In Shaping Places, we talk about the importance of designing for experience. Fiona Young and Alastair Blyth reflect on their recent collaboration developing a tool that simulates a collective design experience bridging pedagogy and space.

Over the past few months, we’ve been developing a tool that guides people through a simple three-step collective design process, beginning with experience and leading to space. We first used this tool in our session at the recent PULSE conference in Indore, India. This was a 2-day conference focused on school design bringing together the designers, funders and leaders of India’s next generation of learning environments.

PULSE conference, Indore, India. October 2026.

Moving from brief to the final outcome was a process that helps streamline the thoughts, such that each thought evolves into a spatial element.

– workshop participant

We then ran a workshop in Delhi, at SKV, a design-build organisation with a focus on adaptive reuse. What resonated from this session was the expression “none of us is as smart as all of us”. Reflecting on the importance of briefing, a participant noted that when undertaken collectively, “it helped surface possible issues and only then can they be solved perfectly”. They felt that “more brainstorming sessions around the brief would open up a broader design and assimilate new ideas”. We also saw the power in roleplaying, giving people the space to play, fostering joy and connection – the tool was both an ice breaker and a team builder.

From Experience to Space session, SKV, Delhi, India. October 2026

This approach helped me to understand how people and their behaviour can influence a space – how space is a reflection of who is using it and how important it is to cater to the needs of the client to have a space designed closer to their expectations. The session was extremely collaborative and opened my mind in ways a space can be designed to cater to every need.

– Nishtha, SKV

This activity was an eye opener of how one can come up with ideas through communication – how different minds can come together and build a space which is meaningful and interactive.

– Aishwarya, SKV

Briefing and inclusive design processes involving inhabitants is rarely taught in architecture school. This tool offers an opportunity for design students to experience how user voice can collectively shape intent, practice and space. Alastair will soon be running a workshop with design students from Westminster University so we look forward to receiving feedback from his students as we continue to evolve the tool.

I would approach my projects with more inclusivity, cater to all different individual needs as well as the group/community.

– Sahaj, SKV

Whilst we originally designed the tool for an education context, we have realised how easily it could adapt to other sectors such as workplace, health, or others. We’re excited about how the tool will shape as we get to use it in more contexts.

In our book, Shaping Places: A framework for collective design, we talk about the importance of iteration and prototyping. We thought we’d share a video which captures our iterative and protoyping process in the making of the From Experience to Space tool.