‘Design for Belonging’ with Susie Wise - Stanford d.school Spotlight
In this fifth episode of the Stanford d.school spotlight; Susie Wise, author of Design for Belonging: How to Build Inclusion and Collaboration in Your Communities clarifies the subject and discusses how she arrived at the approaches of her book. Published as a d.school guide.
The feeling of belonging is a fundamental human need. It's how we know we can show up, be ourselves, and thus enables learning. From a design perspective, we need to understand the feeling of belonging - and understand how to get there. Creating opportunity for belonging to emerge.
Dr. Susie Wise is a design leader with experience in the education, tech, and the social sectors. She coaches leaders in equity design and innovation practices. She teaches at the d.school at Stanford and coaches with the Mira Fellowship. Previously she founded and directed the K12 Lab at the d.school and co-created Liberatory Design.
Design for Belonging provides tools that any group or organisation may use to build inclusion. These might be rituals that bring us together, spaces that keep us calm, roles that create a sense of responsibility, and systems that make us feel respected.
Hosted by The Learning Future’s very own Louka Parry, indulge your cortex in some modern thinking at the forefront of educational design with our amazing guest.
Transcription upon request - e-mail hello@thelearningfuture.com
[auto-transcribed]
00:00:03:22 - 00:00:32:18
Unknown
Hello dear friends, and welcome to the Learning Future podcast. I'm, of course, your host, Louka Parry. Thanks for joining us again, this time for a wonderful conversation with Dr. Susie Wise. Susie is a designer and teacher with experience in education, technology and the social sector. She coaches leaders in innovation practices, equity design and storytelling for inclusion, and she's the founder and former director of the K-12 lab network at the Stanford D School, something that's had a enormous influence on my own journey in education.
00:00:32:18 - 00:00:51:16
Unknown
As many of you know, she's also the co-creator of Liberty Design and the author of the new book, Design for Belonging, a Stanford D School Guide How to Build Inclusion and Collaboration in Your Community. Susie, thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much. Lucca. I'm excited for the conversation. May as well. Yeah, this is going to be real fun.
00:00:52:02 - 00:01:31:14
Unknown
First question, always the same. What's something you've learned recently? Sure. So for me, and not at all about the book or belonging, etc., I recently learned how to build my origami kayak and I've learned a lot about kayaking and I've gotten faster and faster at building it and I've really used it. What really what I've learned, like the deeper learning there is, how much I love being on the water and how much I love taking breaks and getting outside and being physical.
00:01:32:11 - 00:02:01:14
Unknown
I You have to tell us a bit more about the origami aspect of the kayak. This one way you can put it in your and yet the trunk of the car the bit of the car and can absolutely Yeah that's it. Yeah exactly so it's it's an ORU kayak I think is the original of these origami kayaks and it basically just looks like a box and it contains all parts and so you undo the straps of the box and unfold this large it's plasticine which is like in the US anyway.
00:02:01:14 - 00:02:28:02
Unknown
It's like the, the boxes that male carriers use to carry mail around. So it's this, this material that's very light and foldable but durable. And so you unfold it and then you re fold it. And there are some things that are called zippers that you use at different points and literally and now I think I'm out like 7 minutes and 7 minutes you have okay, if I take it in the San Francisco Bay.
00:02:28:23 - 00:02:55:21
Unknown
CC, I think you've, you've sold me. Actually, I have seen them. I've seen them. I'm sure I get lots of targeted advertising as well. What's that stuff? So listening. Yes. But I'm really talking about, you know, where you feel that this actually does it does connect to belonging and so much of your work that you've done as an educator, I about this idea of belonging where we feel we belong, you know, you feel like, you know, even your attachment to the water, you know, you feel this sense of kind of being part of something.
00:02:56:08 - 00:03:28:22
Unknown
So take us into this world of belonging and also design and how those two things can really converge in a powerful way. Yeah, Thank you. And I love thinking of it as two things and how they come together, the design side and the blogging side and the power of their intersection. Okay, so I started to work on belonging, explicitly been working for a long time in the US context anyway, around equity, explicitly racial equity in schools.
00:03:29:15 - 00:04:00:15
Unknown
And I was starting to uncover that. I was meeting some leaders and particular who when we started to move into the equity conversation, they really wanted to do it, but they would get quite intimidated and a little stuck and kind of go into some of their fears around how to work towards equity would show up in a kind of technical way that suddenly the topic of equity was about numbers.
