In recent years, “trauma-informed” has become a powerful phrase in design and research spaces. It reflects a growing awareness that the people we work with bring histories, identities, and sometimes painful experiences that need to be met with respect and care. While this shift towards more compassionate and ethical practices is encouraging - as the language of trauma-informed practice gains traction, it also raises an important question: how do we truly make sure we're honouring trauma, rather than unintentionally commodifying it? This article explores this and what it means to move from commodifying trauma to care.
Design and research will always involve working with people’s stories, and there’s always a risk that those stories become material for our work. When those stories involve trauma, that risk becomes even more important to recognise.
I was also reflecting on my own experiences – both personal and professional.
On a personal level, I’ve encountered moments where I’ve experienced institutions and systems, not as a designer but as someone affected by them. I won’t share those details here, but they’ve shaped my perspective on what it feels like to have vulnerability handled – or mishandled – by those in positions of power.
On a professional level, I’ve thought back on my own research practice. There are moments I’m proud of, where I believe I upheld the principles of care and dignity. And there are moments where if I’m honest, I may not have done enough. And it’s from this space of learning, unlearning, and reflecting, that I write this piece.
Working in a values-led organisation like Sopra Steria has also shaped this reflection. Our shared commitment and values of respect, integrity, and empathy underpin how we design and deliver services. A trauma-informed approach feels like an application. They help us stay grounded, prioritise safety, agency, and dignity.
When trauma becomes a commodity
To talk about trauma-informed design honestly, we also need to acknowledge the risk that sits alongside it: the commodification of trauma.
Commodification happens when people’s lived experiences or harm are transformed in ways that prioritise impact over integrity – stories used to move stakeholders, data points to justify design decisions, or “authentic insights” wrapped up to add emotional weight. Of course, sharing insight is a vital part of design, but how it is done matters just as much. When care is deprioritised (how we protect the dignity, agency, and emotional wellbeing of the people we work with), trauma becomes less about people’s lived realities and more about the value it can generate for a project, an organisation, or even a brand.
It's rarely deliberate, and more than often, it stems from good intentions – to build awareness, evoke empathy, or inspire change. But without care, those intentions turn lived experience into something to be used, rather than understood.
In design and research, commodification can take subtle forms:
Case studies as spectacle: a participant’s painful story is highlighted in reports or presentations to move stakeholders emotionally. Where the story is positioned less as a window into systemic issues and more as a “hook” to capture attention.
Personas built on pain: entire user archetypes created out of traumatic experiences, reducing multidimensional people to symbols of harm or deficit.
“Authenticity” as a selling point: teams emphasising their engagement with people who have experienced trauma as proof of depth or credibility – yet their voices are sidelined once deliverables are produced.
“Trauma-informed” as a product: organisations marketing their services as “trauma-informed” without embedding the principles and practices to back it up - using the language as branding rather than as accountability.
What all these examples show is a shift in focus: trauma becomes something for others to use. Whether that use is to inspire, persuade, or sell, the people who lived the trauma are no longer centred. Their experiences are reduced to consumable products.
The danger of commodification is not only that it diminishes those who share their stories – but also that it risks re-traumatising them by repeating the same dynamics that trauma involves: loss of agency, loss of control, and the sense of being used. When trauma is treated as a product, people are no longer seen as whole, resilient beings, and are seen only through the lens of harm.
What a trauma-informed approach makes possible
If commodification treats trauma as a product, then trauma-informed design offers a different orientation. At its heart, it asks us to pause and consider not only what we design but how we do it, and how our processes impact the people who entrust us with their stories.
Originating in health and social care, trauma-informed principles translate powerfully into design. They invite us to:
Prioritise safety: create emotional, physical, and cultural safety where participants share without fear of being exposed, judged, or re-traumatised.
Honour choice and agency: let participants decide what to share, how it’s represented, and how it’s used. When people have agency in the process, we move away from extraction towards collaboration.
Build trust and transparency: be clear about the purpose, what participation involves, and how stories will be used or not used. For people who may have experienced a loss of control or trust in the past, this clarity is part of creating emotional safety.
