One Face, Many Facets is an original tool designed and developed by Anna and the Toi Āria team. The aim of the tool is to encourage participants to become more familiar with inclusive and human-centred thinking. One Face, Many Facets also helps participants to explore what a commitment to many people, whānau, and communities looks like.

The premise is simple. You start with a single square in which you set out a theme, topic or project. Often the tool gets used to explore community engagement. You might start with a concept, at face value, such as 'Young People'.

After you have selected the topic to explore you then unpack the concept by going wider or deeper into the concept. In this example, engaging with 'young people' can widen to thinking about young people across many areas including: age, culture, gender, education and ethnicity.

And finally you are asked to think about the community or project with a much more expansive view. This prompts you to think about many more things including the interconnectedness of social categories, such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability — all of which shape an individual or community's experiences and opportunities.

We've used this process with lots of different groups, in workshops and at events including: Design for Social Innovation Symposium (2019), at numerous Te Pūnaha Matatini retreats and hui. Each time we learn ways of using this tool, including for health research, building connection and in education spaces.

Please download and use this tool and share with us how it went. We love hearing how it can be adapted and evolved. Recently a West Auckland teacher took this idea and reimagined it with a class of primary school students. She used the cube to capture the questions they wanted to ask.