Susana Leonor
Porto
Susana Leonor
Communication Design Degree Director - ISMAT
Co-founder and senior designer GUDA | Give U Design Art - GUDA (Portugal)
Creativity has been the central focus in her professional career, but the intersection between different disciplines is her passion. Since 2018 she has taken the direction of the Communication Design Degree at ISMAT – Lusófona Algarve. In 2009, GUDA – Give u design art, Lda, appears, where she is co-founder and senior designer of the design and communication studio, where they develop applied design and research, where they introduce design thinking, participatory design and process design practices.
Publications
D3.5: Healthy Corridor Participatory Process Report / Toolkit
The approach we took in preparing this deliverable was based on the understanding, that the responsible team preparing and organising the participatory design process of the URBINAT project, needed a manual in toolkit format so that the internal dissemination of good practices and agreed tool descriptions could be as effective as possible. Furthermore, it would be the guiding principles and practices of each of the cities in URBiNAT in their participatory design processes. From the beginning, we want to signal that the process will be open to customization, adaptation and parameterization by the local city teams according to their contexts, experiences, knowledge and willingness to experiment / innovate in the way they involve and create commitments with their stakeholders, citizens and other resources engaged in the territory. Prior to gathering an information report, incl. an evaluation of how the participatory design processes are conducted in cities, we understand that it is necessary to present a guide / toolkit describing the general process itself.
NBS Expertise
[PDF Download] Community-Based Monitoring
Tool for participatory decision-making improvement. It promotes an organized way of collecting ongoing or recurring information by residents, to be used by local governments and civil society, for planning, budgeting, and implementing local development programs, as well as for monitoring and evaluating their performance. Its activities cover community mapping, mobilization, capacity building, and information dissemination. Its benefits include:
- identification of problems and solutions in areas with fragmentation of needs and different vulnerable groups, which make it difficult to provide standardized solutions
- collective elaboration of simple and intuitive indicators
- contrast to lack of transparency and clientelism
- creation of relations of mutual trust between citizens and public officials
- awareness about policy-making helping citizens to understand the constraints of public action.
[PDF Download] Design Thinking
Design Thinking is founded on the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in generating ideas, insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and match solutions to the context. Design Thinking processes are at the same time analytical and empathic, rational and emotional, methodical and intuitive, often tackle ill-defined problems where the use of creative thinking abilities is fundamental to first a correct problem finding.
Design Thinking is human centered and is based on understanding the needs and motivations of people. And it is optimistic; it believes that there is always a solution to be found. From problem finding to problem solving.
By using Gamification, Serious Games, Senses and Dreams, the Design thinking tools allows people to give first- hand deeper information that it is crucial to complement and simultaneously cross-validate other sources of co- diagnostic gathered through other methods and tools.
[Download PDF] 3D Model Thinking
Model thinking is a collaborative design tool to develop urban and architectural projects with experts and citizens, in the frame of participatory processes.
Architects, landscape architects and urban planners don’t lose their role as experts but engage citizens in the design process in order to explore common visions/ideas/ proposals.
The models are co-designed and co-build in workshops by participants with materials and objects that were collected by all of them. These materials can be the traditional ones, has wood or paper, or the improbable ones, has metal or plastic objects taken from everyday life.
The construction of the model can be the first step for creating consensus, by the common effort of representing the existing urban context in a small scale. Around the 3D physical models, participants can easily make strategic proposals and integrate other inputs.
[NBS Card] Cultural Mapping
Methodological tool in participatory planning and community development, it makes visible the ways that local cultural assets, stories, practices, relationships, memories, and rituals constitute places as meaningful locations.
Process of collecting, recording, analyzing and synthesizing information to describe the cultural resources, networks, links and patterns of usage of a given community or group, also strategically used to bring stakeholders into conversation.
Flexible according to the objectives, purpose and what one wants to map. E.g. facilities, organizations, stories of places, historical sites, for the past (memories and landmarks) or for the future (aspirational mapping), for the community or for outsiders.
It can be combined with approaches such as footprint of women (gender), forbidden cities (safety), asset-based community development (community assets), arts.
[NBS Card] Solidarity Markets and Fairs
In these spaces of conviviality products, knowledge and services manufactured by the own participants are exchanged using or not social currencies as intermediary mechanisms. These markets intensify the social dynamics through valuing the knowledge diversity from the community and creating a circuit of integration and economic autonomy. The markets/fairs contribute to a broader movement focused on rediscovery of the local and popular economy. It innovates by combining three distinct elements in the same space in society: the social ties of proximity, solidarity consumption and the use / occupation of public spaces. Into the markets we find the figure of the “prosumer” who refers to the person who is both consumer and producer. For the continued participation of community members, the markets can be implemented through a local residents’ committee and through activities beyond market spaces.
For more information about NBS in the URBiNAT NBS Catalogue click HERE