In the Civic Design course at Stanford d.school, I worked with students to explore how participatory design can address civic challenges at scale and support more resilient cities and communities. Too often, planners, policymakers, and government agencies aim to "involve the public," but the actual processes for engagement remain limited, performative, or ineffective. This course challenged students to go beyond surface-level outreach and develop real, actionable strategies for community involvement that strengthen democracy, justice, and public trust.

Our design work focused on housing and urban governance—critical areas where civic participation can shape policies on stable housing, legal protections, climate resilience, and equitable access to public services. Students worked on real-world civic design projects with stakeholders, applying human-centered design and participatory methods to tackle complex urban challenges.

Throughout the course, we asked:

How can we amplify community voices in decision-making rather than just collecting input?
How do we design meaningful interventions that lead to actual policy shifts?
How can we create culture shifts in how people engage with government agencies and institutions?

This was a hands-on, project-based course where students not only learned case studies and participatory design methods but also applied them to live challenges with real civic partners. The goal was to prototype new ways for communities to engage with public systems, ensuring that policies are informed by the people they impact the most.

Partners included local city governments who were interested in challenges around activating public spaces and building more of strong community and identity.

This class reinforced my belief that design can be a tool for civic transformation, not just in making public services more user-friendly, but in rebuilding trust, fostering collaboration, and creating policies that reflect the real needs of communities.