Algonquin College student selected to participate in WDO Young Designers Circle
Posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2022
Algonquin College student Muhammad Khan has been selected to participate in the World Design Organization’s (WDO) Young Designers Circle. A learner in the Interdisciplinary Studies in Human-Centred Design program, Khan is one of only two Canadians joining 20 young designers from 15 different countries selected for the 2022-2023 program.
The WDO is a non-governmental organization with United Nations (UN) Special Consultative Status, supporting design initiatives for industry, business, products, systems and services. Launched in 2020, the Young Designers Circle brings together cross-disciplinary international designers under the age of 30. Under the direction of three design coaches, the young designers help to further WDO’s mission of using emerging best practices to make recommendations which address design challenges.
“The World Design Organization has brought together young people from around the world. There are people from all different backgrounds, like industrial designers, or in the urban planning space or architecture. It’s a good mix of different design disciplines,” said Khan. “Over the next two years the other designers and I will be working on different projects, both ones that we’ve pitched and ones assigned to us.”
Khan learned about the Young Designers Circle after Jed Looker, Research Chair of the Human-Centred Design Lab, offered to nominate him for the program.
“Jed heard about the Young Designers Circle and he approached me saying he’d like to nominate me for this program and asked if I was interested,” he said. “I looked into it and it seemed really interesting and a good opportunity to meet new people and do some good design work.”
Khan has pitched three design proposals for the Young Designers Circle. The first promotes an actionable framework for ethical outcomes of design decision-making, which he explains is “exploring what’s currently stopping designers from engaging in ethical practice, what we can do about it and how we can dive into current and past research and design ethics to develop a practical way forward for designers.”
The second pitch tackles unconscious bias and design, exploring both deliberate and unintentional discrimination.
Lastly, Khan proposed co-designing for social change in virtual environments. “I’m a big proponent of co-design, which is a participatory approach where you’re working with the people you’re designing for. The decision-making is very much shared and more democratic,” he said.
Currently in his last co-op term with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), Khan is excited to apply his program and co-op knowledge to the Young Designers Circle. As a user experience (UX) researcher, he works on a team applying usability testing and provides recommendations for a variety of IRCC products, including forms, websites and applications.
The 2022-2023 Young Designers Circle cohort is still in the stage of pitching ideas and offering design briefs. The next step is to select three initiatives, then split into smaller groups and start to work through the projects.
“Everyone is pitching projects related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals,” said Khan. “Over the course of the next two years, projects will come in and out. You have the opportunity to share your voice and then, given the resources, to try to approach some of the problems in design right now.”
Click here for more information on the Young Designers Circle.