Pluriversal Arcs of Impact

In a recent conversation about her leadership at OCAD U, Noel emphasised her drive to leverage pluriversality of relationships and practice as a tool for systemic inclusion and equitable redistribution of power. Noel described her leadership focus as being a “connector” dedicated to building up her team. Reflecting on her approach, Noel elaborates:

Complexity strategy theory impacts how I approach relationships and feedback in organisations in general and in particular in the role that I’m in now. As Dean of Design, one of my driving goals is to build up the thought leaders in my department and spotlight the immense impact of their work. Some people whose work I particularly celebrate who come to mind are Herman Pi‘Ikea Clark, Angela Bains, Sugandha Guar, Jay Irizawa, Diane Mikhael, Ali Qadeer, and Michael Lee Poy. There are so many people doing interesting work in the Faculty of Design at OCAD U! My aim as a leader is to approach my work using systemic methods of relating. Just like there are many worlds of design, identity is also pluriversal, and a systemic approach supports my leadership, practice, and research.

Many Systemic Design researchers use big data for anti-oppressive ends. In a recent interview with Gerry Scullion, Noel reminds us of “needing to hear people’s stories.” She models how we can ground our more de-personalised methods by maintaining practices that “humanise the data,” because “people have very human stories that we have to hear” (Scullion, 2025). Noel’s methodological contributions like the Designer’s Critical Alphabet (Cohen, 2022) and the Positionality Wheel (Noel & Paiva, 2021) are inextricably tied to both humanising data and equity interventions.

Noel’s thought leadership around the nestedness of relationality, or pluriversal Arcs of Impact extends outside of OCAD University as the co-founder and co-chair of the Pluriversal Design special interest group in the Design Research Society. In a recent interview with Lee Moreau, Noel spoke about the impact of pluriversality discourse in design. She notes that the idea of pluriversality resonates with many groups, including “people of colour, people from other geographic locations, people with other gender identities […] anybody who feels a little bit othered.” Noel observes that

this conversation of a world of many worlds resonates with them because it kind of gives them space to say: OK, I can exist as I am because maybe I occupy this other world and we just learn to talk with each other (Moreau, 2025).

Poignantly, Noel quotes Nii Botchway, a colleague from South Africa: “There are no imposters in the pluriverse, because we all respect each other’s knowledge.” Noel welcomingly asserts that in the pluriverse, “none of us are coming in with any imposter syndrome” (Moreau, 2025).

Ultimately, the RSD14 Arcs of Impact—Relationality in Complexity theme invites researchers, educators, and practitioners to explore complex relational networks and respond to calls to action by systemic designers like Noel, who encourage us to “reflect on pluriversality, your own identity, and then the change that you want to make as designers as you work” (Noel, 2022).

Lesley-Ann Noel is a designer, researcher, and educator, the author of Design Social Change, and a co-editor of The Black Experience in Design. She has created several design tools for critical reflection, such as The Designer’s Critical Alphabet and the Positionality Wheel. She has a bachelor’s in Industrial Design from Universidade Federal do Paran´a in Brazil, a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago, and a PhD in Design from North Carolina State University. She was awarded honorary doctorates for service to the field of design by the University of the Arts London and the Pacific Northwest College of Art. She is the Dean of Design at OCAD University (Aug 2024). Before OCAD U, she taught at North Carolina State University, Tulane University, Stanford University, and the University of the West Indies. Lesley-Ann is co-chair of the Pluriversal Design Special Interest Group of the Design Research Society. She practices primarily in social innovation, education, futures workshops, and public health.

Orus Mateo Castaño-Suárez is an award-winning researcher, designer, and artist based in Treaty 13, Tkaronto (Toronto, Canada). Their work responds to the escalating severity of the climate crisis by designing visuospatial, topological, computational, and Systemic Design approaches for innovation across disciplines. Castaño-Suárez contributes to international research through the Harvard Divinity School Program for the Evolution of Spirituality, Abundant Intelligences Indigenous Artificial Intelligence project, American Society for Cybernetics, Systemic Design Association, and the Creative Reaction Lab. In Canada, they contribute to the University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab and OCAD University’s Visual Analytics Lab, Strategic Innovation Lab, Perceptual Artifacts Lab, and Global Centre for Climate Action. Castaño-Suárez’s achievements have been recognised through numerous awards, including the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Their work has been showcased in exhibitions, conferences, and publications internationally. You can read more about them at orusmateo.com