Abstract
This paper shares initial findings from an ongoing study assessing the value and limitations of a two-year community-engaged design thinking initiative intended to foster more inclusive and holistic public health community-based innovations with underserved communities across one county in the southeast U.S. The initiative hopes to institutionalize and socialize community-based design within a public health framework and build organizational and individual capacities. Initial findings indicate that participants find value in design thinking tools and processes, and that such processes have transformed mental models, fostered relationships, and built skills for participants' professional, civic, and personal lives. Findings also surfaced challenges related to power inequities, a lack of alignment between grant initiative requirements and participant needs, as well as rapidly evolving guidelines and divergent capacities. Recommendations for researchers and practitioners are noted, including pursuing a relationship-rich design practice, investing time and energy in framing issues of power and positionality, ensuring long-term and flexible access to resources, and creating consistent visual validation across the initiative.
Keywords
design thinking, community-based innovation, capacity building, public health
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.210
Citation
Lake, D., Motley, P., Casner, M., and Flannery, K. (2022) Design thinking community health & well-being: Creating with and for community capacities, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.210
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Design thinking community health & well-being: Creating with and for community capacities
This paper shares initial findings from an ongoing study assessing the value and limitations of a two-year community-engaged design thinking initiative intended to foster more inclusive and holistic public health community-based innovations with underserved communities across one county in the southeast U.S. The initiative hopes to institutionalize and socialize community-based design within a public health framework and build organizational and individual capacities. Initial findings indicate that participants find value in design thinking tools and processes, and that such processes have transformed mental models, fostered relationships, and built skills for participants' professional, civic, and personal lives. Findings also surfaced challenges related to power inequities, a lack of alignment between grant initiative requirements and participant needs, as well as rapidly evolving guidelines and divergent capacities. Recommendations for researchers and practitioners are noted, including pursuing a relationship-rich design practice, investing time and energy in framing issues of power and positionality, ensuring long-term and flexible access to resources, and creating consistent visual validation across the initiative.