Christina Tran

AC4D is a different kind of school. We quickly realized on day 1 of student orientation that we were all here to work toward social impact. There weren’t going to be endless discussions about whether or not we should be “doing good” because it was pre-defined and a given in all of us as AC4D students. As Steve Portigal observed after guest lecturing:

The school is focusing on applying design to social change, but the discussion is about the problem solving power of design – to understand, reframe, and innovate, rather than an excess of earnestness or worrying. I suspect their point of view is maybe what you could call post-worldchanging…of course you want to address homelessness, let’s use the tools we’ve got to look at it.

We can’t just talk the talk; we have to walk the walk.

The great thing about the mix of method and theory classes we’ve been getting in Interaction Design is that we can both walk the walk while being able to talk the talk. We are able to frame our work within the larger context of the design community while understanding the history of what’s come before us.

We are missing the same kind of framing in the world of social entrepreneurship. We need a “Theory of Social Entrepreneurship” class to support our real work in the social enterprise space.

• If the history of Xerox Park and Lisa and desktop publishing enrich our understanding of what is possible in our interaction designs today, the history of philanthropy and social finance and the sustainability movement give us a frame of what social entrepreneurship means in today’s world.
• If we must read and engage in critical class debates about John Dewey and Richard Buchanan and Emily Pilloton to be able to attend IxD11 and not feel like a noob, we must also read and engage in critical class debates about Muhammad Yunus and Jacqueline Novogratz and Jeff Skoll to start to find our place in the SocEnt space as well.
• Our stimulating discussions about the hot questions in design today (design with vs. design for; the role of technology in our lives) should be partnered with stimulating discussions about the hot questions in social entrepreneurship today (measuring impact; how does scale affect impact; passion vs. burn-out; legal structures and not getting sued by shareholders).

A couple of our classmates have been living in this stuff for the past couple of years and know how to talk in the language of social entrepreneurship. And while they were sometimes frustrated with the all talk and no walk of their previous SocEnt communities, we are now in danger of the opposite. I’m lucky enough to be able to pick their brains.

I’m starting to understand that SocEnt in the U.S. is different than its movement in Canada or the UK, and I’m starting to see why I’m still struggling to fit in. In other countries, SocEnt is tackling urban planning and local community issues. In the U.S., the SocEnt projects that get the most buzz and the most traction are targeting developing countries and the bottom of the pyramid. In other countries, SocEnt is tied to universities, research grants, and government money. In the U.S., our funding comes from VCs and philanthropic investment funds—and I’m not sure how funding of research (not just tech R&D) plays into it all yet. (Hope Lab is an interesting model: non-profit org that funds research and development, eventually spinning off social enterprises such as Zamzee.)

I’m wary of VC funds because I can’t guarantee 10x return if I’m operating a double- or triple-bottom-line business. My solution is to simply bypass it altogether (without much critical thought into the matter). I’m sure some debate and discussion would at least help me see my options more clearly.

I also believe that social enterprises and typical business ventures are different and require different types of incubation. Yes, they share the same backbones of business, and yes, fiscal sustainability is tantamount to success. But there are some new core questions that social entrepreneurs have to weave into their start-ups. How do you get your business off the ground while fueling your mission at the same time? How do you define success, and how to you measure that? How do you position yourself in the current marketplace? Cliché but: where is the line between you and your business, your passion and your investment?

Then throw in the questions that design brings to the picture of enterprise…let alone social enterprise. For most entrepreneurs, proof-of-concept and market validation typically come after you have a working beta, whereas designers create their products out of user research and synthesis and have to prove fiscal traction in addition to market validation.

Typically, we find MBAs with a business know-how searching for their passions; in SocEnt, we get reluctant innovators pursuing business know-how. Where do we interaction designer social entrepreneurs fit into these frameworks? We come at it from multiple sides, trying to make things meet in the middle. We’re making it up as we go along, as all adults do. Out of the frying pan into the fire.

