Design Project 2 Mid-Project Presentations

Annemarie Gugelmann

Cassie Mauer

David Zacher

Esther An

Felipe Sarmiento

Gazal Goenka

Hyun Ju Lee

Jason Lee

Ji Yae Park

Justin DeSilva

Kathleen O'Donnell

Louis Rigano

Lucy Stein

Maria Floreena DelGado

Peter Simon

Saba Ahmed

Soomi Lee

Assignment 10: due 4/22

Hi class! Great to talk with you today. I really appreciate that you're willing to share your concerns regarding project 2 with me since it will help me to optimize the structure of the rest of the course to fit your needs. However, I want pass along this important message: take a deep breath and grab a cold one - the class is performing well on the whole.

Please remember that the goal of this project is not necessarily to solve a problem for your non-profit.

You are working with these organizations primarily so that you can interact with and learn from the people who run the orgs and the communities that they serve.

You should use this information to help you conceive of a proposal for a product, service or system that will sustainably benefit your target community. Your proposal may or may not involve the non-profit you are working with, and doesn't need to be implemented during this course.

Once you have design concepts in hand, you should focus on getting informal feedback from the folks in your organizations and your target communities, rather than treating them like clients per se.

Here is a generic schedule that you could use to guide your work for the rest of the semester:

April 21 - 29

• Continue to research and interact with your organizations target and communities.
• Build a set of potential problem areas to address and early design concepts for each problem area.
• Solicit feedback on these concepts from your orgs and communities, as well as your fellow designers at RISD.

April 30 - May 7

• Choose problem area to focus on and conduct problem-specific research
• Brainstorm on possible solutions and solicit feedback from orgs and communities
• Send out invites to final crit on 5/24
• Research prior art and create a matrix that compares the strengths and weaknesses of your concept to those of precedent projects

May 8 - 14

• Choose and develop one final design solution
• Solicit feedback from orgs and communities

May 14 - 19

• Review and refine all design concept models, diagrams and business plans
• Solicit final round of feedback from orgs and communities prior to presentation
• Package design solution into a persuasive presentation

May 20 - 23

• Presentation preparations for final crit

May 24

• Final crit
• Party

For Thursday 4/22, please complete one or both the following:

Option A

Produce a set of preliminary design sketches exploring the issues you are researching (opportunities for design interventions) and concepts that suggest possibilities for products, systems and/or services that address these issues. Don't be afraid to sketch! Have fun and enjoy the process, really! Have these ready on your laptop, on a USB key or as a hard copy for review.

Option B

Brainstorm on the potential problem areas for your target community that you will address in your project and produce lists, mind-maps and conceptual diagrams and other visual records of your thought process. Have these ready on your laptop, on a USB key or as a hard copy for review.

See you on Thursday!

Yushu Earthquake Relief Effort

Earlier today a 7.1 scale earthquake hit Yushu Prefecture, in southern Qinghai Province, not far from where I worked this past winter. The effect has been devastating in many of the county towns in this region where people live, work and trade their goods. You can read more about this topic here. Please pass along the word that One Earth Designs has begun collecting donations for direct relief to families in this region at their website.

Maternal Deaths in Decline Worldwide

Today the New York Times reports that The Lancet, a leading medical journal, has published a study(Maternal mortality for 181 countries, 1980—2008: a systematic analysis of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5, Hogan, et al. PDF link) that shows a marked decline in maternal deaths worldwide since 1980.

It's interesting to note (as the NYT reports) that the social entrepreneurship community can be conflicted in terms of its opinions of this sort of positive, sweeping social research. On the one hand, the members of social organizations are undoubtedly interested in maintaining the urgency of their mission in the eyes of the public by telling very real stories of tragedy that abound in our flawed planet. This is especially true for issues that, though improving, remain major problems that still deserve to be addressed promptly. Yet, without a sense of progress, all efforts start to seem to be hopeless. Nicholas Kristof has made this point (video) before regarding the seemingly overwhelming problem of forced prostitution.

We should debate this issue of access to clear information vs. maintaing the public's attention in class.

Course Schedule 4/13 - 2/29

Week 8 (4/11)

• Tuesday (4/13)
• AM
• Broader field of DeSE presentation, give out ethnography assignment
• PM
• Work time with organizations
• A8A Ethnography Exercise
• A8B: Develop ethnography plan for your organization

• Thursday (4/15)
• AM
• Presentation of A8 work
• PM
• Intra-Studio Workshop I / HCD Brainstorm
• Work time with organizations
• A9: Research and Mind-mapping
• Conduct research in your organization and produce documentation of your observations, experiences and insights. Produce mind maps related to problems or issues faced by the community being served that you find interesting and may want to pursue further in this project. The more the better.

