VALUE STORMING
Responsibilities: Participatory workshop design, Print design, User research, and Design concepting
The workshop with MoMA Education and the Ali Forney Center, a homeless LGBTQ youth center in New York, focused on exploring what kinds of environments could help participants feel affirmed, safe, and at ease. Insights from these sessions directly informed the design of two new activity spaces at the organization’s 38th Street drop-in center.
Working alongside Agency-Agency and Extrapolation Factory, we shaped the workshop process and created a workbook for youth to capture their thoughts in an exercise we called valuestorming. In this stage, participants reflected on themes of belonging, affirmation, and safety—sharing responses that ranged from ideas of shared identity and encouragement to sensory experiences like nature, brown noise, body posture, and meditation.
Building on these reflections, participants then created dioramas using everyday materials such as fabrics and magazine cutouts. These models served as vibrant, tangible representations of their visions for the sensory room and salon spaces. The session concluded with a full-scale projection of the dioramas, allowing participants to walk through their ideas, explain their thinking, and collectively imagine the possibilities.
The “Sensory Salon” workshop became a cornerstone of this co-design process—bridging personal values with spatial imagination, and ensuring that the voices of AFC youth shaped the environments designed for them.
