Relational Design considers the systems, layers, and intermingling of:
- body – bacteria, blending, beings, biology
- self – capacity, cooperation, compassion, care
- group – generative conflict, generosity, grace, alignment
- network – proliferation, information and resource sharing, common practices
- systems – social, cultural, economic, environmental, digital, ecological
Relational Design Lab combines relational research and practice design with technology.
Most of today’s technology is:
- extractive
- imperialist
- exploitative
- reinforcing of bias
often without intention!
Technology is only a tool and a lens. Our work seeks to integrate personal, relational, and cultural inputs and effects of and on our behaviour.
We are interested in experiments, research, and practices that uncover the ways we can be together without coercion, manipulation, or violence.
The way we make technology and the tech itself can support freedom, collective responsibility, and belonging.
We cultivate digital and social technologies and the stories needed to fertilize the soil for their emergence.
We work towards a future with real, viable technology options to steward our own relationships & experience.
Our technology only matters if it matters to people and we matter to each other.
technology development
- Experimenting, prototyping, and piloting social and digital technologies
- Collaborative software that is distributed, peer-to-peer, open source and open standards-based
- Working with groups to support technolgy implementation
- Sharing insights and protocols with other technologists
applied research
- Participatory and community-led design practices
- Group dynamics, belonging, agency, and communication
- Systems approaches integrating lived experience, relationship, groups, culture, and ecologies
- Moving towards understanding of the motives and needs of collaborators
storytelling
- Catalyzing a movement to highlight UX-centred decentralized technology
- Developing multidimensional resources around belonging, freedom, responsibility, and technology
- Highlighting and amplifying research in the relational design field
- Experimenting with the story of the future
- Creativity-focused events and gatherings
ecosystem cultivation
- Training and support for participatory and community-led design
- Collaborative hub for relational design research
- Convenings to share, discuss, and review relational design research and experiments
- Participation in ecosystem-building events and collectives
services
- community of practice design
- collaboration on tooling for groups
- commissioned research (participatory) related to groups, social connection, technology
Ways of Working
We are creative contributors.
We work on what matters to our communities, in partnership with other communities and builders.
We are experimental.
We operate in a near-future paradigm.
We support people to collaborate without dependence on extractive systems of data collection and surveillance.
Practice & Praxis
- Adopting patterns of practice that emerge from applied research
- Systems approaches integrating lived experience, relationship, groups, culture, and ecologies
- Depth of integration through relational practices
- Support for internal and collective growth practices among our team and partners
- At the centre but not centred
Steward
LX Cast is a product leader, community convener, program designer, and strategist who has worked on communication and collaboration tech serving millions of people for over a decade. They are a catalyst of the Folk Tech movement, championing p2p, OSS, and decentralized technology as resistance to extractive and surveillance-driven culture.
Past roles include Head of Research at Marco Polo, Sr. Product Manager at Notion, Chief Storyteller at Olark, Program Designer at AI Stewardship Practice Program, Practice Designer at the emergence network, Product Strategist at Lightningrod Labs. Resident Fellow in Community at Integrity Institute, Steward at Collaborative Technology Alliance, and host of Belonging Builders.
LX is Chair of the Board at Tech Fleet, board member at Prosocial Design Network, steering committee member of the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion, member of Aspen Institute’s Virtually Human working group, space steward at DWeb Camp, mentor for PDX Women in Tech, Product BC, All Tech is Human, and Mentor Me Collective, a certified Warm Data Host, and the teacher of The UX of Community.
They work with organizations to develop communities of practice, and help nonprofits develop product discovery practices through Changemaker Product Management.