Contemplation 1 : Inner development, trauma and change. Hello! My name is Jax Wechsler. I am an educator, consultant, facilitator and coach interested in inner development for change. Why? I believe we humans need to transform our consciousness to continue to develop human flourishing on our precious planet i.e. physical and mental wellbeing that’s holistically […]

In 2021 I had the privilege to work with an Australian disability organisation on a program of work, co-designing new Community Participation Programs for Young People with Disability. The organisation currently offers programs primarily to adult clients and sensed an opportunity to deliver new programs specifically for Young People. They chose to take a co-design […]

Trauma is widespread and intergenerational. 70% of Americans will have experienced trauma at some stage in their lives and 65% of Australians. These statistics are far greater for refugees, vulnerable communities, minority groups and indigenous peoples.  Collective Trauma refers to the psychological reactions to a traumatic event that affect an entire society. Poor psychological reactions to […]

Please find resources about Trauma Informed Design Research in support of my talk at the 2021 UX Australia Design Research conference and the online courses I have been running for Social Design Sydney. BOOKS The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk M.D. Trauma Stewardship: an everyday guide for caring for self while […]

Social Design Sydney hosted a powerful conversation about Co-Design and Power on August 11 with with 3 eminent Co-design practitioners, Dana Shen, Morgan Lee Cataldo and Kelly Ann McKercher. The videos from the event can be found here. Below are some resources about this very important topic! If We Want Design to be a Tool […]

Since 2013, I have been running a community of practice in Sydney, Australia called Social Design Sydney. Our site has over 60 video case studies relating to Design for Social Outcomes filmed at our events.  Sometimes we run masterclasses on a Saturday morning where we expose our Social Design community to new ways of doing. […]

Experimenting with Causal Layer Analysis The first Systems Change Salon was launched at UTS on February 19th, 2020. Introducing the Systems Salon Like the European Salons of the Enlightenment, the System Change Salon is a place for the exchange of new ideas, and is a forum for trans-disciplinary knowledge exchange. Trans-disciplinary knowledge speaks to new knowledges that […]

A collection of resources related to Systems Thinking for Systemic Change Dancing wth Systems by Donella Meadows, Using theories of change for systemic impact By Anna Birney Systems change: A guide to what it is and how to do it : Report by NPC and LankellyChase Foundation: inlcuding a PDF download “Thinking Big, How to use theory of change […]

The Sydney Vivid festival is not too far away! I have gone through the HUGE program and picked out events relating to Social Design. Hope to see you there supporting these events. Design for Social Innovation Conference Connecting Creatives, Councils and Communities Do GOOD be GOOD Conference and keynote Place Lab: Creating a Sense of […]

Many organizations are turning to design thinking to fuel their innovation efforts. There are two types of innovation, incremental innovation and radical innovation. Incremental innovation speaks to doing what we already do but only better, and radical innovation describes doing something that we have never done before. We have looked at the principles of design […]

As organizations throughout the world contend with unprecedented technological, social, environmental and business challenges, design provides a valuable approach to help simplify and humanize complex systems. Today I discuss some new contexts for design, including healthcare, business, social innovation and government, sharing some stories from my own practice. Healthcare Design can support the design of […]

Design is not about making ‘things’, but is also concerned with how people, and people and ‘things’ work together. Complex problem solving requires collaboration, creativity, co-design, iteration, insight and taking a human-centred approach. These are all key principles used within the discipline of design. Contemporary businesses, not for profits, corporations and governments are employing design […]

I just received a PDF of my latest article for the US innovation magazine: Misc Magazine. The article is called: Reframing thinking and doing within service design and delivery. If you like it I would be most grateful if you would thumbs it up on Medium and/or LinkedIn.

I recently delivered this presentation at the Designing for the Common Good Symposium at UTS. The child story site The Child Journey map Understanding the Child Story from Jacqueline (Jax) Wechsler

I was lucky to attend the recent SDN Global Service Design Conference. The last time I attended this conference was in Paris in 2011. There were 600 people at the conference in New York, testimony to the fact that Service Design is a growing design discipline. The presentations and workshops were of a very high […]

A talk I recently gave at Social Design Sydney discussing my work with NSW Family and Community Services and designing for IMPACT.