Collaborate and share power: rather than designing for people, designing with them - positioning lived experience as expertise.
Affirm dignity and resilience: see trauma as part of a story, but not the whole. Recognising strength, adaptability and creativity to resist reducing people to pain.
These principles may sound straightforward, but in practice they fundamentally shift the role of trauma in design. Rather than mining trauma for deliverables, it is treated as relational – something that calls for humility, accountability, and care.
This reframing helps guide how we show up, and reminds us that research and design is not just about creating artifacts or services - it’s about the quality of the relationships we build, and the responsibility we carry within them.
Putting trauma-informed principles into practice
To bring these principles to life, the following examples outline where commodification can creep in and how trauma-informed practice can help re-focus:
- Extracting stories for deliverables
- The risk: participants’ stories of harm are collected primarily to add emotional weight to outputs. Lived experiences become fuel for someone else’s agenda.
- A trauma-informed alternative: participants have a say in how their stories are used, and researchers synthesise stories into composites or anonymised patterns to protect individuals. This shifts the focus away from using people’s trauma as evidence, and towards understanding shared needs and patterns. The output becomes collective insight, shaped with care, that informs next steps.
- Amplifying trauma for impact
- The risk: painful details are spotlighted to grab attention or spark empathy in audiences rather than meaningful change.
- A trauma-informed alternative: instead of centring trauma itself, highlight resilience, agency, and the structures and conditions that can disadvantage people or make them more vulnerable. This reframing directs attention away from spectacle and towards understanding the wider context and possibilities for change.
- Fast design cycles that pressure exploitation
- The risk: tight deadlines and deliverable-driven timelines push teams to take shortcuts, reducing trauma to just another dataset to be mined quickly.
- A trauma-informed alternative: trauma-informed practice emphasises slowing down. When processes move too fast, people can feel rushed or pushed beyond what they want to share, and consent and emotional safety (for participants and researchers) is harder to maintain. Build time into project plans for reflection, participant check-ins, and iterative consent processes, even if it means fewer outputs. The measure of success becomes integrity, not speed.
- Researchers absorbing trauma as data
- The risk: exposure to repeated stories of harm can desensitise or burn out researchers, making them treat trauma mechanically or sensationalising it for their own sense of impact. There’s also a risk of asking for more detail than is needed, which can be distressing for participants and inappropriate for the research context. Researchers are not counsellors – and participants should never have to relive painful experiences to justify or prove a need.
- A trauma-informed alternative: focus on understanding how trauma shapes people’s interactions with services – not the details of what caused it. Researchers make the purpose of the conversation clear, help participants share only what feels appropriate, and gently guide the discussion if it begins to move into territory that may be distressing. Teams debrief, acknowledge emotional load, and maintain clear boundaries. Care for researchers enables care for participants.
- “Trauma-informed” as product
- The risk: organisations promote themselves as “trauma-informed” without practicing the principles.
A trauma-informed alternative: true trauma-informed work is less about claiming the label and more about demonstrating it. It’s visible in consistent decisions: honouring agency, safeguarding dignity, sharing power, and returning value to participants and communities – for example, by compensating people fairly, sharing learnings back, and ensuring that their contributions influence and lead to meaningful improvements.
What ties these alternatives together is a shift from using trauma as an input to treating trauma as relational. These practices are not a checklist, but a continual discipline - one that evolves with each project, conversation, and act of care.
Closing reflections: beyond commodification
Working with people’s stories and experiences is at the heart of design and research. Trauma-informed practices remind us that trauma is an experience that belongs to the people who lived it. Our role is to hold space with humility – to let it shape how we design and ensure that those who share are treated with dignity and agency.
It’s not a checklist, but more of a way of being that asks to slow down, stay accountable, and treat every story as more than simply content for work. It is an ongoing practice of care – for participants, for communities, and for practitioners.
The question to keep asking is: when we engage with trauma, are we opening space for healing and dignity, or are we packaging it into something to be consumed?
That distinction is what separates commodification to care.