Design Dialogues is a publication of Peter Jones, founder of Redesign and co-founder of the Toronto practice community Design with Dialogue. 
I live and work in Toronto, as an associate professor at OCAD University, where I’m dedicated to the MDes Strategic Foresight and Innovation program. I teach design research and systems courses in this graduate program and am a Senior Fellow of the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab). We’re developing research and practices in foresight and systemic design for socially engaged innovation. (Unlike “social innovation,” this means innovation in any sector with outcomes of human betterment).
I founded Redesign Inc. in 2001, as an innovation research / design firm with a network of associates in the US and Toronto. Redesign specializes in professional practice and high-tech sectors, designing for clinical informatics and other complex work systems.
Dialogic Design International was started in 2007, and helps organizations and problem-focused communities co-design effective responses to complex shared concerns by employing strategic dialogue practices. Our team consists of Aleco Christakis, Ken Bausch, and Tom Flanagan, all leaders of the non-profit Institute for 21st Century Agoras. As a board member of the Agoras Institute, I am honored to work with a worldwide practice network to advance the principles of dialogic design for inclusive, multi-stakeholder participation in solution creation for wicked problems in global and civil society.
In a current book project, Design for Care, I envision the information experiences of consumers, patients, and healthcare professionals as a continuous and complex social system, shared by all and innovated by many. We are all participants co-creating better health care for all members of our society, All forms of care and caring in information, practice, environment, and services are to be considered in the quest for enhancing the human experience of health. Healthcare design concerns are presented not from a traditional user experience perspective, but from the lived experience and perspective of the patient, practitioner, and designer in the health field. We aim to establish the role of information, service, and system designers as critical team members in the health professions, as necessary as other traditional roles in the healthcare system.
My Union Institute doctorate (2000) examined the relationship of organizational values embedded in innovation processes to the maintenance of power and decision control. This work inspired continuing research into the organizational dynamics of innovation, collaborative information practices, and how people think with and use information. My current management research involves changing organizational practices to enable reflective renewal to improve innovation and facilitate transformation.
My lifelong professional and social interests are to humanize systems and institutions, enabling harmonious futures co-created through collective wisdom. You can read more on my Publications page.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/peterhjones
Twitter: @redesign