00:04:01:02 - 00:04:30:21
Unknown
And what I found in introducing the frame of othering and belonging is that it helped all of us, myself included, shift to understanding what the feelings are that we're looking for when we work towards equity in school environments, in communities at large, etc. And so grounding in the feeling of belonging as this very fundamental human need, we need to know we belong.
00:04:30:21 - 00:04:53:00
Unknown
It's part of how we know that we're safe. It's how we know that we can show up and be our whole selves. It's how we know we can actually show up and be a learner. Yeah, So it really matters, especially in schools. And there's a fair amount of research on that that goes along with it. But what I wanted to work with from a design perspective was so that's the feeling that we're going for.
00:04:53:00 - 00:05:23:10
Unknown
How do we get there? Because every every individual, you know, child, adults, student teacher is going to feel belonging in different ways for themselves and we can't go into their brain or into their heart and make it. So what we can do is create things for belonging to emerge, and that's where I saw the intersection then with design, because design helps us open up what are all the things we can create.
00:05:23:19 - 00:05:41:22
Unknown
And we sometimes have a very limited palette that we think we can work with. So I often tell it like you get excited and you want to do something new. You think I'm going to send an email to everybody and that's going to change my school? Well, probably not. Unfortunately, an email has its role to play in our world, right?
00:05:41:22 - 00:06:05:08
Unknown
You and I would not be talking here today if we didn't have email, but there's so many other things that we can consciously, intentionally design. We can think about space or role or ritual. So kind of opening up the the toolkit, the toolbox of what we can design in order to help belonging emerge becomes really powerful. So that's the intersection that I'm that I'm going for.
00:06:05:13 - 00:06:30:15
Unknown
I love that intersection sees the other. I like really how you talked about this. You started with feeling belonging, you know, because it it is a felt it's a sense, as I think you speak to as well in the book. And it's this sense of purpose of belonging to something and then pieces of how do we see each other or seeing belonging and then ultimately shaping belonging, which is almost like the architecture piece to this is like the design piece, as you see.
00:06:30:15 - 00:06:54:16
Unknown
Yeah, that's the design piece, Yeah. And so that seeing that feeling, seeing, shaping the seeing piece is really important. It helps us to break things down and get really specific. I talk about it in terms of moments so we can think about a really wide range of moments that we can look at. We can't create belonging everywhere all the time, all at once, to quote the recent film.
00:06:54:24 - 00:07:22:05
Unknown
But we can we have to look at specific moment. So is it about how people are invited in or entering or is it about what it looks like to contribute to get to show up and share some of what makes you you? That's another really important kind of moment. And then I talk about another moment is descent. What does it look like to have to raise raise issues, offer critical feedback.
00:07:22:14 - 00:07:52:15
Unknown
Those that can become a really powerful measure, even of belonging. Because if you don't belong, you're probably not going to say, Hey, can we work on this? Yeah, yeah. There's not the the engagement isn't deep enough. Says of Pep's care. I'm really I'd love for you to share one of your favorite kind of exercises because I think that's, you know, we can have a we can have a conversation about belonging and we are there's something about being able to drop in a lower level below, which is a real sense of, you know, and everyone listening.
00:07:52:15 - 00:08:17:02
Unknown
All of us know when we feel it and when we we feel othered. And it can and it can feel so unsafe. Often when we, you know, and so evolutionary psychology as well as sometimes the reality is, you know, when we're not we're not within the circle and it's inside outside in the in-group, outgroups and all the other kind of tribalism that kind of is part of our evolutionary story.
00:08:17:14 - 00:08:37:23
Unknown
Well, what's an exercise that you think is really powerful from the ones that you've left? So talking again about getting to feelings, are there a couple of exercises I like? And it's a it's a classic exercise that comes from design. I'm always trying to use some of the tools of design to move into these domains. So a classic exercise, the Emotional Journey map.
00:08:38:14 - 00:09:03:02
Unknown
So simply asking yourself what are the highs and lows of a period of time that I want to pay attention to? That might be the last year, might be since I joined this new school, or it might be since I graduated from college that you're thinking about a specific framework in terms of time and then mapping. What are the highs and lows of belonging.
