Foossa September 2016
Social Innovation Fund, Pax Solaria, A Boldly Better Future (and More)
Foossa’s David Colby Reed and Lee-Sean Huang recently spoke at the Social Innovation Fund convening in Washington DC, where we talked about our work with Design for Financial Empowerment through our affiliation with the DESIS Lab at Parsons School of Design. We talked about ways that designers and providers of public services can better collaborate through more flexible contracting arrangements that don’t pre-assume solutions before conducting design research and reframing initial briefs. We also advocated for creating openings for CDOs, Chief Design Offices in public administration.
The Social Innovation Fund (SIF) is a powerful approach to transforming lives and communities that positions the federal government to be a catalyst for impact — mobilizing private resources to find and grow community solutions with evidence of results.
In August, Lee-Sean co-presented a workshop on human-centered design with V. Mary Abraham at ILTACON (the International Legal Technology Association Conference) in National Harbor, Maryland.
David will be back in DC later in September to representing the DESIS Lab and Design for Financial Empowerment as a panelist at the CFED Assets Learning Conference.
Human Insights 201: Designing and Testing Solutions that Fit Clients’ Lives
New programs or services sometimes fall short of their expected outcomes. Formerly successful programs sometimes fade in effectiveness or popularity as client needs and behaviors change. What approaches can enable us to better respond to the complex and ever-evolving needs of our clients? In this session, practitioners from a community development financial institution, a citywide tax time collaborative and a national nonprofit will share what they did to bring potential clients into the center of their program and service development process. They’ll highlight what they did to make the design process more participatory, how they tested the viability of new service or program concepts, and how the insights they gathered from designing and testing impacted their projects and organizations. This session pairs well with “Human Insights 101: Discovering Clients’ Context and Perspective,” “Human Insights Workshop: Client Journey Mapping” and “Consumer Engagement: Helping People Want What They Need.” This session is sponsored by Citi.
Speakers: Amanda Blondeau, Northern Initiatives; David Colby Reed, DESIS Lab; Amanda Hahnel, Doorways to Dreams Fund; Marshall Sitten, Citi; Pamela Chan, CFED (moderator)
Lee-Sean will be appearing on a panel at the Pax Solaria: The Future of Humanity conference in New York City on Saturday, September 24. Fellow panelists include: Jen Begeal, Miguel Sanchez and Caitlin Burns. Panel description:
Storytelling & Experience: Creating Cultural Communities
How the tools of social communications have changed our cultural development and how we can learn the paths of future society. We all have friends we made on the internet, as lives and relationships are increasingly built online, what does this mean to communities and cultures?
Upcoming Storytelling Workshops with Lee-Sean at the Centre for Social Innovation in New York City
Transform How the New York City Government Deals With Design
We’re excited to see that NYC is addressing the question of how to better collaborate with design firms.
NYC is a global hub for innovation and design expertise. Through Government x Design, the City is ready to work with the design community to transform how government interacts with the public through the Design Services Master Contract.
The Roddenberry Prize: $1 Million for a Boldly Better Future
Star Trek recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the launch of the original series.
We need daring ideas from innovative thinkers to achieve the future that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry imagined.
HT: Context Partners
Cheryl Heller: Our Future Depends on the Words We Use to Describe It
All change begins with language, and the change we create is determined by the freshness and honesty with which we communicate. Cheryl Heller tells us how words can make us shallow and dumb, or smart, empathetic, creative, infectious leaders. And why words are the only power we have to change things.
Cheryl Heller is the Founding Chair of the first MFA program in Design for Social Innovation at SVA, founder of the design lab CommonWise, and winner of the prestigious AIGA Medal for her contribution to the field of design. She is a business strategist and communication designer who has taught creativity to leaders and organizations around the world, helped grow businesses from small regional enterprises to multi-billion global market leaders, launched category-redefining divisions and products, reinvigorated moribund cultures, and designed strategies for hundreds of successful entrepreneurs.