COVID 19 in the US through the lens of Transition Design

Abstract

This project was undertaken by a small team of researchers affiliated with the Transition Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, U.S.A. It is “work in progress” shared with a specific group as an introduction to the Transition Design approach and its emerging toolkit for addressing complex, “wicked problems”, and should not be considered concl usive research. In March, 2020, as COVID-19 was emerging in the U.S., we decided to use the Transition Design approach to track and analyze the spread of and response to the pandemic in the U.S. This scope of research is in tended to serve as a “sketch” to guide further qualitative research involving a variety of methods such as: stakeholder1 and expert interviews (with experts such as epidemiologists, sociologists, historians, policy makers, politicians, healthcare officials, non-profit organizations, etc.), qualitative data-gathering, sensemaking workshops with stakeholders, among others.