Case Study: Democratizing Design Toolkit
Building a shared design language across the San Diego–Tijuana region
Partners
UCSD Design Lab
CETYS University
The Design Academy
My Role
Graduate Design Researcher
My CONTRIBUTIONS
Stakeholder Interviews · Qualitative Synthesis · Landscape Analysis · Market Research · Collaborative Brainstorming
From June 2023 to December 2024, I contributed to the foundational research for Democratizing Design (DD), a binational initiative exploring how humanity-centered design could become a shared and accessible resource across the San Diego–Tijuana region.
My role focused on understanding how people already encounter and practice design, what language and tools shape those experiences, and where perspectives across the regional design ecosystem aligned or diverged.
Challenge | Design is everywhere. Access to design isn't.
Communities solve complex problems every day, yet the language, frameworks, and tools of professional design are often housed within specialized disciplines and institutions.
The result is a disconnect: people may already be practicing the principles of design without recognizing their knowledge as "design" or having access to the language and tools used by professional designers.
Across a binational region like San Diego–Tijuana, that challenge becomes even more complex. Differences in language, culture, government, and infrastructure mean that simply distributing another standardized toolkit would not necessarily create meaningful access.
The challenge: How might we create a shared design language that helps people recognize, communicate, and act on the design knowledge they already hold?
So, what's design?
Everyday Tinkering
Social Innovation
Systems Design
Product Design
Community Design
Collaborative Doing
Service Design
Approach | Understanding Design as an Ecosystem
Before defining a shared design language, we needed to understand who was already defining design—and how those definitions interacted.
Rather than selecting one toolkit, methodology, or sector as the benchmark, I helped investigate design as an ecosystem of overlapping perspectives. We mapped what already existed, then interviewed design professionals and thought leaders to understand how different parts of that ecosystem understood both themselves and one another.
Design | From teaching design to creating the conditions for people to design.
Our research surfaced a central tension: a shared design language needed enough structure for communities and institutions to understand one another, without becoming another rigid framework people had to learn before they could participate.
Rather than standardizing how people design, the opportunity was to create a shared foundation that could flex across people, places, and contexts.
Standardize the language enough to connect people—not the way people design.
The resulting strategy connected humanity-centered design education, a common regional language, a practical playbook, and an adaptable design model—not as a prescribed process, but as infrastructure communities could use and reshape around their own needs.
The goal wasn't to teach everyone to think like a designer. It was to make design flexible enough to recognize how people already think, solve, adapt, and create.
Results | Research laid the foundation for a growing regional initiative.
From June 2023 through December 2024, the broader Democratizing Design initiative engaged 1,275+ people through surveys, interviews, workshops, binational roundtables, and interactive events.
My contribution focused on building the research foundation for this work. Through landscape analysis, stakeholder outreach, interviews, research documentation, and qualitative synthesis, I helped reveal how different design sectors understood themselves and one another—and where their language overlapped, diverged, or created barriers.
Rather than elevating one discipline, toolkit, or definition as the authority, our research treated design as an interconnected ecosystem. This helped establish four directions for continued development:
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Humanity-centered design education
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A shared regional design language
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A regional design playbook
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A prototype Democratizing Design Model