Designing for Belonging: Inclusion in Education and Coliving
· 1 min read
What if belonging wasn’t just a feeling, but something we could design?
This week I found myself exploring inclusion from two seemingly different spaces, education and coliving, both asking the same question: How can we design for belonging?
I’ve been delivering a teacher training on inclusive education this week, and today joined this months Coliving Hub webinar with Indra S. on the same theme. Two worlds that might seem far apart, but share so much common ground.
In #education, we talk about Inclusive Education using the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, a model that helps make learning accessible for all by creating multiple pathways to engage, represent, and express.
In the webinar, we imagined applying that same thinking to coliving, a community of a different kind. Some ideas for inclusivity that were shared were:
🏠 Engagement: varied events like yoga classes, cooking nights, language exchanges that speak to different people and personalities
🪞 Representation: multiple styles of marketing such as closed captioned, read-aloud text, and different languages to have a wider reach
🗣️ Expression: different ways for residents to share feedback such as 1-1 chats, anonymous forms, or group discussions for more choice and comfort
Same framework, different community, both built on the same foundation: inclusion through intentional design.
What I love about UDL is that it actually started in the field of design, was then adapted for education, and now (at least for me) has come full circle, inspiring how we design for communities.
Always exciting to see how intersectional topics like inclusivity are! This is one of the reasons I enjoy being a freelancer, I'm able to be a part of so many communities and so many different (yet not so different) conversations.
How do you (or could you) design to include?
#Inclusion #Belonging #UniversalDesignForLearning #Coliving #Education #CommunityBuilding #InclusiveDesign
