Design Thinking for Social Impact - Design Sprint Conference 2017

Google Design2018-04-16

material#design#google#designers#form#design sprint#design thinking#interview#design sprint conference#innovation#social impact#below the iceberg#Karwai Ng#Will Anderson#GDS: Yes;

5K views|6 years ago

💫 Short Summary

Design thinking is highlighted as a powerful tool to address major social issues, emphasizing ethical design and positive social impact. Design sprints engage communities and stakeholders to rebuild trust and make processes more accessible. The importance of understanding unseen consequences in design is stressed. Working with communities and emphasizing adaptability and ownership is key, with a focus on nimbleness and resourcefulness in social impact work. Injecting purpose and meaning into daily actions is essential, moving beyond superficial practices in design processes.

✨ Highlights

📊 Transcript

✦

Importance of Design Thinking in Addressing Social Issues

00:00

Design thinking helps designers and organizations understand the impact of their work on the world.

Ethical design and positive social impact are crucial, especially in government settings.

Design sprints are used to engage communities and stakeholders, rebuild trust, and make processes more accessible and interactive.

Integrating unseen and unintended consequences in design is introduced to raise awareness among designers.

✦

Emphasizing community values and government adaptability in social impact work.

04:26

Highlighting the importance of strong ownership and nimbleness in the process.

Applying lessons learned to for-profit client work.

Injecting purpose and meaning into the design process for impactful outcomes.

Moving beyond superficial practices like 'how might we's' and Post-its.

00:00SPEAKER 1: Design thinking has the power

00:02to address major social issues by helping

00:04designers and organizations understand how

00:07their work impacts the world.

00:09At the Sprint Conference hosted in November of 2017 at Google,

00:14we brought together a group of practitioners

00:16to share methodologies that support ethical design

00:19and positive social impact.

00:24ALEXANDRA LEE: I was part of the panel

00:25on the civic and social innovation along with really

00:30awesome panelists.

00:32And I basically covered how we incorporate design sprints

00:37in government.

00:38AMISH DESAI: Given the resources that governments have available

00:41or the problems they are trying to solve,

00:43it's really important that being flexible, being lean

00:46is key to solving some of the bigger problems

00:49that we have as a society.

00:50ALEXANDRA LEE: It's hard in the government, especially when

00:53you're doing like community workshops,

00:54to get people to talk about like real challenges and kind

00:59of trusting us to kind of be the holder for those issues because

01:05at the moment, like there is such kind of lack of trust

01:08in government, full stop.

01:11So I think this is a nice way to rebuild that with the community

01:17by making a lot of our processes more accessible, and more

01:20fun, and interactive, and also kind

01:23of delivering on that expectation

01:24by going back and repeating that kind of offer

01:28so they come back for the subsequent workshops

01:30and they get involved in it again.

01:32So we're using Sprint as a way to build conversations

01:36with stakeholders and using that as a way to frame how we

01:40continue to engage community.

01:41DREW BRIDEWELL: I thought it was really

01:43interesting to see the design agencies,

01:45how they approach for-profit, and then

01:48how the nonprofits were approaching it.

01:50And it was really important to see

01:52like the day-to-day government and the experience

01:55of what they're going through, and then

01:56how you can actually make a really

01:58big impact through design thinking

01:59and through design education.

02:01KARWAI NG: In today's session, we

02:02spoke about "below the iceberg," which is a conscious design

02:05framework for integrating unseen and unintended consequences

02:09that we might not normally consider when we design things.

02:14We feel that right now, we only design

02:16products and services that live at the tip of the iceberg

02:18and there's like a whole realm of unseen, unintended

02:21consequences that we aren't considering.

02:23I think a lot of us felt like we were kind of sleepwalking.

02:28We weren't really aware of the sort

02:31of consequences of the things that we design every day.

02:34And so as soon as we introduced a concept,

02:36we did find a lot of natural interest from our colleagues

02:40because we might have heard about these things

02:42on the periphery, but this is one of the first times

02:45that in the quite structured, as well as abstract way,

02:48we can integrate some of these issues

02:50into what we do every day.

02:52ALEXANDRA LEE: Sometimes, like you

02:53have to show more than tell.

02:55So since I'm working with the majority of people

02:58that don't have design training, like I have to kind of warm

03:02up and kind of give them opportunities to really see

03:06themselves as like leaders in the process,

03:08so that they can kind of engage in activities

03:11as kind of someone that has ownership of the process.

03:14And that warms them up and also makes

03:16them comfortable to thinking about like design

03:19thinking as a way to improve how they work.

03:23When we work with the community, like it's just

03:25kind of an exposure to how kind of letting them

03:30know how government can be more adaptable

03:34and also kind of be more open to like what community values are

03:40and needs are.

03:41And so in a way, when we work with the community,

03:45it's more about like exposing them

03:48to like how government is changing

03:51and the potential for them to really

03:53have a strong ownership in that process.

03:55AMISH DESAI: The biggest takeaway

03:57for me was really about the ability

03:59to be nimble, and think about how resourceful social impact

04:05requires you to be, and how we might

04:08be able to leverage some of those learnings in that realm

04:12when it comes to working with clients for a for-profit basis.

04:16KARWAI NG: For me, this is a way of injecting the rigor back

04:18into how we design.

04:19So not just blindly following that process

04:22using "how might we's," putting Post-its

04:24on the wall that don't mean anything,

04:26but adding purpose and meaning behind what we do every day.

04:30[MUSIC PLAYING]

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