Week 9 (4/18)

• Tuesday (4/20)
• AM
• HCD Curriculum Focus Group with Ayako
• PM
• Desk crits
• (Optional) Intra-Studio Workshop II / HCD Brainstorm
• Work time with organizations
• A10: Design concept generation
• Produce a set of preliminary design sketches exploring the issues you are researching (opportunities for design interventions) and concepts that suggest possibilities for products, systems and/or services that address these issues.

• Thursday (4/22)
• AM
• A10 presentations
• PM
• Desk crits
• (Optional) Intra-Studio Workshop III / HCD Brainstorm
• Work time with organizations
• A11: Produce mid-project crit materials
• Background of community
• Background of organization
• Observations
• Mind-maps
• Precedents
• Project concepts
• Future plans

Week 10 (4/25)

• Tuesday (4/27)
• MID-PROJECT REVIEW: Local SE design project: Mid-project review with partner organization in ID gallery

• Thursday (4/29)
• MID-PROJECT REVIEW: Local SE design project: Mid-project review with partner organization in ID gallery
• A13: Readings on evaluating social ventures, verify final review dates with partner orgs

Assignment 8: Due 4/15

In order to make a persuasive argument for your proposal in Design Project 2, you will need to be able to effectively organize and convey the information you collect during your ethnographic research of the communities and organizations you are collaborating with. This assignment is intended to give you an opportunity to quickly experiment with ways of expressing how people utilize the spaces in which they live or work, as well as how they allocate their time in a typical day.

For Thursday 4/15, please complete the following:

Choose a person you know and request some time from them to conduct the brief sociological study described below. For convenience this may be simply a friend of yours, though if you have reached a level of access with your Design Project 2 community / organization members, please feel free to work with them instead.

1. Take a photograph of your subject (the person you've chosen), and a separate photo of one of "their" spaces - their home, their desk, their office, etc - such that the objects in this space are clearly visible. Interview your subject about how these objects fit into their lives and use short quotations to annotate the photo of their space (for example, "Coffee Table: I never use this table - it pretty much just collects dust and junk mail. Really, I'm not sure why I still have it!") Lay out this information on an 11x17 page.

Analyze the information you collect from this process and look for trends. Create a few categories (for example, you might come up with categories such as "useful objects" and useless objects," or "handmade items," "gifts from family" and the like) and either color code your annotations or create lists on the side of the page.

2. Interview your subject about how they typically spend their time in this space. Look for trends in how they allocate time and create a graph on a second 11x17 sheet that expresses a trend that you find interesting (for instance, you might graph the hours they are awake against the hours of daylight and find that this person is nearly nocturnal).

For Friday 4/16:

Email me a list of the ethnographic research methods (photos,video,interviews,focus groups,note-taking, etc.) that you anticipate will be the most relevant to work on Design Project 2. For each method please provide a few sentences describing how you plan to employ the method in your research.

That's it! Let me know if anyone still has questions about the deliverables.

Design Project 2 Clarifications

Hi class - I hope you've had a restful spring break. Below are some clarifications that will help you complete Project 2, Design for Local Social Entrepreneurship.

The primary purpose of Project 1, Design for International Social Entrepreneurship, was to expose you to some of the tools and thought processes that go into community-centered design, from ethnographic research to benchmarking to building sustainable models for implementation. Working in teams, you attempted to respond to the needs of communities that were far removed from your physical location and way of life in Providence. Due to these limitations, your design concepts (while excellent overall) were inherently speculative and difficult to verify, though it was apparent that all of you constructed sophisticated models of the communities based on your research.

Whereas in the first project you devised plans for conducting field research and user studies, the second major project in this course will focus on designing concepts that are tied to your own direct contact with a local community. You will be expected to demonstrate your ability to develop skills in these social science areas while using them to build deep, original insights into the social issues you are seeking to address. In parallel, you will create many iterations of design sketches and models and discuss them with the entire class as well as small groups in order to maintain a lively, collaborative studio culture. You will benchmark your ideas against similar project precedents and build sustainable business plans that take into the consideration the limitations and opportunities inherent in the financial, cultural and environmental landscape that you are working within. You will work directly with community members and representatives of social organizations in order to incorporate a tight loop of feedback into your design concepts.

You will work hard, have fun and leave this course with something great in your portfolio. That's the goal!

There are two basic project structures to choose from:

1: Consult for an existing social organization

Deliver the design of a new financially self-sustaining product, service or system to an existing social organization based around their mission, needs and preferences.

2: Create a plan for a new social organization

Building on insights you have gained through direct contact with your target community, propose a new social business or non-profit based around a financially self-sustaining product, service or system.

Timeline (more detail TBA)

4/9 : Organization chosen, volunteering begins

4/24 and 4/29: Mid-Crit

5/24 : Final crit