Tag: observation

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Design as a learning process

Many projects treat design as a problem with a fixed answer. But what if we treated design as learning journey?

In a complex world, design needs to be a responsive process. This means observing, setting intentions, developing ideas, testing them and seeing what happens. With each iteration of this process we get a better understanding of how the system responds to our thinking — and how our thinking needs to respond to the system.



  • This mindset encourages us to:
  • Respect complexity
  • Work iteratively
  • See value not in a single deliverable, but in insight that accrues over time

It’s hard to argue with that. And yet many design processes are linear and short-term.

But just think about what long-term value could be unlocked by shifting from merely delivering an answer toward building understanding.

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The dream walk experiment at Hazel Hill Wood

Last week at Hazel Hill Wood we ran a ‘dream walk’ with staff and trustees. The aim was to tune into our long-term hopes and aspirations for the site, as we continue the responsibility of creating a thriving place for care and learning.

Hopes and dreams are part of what a place is trying to do. They arise from our relationships with place and help steer the flow of change.

We began with Zuma Puma’s Box-Clearing warm-up (a technique I learnt from one of my clown teachers —more on that in another post), then set out into the woods. The rules were simple:

  • Walk to a place in the wood.
  • Walk with your gaze slightly raised to invite in fun and curiosity (another technique from another clown teacher, Robyn Hambrook) 
  • Share what you’ve always hoped for this place.
  • Imagine how it could be, how it might change.
  • Speak until you’re done.
  • The next person picks up — not to challenge, but to add their own dreams.

We captured dreams in audio and notes, later mapped across the site.

What I learnt from facilitating the process

  • The temptation to say why not is strong — the delivery mindset of Horizon One is never far away. With reminders, we shifted into a more open Horizon Three frame.
  • Some dreams resonated and compounded — one voice building on the next until a vision took shape.
  • Some spots felt dream-silent, as if they were low-energy places. Others flowed with possibility, hinting at where change energy gathers. This was a real ah-ha moment for me.

This dream walk supported three things at once: observation in Continuous Place-Based Design, imagining Horizon Three in the Three Horizons model, and adding inputs to our Kalideascope. 

You could consider carrying out a dream walk where you are: walk, notice, and speak your dreams of place aloud. You might be surprised by what takes shape.

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Consult your hopes and dreams — part of what a place is trying to do

The first stage in continuous place-based design is observation. It is a beginning that says before we do anything different here we need to try and understand this place. 

The aim of this phase is to gather as much data and wisdom as we can before proposing changes. That data can be physical, cultural or even intangible — anything that helps us to notice what makes a place distinct, what gives it its feel. 

One of the data sets I think is often overlooked — but vital — is hopes and dreams.

These are easy to dismiss as not ‘real’ but I see them as very real. Our hopes are distant but visible from where we are now — rooted both in the present and in the future. In the language of the Three Horizons Model, they belong in Horizon Three: an outline of what we see from here in the future. 

Since the design process spans the present and the future, hopes and dreams are a vital link.

The hopes and dreams of the people that live or regularly used in a space are founded in their complex interaction with that place. So asking simple questions like: 

What is your hope for this place?
What do you dream I could become?

…can a great deal about the current lie of the land and its future potential. 

One the questions we ask in the Systems Survey motif (see the Pattern Book) is ‘what is this place trying to do?’

Hopes and dreams are part of that answer. They are usually motivating — either towards one place or away from another. They inject energy into certain courses of action over others. And so that are an important clue as to what patterns are already unfolding here or are likely to in the future.

So pay attention to hopes and dreams as well as the things you can physically observe. These dreams may already be shaping the path that this place is taking.

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Systems Survey

This motif combines the Living Systems Blueprint with a civil engineering perspective to create six questions for a site investigation that can reveal the underlying system characteristics.

  1. What is connected and what is separated?
  2. What is thriving and what is in decline?
  3. What is in flow and what is static?
  4. What is changing and what is fixed?
  5. What stories does this place tell?
  6. What is the place trying to do – and what helps or hinders it?

User guide

  • Site survey — use these questions to bring a more systemic lens to a traditional site survey.
  • System investigation — use these questions to think more about infrastructure and policies and how they relate to the patterns they create on the ground.

This post is an extract from the Motif Library in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design.