The Civic Media: Collaborative Design Studio, based at MIT and working in collaboration with partners in multiple locations, generates civic media projects that are grounded in real-world community needs. We partner with community-based organizations, and use co-design and lean startup methods for project ideation, design, prototyping, testing, launch, and stewardship.

People

Sasha Costanza-Chock, Associate Professor of Civic Media, founded the Co-Design Studio at MIT (schock.cc).

Marisa Jahn, founder of Studio Rev-, is teaching the Spring 2020 version of the Co-Design Studio.

Emilie Reiser, Special Projects Lead at the MIT Center for Civic Media, helped develop the Co-Design Studio course and projects in 2017-2018.

Mariel García-Montes (@faeriedevilish), graduate researcher at MIT CMS/W, worked as Teaching Assistant to the Co-Design Studio in Spring 2017.

Aisha Shillingford, of Intelligent Mischief, worked to help connect the Co-Design Studio to community-based organizations in the Boston area in 2016.

Bex Hurwitz, of Research Action Design, played a key role in the development of the Co-Design Studio as Community Organizer and Co-Design Facilitator over the period 2012-2014.

The Co-Design Studio has been generously supported by the D’Arbeloff Teaching and Learning Fund, and by FUSE Labs.

More information about the current partners and design teams can be found each year in the course syllabus; info about people involved in previous iterations is also available on the projects page.