how do you design with a community from inside it?
Embedded participatory method — designing not for a community but from within it, where the researcher's own position in the settlement is treated as part of the method rather than a bias to correct.
(field map — settlement)
(participatory session)
(spatial survey)
Five months embedded across twelve fishing communities in the Koliwadas of Mumbai — participatory, ground-level, on their terms. The thesis won CEPT's Student Excellence Award ("Living Heritage"). This is where I learned that making a system legible means starting inside it, not above it.
(method)
(next)
perspectives — participatory systems design
→
01
embed
living the constraints before proposing anything about them.
02
listen
letting the community set the terms of what counts as a problem.
03
co-design
building with, not for — and leaving the tools behind.