Episode 141: A conversation with Karen Oikonen and Kate Wilkes on Constellations: An intersection between design and end of life

The Hospice Chaplaincy Show with Saul Ebema

In today’s episode, Saul talks to both Karen Oikonen and Kate Wilkes on “Constellations: Designing participatory engagement and end of life.”

Kate Wilkes is a service designer based in Toronto, Canada. Passionate about meaningful collaboration, Kate is always keen for opportunities to leverage diverse perspectives to make sense of complex problems in pursuit of impactful solutions. Kate studied at the University of Toronto, George Brown College's Institute without Boundaries, and the Dun Laoghaire Institute Of Art, Design + Technology in Ireland. Kate’s interest in the death, dying, and the end of life period is rooted in her own experience navigating her mother’s illness and death in 2015.

Karen Oikonen is also a designer based in Toronto, Canada. Shas a Bachelor of Interior Design from the University of Manitoba and a Masters of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation, from OCAD University. She teaches design research at OCAD University and design thinking at Sheridan College – She finds that having a foot in an academic environment challenges her perspective and is deeply fulfilling. Her experience in health care helped to develop a rigorous approach to research while allowing her to engage directly with patients, caregivers, and clinicians – this helped shape her exploratory path to innovation design – from visual and spatial design to service design and design research.

You can find the constellations images here.