00:09:03:18 - 00:09:37:04
Unknown
That's really powerful because you're you're paying attention then to yourself and your own feelings and you're also edging towards seeing what kinds of moments were they. You can look back on the map and see the high points of belonging or see the low point and then do some inquiry to see into those moments. Another one I love is just thinking about mapping your town or your campus and thinking about where in a particular place do you feel a sense of belonging and not?
00:09:37:13 - 00:10:02:09
Unknown
I talked with an educator recently who had done this exercise with his students and the context of a classroom at there was they made a map of the classroom and then they all filled it out and talked about places where they felt like they belonged, did not. And he right away noticed some really interesting patterns. The girls in his class didn't feel that the whiteboards were a space that they belonged, but the boys did.
00:10:03:00 - 00:10:26:18
Unknown
And he had never noticed that. Right. And you're not always going to get such clear signals of patterns like he saw in that exercise. But it can offer a really interesting lens to be noticing where belonging is happening in real time in space. This gets to that notion that you were referencing too of that. It's a sense of belonging.
00:10:26:22 - 00:10:47:19
Unknown
Hmm. I love that I've really another mapping piece I fantasize about. I mean, just thinking about that for every organization, you know, where where do people congregate? Like what? And what is it about that space, you know, the grouping and the. Yes. The other kind of elements that we can use to shape belonging that makes it so, you know, that's really powerful data.
00:10:47:19 - 00:11:11:01
Unknown
I think, for us to use. I'd love. Yeah, exactly. I'll throw out one more exercise just because it kind of flips to the other side, kind of more into the design space. Less about feelings, but more about idea generation. Yeah, and that's assumption storming. Assumption storming is just an exercise to say what are all the assumptions that we have?
00:11:11:07 - 00:11:37:20
Unknown
And you could ask about who belongs in a particular context and you can often really uncover some interesting underlying assumptions and then you can push yourself to flip those. We think of this particular program as just about young children. What if we actually opened up the role that parents play and understand multiple lovers? It just it opens up kind of the possibility space.
00:11:37:20 - 00:11:59:24
Unknown
I think when you start with an assumption storm. I really like that. I like that a lot. I'd love you to take it because in the what you've referenced, some wonderful thinkers and researchers and and human beings, frankly. So you take us just a level higher at the moment. You know, here we are, 20, 22. It's mid-May as we record this, you know, what?
00:12:00:01 - 00:12:20:21
Unknown
What do you think? I mean, some people would say that we have a crisis of belonging right now, a crisis of meaning. So at a societal level, you know, and obviously schools are nested within contexts as our organizations, universities, etc., what would you say about where we are in terms of our belonging at a community level? What's what's your reflection there?
00:12:22:05 - 00:12:55:06
Unknown
Yeah, I would say and in this moment I've been really reflecting there was just a mass shooting and Buffalo, New York, here in the United States context. So I've been really struck by that, bothered by that, despairing around that. It was a very clearly racially motivated shooting. And so just kind of the visibility of the othering is really apparent.
00:12:55:23 - 00:13:35:07
Unknown
So when I zoom out, I do think we're in a very difficult time, a kind of a crisis around belonging and the kind of the the strength of the othering tendencies that we have as humans. And so the call to work on what John Powell calls bridging is really powerful and important. And I don't want to be naive to think that the tools that I am putting forward in terms of the intersection of design and belonging are going to solve everything.
00:13:36:00 - 00:14:08:12
Unknown
And what So when I'm trying to do just from my corner of the world, my orientation is towards helping people get started, to have that reflection, to feel into what is belonging and to recognize the places and for whom belonging is not afforded and to to take that work up, we need more people taking up that work and not just doing the things that are kind of nice to haves around the edges.
00:14:08:12 - 00:14:34:03
Unknown
So I really think of my work as being about how to demystify getting started. Yeah, and working towards something that matters as much as belonging. There's some beautiful there really are some beautiful reflections in this book. Susie One that what are you, what are you thinking about? Well, I'm thinking about this idea of and I'd love you to try to just reflect on this as well.
00:14:34:03 - 00:14:54:17
Unknown
It's it's one of Bernie's piece, Bernie's reflections with true belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to your self so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. So I'd love because I think often when we think of belonging, it's it's group, it's it's power.
