In the Fall of 2025, Dr. Leandro Miletto Tonetto, an Associate Professor at WDO Educational Member Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Industrial Design, introduced a new course. ID 4843: Applied Design Methods for Community Well-being brought together a small group of undergraduate students to learn how design can actively support dignity and well-being in real-world contexts.

As a design researcher whose background spans cognitive psychology and over two decades in healthcare research, including pediatric oncology in Brazil’s public system, Tonetto is no stranger to the gap that often persists between design theory and practice. “While students learn foundational methods, they are not necessarily prepared to apply them in complex, real-world contexts involving people facing health, emotional and cognitive challenges.”

ID 4843 aimed to address this gap by taking students outside of the classroom and expanding learning into emotional and behavioural dimensions. Anchored in a partnership with A.G. Rhodes, a non-profit senior care organization in Atlanta (USA), and supported by a 2025–2026 Transformative Teaching and Learning Innovation Incubator Grant from Georgia Tech’s Center for Teaching and Learning, the course situated students directly within a care context where many residents experience cognitive decline.

The nursing home setting fundamentally reshaped familiar design pedagogy and practices. First, students underwent several weeks of ethics training and “were continuously encouraged to reflect on their role, their behaviour and the implications of their design decisions.”

With lectures being minimal, learning instead emphasized discussion, role-playing and immersive community engagement, fostering deep bonds between student and resident, designer and user.

Observation and interviewing, staples of design research, became more nuanced, requiring heightened sensitivity, patience and interpretive skill. Students were forced to grapple with questions that resist easy answers: What constitutes meaningful participation when communication is impaired? How do designers interpret behaviour ethically and accurately in such contexts? And critically, how can design support dignity when autonomy is not always fully present? 

“Each person possesses dignity by virtue of being an autonomous agent, forming the basis for equality, freedom, and justice. In care contexts, however, dignity extends beyond autonomy to emphasize interdependence. It emerges through care, dependency and relationships.”

Guiding how students conducted research, engaged with participants and developed design outcomes was the concept of design for dignity, which served as both a “conceptual lens and a practical objective.” One of the course’s most compelling entry points into this exploration was horticultural therapy. As a non-pharmacological intervention, it supports physical, cognitive, emotional and social well-being through engagement with plants and nature. The course looked at how the design of tools, environments and interactions can enhance, or limit, these benefits.

In one example, students observed that flower-arranging activities brought joy to residents, but that some participants were unable to independently trim plants or transport their arrangements due to mobility constraints. In response, students “began designing adaptive tools, such as wheelchair-mounted vase holders, enabling residents to transport and display their creations with pride.” 

Many students also chose to continue developing their projects beyond the semester, not because it was required, but because they felt a sense of responsibility toward the communities they engaged with. “We are clearly seeing a shift in how our students understand design. They still want to create products, services, and experiences, and to build successful careers. At the same time, they are actively seeking ways to have a meaningful and positive impact.”

Ultimately, the course points to a larger question facing design education today: can dignity be taught? The answer, as this model suggests, lies not in abstraction, but in practice. By embedding students in real-world contexts, challenging their assumptions and equipping them with both the tools and the mindset for ethical engagement, design for dignity becomes not just a principle, but a habit, one that students can carry into any domain of their future work.