DFA & Design Thinking on Your Resume

Published in

DFA Collaborative

7 min readJan 13, 2016

Whether you’re looking for a job related to design or not, design thinking is an invaluable skill to have. Employers are beginning to take notice of the importance of user research and iteration, and they’re looking for people who can bring these skills to the table. Design for America is a fantastic way to tell people about your experience using the design thinking process in the real world.

DFA is also a great indicator for a lot of other good things too. Think back to your DFA experience beyond just learning about design thinking. It’s pretty amazing that you’ve spent a significant amount of time and effort to work on projects that won’t get graded but are rooted in the desire to help people in a tangible way. DFAers are exceptional because you all have implemented the design thinking process outside of the classroom. You are passionate about solving the problems around you on your own time. You’ve worked in diverse and interdisciplinary teams and have been able to contribute to and leverage the skills of your team members. You’ve done some awesome things! Now it’s time to show off some of your accomplishments to potential employers!

This article will cover some resume best practices, and then dive in to DFA-specific resume tips and show you how DFAers across different roles have described Design for America. We want you to tell people about the awesome projects that you’ve worked on and the experience you’ve gained by being part of DFA!

General resume tips

All normal rules of resumes apply here. Here are some common things to keep in mind when writing or designing your resume:

Keep it simple: When designing your resume, it is better to err on the side of clean and minimalistic. Resumes are usually glanced at quickly, so readability and information hierarchy are extremely important. It’s okay if it looks boring, as long as they can read it.
Hit the high notes: It will be tempting to write a lot about each of your experiences, but space is usually limited. Pick the bullet points that demonstrate skills or impressive achievements that aren’t described elsewhere.
Be choosy: You don’t have to tell them about everything you’ve ever done. Tailor your resume to each employer and only include experience that is relevant to the position you are applying for.
Master list: Related to the point above, keep a master list of all of your resume descriptions so that you can easily copy and paste sections you need when tailoring your resume.
Action!: Use action verbs rather than passive voice. Here’s a good list of verbs to use (https://www.themuse.com/advice/185-powerful-verbs-that-will-make-your-resume-awesome)
Quantify your accomplishments: Use numbers and facts where you can to provide evidence of how awesome you are.
Contact: Remember to put your contact info on your resume so they know how to keep in touch! Address is less important, but phone number and email address are crucial.
PDF: Save your resume as a PDF and include your name in the file name so that people can easily find your resume and it looks the way you need it to.

DFA on your resume

This section is split into a few sub-sections that detail different parts of the DFA experience and how to write about them. Not all of these may apply to you, so pick the most relevant ones!

DFA Summary

Sometimes, you may want to include a description of what DFA is before launching into your experience. This depends a lot on how much space you have and how verbose you want to get. It’s definitely not required, and DFA is pretty easy to look up on the internet.

Here are some descriptions that DFAers have used:

Design for America is a national network of self-driven college innovators that are empowered to be leaders of social impact by utilizing key design processes needed to solve challenges communities face.
Design for America is a project-based student organization that addresses and solves social issues through the design process.
Design for America is a network of student-led studios that create local, social impact through interdisciplinary design.

Team Dynamics

One of the most compelling parts of DFA is that you are working with people from all different backgrounds and experiences. This is incredibly valuable for companies to know, and it is an aspect that is rarely seen in coursework and internships.

Here are some examples:

Learned how to work on a team to achieve a collective vision and results
Worked with peers to answer the simple, yet complex question, “How can we” do something together
Learned how to motivate teams through difficult problems to maintain energy and commitment
Collaborated with other DfA students throughout the academic year working on team-based design projects.

Project Management and Leadership

Being in DFA requires initiative and teaches leadership at all levels. It’s a crash course in managing people and projects, which are skills that employers are looking for.

Balanced 80 hours of school work while planning and scheduling self-created deadlines for our project (approx. 5 hours per week)
Worked toward deadlines and created deliverables as scheduled
Learned how to delegate tasks and keep others and myself accountable to our actions
Experienced “Lean” company structure and can think strategically as such
Applied skills on an assortment of project teams of various roles and challenges
Grew an autonomously run studio of DFA by 40% over 3 years
Voted most inspiring leader by my peers in DFA

Real examples from alum:

Founded first city-wide Design for America studio for students to create local & social impact through interdisciplinary design.
Directed a pilot program and collaborated with a multidisciplinary team for a semester- long human-centered design project on redesigning health records for children.
Coordinated a 10 member executive board and five project teams, established partnerships with companies and MIT faculty, and organized campus-wide events such as an Arduino Hackshop and a Graphic Design Hackshop with over 75 students in attendance at each.
Trained 8 teams every quarter through workshops, design reviews, and external resources; developed structure within the organization and managing a budget of $3000 during the year, $7000 during the summer; organized a weekend long design intensive for 5 studios across the Midwest
Managed ~30 members across 6 teams for 10-week long human-centered design project
Planned and executed new processes such as intensive leadership training, weekly deliverable requirements and technical skill workshops to develop members’ hard and soft skills.

Skills that you’ve learned

Sometimes you want to tell people about what you can do, or what you learned.

Well-practiced in creating forms and surveys to gain quick and useful feedback
Accumulated 40 hours of DFA skill workshops
Proficient use of entire adobe suite (Specializing in inDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop)
Conducted over 5 hours of user interviews
Familiar with many design research and synthesis techniques
Able to think of creative ideas and inspire others to think more creatively
Experience with laser cutting, 3D printing, water jet cutter, plasma cutters, mills, lathes, welding, woodworking, metal working, molding, arduinos, motors, raspberry Pi
Learning knowledge of HTML, CSS, java, C++, django, python, databases, UX, etc.
Learned alongside service designers, graphic designers, industrial designers, etc.

Examples from alum:

Researched local social, environmental issues; found community partners with whom teams could work
Conducted research about individuals with developmental/cognitive disabilities and barriers limiting their employment opportunities over six weeks
Created personas to create user empathy throughout the design process

Things that you’ve actually done

Focusing on specific projects and achievements are a good way to ground your experiences in reality and pique a reader’s interest.

Led a team of 10 students to redesign vehicular alerts for older drivers for Fiat Chrysler Automotives
Developed 1 prototype ambient LED color changing reverse sensor
Developed 1 prototype corner illumination headlight system
Presented concepts to chief engineer and human interaction designers at Chrysler Headquarters
Led healthy food access project featured on Forbes and Core77
Wrote and designed the RISD|Brown team proposal for a driving accessibility project sponsored by Chrysler (5 university studio chapters selected from a pool of 21)
Designed a new buckling system that makes it easier for the aging population and people of all abilities to buckle themselves in; presented at Fiat Chrysler Headquarters in December 2014; presenting at SAE International in April
Presented DFA’s approach to social innovation at Interaction13, a global design conference in Toronto, ON
Co-designed a new ‘tinkering’ exhibit for the Chicago Children’s Museum on Navy Pier with a team of five

Here are some resume excerpts from DFA alums that do a great job of showing off what DFAers can do:

This alum does a great job of splitting their different roles in DFA and highlighting important activities and elements of each role. The Studio Lead description provides a snapshot of the leadership skills learned, while the Project Designer role focuses on design research and some project results.

This description packs a lot of information into one paragraph. In one paragraph, this alum covers mentorship, leadership and logistics while describing some some specific projects and impact. There are no wasted words here.