Project Title Burnout: the interplay of capacity and care within community-centred organizations

This research project explores the potential of life-centred design approaches within community organizations to respond to distressing employee experiences. The study investigates how dynamic and intense professional expectations contribute to distress impacting personal capacities, affecting personal well-being and ability to give and receive care. Through foresight and participatory design research methods — such as causal layer analysis to examine underlying causes, to identify emerging patterns and journey mapping to visualize employee experiences — the research aims to uncover new holistically-focused insights and impacts to support care providers.

Emilio Castillo is a multidisciplinary designer in training. He comes with over a decade of experience across various fields, from conflict resolution to not-for-profit work. His travels to conflict-stricken areas have reframed his notions on ‘empathy’, ‘relationality’ and ‘connectedness’. A storyteller by nature and nurture, Emilio designs at the intersections of academia, the corporate and the creative world; it is there where he unboxes critical potentialities for expression, problem solving, and motivating social change.