Welcome to GROUP HUG!
yum! dig in!
GROUP HUG is an internet lazy susan, rotating wonderings, prompts, and tools about COMMUNITY DESIGN (aka the craft of bringing people together and easing the things that keep us apart.)
🌀 THIS EXISTS FOR THE HEART-FIRST PRACTITIONERS
…and those intrigued by the ooey gooey that binds any group of people together. Maybe you’re even in a role where you support a group of people in some way.
More focused on the abstract, magical, unpredictable human funk than the practical! There’s just so much of the practical!
More “how we build trust” or “drug-free ayahuasca-like group experiences” or “why you can’t get people to do things by just telling them to do things” than “5 dinner party prompts” (though dinner party prompts are lovely if they’re actually good.)
While I love a good tool or tactic (and will share some!), I’ve also been in a position where I’ve used the ‘right’ framework or the ‘perfect’ prompt, checked all the boxes, yoinked out all the best practices…and yet! Something doesn’t click. There is a gap.
It’s like:
SOMETHING DESIGNED FOR PEOPLE TO DO ———> WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY DO
And why wouldn’t there be a gap? That’s that ‘unpredictable human funk’ mentioned earlier. It’s funk because it’s random. It can’t be controlled or planned for.
It takes heart-first, sensitive, ego-light community designers to peer one layer deeper, listen harder, and try something else.
This is for you if you love some nuance, picking apart the invisible but tangible, and/or being an amateur sociologist.
💜 BY COMMUNITY I MEAN
whatever is already coming to mind for you! You’re probably right on! Other examples could be: families, volunteers, friends, clubs, members (of museums! of Elks Lodges!), teams (at work! on a football field!), classes, unions, friends, co-ops, etc.
☁️ IT MIGHT MEANDER AROUND THESE THEMES
facilitation, experience design, group identity, community “health”, power dynamics, communicating, communications (different from the previous word, hit subscribe to find out how 😎), groupthink (lol), resource making, emotional skillbuilding, cool resources and stories out in the big wide world, etc etc.
💫 TO GET A LITTLE MORE SPECIFIC
here are the working titles of a few drafty future posts (no promises that they’ll ever see the light of day!)
What’s easy for you is also easy for the group
Why communities need archives of the past, present, and future
When groupthink goes wrong: community narratives + how to shape them (editor’s note: this sounds culty but it isn’t, or is as much as any of this is!)
Non-coercive communications
How to get people to do things: why not to give up when your first try doesn’t work
Free experience template: Land ‘N Learn “teaching potluck”
🪞 I AM BUT A FELLOW WONDERER
And a fan of the human funk. My silly little life has been dedicated to bringing people together – at concerts, zombie proms, museums, libraries, amateur dance classes for adults (POWER PRANCE!) and a VIP pet rock club in the 5th grade.
Currently I am a community designer at IDEO where I was thrilled that “designing rituals and experiences to deepen belonging” would be part of my daily duties, and co-organize with the Radical Adventure Riders and Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op in New Haven. Thank you for indulging me.