»»For a complete list of Summit
participants along with bios and photos, please see page 30. After the Summit, contact information for all participants will be distributed via email.
Studio work sessions will fill most of Friday. On Friday night, at a reception hosted by AIGA Birmingham, each studio will present a brief overview of their initiative and their discoveries to date, in a PechaKucha format, to the Summit as a whole for feedback. Studio work will then continue on Saturday. A final discussion of each project, before the entire Summit, will happen late Saturday afternoon, where studios will present plans for concrete outcomes and actionable implementation. Sunday morning, AIGA chapter participants will meet to discuss the Summit: Lessons learned and how those might be applied in their local communities. It will also be an opportunity for chapter leaders to share case studies of similar programming they may currently be implementing, in their chapters, that focuses on design for social change. During that same timeframe, facilitators and scribes will meet with the AL Innovation Engine team to debrief and identify action steps for any individual and shared projects that have emerged over the course of the Summit. For participants not previously exposed to work with designers, studio moderators will lead the team through a design thinking process. This process is a framework for problem solving that often leads to creative solutions. For the most part, designers follow a pattern of steps to define a problem, generating ideas and translating the ideas into value. Among designers, there is a relatively clear sense of the attributes of design thinking, although it is articulated in different ways by different practitioners. Its key characteristics involve refining the problem statement to include dimensions often overlooked by others; aiming for human-centered solutions, which often means early ethnographic research to better understand those effected by the problem and solutions; encouraging divergent thinking; crafting many approaches to address a problem before narrowing them; and rapid prototyping, to encourage risk in considering options. Convergence on a valid solution occurs after testing prototypes and then focusing on gaining the consensus necessary from all stakeholders in order to execute a solution that results in real progress. We may only be able to do part of this work during our short time in Alabama, but it is our hope that we can craft and develop feasible and fundable programs of scale and impact that will help us reach the goal of implementation within 18 – 24 months. We have incredible expertise on every team, so the process should be energetic, challenging, and rewarding.
Summit Program
July 21 to 24, 2011
Additional Resources “Inside the Design Thinking Process,” by Helen Waters, Bloomberg Businessweek, Dec. 14, 2009
www.businessweek.com “Rediscovering Social Innovation,” James A Phills, Jr, Kriss Deiglmeier, Dale T. Miller, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2008
www.ssireview.org “Design Thinking for Social Innovation,” Tim Brown & Jocelyn Wyatt, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Nov 18, 2009
www.ssireview.org “Tools of Engagement—The New Practice of User Centered Design,” Robert Fabricant, Core 77, July 1, 2009
core77.com
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