The article below was published on the Safe Home for Life ChildStory blog. I worked on this program as a service designer on contract from November 2014 – May 2015. The program was aimed at designing online services to improve the experiences of children, families, NGOs and workers involved in the NSW child protection system. […]

I have recently been conducting some co-design programs with a regional NSW Family and Community Services agency. The programs are designed to build co-design capability amongst public sector employees, build relationship with their clients, and improve service delivery. This workshop was conducted over three days and participants were taught some design research/co-design methods. ADHC Co-design […]

I recently gave a speed teaching session at the Design for Social Innovation Conference. The presentation: Persuading your organisation to do awesome things from Jacqueline (Jax) Wechsler

Humanizing innovation through customer-centricity for MISC Magazine | The Human Experience Issue, September 2014 My new article for MISC Magazine, about supporting customer-centricity and human-centred innovation within organisations through providing research driven rich visual artefacts that invoke empathy and customer-centric thinking and decision making by broad organisational members. _______________________________________________________________   Humanizing Innovation Through Customer-Centricity For […]

I came across interesting video about supporting innovation w design in health care by Lorna Ross, Director of Design at the Mayo clinic. It relates to some of the ideas I explored in my Masters thesis. I will be writing more about this soon : ) The points I found most interesting were: Design is […]

Social Design Sydney event held: Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014 Speakers & videos Dominic Campbell is a digital government specialist and social innovator. He established FutureGov in the UK in 2008 and has co-founded several start-ups such as Patchwork a collaboration tool for multi-agency working, currently focused on children and families intervention, Casserole a peer to […]

Social Design Sydney’s Designing with Citizens : Citizen-centric policy and services event was held on June 3rd. This event consisted of conversation and Australian case studies discussing citizen involvement in the design of public policy and services at the state, local and federal government levels. The speakers Jane Treadwell World Bank Government Transformation Senior Consultant, […]

Doug Powell has a long history of doing “good” design work. He was former president of the AIGA, involved in setting up the Design for Good framework amongst other things. I watched a presentation he gave to students at MICA Social Design and have noted down some of the points I found interesting. http://vimeo.com/88416645 1. […]

Curious about applying design thinking methods to solve a tricky problem? Some really great design tool-kits have come across my radar. Check out the list below. Perhaps you have a problem you can apply them to. Feel free to leave a comment about these or if you use any others which are useful?   The […]

I recently did some research for a project which aims to facilitate health-related behaviour change using technology. Some of this research is summarised below. 1. BJ Fogg’s model In order to build persuasive technology, people need to be encouraged to change their behaviours. The BJ Fogg model was developed in 2009 to understand human behaviour […]

Citizen-centric Public Policy & Services Join us for some conversation and Australian case studies discussing citizen involvement in the design of public policy and services at the state, local and federal government levels. Date: June 3rd, 2014 Time: 6:15pm Place: College of Fine Arts, UNSW Greens Rd Paddington NSW Australia http://socialdesignsydney.com for more information

Understanding value is critical for innovation and new/improved products & services Clay Christenson has a very useful tool for considering value – Jobs To be Done. We hire products and services to do things for us. By thinking about the jobs that we seek assistance to do can helps to understand the value that products/services […]

This is from a project I recently working on. We used a human-centred design process to deliver journey maps, personas and wire-frames for a mobile tool to help cardio-vascular disease patients and those at risk change their behaviour. Sticky Design Studio Case Study for CONNECT project from jaxwechsler

Join us for the second Designing With Sydney event as part of the Change Makers Festival. November 5th at 6:15pm – 8pm at the College of Fine Arts UNSW, Paddington Sydney Design is not all about making things. Design assists to solve wicked and complex probelms and is being utilised to facilitate social outcomes globally. […]

In August I organised an event for the Sydney Design Festival called Introduction to Social Design Evening. It consisted of a series of case-studies about social design projects by Sydney practitioners. Tasman Munro  shares his experiences co-designing with inmates and staff in NSW Corrective Services. Centre for Social Impact fellow Social Designer Ingrid Burkett shared […]

This video shows a participatory decision making process where citizens help decide how their city budget is spent using a game in San Jose, USA.

