Designing With: Creating Conditions for Stronger Participation

Meaningful participation is a cornerstone of effective collaboration and successful outcomes. However, certain conditions must be met to foster meaningful participation. Participation is often tokenized, overly controlled, or unsupported, leading to frustration, disengagement, and missed opportunities for true co-creation. To build stronger collaboration in any setting, we must understand how to intentionally design environments where people can genuinely engage.

This workshop will introduce the Social Relational Window, a framework that helps us examine different approaches to engaging others— to, for, not, and with—and how these dynamics shape our relationships and group processes. Together, we’ll explore how to create the conditions that foster equitable, authentic participation in meetings, classrooms, and organizational processes.

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn and experience:

• An understanding of the Social Relational Window and its four approaches to collaboration
• How levels of expectation and support shape participation and outcomes
• Tools and strategies to analyze and shift real-life situations toward more collaborative approaches
• Language and frameworks to guide more equitable and inclusive group processes

This interactive session centers on reflection, dialogue, and real-world application, equipping you to design spaces where participation isn’t just allowed but intentionally cultivated.

Agenda:

6:00 // Connection warmup

6:20 // Workshop on the Social Relational Window

7:45 // HCD Lab community time

8:00 // Dessert social @ Van Leeuwen Ice Cream

About the facilitators:

Sam Pearl is a Boston-based facilitator and nonprofit practitioner who has spent most of her career working alongside young people to design, lead, and reflect on change efforts in their communities. Drawing on her background in conflict work and experience across different social sectors, she strives to design participatory processes that elevate lived experience and challenge systems of exclusion. Sam is passionate about storytelling as a powerful tool for connection and social change. Her work is driven by curiosity, care, and a belief in the power of collective problem-solving to create more inclusive, equitable solutions.

Evan Chan is a civic designer, facilitator, and community-builder who is passionate about improving government services and fostering equitable outcomes. He has worked as a public servant and as a consultant, navigating complex bureaucracies and centering the voices of residents and frontline workers at all levels of government. Before coming to design, he worked as a Christian youth minister with a university student organization, mentoring students and fostering a vibrant community. The values of compassion and care that he developed then still ground the work he does today.