Designed with Care: Creating trauma-informed content

by Rachel Edwards

Trauma can affect anyone, and have profound impacts on social, physical, and emotional well-being. It's estimated that 70% of the global population has experienced a traumatic event.

Designed with Creating trauma-informed content explores what it means to design content for people who have experienced trauma. Written by designers, researchers, and educators around the world, the book is a must-read collection for anyone who works with people, information, or technology.

Chapters and Wechsler, "What is trauma?"Michelle Keller, "Clarity is Designing content for bereaved and dying people"Rachel Edwards, Jane McFadyen and Steph Mann, "Designing questions"kon syrokostas, "Trauma and technology"Rachel Edwards, "The case for content warnings"Sarah Fathallah, "Trauma-informed research for content design"Kate Every, "From principles to Using trauma-informed principles to design services"Steph Mann, "Working with and for young people"Jane McFadyen, "How trauma-informed principles can work in government"Owen Leigh, "Content design in high-risk digital spaces"Morgan Cataldo, "Does this feel dignifying? Considering, telling and sharing more ethical stories"sahibzada mayed, "So you want to decolonise trauma?"Jenny Winfield, "Vicarious Protecting your spirit when doing trauma work"Miriam Vaswani, "Crisis a crisis is more than a moment in time"Josh Kim, "Compliance is just the Accessibility for trauma-informed outcomes"Rachael Dietkus, "Trauma literacy in content design"

359 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 1, 2024

About the author

As a content designer, Rachel has worked extensively with parliament, government and charities helping people understand their rights. Her interest is how to create better content for people experiencing stress, anxiety, and trauma. Originally from Canada, Rachel now lives in Scotland.

Reviews

[Laura Copestake · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book for anyone who creates content. It's insightful, informative and a great starting point on getting to grips with, and growing your understanding of trauma-informed design principles.

[Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it would speak to me in some way, but I couldn't predict exactly how.

It nudged me to recall my own situation: I've written nearly 500 essays on a sensitive topic, and I've felt perplexed by how to tell people that these essays exist. While reading Designed With Care, I realized that I ought to consider others' potential traumas not as a deterrent from advertising the essay collection but to help me present it to them, especially as someone's trauma may be related to why they want or need to read the essays. This insight is already helping me think about how to title my collection, how to describe it, where to share it, and other possible ways to divide it up to give readers a sense of breathing room and personal agency.

So this book had a worthwhile takeaway for me. Everyone's design need will be different.

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many thoughts! In short - I'll definitely be adding some of these chapters to my Designing for Social Change class. Full review to come!