00:14:54:17 - 00:15:17:07
Unknown
Yeah, cool. I'm a part of this particular community or this particular community. What is your reflection in having explored this now for for many years with a sense of belonging to one's self? Yeah. So I think that's a beautiful and I wanted to include Bernie. So I have these folks, as you're referencing in the book, and I call them host Heroes of Belonging, and I kind of sprinkled throughout the book.
00:15:17:07 - 00:15:38:05
Unknown
But then they also have this pantheon image and I got that idea. I'm thinking about the books that I had as a kid about Greek myths, and it was the gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus. And this, for me as a designer, is bringing together some of these really eclectic references that I draw upon to think about belonging.
00:15:38:13 - 00:16:05:13
Unknown
Brené Brown is probably the most famous person to popularize thinking about belonging, at least in American popular culture. Yeah, and I think that notion, though, of how belonging becomes portable, we can start to think about how mapping the places where we feel it, but that the kind of the self-actualization of belonging is that you know it and you carry it with you.
00:16:05:15 - 00:16:30:24
Unknown
Yeah. And that's that's powerful for learning, that's powerful for loving, that's powerful for being in community. And you can even think of it referencing back to some of, you know, the horrifying things you've seen in terms of extreme othering, It's probable that those individual perpetrators have no sense of belonging. And so they're seeking this kind of violent attachment to these other ways of being.
00:16:32:00 - 00:17:10:10
Unknown
So it's it feels fundamental to be being a functional individual, but also as a functional part of a community. Yeah. And we're always we're always part of more than one group. We have our identities have these layers. We live in intersectionality and that we can belong to more than one thing is a beautiful thing. Yeah. And as we reflect on that and, and kind of take stock of that and let that live and breathe and make it part of our whole self, right, then we recognize the context where we get to show up as that whole self.
00:17:10:10 - 00:17:37:04
Unknown
And that's, I think, a great bar to think about, whether you're building a school or an organization or another kind of entity. That's such a wonderful reflection. Suzy, take take us into this idea then of like when we are when we are within an institutional frame, so we are in a school or we are in an organization and we are in a team, you know, what are some of the practices that you have seen that really build belonging?
00:17:37:04 - 00:18:00:15
Unknown
Because it does seem like we all acknowledge its importance, but it's not ever it's not ever measured. Right. First of all, so, you know, we're not kind of ranking at like what's the levels of belonging and maybe we shouldn't anyway, but this is idea that's kind of a bit is kind of a bit over to the side. Yes, we know that it matters, but actually what matters is that you achieve this particular task at this point in time.
00:18:01:01 - 00:18:31:00
Unknown
So what's the kind of what are the practices that you've seen around the shaping piece in particular that that you see really significant uplift or like a deepening into the sense of belonging, that we can be more than one thing and we are part of something really, you know, bigger than ourselves. Yeah. So I think for me I and of I'll share something about the shaping in a moment, but I think that remembering that is a sense of belonging and that we feel it in our bodies and that's fundamental.
00:18:31:00 - 00:19:02:12
Unknown
We human is a is a very important first piece. Yeah. And then when we're ready to think about where and how to shape one of the powerful things, particularly for leaders, I think is around storytelling. What are the stories that we tell? And that's powerful, both in terms of representation, How do we share stories of the full range of people that get to belong and a particular context?
00:19:02:20 - 00:19:29:03
Unknown
And also how do we do that real human storytelling about our own journey, about how we've come to a place of deeper belonging and the understanding of that. So I think storytelling, especially from a leadership perspective, becomes a really important aspect of the work. MM I love that the, you know, what's the narrative? So there is something about story similar to belonging.
00:19:29:03 - 00:20:09:04
Unknown
I feel Suzy storytelling and belonging are almost two of the most human, human things we could imagine, right? Yes. And, you know, to be seen in story and to kind of feel stories, you know, we all lean forward when someone says in the West once upon a time, you know, and we go, Oh, now what happened? You know, we get into that story and I'm curious then, is that when you think about your work in communities like and particularly, you know, the work around fully embracing the diversity of exists within our communities, what do you see as kind of the the guiding with a North Star?
00:20:09:12 - 00:20:33:11
Unknown
Like with what do you think we can actually achieve if we design for belonging powerfully in our learning systems? Like what can a school look like now or I think future? Yeah. What can schools look like now in the future? Yeah, well, so what's really powerful about belonging, as we've been saying, is that it's this fundamental human need and sense.
