The Social Healing Project is building social webs between science, community, and personal experience. 🌱 What is Social Healing? There’s a story told in service design circles about an electronic musician, Yoko Sen, who spent a long time in a hospital. While there, she became very sensitive to the disruptive noises that happened constantly…

Can cities be respiratory systems for grief? — No one tells you how you will stuff entire months into a box. Well, therapists will tell you (they’ll call it “suppressed memories”) — and so will scientists (they’ll use something more sophisticated, like “state-dependent learning”) — but you are highly self-aware, thank you, and you certainly don’t recall engaging…

To survive, the industry must start delivering what its users need. Here’s how. — Several months ago, I was part of a gathering for solutions journalists from around the world. The term “solutions journalism” sounds positive, but this form of media isn’t focused on feel-good stories or “puff” pieces. …

We’re familiar with dark patterns in UX design. What about in our civic institutions? In May, a colleague on the Modernist Studio team sent a curious message in Slack: “Is it weird that an economic stimulus payment was sent as a debit card, addressed to a combination of your first…

Originally published by Modernist Studio. In late 2019, a team of designers, writers, researchers, and software developers at The New York Times published a list of 10 “themes” around news consumption to watch for in 2020. …

An Evangelical Texan is now using her pulpit to fight Trumpism. Will her flock follow? — It’s a beautiful September morning in Austin, Texas, and Jen Hatmaker is gently heckling the congregants of Austin New Church. Today’s sermon is on the parable of the Prodigal Son, and Hatmaker, delivering the sermon, is just winding up for a big theological swing when a cell phone rings. She…