How do you take your coffee?
It depends on the time of day! When I wake up I make a pour-over with whole milk (I love a light roast Ethiopian coffee). I often go to work in my local coffee shop, where I get a cortado to stay. And for an afternoon weekend treat I'm getting a mocha with oat milk!
Bio
Emma is an information designer and textile artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She translates bureaucratic information to help alter people’s relationships to power. Through her work, Emma researches "publicly accessible" information produced by bureaucracies and transforms it into new forms, making it easier for more people to access, engage with, and learn from it. Her goal is to inspire new ways of thinking critically about the structures that shape our lives and to contribute to the creation of future bureaucratic systems that support all people.
Emma currently serves as the Design Practice Lead at the Center for Civic Design, where she works alongside elections offices and civic engagement organizations to make elections easier to run, support innovation, and encourage broader participation.
What's your creative process?
I work as an information designer and a civic designer, currently in the U.S. election space. My projects often start with curiosity about how a civic process works. What questions do people have about their government? What do voters need in order to participate? I do a lot of landscape research to understand how election officials across the U.S. solve problems. Then I think through how to explain processes in plain language so that people can take action based on their needs. And, what do election officials need on the back end to make that happen?
All my projects are collaborative, so I use Miro to ideate with my colleagues and project partners. It can be hard to collaborate with people all over the US, but I'm grateful for digital whiteboard tools that help! At the same time, I'm a fan of getting off the computer as much as possible, so I do schematic sketches by hand and relish all the opportunities I get to work with people in person.
I can't talk about my creative process without talking about testing! As a textile artist, I test materials and woven structures before making a project. As an information designer, I advocate to build usability testing into the process. We rely on past research and best practices during the design process, but we always learn more when we test projects with real people! You never know how an audience will perceive information until you ask them.
What's your favorite project you worked on and why?
A favorite semi-recent project of mine was one of my first projects at the Center for Civic Design, the communicating Election and Post-Election Processes Toolkit for the US Election Assistance CommissionOur note:
We invite you to explore Emma’s work at emmawerowinski.com to experience a practice grounded in accessibility, collaboration, and civic impact. As an information designer and textile artist based in Brooklyn, Emma transforms complex bureaucratic information into clear, human-centered tools that invite critical engagement and participation. Her creative process is deeply research-driven and collaborative, blending digital and hand-drawn methods while emphasizing real-world testing to ensure her work meets people’s needs. At the Center for Civic Design, Emma led projects like the Election and Post-Election Processes Toolkit, helping election officials nationwide build trust and combat misinformation. With every project, Emma brings a thoughtful, rigorous approach to making systems more transparent, inclusive, and supportive for all.