Designing for Long-Term Impact in the Neighbourhood Grant Program
Services
Services
Project Type
Project for Toronto's Civic Innovation Office | Co-led with Molly Connor
Year
2019
Skills
Service Design
Service Blueprinting
User research
User journey mapping
Persona development
Overview
This project was the result of a six-week design sprint for the City of Toronto's Civic Innovation Office, an office funded by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. This project focused on the City's Neighbourhood Grants Program and developing a way that "long-term impact" could be understood and measured in the grant program.
The research process included the following methods:
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Community consultations and resident activities
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Interviews with residents, city staff, and program partners
The project's outputs included:
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A service design blueprint
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A co-created definition of "long-term impact" as it relates to the Neighbourhood Grants Program
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An improved evaluation system for measuring and monitoring long-term impact in the program
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A balanced scorecard
Riley McCullough
Foresight Strategist and Designer
My Work
THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE
By imagining different possible, plausible, and preferable narratives of the future, foresight allows you to build strategies around the uncertainty of tomorrow. There are various different ways of thinking about the futures, such as strategic foresight, speculative futures, and design fiction.
Examples of Work
What might this look like?
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Collection and analysis of drivers of changes, emerging signals, and trends
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Development of scenarios and futures stories
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Strategic foresight workshops and reports to inform your organizational strategy
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Workshops focused on skilling your team in futures literacy
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Workshops focused on co-creatively exploring and imagining different possible, plausible, and preferable futures
UNDERSTANDING USERS AND DESIGNING EXPERIENCES
Design thinking focuses on an empathy-based and human-centred approach to solving complex issues. It enables us to redefine problems and imagine new solutions to challenges, from the user’s perspective. Design thinking can support other design processes, such as service design.
Examples of Work
What might this look like?
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User research, user journey mapping, needs analysis, barriers analysis, etc.
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Service design and service blueprinting
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Co-design and participatory design workshops
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Introduction to design thinking workshops
THINKING IN SYSTEMS
Systems thinking is a useful tool for comprehending and embracing complexity.
It enables an understanding of the interrelationships between objects and activities and highlights the importance of understanding how different actors work together to impact a product, service, or strategy.
Examples of Work
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Visualizing the interactions between the human-environment forces of the Anthropocene
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Mapping the systemic relationships behind San Francisco's public defecation crisis
What might this look like?
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The development of systems maps to visually communicate the complexity of the system of focus
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Systems-thinking workshops to support your project
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Stakeholder and ecosystem analysis