the worst or scariest interview that I've ever had. Yeah, I mean, I've had some pretty mad research experiences in my time. Yeah, I've interviewed people in prison who are lifers. That was kind of an experience. Not a bad one at all, actually, just that I was pretty scared. There's been a lot of experiences where I've been like pretty nervous going in because I'm about to meet somebody that in my head I've made sound quite scary. And then what's quite amazing is that like, They're almost always just really nice people. I have had a couple of experiences with people who are not in a good place and that has become very apparent. Either they wanted to show up to the research to make a bit of a complaint about the organization that I'm working on behalf of, or they're very anxious about, and rightly so, like they're very anxious about things like getting paid or what's going to happen with their input. Even that you can do a lot to try and allay those fears or mitigate some of these kinds of things. But sometimes I think in this line of work, you do interact with people who are just in a really bad place and that can be very upsetting. So yeah, the strategies that you need to have to deal with that too. I think none of those sound like they were sort of nightmarish interviews. No. But it's just, a lot of it sounds like going into it with a sense of apprehension and then actually the reflection on the experience and the experience. generally was more positive than you were expecting. Yeah. I mean, if I compare it to like some of the stuff I used to do, like going to workshops that were about like peanut butter and stuff, where I'd be like, I can't believe that I'm here. Like what is going on with my life? Like I'd much rather be in a slightly scary interview with a prisoner than to be in a workshop about some thing I don't care about. There we go. And did you have a spectrum of crunchy to smooth? I mean, there was a many conversations of that type going on. I think I struggled to keep my mind in the room to be honest. There we go. Yes. I seem to be lacking any engagement at all with this one. You mentioned that the people that you visited in prison who'd obviously been convicted of crimes actually seemed really normal. Did you find that more frightening to work out that actually there are lots of normal people in the world? Yeah, I think that was one of my kind of favourite projects in a way because it's challenged so many of my assumptions about what I thought I was going to find going in. And actually that was the project where I first really learned properly about trauma informed design because I worked directly with a prison psychologist when I was planning my research and she just, it was amazing and gave me loads of tips on like how to navigate these situations in a good way. But you know, I was afraid of things like asking. What are you good at? Or like, what's the highlight of your week? Like things that you would ask other research participants when you go into their homes or you chat to them on zoom these days, you know, one of the things you'd usually ask is, you know, what's your favorite thing to do when you've got some spare time or whatever. And I felt like going into these interviews with prisoners, like, how am I supposed to ask? questions like that, isn't it completely insensitive to ask like, what's the highlight of your week? And she, this psychologist is like, no, you absolutely should ask those questions. You should ask what they're really good at. You should ask what the highs are of being here as well as the lows and really show that you weren't like, you're interested in them as people because there'll be very few people in prison that are asking about them in this kind of way. And it was amazing, like the kinds of things people would tell me about and, and yeah, I felt like we really did manage through some of these methods to get to. you know, really strong conversations through the use of quite simple tactics as well. So she would say things like, you know, you need to give people some agency. So like when you're setting up your research, don't assume that just because people are in prison, they are just going to be at your back and call whenever you decide to go and do an onsite visit. They have jobs, they have schedules, they have visits, they have stuff to do. And like you need to ask for their time. You shouldn't just assume that they'll come and meet you. Just so you know, things like that, they're basic respect, but. that maybe I wouldn't have thought about in the same way if I hadn't have worked with somebody so insightful and generous. That's great insight. You often feel that you're going to make some faux pas, but actually there are those open questions that are sort of basic and human that people can answer from different places because of their context, but it helps to get the ball rolling and that dialogue flowing. Yeah, definitely. So that naturally brings us to the top of trauma-informed design. And the first question is, how would you define trauma-informed design? So to me, trauma-informed design is just a more caring and careful approach to design. It's about recognizing that when people have experienced traumatic things, they have slightly different needs from the products, services and experiences we're designing for them. And we need to be quite mindful of how, you know, they show up and what their needs are in order to not cause further harm in the things that we are creating. What's really great about this approach is that there are some principles that practitioners tend to follow that are grouped into kind of five or six key themes, which really make working in trauma much kind of more manageable. It helps you to sort of navigate through because trauma is this huge topic and it means lots of different things to lots of different people, you know, it's You, people talk about big T, little T trauma. They talk about intergenerational trauma or vicarious trauma. And there's so many different things that can cause someone to have a traumatic experience that defining just trauma itself is quite hard. So when you start thinking about trauma informed design, the fact that there are these principles to work to really helps. And the principles are safety. So helping people feel safe when they interact with you or the product or service you're working on trust. Sometimes people kind of. call it accountability or transparency, but there's a second one that's