The last version of this presentation about design consciousness that I posted here was offered to a class of  marketing students at a business school in San Francisco. This one is a presentation to a class of divinity student at the Pacific School of Religion here in Berkeley. The course is called Design Thinking for Social Change. Needless to say, the presentation has evolved significantly – partly to address an audience with a far different context for understanding “consciousness”, and partly because my thinking about design consciousness continues to evolve as I write about  and teach it.

Design consciousness, in my framing, is borne simply out of our awareness that we live in a world that is largely of our own (human) making. If we consider that everything was put into the form it holds by some process that we might refer to as “design” (by the logic that the form of a thing IS its design), then the only choice we have when setting out to intentionally create change, is to design it mindlessly or with awareness of what we are doing…to design it poorly, or design it with the best of intention, and to design it well.

Design thinking is a framework for intentional creative action that has emerged over the past few decades. It is designed  to allow people to collaborate on creative challenges in the social sphere that they face mindfully and with skill. One can quibble about the specific mindsets, steps and methods one employs in designing just about anything – but not about the need to bring mindful attention to every act of  human creation.

It is in this awareness that I seek to ground students as they grapple with the ambiguities and gratification of design thinking.

I was delighted when Zvika Krieger came to Chochmat Halev, my Renewal Jewish community, as our spiritual leader. In his previous position he had been the founding Director of Responsible Innovation at Meta/Facebook. Who better to renew the exciting project of Jewish renewal than someone steeped in the discipline of design and innovation. 

I have found many of the drashes (commentaries on the Torah) that Zvika offers weekly to contain kernels of design wisdom in them, even when he doesn’t identify them as such. So I was excited when he agreed to join our conversation at the Pacific School of Religion (PSR) about design consciousness from a Jewish Renewal perspective. I was keen to hear what he might have to share in a context where the connections between the many creation stories embedded in the Torah and our contemporary practice of design might be made more explicit. 

Zvika did not disappoint. 

The first 10 minutes are a meditation that Zvika offered at the intersection of the soul traits of “Gevurah” (strength, boundary) and “Hod” (splendour, perseverance) as a resource that allows us to keep moving forward when we’re in what he names the “mushy middle” of the design process.

At 00:10:16 on the video time bar Zvika tells his story of his journey at another intersection – between design and spirituality. 

At 00:26:55 he offers a reflection on the place of “wisdom of the heart” and “wisdom of the mind” in design and design consciousness and at 00:35:47 he offers thoughts about the portion of the Torah called Shemini

Finally at 00:43:15 he takes some student questions.

I was delighted when Grace Gilliam agreed to assist me through the Spring 2023 session of Design Thinking for Social Change at the Pacific School of Religion (PSR). As Associate Director of Community Engaged Learning at PSR I knew I could count on her to help student align their projects with community need. Grace was keen to get a grounding in design thinking to help ground her work. 

As a practicing Buddhist who took her Bodhisattva Vows in December 2017 Grace was keen to bring a Buddhist perceptive to our conversations about design consciousness and “towards a theology of creative praxis”.  In this presentation titled “Compassion and Creativity” Grace reaches beyond the customary design thinking of empathy into it even more radical soul cousin compassion to inform our design consciousness and practice. 

Dave Dawkins is a design lead at the innovation firm IDEO’s non-profit arm IDEO.org. I invited him to share his experience applying design thinking to diverse social challenges. His animated and energized presentation of some of his work inspired the students to think about what we’re doing in the Design Thinking for Social Change course at the Pacific School of Religion (PSR)  in a bigger frame. It didn’t surprise me that Dave would inspire the students as much as he had inspired me on our first meeting. 

What did surprised me though was Dave’s own history with theological thinking and the stimulus, insight and wisdom he brought to our ongoing conversation about design consciousness. 

Picking up with conversations “towards a theology of creative praxis” in Spring 2023 I invited Dr. Deena Aranoff to share some thoughts with the Spring 2023 cohort of the course I teach at the Pacific School of Religion (PSR) in Berkeley. 

She drew on recent writing she is doing about “The Maternal Divine” in particular “locating the maternal valence of the key Hebrew term for steadfast faithfulness: a,m,n.”, which is the root of the affirmative blessing “amen” as well as of  “oman”, “ as a reference to a craftsman”. 

Dr. Aranoff is assistant professor of medieval Jewish studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. Her interests include rabbinic literature, medieval patterns of Jewish thought and the broader question of continuity and change in Jewish history. Deena is also a community educator and teaches Bible, rabbinics, and Jewish mysticism in a variety of adult education programs.