Here are some examples of social enterprises that might provide some clues:

• Tom’s Shoes
• Catch a Fire (channel corporate employees to do pro bono consulting)
• Ecojot (recycled paper notebooks)
• Seventh Generation
• Para Vida (coffee)
• Better World Books
• Good Capital (investment firm that invests in social)
• Ben and Jerry’s business
• Brand Aid Project
• Root Capital
• O Liberte (shoes)
• Acumen Fund
• Grameen Bank

Web sites where the debates are happening:

• socialedge.org
• socialinnovation.ca
• dreamnow.org
• http://socialfinance.ca/taskforce/report (social stock exchange, anyone?)
• socialearth.org
• dowser.org
• http://sigeneration.ca/

Books to whet your appetite:

• David Borenstein: Social Enrepreneurship – What Everyone Needs to Know
• Jacqueline Novogratz: The Blue Sweater

Conferences:

• SOCAP
• A Better World for Design
• Harvard Social Enterprise Conference
• re:Vision 2011
• RISE

Incubators focused on social enterprises:

• Unreasonable Institute
• Good Company Ventures
• Echoing Green Fellows

[Thanks to Hour School co-founder Ruby Ku for a lot of the above links and resources. In the spirit of Hour School's mission to transform learners into teachers, I believe either she or Ryan Hubbard is fully capable of teaching a kick-ass course in IDSE 402: Theory of Social Entrepreneurship.]

Meet my first business model canvas. Isn’t she cute?

I was spurred on by our IDSE 401 discussions about income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements—and the ‘oh snap!’ realization that we haven’t solidified our revenue streams. I’ve been using Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur’s Business Model Generation book (recommended by Justin Petro during Q1) to walk through key considerations of a business plan:

• Customer segments
• Value proposition
• Channels
• Customer relationship
• Revenue streams
• Key resources
• Key activities
• Key partnerships
• Cost structure

The Business Model Generation book offers common patterns, examples, and good questions to think through each of these sections in their version of a business model canvas. The authors approach business model generation with a design sensibility and encourage ideation and prototyping to arrive at a proper and/or innovative model for your idea.

I’m gonna go off and do 10 more iterations. See you later.

The last week of our Q3 studio class was much more informal than previous weeks. It was open work time as we prepared for our final presentations with no structured check-in’s with Justin, though everyone ended up chatting with him throughout the day.

Because of those small changes, I realized a few things about the way I learn:

• I learn through eavesdropping. Because Justin was walking around to groups in their workspaces or meeting with people in his office with the door open, I was able to pick up on various bits of advice throughout the day (including, “if you want people to pay attention to it and remember it, write it down on a slide. Don’t just talk about it.”) I could integrate what I wanted, I ended up learning more, and he didn’t have to repeat himself over and over again.
• I’m nosy and want to know what other people are doing. Because of the structure of scheduled one-on-one’s between groups and Petro (which I’m glad we had because we had given feedback during Q2 that we wanted more of that time with professors), groups ended up presenting and preparing for their meetings with Justin behind closed doors. And the feedback was in some ways trapped in that room because 1) we just integrated our feedback into our own process/project and went along our merry ways and 2) we didn’t have the time or discipline to reflect and share that feedback back via blogging, and 3) we simply didn’t realize what we were missing in not sharing all of that back. We spent the rest of our class times working in our teams (often in separate rooms or corners). While we did catch bits and pieces of what others were doing, notably when someone (inside or outside the class) asked a group about it, there could have been a lot more.
• I wanted coaching about the design process. This clicked for me when I read this in an Edward de Bono article: “I am not suggesting that [lateral thinking] is easy. It requires a lot of careful practice and coaching. But the deliberate steps can be used.” And then when I saw this happen because Kat asked for Jon’s help in walking her through an insight recombination exercise:Feedback is an important part of coaching when you’re trying something new. One net result of the structure of the quarter was that we got a lot of feedback on whatever we managed to pull together to present of our projects, and less feedback on our processes. Coaching is tricky when the process is so messy, but there is value in walking through the methods we are new to in the specific context of the project we’re currently working on—often when the need arises, and in the middle of our individual worktime. It helps gel the individual methods we learned previously floating around in our heads with the context and roadblocks of our current project floating around in other parts of our heads.

Of course, hindsight is much clearer than foresight. It takes a change, reflection, an outsider, and/or the ability to step back to see how things are currently working. Because we’re usually too caught up in the actual work, and we fall into habits and routines, and things just go unquestioned. It’s a struggle new organizations also have to deal with after a few years of operation—how to best use the people and the space that you have to work with.

As interaction designers, we can look at the “touchpoints” of a studio learning experience:

• meetings: open vs. closed, location, formality, who’s invited, who can sit in.
• do you go to the higher-up or does the higher-up come to you?
• do people feel free to come up to you while you’re working and interrupt and ask questions?
• where do people actually work? what’s the space like?
• where are the closed doors? (the physical ones and the assumed ones)
• how public is your process? how visible is it?
• what are each person’s expectations about the space, the time together, the process?
• how do people keep each other updated on each other’s work?
• what’s the dynamic of teams within the larger organization?

It’s a shame we didn’t do POW reflection videos the last week of Q3, because a lot of things clicked, and I learned a lot during that last week. What you get is a long thoughtful blogpost instead.

Design Research is integral to the Design Process

In my last post, I wrote about our cycles of research/synthesis/design as we worked on Nudge. The stages in the design process were definitely not clear-cut, nor were they scheduled. They flowed one into another, as they should, and they were often overlapping.

This past quarter helped me clarify my belief that design research should be an integral part of the design process. It can’t be segregated to the beginnings and ends of a project with a neat hand-off—or the possibility of facing the chopping block if the team doesn’t have enough time or money. Earlier in the quarter I had lunch with a local designer who didn’t believe design researcher should be its own role. He believed the “design researcher” runs the risk of becoming lazy about not having an opinion about the research findings because they can just hand the findings off to the “designers” who then have to deal with them. When the roles are segregated, I would also argue that the designer also runs the risk of not feeling responsible or empowered to do additional fieldwork on their own during the course of a project—especially when they need those gut checks, and especially if we are to keep people at the core of our designs.

Going Deep

I think continued research/synthesis/prototype cycles are more apt to happen naturally if you are working over a period of time within one specific social issue that you feel passionate about. You will continue to learn more, talk to more people, and have experiences within the relevant field, and the insights you’ll accumulate from following your curiosity will continually inform your design work.

It reminds me of our discussions about social impact during Q1, when we read Emily Pilloton’s take on going local and going deep to have any meaningful social impact.

After two years of tackling design projects for measurable social impact, the one piece of advice I would give to other designers who seek to apply their creative skills toward activism and community engagement is to sit still and focus on one thing.

I mean this not in a cubicle context (”sit at your desk and return emails”), but rather as it pertains to approaching huge, high-stakes design for social-impact projects and enterprises. To sit still and focus on one thing means to commit to a place, to live and work there, and to apply your skills (your “one thing”) to that community’s benefit.

This idea of deep engagement makes me question the consultancy model of design—where you come into something, work for a predefined amount of time, and then leave. It’s what rubs me the wrong way about the recent surge in design “competitions” that call for submissions from creative citizens to solve problems that are remote to people’s lives—physically and emotionally. If you are going to be tackling maternal health in Africa, I may be able to contribute my ideas from Austin, but I am lacking 1) context, 2) skin in the game, and 3) responsibility in the follow-through to what happens to those ideas. It feels more productive to me to either engage a curated group of people (including designers) who have an invested interest in the issue or to co-design with the mothers in Africa themselves.

Commitment to the consequences is important when we’re tackling social issues where our solutions will have real impact (positive and negative). There is a role for the designer, but we must be willing at some point to throw ourselves into an issue space for an extended period of time and to partner with real experts and actual stakeholders. Commitment to anything is difficult in my 20′s when I don’t want to plan beyond next week, but I think it is a step I must take if I want my work to have social impact.

The Role of Technology

I recently read a revealing article by Kentaro Toyama questioning technology’s role in solving social issues. Technology is an amplifier of human intent and capacity. If we don’t nurture human capacity in any specific region, rushing in with technology (best case) doesn’t stick or (worst case) does more harm than good.

