Blog 4

Will my company be socially impactful? Will it always be a positive impact? To answer these questions, I will examine my venture using the logical framework impact value chain model. The inputs are largely centered about human capital and staff time. There will be no regular inputs of money or any physical capital. The outputs are somewhat difficult to discern for a participatory design company. What measurable data can be reliably gained that can compare project results as varied as those anticipated while working with a community that will have wide-ranging needs and opportunities. I suppose the best possible answer would be to add up the total money spent on the project to see how greatly the community thinks it will value the outcomes. The outcomes, or impact, could be gleaned by conducting surveys and interviews before and after the project is completed to observe changes in the community’s perception of itself. If the project has not achieved the goals of significantly improving resident’s happiness or sense of well-being, the process must be tweaked to better guide community members toward a satisfactory end result. I feel like there is a better way to measure the outputs. Can anyone out there suggest some alternatives?

Blog 3

“If there is no competition, there is no market.” It is hard to imagine competition for a social venture. Why would you want to compete with me when I’m trying to make people’s lives better? If we are working towards the same goal, why don’t we work together? But I realize that this is because I am assuming social ventures work as purely altruistic entities. That is not the case for any venture, or really anyone intent on making money. Social ventures seek to do good, but they also seek to do it better than anyone else. The customers I serve should be served better by me than the next best alternative. There are similar participatory design firms such as Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) and Latent Design, but they tend to operate in specific geographic areas. Latent Design, in particular, only operates in the Chicago area at the moment, whereas KDI operates continuously in Los Angeles and Nairobi while branching out to other areas for the occasional project. If I keep my geographic scope narrow, for instance staying within one Pittsburgh neighborhood at the start, I can likely avoid directly competing with other participatory design firms until I have a distinct advantage of having already made connections within the community served. Not all competitors are going to be other design companies. Anyone who offers a solution to the needs of the neighborhood could be considered competition, however this is where things get fuzzy. As a guiding figure, my company does not intend to actually supply the resources to the neighborhood, rather it will connect the neighborhood with the provider that best suits their needs. So providers are at once competition and also collaborators.

This also creates some problems when pricing my services. If the competition is viewed as other design companies, I will be operating in a different geographic region with a different cost of living (and different costs for many goods and services). If the competition is viewed as urban developers and providers of certain resources, the price would be affected by the resource provided and not the connection to a resource. Competitive pricing can thus only provide a very broad estimate of the price range for the service. Viewing the pricing from a cost- and margin-based angle is also murky. There may be some marketing costs, taxes and legal fees, but there is not much overall fixed cost for offering a participatory design service. If there are variable costs, such as covering costs of acquiring access to a resource for the community, it would be added to the price for that project. Primarily, the price will likely be dominated by the value created for the community. After all, even the variable costs are likely ones that would be encountered if the resource were acquired without going through the design thinking process. So, that being said, I suppose the real question when determining the price of my service is how much do communities value using the design thinking process to find and fill opportunity gaps?

Blog 2

What do I do? I already decided that what I want to do is participatory design, but I have to find a niche. Because the point of design thinking is to find an opportunity space, I cannot differentiate myself on tackling a singular and unique issue. Also, because I am offering a service that aims find opportunities, there is not an easy fit into the positioning templates offered. I guess it is better to find the answers to the following questions: why did I start the company, why should customers patronize the company, and why should good people work for the company. Perhaps from here I can gain some insight into what the niche is.

Why did I start the company? I hope to offer an opportunity to disadvantaged communities, guiding them as they make their own decisions on how best to solve issues that they care about. The company will promote design thinking as a tool that will give residents a voice in how their neighborhood will move into the future.

Why should customers patronize the company? It is entirely up to the residents how they choose to move forward, and the first step would be to decide whether they need to pay a design company to help them find out what they might think they already know. For this, I say that we are “eliminating the broom” on a neighborhood scale. At the beginning of my time at Carnegie Mellon, a guest speaker came to tell us how design thinking is used at his company, Proctor and Gamble. He told us a story about how he was researching how customers use their detergent. One customer was asked about the solubility, to which she replied the solubility was great. The speaker asked her to show him, so the customer added the detergent powder to water, took a broom handle and stirred the whole tub until the powder was dissolved. At no point did the instructions say to stir with a broom handle. Since hearing that anecdote, “eliminating the broom” has become my favorite phrase for what I feel is the area where design thinking can add the most value. Sometimes the opportunity is not in overcoming some obvious obstacle, but in realizing idiosyncrasies and inefficiencies that hinder us but to which we have grown so accustomed that we completely ignore.

Why should good people work for my company? I guess this goes back to my friend who got excited to see my list of issues and was eager to discuss them, but quickly realized discussion would not be enough. There are underserved communities in every city, not just the major metropolitan areas that are design hotspots. And there are talented people in each of these cities who can help connect communities to resources and guide their growth. So I guess I’m looking for people who see that “sketchy” neighborhood not as a threat or the next place to get gentrified, but can see a vibrant community ready to flourish.