Whoa, We’re Halfway There
By Payal Bhujwala, Brandon Fiksel, Dana Frostig, Molly Schaefer, and Nick Simons.
Previously, in MHCI x TPF…
In our last medium post, we discussed our plans to continue working on our presentation, report, and project website. We have made solid progress on those deliverables, and are working on finalizing our slide deck for the Spring Presentation next week. You might also remember that we said we were working toward a narrowed problem statement to serve as our focus moving forward. Well, good news: we’ve selected our problem statement and an approach to solving it! Before we divulge that information, though, we would like to reflect a little on our experiences so far in this project.
Reflection
As we’ve been working on consolidating and refining our work over the last several months, seeing everything come together has been really fulfilling. It’s exciting when an insight found early on in our research connects seamlessly with a newer revelation and inspires us with rich opportunities and ideas that we could incorporate into our final solution.
Looking back on all of our work, we are seeing just how much we have learned from our meetings with our clients and meaningful conversations with donors, grantees, and locals. Aside from donating what we can to causes we care about and volunteering here and there, our knowledge of philanthropy was pretty surface level when we first started this project. Now, we not only have a deeper understanding of the philanthropy and nonprofit ecosystem, but a new appreciation for the field and the individuals dedicating their time and expertise to help others. Also, we can now confidently say we understand what a community foundation is, and how The Pittsburgh Foundation operates (a feat we were told can take up to two years of working there). Most importantly, we are fortunate to have been able to get to know and learn from so many different amazing people within the Pittsburgh philanthropic community. We are grateful that we had these months to dive in deep in our research to be able to fully understand the problem space.
Narrowed Scope
Through organic discovery and strategic research, we have identified a narrowed problem statement that is the culmination of our insights and opportunities:
How might we more effectively capture, assess, and utilize donor information, so that TPF is equipped to simultaneously further the personalization of their donor services and the matching of donors to pressing community needs?
We found our way to this narrowed scope through our intertwined insights and key opportunity areas, which focus on donors, their connection to the community, and their relationship with TPF. While all donors are eager to support the community, and many highly value the personal connection they have with TPF, they are highly diverse individuals with unique interests. Supporting these donors requires a lot of manual effort and highly specialized knowledge, which is why…
*** drum roll***
We are going to address our narrowed problem statement by focusing on an internal tool for TPF that captures donor information in an easily consumable and actionable way, equipping TPF to further personalize their donor services and match donors to pressing community needs.
Moving Forward Into Summer Semester
Armed with our narrowed problem statement, we are currently working on distilling our work to date into our Spring Presentation, our Research Insights & Reframing Report, and our Project Website. We have kept our TPF team updated along the way in terms of our research and progress, but it will be exciting to thoroughly explain the insights we uncovered and show how those fed into our narrowed direction.
Immediately following our Spring Presentation at the end of the month, we scheduled a lengthy Summer Planning session with our TPF team, where we’ll collaboratively iron out our directives and goals for the last months of our Capstone project.
What we can say for sure is that our Summer semester will involve lots of iterative design — prototyping, testing, refining, and prototyping again. And while we wish we could conduct these user tests in person, we are confident that testing out our prototypes virtually with the TPF team will be valuable and insightful, especially as they continue to navigate the new remote work space in their daily operations.
“The thing I remember best about successful people I’ve met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they’re doing” — Fred Rogers
…Oh, and here’s some bloopers from the cutting room floor:
