Death, dying & design is a collaboration between Karen Oikonen and Kate Hale Wilkes. While much of our work is exploratory and guided by our own curiosity and desire to create more accessible spaces for conversation and contemplation, we also collaborate with others who are keen to create opportunities for people to engage in participatory experiences in public spaces.

If you’re interested to learn more about our work or have a project idea in mind, reach out! We’d love to connect.

Karen Oikonen

Karen Oikonen is a design researcher and service designer, specializing in participatory and co-creative approaches to better understand the complexities of the human experience within environments, systems, networks, and communities, with the goal of creating positive change for people. Having lost her dad to cancer in 2010, she is dedicated to creating opportunities for reflection, discussion and engagement on death and dying in public spaces. In addition to collaborating on multiple participatory installations, she co-founded the Dying. series with Dr. Kate Sellen and Maria Cheung which has attracted over 5,000 attendees since it’s launch in 2019. By day she is a Principal Innovation Designer at The Moment, an innovation consultancy in Toronto. Karen holds a Master of Design, Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD University.

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Kate Hale Wilkes

Kate Wilkes is a service designer and one-half of the team at October Systems, a research and design studio based in Toronto. 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.