really about helping people to like feel or build trust in you. And then there's collaboration, which we do a lot in design anyway, but the type of collaboration you do in trauma informed design is kind of a bit more deep and a bit more long-term. Then there's agency and empowerment. So this is all about giving people choices and agency in the thing that they're interacting with and then hope as well as the last one. So that's one that we use a lot in the work that I'm doing at the moment. the organization called Chen, spelled C-H-A-Y-N, but this is all about recognizing that people who have experienced really, really difficult things can feel hopeless, but they're still human beings and they're still looking for connection and joy and hope. There's a lot of hopefulness in designing great solutions for people who have had quite difficult times. Using these five buckets to guide both the research interactions that I will design. as well as actual products and services and experiences is really helpful. Can you give us a concrete example that would help us to put that into context? Yeah, definitely. So thinking about safety, for example, as a principle, one of the things that we think about a lot in trauma-informed design is that when people have experienced trauma, they may have felt quite unsafe in their bodies. And this kind of feeling of unsafe, like lack of can really continue like long after the event and being triggered is something that we talk about a lot. So you want to make sure in the design work that you're doing and in the interactions you have with people, you're not triggering someone. And so when you sit down to plan a research project around something traumatic and you know that you want to be thinking about safety, I would spend a bit of time thinking about like, okay, so what kind of language am I going to use so that I'm going to like hopefully not trigger people when I talk with them about the subject. And when you talk about triggering, are you talking about making them sort of reflect on a traumatic experience or is it deeper than that? Yeah, it would be the idea that you might use a word or phrase that they particularly find difficult in relation to that topic that might trigger them to feel really upset. And that's not an experience that you want to kind of give rise to as part of your work. So I would say something like… When I'm working with people who have been suicide bereaved, for example, I would say to a participant, I'm not going to use the word committed because I know that that's a word that lots of people find triggering. The idea that someone's committed suicide, it's not a crime anymore, that's not the word that we use anymore. Or if I'm working with people who've been sexually assaulted, I'll say we don't use the word victim, we actually use the word survivor because we think that that's more empowering and hopeful. So I'm kind of careful about those words with safety in mind, but I will also ask the participant, like, what kinds of words and phrases would you like me to use so that you feel safe in this conversation? I don't want to say something that's going to upset you, but I can't read your mind because everyone has different triggers. So would you tell me if there's a particular word or phrase that you'd like me to avoid? And I had somebody come back to me and say, this is for the suicide bereavement project I was working on. She said, I don't want you to use the word lost because I did not lose my family member. That word implies that if I just looked a bit harder, I would find her. Yes. And so she was like, please don't use that word because that I find triggering. And I was like, yeah, of course, I will absolutely do my best not to use that word when we chat. And so it's those small things and just being a bit more thoughtful and planning a bit more the kinds of interactions you're having with people. Obviously that's from a research perspective and yeah, just making sure that it feels, feels good. And then if you think about safety, so that's the first principle again, but through the lens of design, like a service or product or experience that you're designing, those principles should also be coming through in, in your design work, not just your research. So for example, at Chen, which is where I work, we provide support for survivors of gender-based violence through. a variety of online platforms. And on our website, there's a big old red button right there on all pages of the site that follows you around. And it says, leave this site. And that is specifically designed with safety in mind so that if somebody is looking at our resources and they get interrupted by somebody, it could be a partner that, you know, they don't want them to see that they're exploring this. They can quickly click on the leave this site button and it takes them to a Wikipedia page where there's like an already an inbuilt search that's about animal memes and their search history is also deleted. So it's a smart design feature that's all about safety and all about being trauma informed, that's like really simple and tangible. It's actually used like pretty much as standard across our sector, but that's a really nice example of safety and design. And then you can go through the different principles and think about, you know, how you bring them each to life with, with your research and with your design. Um, but yeah, like I said, that's just, that's just one. One thing that's really important to kind of highlight is that We're rarely actually in research asking people to tell us about the traumatic thing. So we would say, you know, we're going to have a conversation with you about this service that we're designing. That's going to be the main focus of the conversation. If you would like to share your experience that you had of whatever topics that I'm working on, whether it's suicide bereavement or whether it's planning for death or whether it's sexual assault or domestic abuse, we'll say like, if you want to discuss any of those things. and your experiences with us, you know, we will provide a space for you to do that. And you can absolutely feel free to, but the purpose of the conversation is not to, to hear in detail about that experience. And I think that really helps people to feel a little bit calmer that like, they're not going to turn up and we're just going to be like extracting this like very difficult story from them. It's actually more about designing a service