Rebecca Rubuliak, Paige Reeves, and Ben Weinlick
This paper explores what bringing a relational perspective to systemic design practices in the context of disability services can look like in action. Drawing on feminist relational theory and critical disability studies, we reflect on our experiences within the Future of Home Lab, a multi-stakeholder social innovation initiative using systemic design to generate accessible, inclusive, and affordable housing options with people with intellectual disabilities. We highlight how relational commitments shape our systemic design process: foregrounding relationship, care, reciprocity, and reflexivity in how we work with design teams and community. We explore four themes, the design relationship, housing, disability, and belonging, looking at each from a relational perspective and then exploring in tangible ways how this perspective shaped our practice. Framed as an offering of our ‘unfinished thoughts’, we invite others to consider how relational orientations might deepen systems change work, especially in contexts marked by histories of exclusion.
Keywords: systemic design, relationality, intellectual disability, disability studies, feminist relational theory, systems thinking