I set out a challenge to meet with 30 social innovators in a month.

here’s what I learned from all these coffee dates

It is no easy task to cultivate change and help other members of the community thrive. There are many problems in need of solutions, but as a designer, I know that it would be irresponsible to simply tell people that “I have the solutions for you”.

I started the #Impact30Coffee challenge in an almost impulsive manner.I want to learn from other people’s experiences in trying to create impact or motivations for being part of a bigger movement.

I want to learn the perspectives of people who are creating change in the city.

Network of Networks

Perhaps the most overused term in 2018 is “Network of Networks”. While non-profits and charities are important parts of our social support system, funding cycles for organizations are sporadic and, most of the time, stressful. Reliance on grants and government funding has a darker side nobody ever talks about. The topic came up in a few of the coffee chats but was edited out from the posts. Long story short, many organizations compete over small amounts of money for individual survival needs rather than investing their time in forming a stronger network with complementing initiatives to multiply the collective impact.

Another challenge for the “do good sector” is that these social impact organizations are founded by people with no previous organizational experiences. In the case of social enterprises, the required knowledge in the operations of the business is even more important as the organization is now competing against all the similar businesses in the sector. Simply being a “do good business” will not be the primary reason why people should pay more for a service or a product. The social enterprise has to be good, and in most cases, better than what is already out on the market. Although many founders of social impact organizations may be subject-matter experts in making the world a friendlier place, knowledge in business operations, design, and technology are often absent.

Designing “Social Good” with or without Technology

Design as a profession in changing the world for the better is often invisible and sometimes underrated. While business goals and sales can be understood from a quantitative perspective through numbers and capital gain, the impact of good design is experiential. What makes people choose to contribute their time and money to one cause over another? What makes people feel that they can make an impact and be part of the movement through their everyday actions?

The sad truth is, design either means getting a $50 logo from UpWork or the extreme makeover “when we have some extra money”. The pressing challenge for design to be part of the conversation is is that the work of a designer is always the first thing to get cut from the budget. It is always considered as a “nice to have”, but a great design has the potential to completely transform the experiences of “doing good”.

The design of an experience is always emotional. It communicates empathy and compassion. When applied properly, the design yields powerful outcomes through storytelling beyond the delivery of individual perceivable elements such as a logo mark, a typeface, and web interfaces. Good design communicates the whole story.

Organizations tend to forget, while technology can help you with a robust “donate” button, the design is what makes people remember your stories and inspire them to support your cause long term. Design needs to be elegant, it also needs to be functional. The aesthetics are there not merely for the reason of “being pretty”, but to engage an audience, provoke a certain emotion, and ultimately prompt a person to take action.

When it comes to building a digital presence, many designers and web developers have experienced the “just a UI/UX dev job to do some quick visual enhancement” or “I need an app for this” request. Often enough, the poor manifestations of aesthetics and experiences are rooted in elements that are not immediately visible to the eye. At the same time, do organizations really need an app to provide good services?

Design can bring things that you are able to perceive immediately, such as graphics and visual elements of an app interface, it can also enhance an organization in ways that are rather complex and invisible. I had long chats about designing the invisibles with a few of service designers. Many organizations face challenges in “digital transformation” — a process of learning to work with technology. Design, in this context, takes away the fear towards the ever-changing landscape, and assists organizations toward achieving greater impact through developing a symbiotic relationship with uncertainties and new technological advancements. Most importantly, understanding the invisible layers of design is crucial in addressing the root cause of many challenges for our society as a whole.

Working Together, Creatively

While being bombarded by articles promoting how tools such as programming(coding) and design thinking can fuel social innovation, we should also value the soft skills that can help us to understand the issues we need to tackle more holistically. The reality is that there are people in need of food and shelter right at this moment, and we can’t simply choose the longterm goals above the immediate needs.

That’s the difficult part of social innovation. The challenge is that we cannot do it alone.

Similar to Network of Networks, creativity is a force we cannot ignore. Creativity is not what people should do on the side, after work, in their garages. Creativity is practical. Creativity drives many of us to relentlessly derive new knowledge from existing ones (inevitably with some failures here and there). Creativity gives people hope at the end of a 16-hour work day where nothing about “chasing a dream” is guaranteed to work out but a slim chance of “finally making it”. Being creative is the most powerful mindset that can pull people out of undesirable situations and build a better future for themselves. In the case of theSpace, by enabling adults with intellectual disabilities to develop skills in arts and media production, members gain self-confidence and increased financial independence through their new-found outlets to communicate their thoughts to a wider audience and work with the teachers and other members in their cohort.

Ottawa needs a creative culture that is rooted in collaboration, good communication, and critical thinking. These qualities will give us leverage to not simply fit people into narrowly-defined jobs and positions provided by mega-corporations, but to turn constraints and limitations into opportunities through a collective desire. This is not about a certain segment of the population, namely “ social innovators” or “community builders”, having the technology and techniques to become more “innovative” and “tech savvy”.

We need a community where ordinary people can chase their passions, share their work, take a leap of faith, and make a decent living out of the work they produce without feeling that their current financial, physical, and social situations are keeping them from going forward (or anywhere).

This community is not going to magically appear because of the great social benefit organizations we have in the city or a certain group have advocated for it. We need to create this community on our own, so that we can help each other grow.

about the posts…

some haven’t gotten back to me regarding the content…yet… (and I’ll probably never get to post them)

You are welcomed to view the ones that I got to post here: https://www.instagram.com/nomadic_labs/

and I didn’t get 30
but it doesn’t matter

I had a lot of coffee.