Trauma Tuesday — Part 4 Designing With Emotional Imagination — Local Realities to Global Reach, Building Technology for You and Your Mum

We live in a global world. People are moving, and so is technology. For many, that movement is chosen; for others, it is forced. Either way, we now design in a landscape where displacement and immigration shape how people meet systems. Especially here in Vancouver—a city where diversity is the norm rather than the exception—we have a front-row seat to the ways global migration impacts technological needs. It’s the perfect place to examine what it really means to build technology that can serve end users of many backgrounds, languages, and histories.

If there’s one posture that helps us design for real people in real places, it’s this: humility and curiosity. Don’t assume—ask. Don’t rush—listen. And when we miss (because we will), repair with care.

This isn’t just good manners. It’s the essence of trauma-informed technology. And nowhere does this matter more than in places like British Columbia, where “the average user” isn’t average at all.

B.C. as Our Classroom

Here in B.C., the diversity is breathtaking:

• Nearly 29% of residents are foreign-born, and in Metro Vancouver it’s closer to 42%.

• Immigrant and refugee realities often include language friction, credential loss, discrimination, family role shifts, and sometimes high trauma exposure from displacement or conflict.

That means when we pilot with Fraser Health Authority and the BC Nurses Union, we’re not designing for a monolithic “user.” We’re building for nurses, administrators, and patients whose lived histories may be profoundly different from our own. And if we get it right here, we can get it right anywhere.

Emotional Imagination as a Design Muscle

Designing for this kind of complexity requires more than user research—it requires what I like to call emotional imagination. That’s the ability to expand beyond our own experiences, to imagine how it feels to be the end user:

• What might overwhelm their nervous system?

• Where might they hesitate, brace, or check out?

• What tiny signals of safety could encourage them to keep going?

• And just as importantly—what small moments might give them a sense of pleasure, ease, or lightness along the way?

This isn’t sympathy (feeling sorry) or even plain empathy (feeling with). Emotional imagination is active: it stretches us to meet people we’ll never fully know, but whose safety and dignity we’re responsible for.

Think of sitting with your mum at the kitchen table, watching her navigate a form on her phone. She squints, she second-guesses, she hesitates before hitting “next.” Emotional imagination means designing so that moment feels steady and supported—like a gentle hand at her back saying, “You’re safe to continue.”

Or picture your little brother on the bus, earbuds in, one thumb scrolling, half distracted. The nervous system there needs clarity, not clutter. Emotional imagination means shaping technology so he doesn’t miss the important cue buried in noise. It’s design that fits into the small windows of attention life allows.

And then there’s you, right here, engaging with these words. Maybe you’re curious, maybe tired, maybe half-doubting whether technology can really hold people this gently. Emotional imagination means I write with humility and curiosity, aware of your presence and pace—even though I’ll never know exactly how you feel in this moment.

Creating technology with an emotional imagination is about building something that can fly with humility and curiosity into the experience of another—arriving not with judgment, but with steadiness, patience, and care.

The Principles in Action

So how do we take humility, curiosity, and emotional imagination and bake them into software? Here are the “small moves” that do the big work:

• Language & Literacy: Plain English, translations in priority languages, audio read-outs, and visuals instead of idioms.

• Predictability: Progress bars, “what’s next,” visible save/resume, and gentle timeouts.

• Choice: Sequential, easy-to-follow steps for users who know their path, and a named option for those who feel confused and need direct, personal support.

• Tone: Calm guidance, one decision per screen, no flashing banners or scolding pop-ups.

• Trust: Clear “what we’ll ask and why,” transparent data-use summaries, and consistent terminology.

• Lightness: Tiny touches that make the process feel more human—like gentle visuals, encouraging microcopy, or a moment of delight when something is completed.

Each of these is deceptively small. But the nervous system doesn’t decide safety based on mission statements—it decides based on micro-interactions. One click that feels steady. One word that feels kind. One small spark of lightness that makes someone smile.

Why It Matters

At PrimeHealth, our user base is always “local”—whether that’s a Fraser Valley nurse, a Metro Vancouver family, or a future cohort in California, Ontario, or Europe—and our edge comes from building global scaffolding with local configurability. Humility and curiosity keep us from assuming. Emotional imagination stretches us into spaces our own lives can’t reach. And together, they shape technology people leave feeling not just functional, but steadier, more capable, maybe even proud.

Because the real measure of trauma-informed design isn’t the feature list. It’s whether the person on the other end feels safe enough to continue.