Citizens Design for Community

Client: Health and Wellness alliance for Children, Collin County, Texas

role: Project Manager

Design Challenge

To engage community members in identifying major challenges families face in their county, and to set a vision for how families and an Alliance of cross-sectoral organizations can work together to make a significant impact on families’ daily lives

Overview

Collin County, a county just north of Dallas, Texas, is experiencing rapid population growth – and accompanying growing pains. Despite the reputation Collin County has for wealth and livability, many families are living precariously and facing challenges related to their health, finances, housing, safety, and transportation.  In this project, I led my team from the Business Innovation Factory in partnering with The Health and Wellness Alliance for Children, a nonprofit group of community organizations dedicated to helping children achieve better health and well-being. We engaged local families in pinpointing opportunities to make positive change and in designing new approaches to tackling families’ challenges and social determinants of health. I delivered strategic recommendations for where the Alliance should focus its efforts (and why), and worked with the Alliance steering committee to co-create their next steps, as well as “design principles” and blueprint behaviors to guide their future engagement of local families.

Process

I worked with local community stakeholders and recruited 14 families for a participatory research and design process, composing a group of families representing a range of backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and demographics. I designed and facilitated a 2-month long participatory process in which I taught the families (including Spanish-speaking families and youth over the age of 12) and selected Alliance staff members a design thinking process. The goal of this process was to engage families in identifying the key challenges that they face, exploring these challenges from the perspectives of their friends, neighbors, and others in their community, brainstorming ways to address them, and iterating on their ideas. To aid families in uncovering insights about their own lives and better understanding others’ experiences, I guided them through conducting a variety of qualitative methods – including semi-structured interviews, observations, self-documentation “day in the life” journals, photojournalism, and guided tours around their communities.

The participatory design process culminated in a Community Critique event, in which families shared their challenges and ideas with their peers, members of the Alliance, and other community stakeholders, received feedback, and worked together to discuss idea implementation and community change. After this event, I led my team’s analysis and synthesis process, and developed and presented to the Alliance my foundational insights, actionable opportunity spaces for change, and tactical strategies for creating positive impacts. The opportunity spaces we outlined are as follows:

Outcomes

Based on our recommendations and insights, we facilitated the Alliance in defining and aligning around next steps for their work and for future family engagement. They developed a greater depth of understanding of the opportunities for change within the county, and more importantly, how these challenges intersect and affect each other. As a result of the success of engaging families in this work, the Alliance is also continuing to partner with families and youth to co-create change in Collin County through a family advisory group that will better address the roots of families’ challenges by actively collaborating with community members to effect change. 
 

Steps in the participatory design process: