About Me
I am a designer, researcher, educator, and leadership coach who focuses on participatory, community-oriented design and imagining futures for racial justice.
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I started out as a professional design researcher, moving between Tech companies like Yahoo, and consulting firms like IDEO. When I was laid-off from a start-up in 2013, I started my own strategic research firm called Winnow.
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But when I had a chance to think about what I really wanted to be doing, I realized I wanted to go back to school to study design + social justice. I completed my doctoral studies in 2023, developing Social Design Dreaming as a tool for amplifying the long-term visions of racial justice projects.
What I do
Design Roles
Designing, with its skills for turning amorphous, ambitious concepts into material forms that can be shared, iterated, diverged, and expanded, offers justice advocates new methods, tools and opportunities to describe their visions for a better world.
Coaching is like a secret super-power for leaders. I create a bi-weekly space for designers to pause, reflect, and plan. Together we set new strategies to get to where they dream of going.
Strategic research, co-design, and prototyping approaches that connect to the paths of people, in context, to deliver new perspectives on current and future experiences.
Featured Publications
1 / Framework for prefiguring future visions
Designing Equitable Worlds: Six Orientations to Evoke the Future
by Hillary Carey
Design Issues, Summer 2024
2 / Barriers to long-term visioning
by Hillary Carey & Alexandra To
Journal of Futures Studies, Vol. 28 No. 3 March 2024
3 / Visioning for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Radically hopeful visions:
Futuring for institutional anti-racism work
by Jessica Meharry & Hillary Carey
Futures Journal, Volume 156, February 2024
4 / Vision Framework for Design Leaders
Communicating Visions for Design:
the STOVE Framework
By Hillary Carey & Mia Blume
DMI:Review, 05 June 2023
All Publications
Designing Equitable Worlds: Six Orientations to Evoke the Future
H Carey. 2024. Design Issues, 40 (3): 6–17. https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00764
“Lots of extra time and privilege to just dream of utopia”: Understanding barriers to long-term visioning in racial justice work
H Carey and A To, 2024. Journal of Futures Studies, 28 (3), 13-29. https://doi.org/10.6531%2FJFS.202403_28(3).0002
Radically hopeful visions: Futuring for institutional anti-racism work
J Meharry and H Carey. 2024. Futures, 156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103298
Social Design Dreaming: Everyday Speculations for Social Change
H Carey. 2023. Temes de Disseny, 39. https://doi.org/10.46467/TdD39.2023.72-91
Communicating Visions for Design: the STOVE Framework
H Carey and M Blume. 2023. Design Management Review, 34. https://doi.org/10.1111/drev.12361
Engaging with Theories of Change in Transition Design
M Sides, H Carey, E Dorn, and N Theriault. 2022. Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación, 157. https://doi.org/10.18682/cdc.vi157.6849
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Stories to Motivate Social Change: An experiment in radically hopeful everyday futures
H Carey and J Meharry. 2023. RSD12: Relating Systems Thinking and Design Conference
Articulating Theories of Change Towards More Just and Transformative Design Practices
H Carey, M Sides, and E Dorn. 2022. Design Research Society Conference
Communicating Design Visions: the STOVE framework
H Carey and M Bloom. 2022. DMI: Academic Design Management Conference
Gleaning Racial Justice Futures: Past promises and an unequal present
H Carey, C Costes, and M Bansal. 2021. RSD10 Relating Systems Thinking and Design
Designing against oppression: A conceptual framework for an anti-oppressive design praxis
J Meharry and H Carey. 2021. RSD10: Relating Systems Thinking and Design
Reducing uncertainty and offering comfort: Designing technology for coping with interpersonal racism
A To, H Carey, G Kaufman, and J Hammer. 2021. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Fictional, interactive narrative as a foundation to talk about racism
H Carey, A To, J Hammer, and G Kaufman. 2020. DIS: Designing Interactive Systems Conference
Anti-Oppression Mindsets for Collaborative Design
H Carey. 2020. Design Research Society Conference
Getting from Vision to Reality: How Ethnography and Prototyping Can Solve Late-Stage Design Challenges
B Sih, H Carey, and M Lin. 2018. Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference
Nested Experiences: Teaching others to engage others
H Carey. 2011. Participatory Innovation Conference
Tangible steps toward tomorrow: Designing a vision for early childhood education
H Carey and SG Howard. 2009. Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference
Integrating Design Thinking into the Strategic Planning Phase of Product Development
H Carey, C Vogel, J Cagan, and L Weingart. 2002. IDSA Industrial Design Society of America
Invited Talks
Futures Thinking for Systems Change in Healthcare
October 2025. Geisinger Guest Speaker Series
Keynote: Equitable, Joyful Futures: Imagining the futures we want
September 2025. Social Entrepreneurship: National Benevolent Association
Keynote: Social Design Dreaming: Imagining the futures we want
June 2025. Dignified Futures Conference
Peer-Reviewed and Invited Workshops
Splitting Hairs or Shaping Practice? Debating Systemic and Systems Design
October 2025. RSD14: Relating Systems Thinking and Design
M Fidos, H Carey, and M Suoheimo
Ridiculously Hopeful Futures – Participatory Experiential Futures
June 2025. Dignified Futures Conference
H Carey and J Brown
Manifesting Futures Today – Dignity of Nursing Work
June 2024. Design for Dignity Conference
H Carey, M Lin, and S Hamell
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Ridiculously Hopeful Futures: Techniques for Evoking Better Worlds
October 2023. Conference on Community Writing
H Carey and J Meharry
Evoking the World You Want: Engaging People in Future Visions
July 2022. University of Pittsburgh Diversity Summit
January 2022. Pittsburgh Racial Justice Summit
Reimagining the Futures Cone: Past, plurality, and perspective
October 2021. RSD 10 Relating Systems Thinking and Design
H Carey, M Bansal, C Costes, and R Arredondo
Envisioning new futuring models: Past, plurality, and positionality
December 2021. IASDR International Association of Societies of Design Research
H Carey, R Arredondo, C Costes, and M Bansal
Patents
Initial impression analysis tool for an online dating service, Yahoo!
2011. LV Pettinati and H Carey | US Patent 7,958,117
Method for Remote Check Capture, Pitney Bowes Corporation
2009. TJ Foth, JD Pierce, and H Carey | US Patent 7,526,117