One thing that’s fascinated me about the design thinking process is how nonprofits can use it to listen to the needs of their communities and think outside the box when taking action, despite design thinking being primarily known as a business strategy.
Another reason I like design thinking is that it uses the stories of individuals and communities for meaningful impact, storytelling and engagement that advanced an organization’s mission.
And connecting the evaluation process to design thinking seems like a no-brainer.
We’ve discussed the first three steps in the design thinking process- empathize, define, and ideate. Let’s finish out this series with the final two steps in the process- prototyping and testing.
With design thinking, testing and evaluating feedback helps nonprofits observe and uncover additional wants and needs from the communities they serve.
But I’ll admit that I initially wasn’t sold on the last two steps.
One main reason why I wasn’t initially sold on prototyping and feedback (and with the design thinking process in general) was that, in my opinion, the nonprofit world moved much slower compared to the corporate and business worlds. It’s easier for businesses to generate innovative ideas, scrap the ones that aren’t working, and try something new. Whereas it seems like there’s more at stake for nonprofits who can move that quickly.
Failing fast doesn’t sound all that appealing, especially if you have a funder that expected the solution to succeed. And this can potentially lead to a loss of funding for the program. So how can nonprofits encourage the design process, with a strong focus on encouraging funders to understand the process of failing and doing it quickly, so that less time and money is invested in a solution that doesn’t resonate?
Prototyping is also important because it allows nonprofit to build a bias towards action, with the understanding that you may fail, as fast. And therein lies the crux of the matter.
Feedback, on the other hand, is the cornerstone of evaluation. Without feedback, nonprofits wouldn’t have meaningful guidance on how to improve their programming. However, my hangup was with prototyping.
In business speak, in order to understand exactly how users will interact with a product, you have to test how the users interact with the product. Instead of developing a finished product, you create a scaled down version of it.
In design thinking, prototypes are built so that nonprofits can think about solutions in different ways (in the form of a tangible product rather than in abstract thinking). But in the nonprofit world, we tend to get hung up on these abstract ideas.
But I’ve learned that when you have a physical product to share, it’s easier to articulate a possible solution. Plus, it encourages you to take action more readily compared to just speaking about a solution.
It also encourages you to come up with multiple solutions based on the feedback you’re getting, and not be married to one idea. Though this can pose a problem for some nonprofits due to a variety of influences: Your funder may like one solution while you and your staff feel that another solution is better, for example.
I was also hung up on having to build an actual prototype, until I realized that developing logic models–the starting point of any program and a living document that many evaluators expect a program to have in place prior to an evaluation beginning– can serve as a prototype.
Tie this to the program’s curriculum and the ability to evaluate as you go, and we have a great way for nonprofits to prototype fast, adding and removing elements where needed to move towards program success. Being able to tie design thinking and evaluation neatly together is what sealed the deal for me.
Key takeaway
Nonprofits that can embrace the design thinking process can understand that there is a need to look for the gaps to get at the unaddressed needs of a problem they seek to solve. And that often can’t be done in the ways nonprofits are used to. When processes like prototyping feel unfamiliar and concerning, you have to trust the process, yourself, and your staff. Using design thinking encourages nonprofits to understand the complexities and nuances of the communities they serve in order to build innovative interventions. And when it’s done in a collaborative way–with staff, funders, program participants, and other stakeholders–design thinking has the potential to be a driving force in the nonprofit world.
Raise Your Voice: Does your nonprofit apply the design thinking process to create your programs? Share below in the comments section.
