Author name: Jax

Inner Development for Change – Contemplation #1

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 […]

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Reflections : Co-Designing with Young People with Cognitive Disability

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

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Stewarding Trauma : Self care tips and tools for working within trauma spaces

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

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Systems Change Salon 1 : Causal Layer Analysis

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

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Resources : Systems thinking for Systemic Change

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

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How to innovate with design thinking

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

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New Frontiers for 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

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Sweet spot for innovation

How design supports innovation

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

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Codesign capability building at FACS

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

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Latest article: Humanizing innovation through customer-centricity

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

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Designing for Wellbeing event

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

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Designing with Citizens videos

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,

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Social innovation / HCD / service design resources

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

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Designing With Citizens Event

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

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Case-study : designing a mobile health tool for CVD patients

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

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Designing With Sydney : Introduction to Social Design Evening

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

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Design Pioneer: Patricia Moore – Mother of Universal Design

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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Image Post

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Design, Frameworks and the Service Organisation

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

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Service Design Workshop with Marc Stickdorn @UNSW

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

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Reflecting on Steve Jobs & Apple’s Approach to User Experience

(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

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Design PHD Conference at Lancaster University

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

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About Co-design

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

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Hello world!

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

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Using Scenarios

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

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About Co-design

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

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EU pushes design led innovation

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

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Design quotes

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

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Thinking About Participatory Design Research : Part 1

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

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Value of User Experience Design

[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.

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Designing experience for competitive advantage

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

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What is User Experience Design?

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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User Stories – strategic value?

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

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The Agile Manifesto

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,

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Marketing and User Centered Thinking

[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

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Emotional Design

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. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlQEoJaLQRA] Patrick Lynch summarizes Normans thinking here. “Why attractive things work better In psychology, emotional reactions to stimuli are called affective

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Razorfish – Ray Velez and Laura Fraga (Ford Motor) on Agile Processes

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2728094&w=425&h=350&fv=sessid%3DBAhDOh9BY3RpdmVTdXBwb3J0OjpPcmRlcmVkSGFzaFsKWwciCmZsYXNoSUM6%25250AJ0FjdGlvbkNvbnRyb2xsZXI6OkZsYXNoOjpGbGFzaEhhc2h7AAY6CkB1c2Vk%25250AewBbBzoJdXNlcnsGIgl1c2VyaQMxxqFbBzoNbGFuZ3VhZ2UiByoqWwc6Cmlu%25250AYm94aQBbBzoSbm90aWZpY19jb3VudGkA–3d258b4213ec2336bbeb01c489bc6d2caefa6b09%26pvt%3D0%26doc%3Drazorfishrayvelezonagileprocesses-090506172417-phpapp01%26version_no%3D1241654050%26presentationId%3D1396808%26totalSlides%3D19%26startSlide%3D1%26inContest%3D0%26preview%3Dno%26stitle%3Drazorfish-ray-velez-and-laura-fraga-ford-motor-on-agile-processes%26userName%3Drazorfishmarketing%26has_form%3Dnull%26form_after_slide_number%3Dnull%26form_is_blocking%3Dfalse%26hostedIn%3Dslideshare%26useHttp%3D1] more about "Razorfish – Ray Velez and Laura Fraga…", posted with vodpod

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