As part of the Co-Design Your Place Summer Volunteer Program, I was among a group of people who worked voluntarily on building a service that will support the regeneration of the Palace-Park Complex in Siemianowice by creating a sustainable community around it. The main goal was to complete the construction of the Eastern Wing of the Palace and then apply services supporting community-building and regeneration processes. The challenging question was how we might organize a community in a place that is not ready to be used? Our answer was crowdfunding.

During the project, I took part mostly in the research and testing phase. For the testing part, I prepared an enlarged card prototype with moving parts, which were to help in visualizing what could be on it. Afterward, I was involved in the final presentation where I was talking to the audience about the testing phase and answering some questions.

The nearly three-month-long project was an intensive educational, meaningful, design, and international collaboration experience. During the volunteering, I had the chance to learn how to solve challenges by service design and apply it to the regeneration context. I also met fantastic young designers with whom I hope to collaborate in the future.

For me, the most surprising part of the process was the testing phase. This was my first time as a tester and the results completely surprised me. Some of the answers were absolutely different from my assumptions or imagination. This taught me how crucial it is to verify assumptions and just talk to people.