that's hopeful for them and people like them, and they're going to contribute meaningfully to that. So that in itself kind of shifts the focus a little bit away from like feeling in the spotlight, oh my God, you're going to ask me all about my trauma towards we're designing this service, we would love your help. This is a space where you can absolutely bring up the context of why you need this service, but we're not going to ask you any direct questions about it. And in order to do that successfully, it's all about like informed consent and letting people know well in advance, like what kind of topics you'd like to cover together, giving people the option to say like. Yes, I'm up for talking about that one, but no, I'm not up for talking about that one. Um, so you get this idea of kind of dynamic, active consent. That's a world away from the kind of consent forms of old that I used to use when I was doing more commercial design. And you have people making more active choices as well around like, yes, I'm happy to have a conversation, but no, I don't want my video on, or, you know, people changing their mind on the day, which is absolutely part of a trauma informed lens, which is understanding. You know, people don't always feel the same day to day. So they may sign up for research and then decide that they still want to talk, but in a different format, or they just want to speak for half an hour instead of an hour, or they want to speak on a different day. So being much more mindful and flexible of like those people's needs and how it actually feels to take part in research when you've had a very difficult experience and all of the resulting factors around kind of PTSD and anxiety and stuff. You're never going to do a successful design research around these things unless you have a very clear idea of trauma-informed principles and how to bring them in. You mentioned this idea of her saying actually that there will be a space for you to talk about the trauma that you've moved through. Linking that in with the topic of the podcast that you love, is there a scenario where the discussion over that traumatic event actually expands to feel the time you've allotted for research? What was your... policy be on if suddenly you find that actually the subject of the conversation is focusing more on the traumatic event rather than the conversation that you need to inform your design. How would you handle that? That seems quite difficult. Yeah, it's definitely something that there's no hard and fast rules around it. I'd say like a really big part of engaging with people around trauma is validation. So like, Sometimes people do take part in research just to share their story and to feel heard. And I think that's, that's a thing. And absolutely we welcome that. I have a bit of a policy whereby like somebody's comfort levels and somebody's like feeling of like being listened to and heard is actually much more important than our research project. So like if I do a couple of interviews out of eight and like, I don't really learn anything about the design works that I'm focused on, but they get a chance to share their experience with somebody who actually. is there to listen and cares like that's absolutely fine. And I think there's a lot of kind of expectation management and setting that you need to do with kind of stakeholders of organizations when you come in and do this type of research that like, it's not going to be that kind of in and out extractive, like 10, you know, five research sessions a day for two days. And then you're going to have all of these insights. It's like, I'm still committed to amazing insight for sure. And we will develop really strong learnings, but maybe if you need to add a couple more participants to your pool to account for the fact that some of them might just be there to share their story. And then I think when you're in an interview and you can sort of sense people going in that direction, it's one of the skills that you need to have as a researcher to kind of know when to steer people back towards conversation if that feels appropriate and when to let somebody just keep talking. So I would almost always allow for like a longer interview period anyway, just in case people decide that they would like to spend 20 minutes giving us the backstory and the context, that's fine. But if I can sense that people are kind of really going off on a tangent or going down a road and disclosing things that feel quite personal, I would usually say something like, you know what, I feel like we could talk for hours about this and I'm, you know, I'm learning from you and thank you for trusting me with this. I wonder whether... you would be okay with it if we move on to this topic with the time that we have left. And quite often people will visibly be quite glad of being steered back from oversharing because that can also be something that can make them feel quite unsafe after an interview session if they've just like overshared. Yeah, they can worry afterwards that like that wasn't appropriate or that wasn't what you wanted. So a lot of the job as well is actually in like these really reassuring follow-ups where you can say to somebody like, we learned a lot from you. Often I'll name the specific things that we did learn from a particular participant, so that it's sort of more trustworthy. Yeah. Well, we've listened. And just, yeah, and just try and kind of sense check it as you go. Like sometimes, like I said, there are just sessions which are like, what they're just going to be about listening to someone's story. And then others, you can use your sort of good judgment to sense like. I'm not sure this person really wants to be going down this road. So I'm going to give them a couple of chances to come back and sometimes they'll take them. You got to learn it as you go a little bit, but yeah, be a human. That's fantastic. When you talked about actually people moving straight into research into traumatic or taboo areas, just the way you automatically worked through that phrase and it was such a diplomatic negotiation of, okay, well, we need to try and move back into. I'm learning from the topic, but how do you feel about, I think we'll probably transcribe that phrase and put it into the show notes as well. It sounds like one of the things, yes, definitely. That's a great way to bring people back into the point and work out whether it's feasible at that stage. Yeah, and I think it's always a