Advancing civic well-being through design.
MIT Civic Design Initiative
Comparative Media Studies / Writing
SHASS, MIT
The MIT Civic Design Initiative actively imagines democratic futures -- including institutions, processes and spaces -- as technologically enhanced and human-centered.
We treat design as an interdisciplinary and collaborative means of unpacking and mapping complex issues and using a repertory of state-of-the-art material and digital media as tools for inclusive prototyping and evaluation of novel and sustainable solutions.
We believe that design processes and methods can shift societies to more sustainable and resilient futures through the understanding of interconnectedness of social, economic, political, and natural systems to address problems at all levels of scale in ways that improve quality of life.
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The Civic Design Initiative, is a research group in Comparative Media Studies and Writing Department at MIT that aims to offer a unique place and platform to support new and continuing research that address one or more of the complex civic challenges we face today.
Our Research Areas
Our current research area focuses on creating transformative change in public space, governance and mobilization, through active collaboration with communities, industries, and government groups.
Taken together, the initiative seeks to design democratic transformation in the institutions we inhabit such as government, public space, schools, etc.
CDI uses speculative design methods, as well as participatory and co-design methods to redesign the procedures and spaces that comprise public life.
The outcomes are bold, yet practical models in which to live.