I recently presented this talk and a paper at the European Academy of Design 10 Crafting the Future Conference in Sweden. Scaffolding Innovation Through Human-Centred Design from jax wechsler Paper: http://www.trippus.se/eventus/userfiles/39741.pdf

Hey Hey (Swedish for Hi)! I write this post from an airport in Gotenburg in Sweden where I have just spent the last few days at a conference called Crafting the Future held by the European Academy of Design. Here I learnt a lot about the topic of sustainability and fashion from academics Dr. Kate […]

Patricia (Pattie) Moore is a pioneering female designer, gerontologist (social scientist of the aging), author, educator and design thought leader. Pattie has been named by ID magazine as one of the 40 Most Socially Conscious Designers in the world. She is one of my personal design heroes. In 2000 she was selected by a consortium […]

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I had an article published in the DMI Review recently about the importance of using frameworks within complex design projects. The paper is related to the work I have been doing for my masters thesis. It’s a practice-based research project about my use of artefacts within a commercial human centred design project. The article is […]

I recently had an article published in the Fall issue of  MISC Magazine | The Simplicity Issue called Delivering Simplicity: Organizational Contexts and Service Design My article is on page 52 and can be viewed as a PDF There are some good articles in the magazine which you can read online or get at stores. […]

Here is a copy of an essay I recently write for a publication. Scaffolding Innovation Through Design Artefacts This short essay will reflect learnings from a case-study I am working on as part of my masters research. My thesis constitutes a practice-based research project about a specific human-centered design project for a large company which […]

I saw Charles Leadbeater  author of We think – The Power of Mass Creativity speak recently about innovation in the public sector as part of the GovCampNSW initiative. I thought I would share a few of the notes I took at his talk: > creativity comes from communities that share a cause i.e. passionate communities that […]

I am very excited to be finishing my contract today and devoting some time to writing up a case study about my latest project for my masters thesis. I delivered my final deliverables and a presentation to a national audience via video conferencing last week at work. It seems that these were extremely well received by the organisation. […]

As part of a recent work assignment I was asked to do some contextual enquiry (interviews with stake-holders with-in their work environments) and was able to talk my client into letting me run some group co-design workshops instead. The project was to produce a high level design for an online portal for financial planners to […]

I feel very fortunate about attending a 3 day workshop with Marc Stickdorn co-author of  This is Service Design Thinking over the last few days. It was organised by UNSW and consisted of a really interesting mix of people from diverse backgrounds including students, academics, professionals and UX/Service Design practitioners. A note to the Service Design […]

Below you will find a talk I gave at a recent conference/bar camp at http://govcampnsw.info It explains what co-design and human centred design is and shows some examples of how it has been used to shape public services in the UK. Human Centred Design, Codesign and Government from jax wechsler

(An article I recently wrote for the Objective Digital blog) It was sad news that Steve Jobs lost his fight with Pancreatic Cancer last week. We wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on some of the things that Jobs (and Apple) brought to usability and customer experience. It is widely agreed that Steve Jobs […]

I was fortunate to attend the Service Design Network conference  in Paris last month. You can view the talks at this URL: http://www.service-design-network.org/content/media-1 Whilst many of the talks were excellent, below are a few brief notes about my three favourites which you should check out. I would highly recommend the talk by Craig La Rosa […]

Seems like Google have started a new channel for “Business in Bites” Good idea but I wonder whether the signal to noise ratio is going to make it worth-while? TED is excellent. TED is curated.