balance between being. I'm here to listen to you. And then like, you know, we have a project that we're exploring that we're looking to learn from, especially when you're working with charitable organizations, that isn't huge amounts of budgets and resources to do endless interviews. So it's my job to make sure that like I'm balancing those things and it can be quite hard, but yeah, be just be a human and you'll, you'll almost always learn something. And if you think about this as like qualitative research, do you think that there's a specific number of research interviews that will allow you to gather data about a topic? plus the contingency of maybe having interviews where there's a higher chance of having more of a story of trauma rather than the focus into information that you need for your research. Is there not a magic number? Now we'd usually do between five and 10 qualitative user research interviews for any project. Usually you do at least five, right? I'd say that a good rule of thumb is to like add a little bit of time on each one. So instead of talking for an hour, you schedule an hour and a quarter. So if- Yeah, yeah, yeah. rather than having to necessarily add more interviews, you're adding a bit more time to allow for that kind of divergence. And then I would usually sort of do a bit of a sense check and say like, how much have we learned after five or six and do we feel as a team as though we need anymore, and then we can say, actually, we've still got a bit of a gap in our learning around this feature or this idea, so we do need to add a few more rather than sort of that from the beginning saying, right, well, we're going to have two people drop out, so we need to have eight minimum, you know. I've always preferred to have that kind of reactive approach to how it's going. Even before I was doing trauma informed work, you're looking more at how much you've learned rather than like the numbers. And also you do scope for the unknown unknowns. If you think, well, actually, only these are the questions. I already know the questions. I just need to find the answers. Whereas actually you've got to roll out for the journey and the discovery there and that next phase as well. That's great. principle of trauma informed design, you've talked about hope. Can you tell us a little bit about how you address the topic of hope or bring that theme of hope into your research interviews? Yeah, definitely. So I think hope. is like I said, it's a really foundational part of working in a trauma informed way. Like we're not there just to wallow in difficult experiences as designers, it's our job to be imagining and thinking about better solutions for people. So I think to a certain extent, like just taking part in research and knowing that there's an organization looking to solve the problem that you have is hopeful. And I've heard that a lot from research participants. Something that I think is really useful is sharing prototypes and collaborating on ideas together with people because it really helps people to get a tangible sense that a solution is actually being designed. This comes back to the principle of trust and transparency as well. Many times people who have experienced trauma have been let down or lied to or coerced by organizations or people that they were supposed to be able to trust. If you bowl in... to a research project and you were like, oh, we're designing this new thing. We would love you to help us out with it, but you don't really show anything that you're working on. I think it's much harder for people to like really grasp and trust what it is that you're trying to change. So bringing like tangible prototypes to share and kind of look at together and build together, I think that adds an extra layer of hopefulness because, you know, people get a sense of what's really potentially coming down the line. And then I think there's like one of the really big aspects of being hopeful is just being validated and being seen as an individual. I think it's really important not to say things like, it's going to be okay, or like, you're so strong in these kinds of situations because they kind of sound, they're a bit flat, like they don't really, they don't mean anything because you don't- They're platitudinous, yeah. Yeah, you don't know the person and actually you don't know whether it is going to be okay for them. But what you can do is say that sounds really hard, like what you've experienced sounds really difficult. And I'm sorry that you have been through that. And that actually connects with people at a much deeper level. It feels more real to say, I'm really sorry to hear that. It sounds awful. And weirdly, I think doing that is also hopeful because it helps people to actually feel like you get it and that you've, they've been seen. So yeah, there's a few things. It's kind of the design-y aspect. bringing in those prototypes, showing people what you're working on, that's really hopeful. Building community is also really hopeful. So like at the end of sessions, not just saying, right, that's it, I'll probably never speak with you again. Often with trauma informed research, we stay in touch with people for a lot longer and we give them updates about like what we did learn and what we're now doing like as a follow up. And of course that has implications for kind of cost. bandwidth of your team and stuff like that. But I find that that's a really interesting thing as well. So building community as you go. So there'd be a few examples. Brilliant. And it's fantastic to end our session talking about hope. So I'd really like to thank you for sharing your story and introducing us to Trauma Informed Design. I know I've learned a lot on the podcast. Oh, my pleasure. And congratulations for not making the chair squeak at all. You have fantastic core strength. Thank you very much. If you want to let us know a charity after the podcast, we'll then put a link to that into the show notes as well. If anyone else would like to celebrate your enviable core strength, is it enviable core strength or is it just a very squeaky chair? Or are you just standing? They can make a donation as well. Oh, that sounds great. I'll do it. Good chain, but that would be fab. Catch you later. Service Design Yapp is a production from the Service Design Network UK chapter. It's hosted by me, Stephen Wood, with production assistance from Gene Wotania. Music is by DuckerStats. He's one of the best scientific minds we have today.