00:20:34:05 - 00:21:16:04
Unknown
It allows us then to be in relationship. So I think the the future of school is really privileging. How do we learn and relationships that's going to both draw upon and continue to build belonging. So that can look a whole lot of different ways. But it and there's tons of room for creativity there. Yeah, but the role of guides and mentors, the role of working across difference, doing meaningful work across difference and different kinds of groupings is really powerful.
00:21:16:11 - 00:21:37:22
Unknown
It also that the whole notion of grouping where and when do you get to be in different kinds of affinity groups or identity based groups that feel supportive because as we've been talking about, your belonging in one place can help you build your belonging in other brothers? Yeah, not going to feel the same kind of belonging in every single context, right?
00:21:37:22 - 00:22:14:16
Unknown
That would that that's not going to happen. And it also wouldn't it would it would be some kind of everybody all the same all the time, which we're not going for. We are going for a context where people can show up as their whole selves, express their interests, follow their passions. Yeah. And build in collaboration. It's I been I'm so my question is because I mean I am so on board I mean not that this not you're not selling me anything at all but really this is kind of just this is the aspiration that we have for a learning communities, really, is it not?
00:22:15:00 - 00:22:34:04
Unknown
And so it absolutely is. What do you see as the as the kind of the barriers getting in the way of us being able to create that future? Like what are those kind of big blockers at the moment? And you spoke a bit about, you know, the sense of disconnection, but what do you think, even like within the way that we've shaped the systems in which we live, work and learn?
00:22:34:23 - 00:23:17:13
Unknown
Yeah, so I'll say that and I don't have super deep knowledge about what I'm about to say, but I will say that for me it feels like So back to the feelings. It feels like our obsession with the systems and with scaling is, is one of our big barriers. And that part of what I think comes from building learning communities that are really grounded in belonging is loving them, encouraging them to be freeing them, to be liberating them, to be idiosyncratic, local.
00:23:17:13 - 00:23:41:16
Unknown
Yeah. Which doesn't mean that you're not trying to ensure that everyone gets a beautiful and idiosyncratic education you are. But it's not going to look the same everywhere. And that that's okay and that that's actually powerful and send signals to people that they get to show up and belong. Yeah, that's so good. This I heard recently Susie Scale.
00:23:42:01 - 00:24:06:14
Unknown
Scale is male then if you've heard that before. But I think it is a scale is male and female. Probably like this idea that there's something around the kind of the the seeking a must be massive like go huge be a unicorn even that whole kind of paradigm is almost antithetical to the idea of locally connected communities. Like I'm far more interested in how do we spread rather than how do we scale this?
00:24:07:03 - 00:24:34:09
Unknown
And then we're acknowledging the agency that that learning communities have or that communities have it. Human beings have to really own their own futures as they move forward. Yeah, and I think from a and then as we like thinking about spread a powerful piece there is thinking about bright spots, right? What can we notice that beautiful that's beautiful that this particular school did and created And how do we not try to replicate that?
00:24:34:09 - 00:24:56:14
Unknown
I did that in air quotes. Yeah. Yeah. How do we not try to replicate that? But how do we take inspiration from that and think about what a related way of working our way of supporting teachers or way of sharing work would look like in our own context? Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that. Susie. So good. All right, so I have a final question for you.
00:24:56:14 - 00:25:15:01
Unknown
And it really is, you know, you've been as as an educator and a thinker and a researcher. You've been doing this work for some time. What do you want to leave us with? What would you like us to kind of be feeling? Not just thinking, but feeling about belonging as we as we go on our continual journeys in the world?
00:25:17:00 - 00:25:42:05
Unknown
I really want us to just investigate it, to remember that belonging is this fundamental human need and that it's a worthy question to ask ourselves when and where we feel it, and then to ask others when and where they feel it. And to move from there does use that noticing to say, Oh, this is a bright spot of belonging.
00:25:42:11 - 00:26:16:21
Unknown
What can we learn from that? And oh, this looks like we're getting into some othering territory. What can we address there? So to take up concrete moments and then seek to shape them. So that's a beautiful, beautiful way to to close out a conversation. I'm for lugging something that I really think in our collective work in education must become central to the way that we we design and organize our learning systems.
00:26:16:21 - 00:26:24:03
Unknown
So thank you for joining us on the Linkage Podcast and thank you for the work you do. Thank you so much. It's great to be with you.