Co-imagining a trauma-informed future with domestic abuse survivors

Christina Lai is a responsible tech and inclusive design focused service designer from London.

Pillow founder Lesley Sackey kicking off the workshop in a large meeting room with the participants and Responsible Design fellows in the audience Photo: Saranya Satheesh

As a key milestone in my UX for Change Responsible Design Fellowship, I co-facilitated a trauma-informed, regenerative co-imagination workshop with 11 domestic abuse survivors. This was in partnership with Pillow, a tech platform and community supporting women as they move from surviving to thriving after domestic abuse. In England and Wales, an estimated 1.6 million women experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2024.

During the workshop, we co-explored ideas for the future, such as how support might evolve with an individual, and how community connection could be built while maintaining safety.

For most participants, this was their first experience of a co-design workshop, and deep care and immense preparation were undertaken by the team. This was also the first time I experienced what it looks like when trauma-informed theory becomes fully embedded practice.

Trauma-informed and regenerative by design

From the outset, we knew how we worked mattered more than what we produced.

Trauma-informed practices prioritise safety, dignity and empowerment. They acknowledge and minimise the potential impact of trauma on individuals, creating environments where people feel emotionally and physically safe, in control, and free to participate — or not — on their own terms.

Regenerative mindsets create experiences and systems that restore, uplift and cultivate long-term wellbeing, reciprocal relationships and agency, rather than simply extract insight.

We intentionally embedded these principles throughout the workshop. Participants could signal their energy levels using social battery indicators, step away at any point, and use a quiet room when things felt overwhelming. We shared safety and wellbeing principles upfront and made it clear that participation was always optional.

Instead of ‘ideation’, we invited participants to co-imagine. Rather than asking people to retell painful experiences, we focused on future needs, strengths, and possibilities.

We also reworked familiar design tools. Journey maps became messy, non-linear ecosystems reflecting post-crisis realities. Problem-fixing shifted to strength-based appreciative enquiry. Empathy maps became future-focused experience maps, expressed in survivors’ own words, images and symbols.

Some participants worked visually, while others preferred words, lists or short phrases. All approaches were valid and valuable.

Experience mapping prompts. Photo: Christina Lai

Ecosystem mapping and bringing lightness with colourful stickers. Photo: Saranya Satheesh

Seven trauma-informed learnings

1. Community-led works best Our activity briefs were open, which can feel either liberating or overwhelming. One participant spontaneously stepped into a facilitation role, translating the activity into language that others related to. That act of leadership was powerful, and a reminder that co-creation works best when the community is trusted as experts in their own experience.

2. Notice non-verbal distress My biggest personal learning came from recognising that my autism can affect how I pick up non-verbal cues. One participant became quieter and struggled to engage. A teammate noticed and gently offered the participant a break. Trauma can surface unexpectedly, even during future-focused work, so trauma-informed facilitation works best as a team effort guided by an agreed distress protocol.

3. Design consent as ongoing Reducing the risk of re-traumatisation involves offering personalised and nuanced consent. Participants must feel fully in control of what they choose to reveal. We saw a range of comfort levels that fluctuated throughout the day, which highlighted the need for more granular and flexible consent.

4. Clarify value and recognition early Conversations about compensation and acknowledgment happened later than ideal. Meaningful recognition looks different for different people and should be discussed upfront, whether that is payment, access to networks, or future opportunities.

5. Make space for lightness Domestic abuse is a heavy topic. Small moments of humour and play helped reduce emotional load. One participant mentioned how something as simple as a funny sticker provided brief relief during intense reflection: “How could you not laugh about a dog in spectacles?”

6. Structure for safe participation Some participants preferred to reflect quietly or share when they felt safe and validated. Others shared openly. We encouraged individual creation first and made sharing optional. This helped protect agency, particularly for those used to feeling pressured to comply.

7. Movement can be healing The workshop opened with a grounding breathing exercise and included an optional Qi Gong-inspired movement practice during the break. After the workshop, participants and designers took part in a boxing session. The physical exertion offered a cathartic release after intense emotional labour.

What stayed with me

I have run dozens of workshops in my decade-long career, yet this one felt refreshingly different, liberating and empowering.

It embodied the accessibility and inclusive design adage to design with, not for. We reminded participants that their experience mattered more than good ideas. I came to understand what that really means in practice, with ‘trauma-informed’ not treated as a framework, but as something lived moment by moment.

It means minimising the need to retell traumatic stories. It means not forcing participation, even unintentionally. It means designing from principles of safety and autonomy, rather than urgency or extraction. It means trusting the emerging process and going with the flow.

The most meaningful outcomes were not the artefacts or ideas we created. They were the trust we built in relationships and the immeasurable qualities we witnessed in these remarkable women — empowerment, hope and imagination.

It is easy to forget that hope and optimism are powerful forms of resistance. Amid shifts in society and technology, we urgently need regenerative, relationship-centred mindsets. These are critical to create responsible and ethical futures for us and for future generations.

I am looking forward to carrying these practices back into my day-to-day work, not as a finished approach, but as an ongoing commitment to learning, care, and relationship-centred design.