Designing Dublin

Designing Dublin arrived at a critical point in the city’s history, 2009 was the first year of Ireland’s deep recession, the future of the country was less than certain and fiscal spending had been significantly cut. Following my Masters at Bath Spa I had become increasingly interested in Design Thinking and was learning more about how the design process could be applied in different contexts. Designing Dublin gave me an opportunity to develop myself as a design researcher, practicing design ethnography and use Design Thinking as a way of collaborating with others. Working with community was something new to me at that time. It was a skill I would later bring to the Design Impact fellowship.

As the main lead on all of the print production for Designing Dublin, I was responsible for laying out and producing several publications including our final book Designing Dublin : The Compendium (2011), a 440 page monster that was produced during the same month the Queen and Barack Obama visited the city (I missed all of this action!).