The design practice offers a set of services to meet the needs of TFA teams and their projects/initiatives. Services breakdown into five general areas but are not limited to: (1) research (2) design (3) testing (4) evaluation and (5) documentation.
*Please note: These services do not follow a linear format, and teams may request any service at any point in their design journey. Some teams may already have a working prototype and need support with how to design testing sessions, while others may be at the very beginning of conducting user research. Each of these services tie to the 8 design abilities (@Stanford d.school) to build the capacity of TFA teams and further integrate design practice into team repertoire.
User research involves studying TFA constituents and other important stakeholders, to understand their needs, desires, challenges and goals. Tools and methods used include focus group discussions, shadowing stakeholders, holding listening tours, embedding within a constituents’ context and interviews.
Design abilities explored and built: (1) Learn from others (people and contexts) (2) Navigate ambiguity (3) Communicate deliberately.
Ideation involves the generation of new ideas for a variety of purposes, whether that’s to address current challenges or to come up with new programs, products, services, ways of working, etc. Tools and methods used include rapid idea generation, round robin (a facilitated activity passing an idea around from person to person), collage/mood board creation, synthesis mapping, etc.).
Prototyping involves creating models and early working versions of select ideas at different levels of fidelity. Tools and methods used include storyboarding, prototyping dashboards, role plays, mock-ups and modeling activities.
Design abilities explored and built: (1) Learn from others (people and contexts) (2) Navigate ambiguity (3) Experiment rapidly (4) Synthesize information (5) Move between concrete and abstract (6) Build and craft intentionally (7) Design your design work.
Testing involves the evaluation of ideas and prototypes through actively engaging constituents and stakeholders, gathering feedback, iterating and validating the ideas or prototypes in focus. Tools and methods used include focus groups, play tests, designing good feedback questions, and more.
Design abilities explored and built: (1) Learn from others (people and contexts) (2) Synthesize information (3) Move between concrete and abstract (4) Build and craft intentionally (5) Communicate deliberately.
Evaluation involves the assessment of a working prototype that is up and running. Tools and methods used include defining indicators of interest, creating M&E plans and frameworks and more.
Design abilities explored and built: (1) Learn from others (people and contexts) (2) Synthesize information (3) Move between concrete and abstract (4) Build and craft intentionally (5) Design your design work.
Documentation involves reflection, the creation of artifacts, and sharing evidence of learnings for a project. Documentation can take place throughout the course of a project or can be highly focused on specific project periods, and is dependent on what is sought to be learned or observed. Tools and methods used include design journaling, setting up wikis or collaborative authoring tools and more.
Design abilities explored and built: (1) Synthesize information (2) Move between concrete and abstract (3) Build and craft intentionally (4) Design your design work.