2025 Summer in Chicago

Most recent update: 11/03/2025

In the sweltering heat of Chicago’s summertime, I reflected over the intersections that exist between design, research, and self-improvement and practice. These are metacognitive parts that power my externalized efforts to humane, ethical, and holistic change.

society

Loyola post-grad coursework

CIEP 488 –
Participatory Action Research

In Loyola’s CIEP 488: Participatory Action Research course, I studied how collaborative inquiry can turn reflection into change.
The course reframed how I think about design entirely: as a form of action research where observing, questioning, and co-creating solutions emerge from within a community rather than being imposed on it.

Through readings on Coghlan’s Demystifying Action Research, I discovered how Action Research practices a cycle very similar to my own:

experience → understanding → judgment

I’ve used this cycle as the game-changing method that powers my insights to positively address and reshape the systems that organizations must run on. Researcher, client, and audience develop a sound trust when they collaborate early and often with this cycle at their center:

• Experience: paying close attention to what’s happening right now.

• Understanding: recognizing patterns and the big picture meaning beneath it.

• Judgment: choosing what to do next, ethically and with intention.

The class reminded me that research isn’t separate from feeling and attending to my own reactions, values, and emotions can sharpen how I see the systems around me.
It grounded my belief that good design starts with honest awareness of self, of structure, and of purpose. That awareness is made real by how and why it is introduced to determine a optimal, even if theoretical, reality

my community

The Andersonville
Farmer’s Market:
A LinkMatch made in heaven

Farmer’s Markets are one of my favorite weekly events in the summer. In Chicago, we have around 30 neighborhood open-air summer markets, with at least one open every day of the week. 

While shopping for produce on one of the Northside markets, I learned that all Chicago markets accept SNAP benefits as payment. As an added bonus, each market offers a LINKMATCH program that, for every dollar exchanged for a LinkMatch token, is matched with a special coupon for another $1 worth of fresh products.

I had no idea until mid-summer. After reflecting on how I missed such an important and cost-beneficial program, I looked for indicators and signage around the market, as well as talking to the vendors about the program.

I led a one-time consultation with the market administrators.
On the surface, the task was simple:

Help them clarify signage for programs like EBT, Link Match, and SNAP so shoppers could better understand how to use them.
But as in all design research, the surface problem hid something deeper.

Through conversation, I realized their inconsistent signage wasn’t just logistical, it mirrored a larger social pattern; a stigma.
While every other vendor stall consistently displayed signage for accepted payment methods, EBT and Link Match were missing entirely.
As a result, few vendors or customers knew of the program, even though some vendors had more extensive knowledge about using EBT as payment. Despite the LinkMatch stall at the front of the market, the program was mentioned in a few inconsistently place signs and largely went unnoticed .

Together, we unpacked that tension.
We discussed how visibility signals value and how more regularly and consistently place signage could positively reduce the stigma and bring more audience awareness to the LinkMatch opportunity that benefited both their and the farm vendor wallets.

That one consultation didn’t solve everything but it changed how the team saw the issue.
They gained new language for the problem and a clearer understanding of what kind of support design strategy could provide.

The pros:

• More consistent, intentional signage.

• Broader recognition that design choices can carry social weight.

• Renewed curiosity about audience experience and vendor engagement.

The cons:

• Without a follow-up pilot or structured survey, they had no concrete way to measure what improved.

• Some changes faded without sustained accountability or a system for tracking success.

Even so, the insights stuck.
That single conversation reframed their thinking and my own: clarity work is most powerful when people begin to see their systems differently.

myself

Urban Chicago’s historical use of native prairie flora

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my summer practice of drawing flora in different familiar and unfamiliar mediums. (soft pastel, ink, and markers)

In the beginning of the summer, I became enamored with my local flower shops inventory of local prairie wildflowers. The mix of wild with the careful environmental design of Chicago neighborhood’s natural spaces inspired me to draw everyday.

I found grounding through art, photographing flowers, sketching prairie plants, and reconnecting with Chicago’s swampy, resilient ecosystems. It reminded me that making and noticing are crucial parts of knowing. Especially when federal forces were ordered to Chicago.

Art kept me balanced while I was processing the social implications and weight of my research, consulting, and living amongst a political period of unrest and chaotic force.
It gave me space to feel joy, even while studying inequity or navigating uncertainty.
I realized a different way to express that nothing happens in a vacuum. The work I do requires me to center my feelings, reactions BEFORE determining the societal impact I want to make.
Getting to know myself in how I think, where I feel tension, and what motivates me made my professional work more humane and catering to the needs of the moment, not just general “work” divorced from reality.

Closing Reflection

My summer wasn’t about big deliverables or campaigns.
It was about connecting thought and action, feeling and framework.

• Through Loyola’s PAR course, I learned to see my design practice as both research and reflection.

• Through the Andersonville consultation, I saw how one well-guided conversation can shift a community’s perspective.

• And through art, I found the joy that keeps that work alive.

Design, for me, has become a practice of curiosity over control.
Each project, conversation, or sketch is another way of asking: What’s really happening here, and how can we make it better together?