Academic observers have deconstructed telecenters and other ICT4D projects, enumerating the many reasons why the initiatives fail: ICT4D enthusiasts don’t design context-appropriate technology, adhere to socio-cultural norms, account for poor electrical supply, build relationships with local governments, invite the participation of the community, provide services that meet local needs, consider bad transportation infrastructure, think through a viable financial model, provide incentives for all stakeholders, and so on. These criticisms are each valid as far as they go, and ICT4D interventionists sometimes focus narrowly on addressing them. But this laundry list of foibles ultimately provides no insight into the deeper reasons why ICT4D projects rarely fulfill their promise, even as their cousins in the developed world thrive in the form of netbooks, BlackBerrys, and Facebook.

…In every one of our projects, a technology’s effects were wholly dependent on the intention and capacity of the people handling it…In our most successful ICT4D projects, the partner organizations did the hard work of real development, and our role was simply to assist, and strengthen, their efforts with technology.

If I were to summarize everything I learned through research in ICT4D, it would be this: technology—no matter how well designed—is only a magnifier of human intent and capacity. It is not a substitute. If you have a foundation of competent, well-intentioned people, then the appropriate technology can amplify their capacity and lead to amazing achievements. But, in circumstances with negative human intent, as in the case of corrupt government bureaucrats, or minimal capacity, as in the case of people who have been denied a basic education, no amount of technology will turn things around.

For me, the amazing potential of design is when our ethnographic research unearths opportunity areas where people have the intentions and capability yet aren’t following through with actions. To find areas where human capacity exists and build on it. A prime example is environmental sustainability: we all know we shouldn’t be driving or buying that bottle of water or using yet another plastic bag…but how many of us live actively green lifestyles? I believe that design and technology can bridge that gap.

Thus, the search for ‘elegant’ solutions

One of my ultimate goals for my designs is elegance. After I present a design solution, it would be awesome if the feedback was “why hasn’t anyone already done that?” I realized this after I watched Ruby’s and Kat’s participation in the student design competition at Interactions 11 conference. Through their research they found that hotels in Boulder were already housing people when shelters overflowed during the cold winter (and off-season) months for a discounted rate. Their proposed solution was a website that would make those booking connections easier between shelters and hotels. An additional public display and text donation system helped draw in awareness and participation from the citizens of Boulder, most of whom probably don’t know this is going on in their own city.

Actually, before they presented SafeBed, part of me thought they might not win because the end product of a website to connect the shelters and hotels seemed so obvious, that it might not be perceived as that innovative. (Of course, they did win!)

Edward de Bono of the “six thinking hats” system puts it best when he laments that:

…every valuable, creative idea will always be logical in hindsight. If an idea were not logical in hindsight, then we would never be able to appreciate the value of the idea.

When design works well, the solutions merge seamlessly into our lives, and we stop thinking about their inventiveness (possibly controversial nature) at the time. But we can only arrive at elegant solutions that will integrate into people’s lives if we have empathy for how people behave and a sense of what they’ll be willing to adapt.

It seems pretty simple to arrive at elegant design solutions: use design research to discover existing behavior and intentions that can be amplified by design and technology, and then design! Simple yet difficult. Yet exciting.

Reluctant innovators

The idea of a reluctant innovator has been stuck in my head since I read this blog post on kiwanja (via Erik Hersman’s tweets). These are “people who found themselves in the midst of a problem they felt compelled to solve.” They became innovators, and eventually entrepreneurs—and reluctantly. They weren’t looking for problems to solve; the problems found them.

I think one of the strengths of AC4D’s program is that we have all come together around this social issue of homelessness, and we’ve been able to learn together, share together, and bring our own points of view into the design process. At the same time, I don’t have a good sense of where people’s hearts really lie. I’m sure there are specific social issues nagging at each of us, problems that we want to tackle after school.

I’ve been able to pretty easily put the two social issues I feel most strongly about—living sustainably and improving public education—onto my professional back burners. (And no, I’m not going to combine them for the sake of combining them.) Haven’t really thought through personally or professionally what it means to apply a design methodology and entrepreneurship model to tackling either of the two. Partly because I’m scared to leave the consultancy model of design that I know and love. Good time to start thinking!