A friend just sent me a great video about Game-Storming i.e. brainstorming using games. I highly recommend the book it mentions: Gamestorming: A playbook for innovators, rulebreakers and changemakers. I have had some great results using techniques from this book in workshops on a wide variety of topics. (There is also a lot of academic literature […]

I am having a great time in London connecting with people who are working in the social innovation space. I was lucky to attend a great event put on by the UPA about UX for social change. There was a diverse set of speakers who gave presentations at this event. Below you can find some […]

I am very excited to be attending the 2011 Design PHD Conference at the Imagingation Lancaster Lab at Lancaster University next month. The Imagination lab are doing some really interesting work in the areas of Democratising Innovation (i.e Von Hippel’s book – free download!) Design for Sustainability Design Futures Design Management Service Design I have […]

Expanding upon a post on my UX Think blog about the initiative by EU governments to encourage design driven innovation within the EU, I found some videos explaining what co-design is from UK service design agencies Think Public and Engine. This last post had many examples of this drive within UK and both these videos discuss […]

Collaborative Consumption Groundswell Video from rachel botsman on Vimeo.

Welcome to my new blog! My name is Jax Wechsler and I passionately want to utilise my educational and professional experience to help create positive change in the world. I have worked in online for over ten years and these days work as a user experience designer. I have also been undertaking a masters by […]

I love this video….so cute and really captures what UX design is about.   [vimeo http://vimeo.com/21691333]

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Last year I undertook a compulsory unit at uni in qualitative research methodology.It got me thinking about the research we do to inform the design of applications we develop and the value of using a framework for research. I learned about how we all bring assumptions to our research as a consequence of our perspectives […]

What are they? Design principles (also called experience attributes) describe the experience core values of a product or a service. They can be visually oriented objectives that describe the personality the product should have. They should be written in a short and memorable way. As a designer you should know them by heart while doing […]

Report from Avenue Razorfish illustrating the value of well designed and executed digital experiences. Experience is the brand!

I have been attending PDC 2010 the last few days i.e. a conference about participatory design in Sydney. It has been very interesting so far…both the lectures as well as the hall way conversations between a well represented international audience. I wanted to post about a workshop I did about innovative participatory design practices held […]

Some thinking about scenarios…. It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story – Native American saying, tribe unknown A scenario is a description of a persona using a product to achieve a goal, they describe an instance of use…in context. Scenarios are usually narratives that tell a story describing one or more tasks […]

I spent some time contracting this year at a large organisation as part of an internal experience architecture team. One of my tasks was to operationalise usability testing within the online team who were responsible for the design and development of both online and mobile sites and apps. In the past I have done a […]

Expanding upon my last post about the initiative by EU governments to encourage design driven innovation within the EU, I found some videos explaining what co-design is from UK service design agencies Think Public and Engine. This last post had many examples of this drive within UK and both these videos discuss Service Design work they […]

I recently spotted a report done by the commissions of the European communities called “Design as a driver of user-centered innovation” “The working hypothesis of this document is that design is a driver and tool for user-centred and sustainable innovation and differentiation, complementary to technological R&D, and that increased use of design could increase European competitiveness. The objective […]

I have been working on a short animation about Design Thinking with a friend and have collected some quotes about design from a variety of sources…. Some food for thought. [de·sign   [dih-zahyn] ] Design is defined as both a verb and a noun, it refers to both a thing and an activity. It comes […]

Participatory Design (PD) has it’s beginnings in Scandinavia in the 70’s where there was a movement by academics and trade unionists to involve users in the design of the applications that were being designed to assist their work. It aimed to prevent workers from being dis-empowered by the tools and computer technologies imposed on them […]

I recently reviewed an interesting presentation called “Design Thinking is Killing Creativity“. Whilst I feel that the author was trying to generate an audience through being controversial, it does echo a common sentiment amongst the design community that ‘design thinking‘ is fundamentally flawed with it’s assertion that everyone is a designer. It reminded me of […]

[slideshare id=3075641&doc=userexperiencedesigninbi-100204204822-phpapp01] Excellent presentation about the value of user experience design and at what points it should be brought into the process. I have just sent it to some internal stakeholders from work who have project management responsibilities. If we are to provide better experience for our customers….education is key.

Thought provoking article from iA (creators of the webtrends maps) called “Can experience be designed”. Some exerpts from the article I liked: “Experience design is not a remedy that turns products into miracles that everybody likes. It will help you speaking more efficiently to your target group. To that end products needs to be simplified. […]

Great preso acknowledging the important of CONTEXT to usability and the inter-dependencies between online services and different devices….the web is everywhere and we need to design with this in mind. And when designing we can not for one moment forget to consider the who? and the where? And not forgetting the social context of use […]

There is an article from Business Week: Apple’s design process about a presentation given at SXSW by Michael Lopp, senior engineering manage from Apple about their internal design process. I liked the idea about paired meetings where each week they have 2 meetings. – One is a free for all – a meeting to innovate […]

Usability – what is it and why is it important? Presentation about usability and why it’s important. I have been doing  fair amount of usability and interaction design work lately… Get in touch if you need some help with sorting out the usability of your site 🙂

In 1998, Pine and Gilmore in the Harvard Business Review wrote an article called “Welcome to the experience economy” where they explain that companies need to shift focus from the provision of merely goods and services to the provision of consumers with experiences. They later wrote a book about the subject called:“The experience economy: work […]

Jesse James Garrett postulated a model/schema (fig. 1) for understanding user experience design in his book the Elements of User Experience Design in 2003. He also co- founded a leading user experience design agency called Adaptive Path. The model Garrett uses posits that there are five layers to UX design that have varying levels of […]

I am undertaking a masters by research in user experience design (IT/HCI) looking at the role design artifacts can play within UXD. (Hence my infrequent blogging these days.) Here is a little presentation I prepared for one of my research preparation classes. Please leave me a comment if you like it. 🙂 [slideshare id=2346758&doc=presentationuni-091026023502-phpapp02]

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I was having a chat with my lead designer at work today. We recently conducted some user testing with sample users testing three alternative look and feels for a new web service we are building for a client. These tests were done online via a questionnaire. Whilst we constructed a report of this data for […]

I have been doing a lot of reading lately for my university literature review and have been thinking a lot about the relationship between user experience, design and research. These are some rough notes which are influencing my current, and continually evolving thinking on this topic. As my paper gets written, I will share more […]

This video below talks about why interaction design matters. It is aimed at marketers…. Marketing is about people’s relationship to products. Marketing gets people to purchase products… But what happens after the purchase has been made and the person interacts with the product? Interaction design (and designing for user experience) affects the relationship a person […]

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Death To Personas! Long Live Personas! from Elizabeth Bacon

I recently read a fantastic post by Penny Hagen and Michelle Gilmore about utilising user stories as a strategic design tool. I currently work for a small digital consultancy within a not-for-profit organisation called the Inspire Foundation. As mentioned within the post, we have had the opportunity to work with Penny on some of our […]

Great schematic illustrating the importance of user experience design by http://experiencedynamics.blogs.com Review an analysis of this poster

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Manifesto for Agile Software Development We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, […]

I love this presentation by Joshua Porter called Designing with Psychology in Mind. It is very clever and well put together. I love the idea that designers are in the business of changing behaviour as are psychologists so we as designers may need to add another skill to our arsenal, that of psychologist. Also the […]

[slideshare id=1566683&doc=theaudienceisalwaysrightfinal-090611034628-phpapp02] Excellent presentation by TBWA which discusses their approach to marketing and advertising, “an approach that shifts communication from brand-centric to audience-centric thinking“. I have become very interested in user-centered design practices and strongly believe that humans need to be at the center of all marketing and all new product and service design and […]

TED talk by Don Norman, the author of ‘Emotional Design’ presents about making people through design. He looks at the three emotional cues that good design needs to address in order to be successful. Patrick Lynch summarizes Normans thinking here. “Why attractive things work better In psychology, emotional reactions to stimuli are called affective responses. […]

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