Hi, I am Martin. I have set up this space because I wanted to find a calm corner on the internet to have some simple, but hopefully useful thoughts about how we can use design to improve our relationships. As a Communication Designer, I am trained to create one-sided relationships. Drawing people’s attention to something they weren’t interested in, shaping their opinion on something they might not have had an opinion on, making them do something they wouldn’t have done or making them buy something they wouldn’t have bought. The intentions behind this one-directional communication might be good or bad, necessary or unnecessary. I am not debating their particular outcomes. I am questioning this practice for its inability to create spaces of collective learning and action. As a Conversational Designer, I am trying to unlearn what I was taught and create Conversational Spaces that can be plural and therefore generative. I encounter many beautiful lessons in this process, which I am trying to collect here.  

For whom is this space? Everyone. If we want to design honest conversations, we all need to become aware of the conditions under which they are held.

To shift from Communication Design to Conversational Design is only at its surface a shift from instructional interfaces to conversational interfaces. At the root of the shift is the realisation that we need to become aware of the conditions that shape our conversations if we want to improve them. These psychological and physical infrastructures shape how we act together. In a world of distraction and division, we forget that we are curious beings who thrive in challenging environments. Challenging our belief systems is not a threat; it is what we as living systems need. No living system ever learns on its own. It co-evolves with its environment. Conversational Design, at its core, is the design of co-learning spaces for living beings.