Designing with Intentionality

Oakland Civic Design Lab

Hi everyone, my name is Brandon Greene and I am the Manager of the Oakland Civic Design Lab “OakCDL.” The Civic Design Lab is a public-private partnership embedded in Oakland City Hall with the purpose of serving as a Civic Incubator. We utilize principles of service design and human centered design. My task as manager is to re-envision not only what the Civic Design Lab will do but how it will do it. Since transparency is one of our core values, it is my hope that through these medium posts, we can give some insight into our thinking and keep people up to date on our progress.

In this first post, I would like to talk a little about our Mission, Vision, Values and Design Process as well as how we arrived at each.

In order to create the central frameworks that will guide our work going forward, we attempted to ground ourselves in the necessities. That is, what are the things that are vital, the non-negotiables that must be present in the DNA of OakCDL.

It should come as no surprise that the first step in this process, involved a white board, markers and post-its.

OakCDL mission, vision and values brainstorm photo. The photo shows post its on a white board along with writing describing and defining rubrics for success.

OakCDL brainstorm photo. The photo shows a white board with post its and writing defining what we mean by empowerment, impact, transparency and accountability.

Before doing any drafting of the words that make up our Mission, Vision and Design process, we wanted to first make sure that we were specific about what values would guide us. These values would be the bedrock of everything that we do and would guide everything from how we communicate about our work to how we decide to take projects on. After some brainstorming, we settled on; 1) Empowerment; 2) Impact; 3) Transparency; 4) Accountability; and 5) Equity. Of course, these terms without substance behind them, mean nothing so we sought to define them in the following ways:

Oakland Civic Design Lab Values

1. EMPOWERMENT

· Creating space for intentional, racially inclusive community access to decision makers

· Creating space for intentional, inclusive opportunities for government workers to engage with and build with community

· Creating space for intentional shared community/government access to the solution generating pro equity process

2. IMPACT

· Increased community trust in government

· Measurable change in the lived experiences of residents most impacted by racial disparities

· Measurable change in government culture and operations

· Measurable change in how community and government interact

3. TRANSPARENCY

· Transparent decision making and project selection processes

· Transparent sharing of outcomes

· Transparent sharing of challenges

· Transparent sharing of lessons learned and modifications made as a result

· Transparent sharing of resources.

4. ACCOUNTABILITY

· Community accountable through role as constituents

· City accountable through role as a services provider

· Shared responsibility, when all are active in their role, it makes room for everyone to thrive

5. EQUITY

· Operating from a mindset of abundance

· Understanding that some solutions may require the use of more resources

· Intentional focus on racial disparities, their root causes and how those disparities are perpetrated by institutions and systems.

· Defining benchmarks, tracking racial disparity data, and measuring outcomes as drivers for success to eliminate racial disparities in Oakland

After we settled on the values that drive us, we asked ourselves at a minimum which of the values would need to have the potential to show up as outcomes, in order for us to contemplate taking on a project? We decided that all projects must have the potential to 1) empower; 2)make tangible impact; and 3)increase racial equity. These three factors became our internal vetting process.

Once we had working definitions of our values, we sought to determine just what we would be endeavoring to do each day (our Mission) and what success would look like in a broader context (our Vision). With each, we tried to ensure that they synched with our value set as our North Star.

Through several workshopped drafts and some focused digging through a thesaurus, we landed on the words that we thought properly conveyed our message.

Mission:

To deconstruct and reimagine the delivery of government services and the distribution of government resources though building authentic inclusive community relationships and empowering City staff.

For our mission we wanted to ground the distribution of services and resources in tangible and measurable impact. Meaning, if executed properly, how would real lives and real people, benefit?

Vision:

We will empower impacted people by working to transform how they experience the City of Oakland through challenging existing narratives about how government works and by promoting a culture of racial equity and inclusion, innovation, accountability and transparent decision making among City staff and leadership.

For our vision we wanted to use words that clearly allow us to measure our success.

After we were clear on the values that guide us and how those values show up in our Mission and Vision statements, we wanted to make sure that those values also clearly showed up in our design process.

Design cycle to ensure that how we work upholds our values:

1. Co-create the table

a. Invite Stakeholders

i. City staff

ii.Community

b. Solicit Feedback

c. Ask “Who is missing?”

2. Gather Data desegregated by race

a. Through engaging in active listening that:

1. Centers those most impacted by racial disparities

2. Acknowledges past and present histories and outcomes

3. Believes the experiences of those impacted

3. Assess community assets and needs

4. Define the challenges and opportunities

5. Reimagine how the systems can function (brainstorm)

i. Ask “Who is disproportionately benefitting?”

1. Gather more data

b. Co-create/Design/Build/ Mitigate harm

c. Gather feedback/learnings

i. Ask “Do potential solutions/outcomes align with values?”

ii.Ask “Do potential solutions/outcomes create the desired impact?

Iii. Ask “ how can we mitigate harm until goal is achieved?

1. Who disproportionately benefits?

iii. If no, start back at 1

OakCDL Design Process photo. The photo visual demonstrates the steps of our design process.

Now that we have all of the component parts, we have a framework by which we can communicate with internal and external stakeholders about how we select projects and why as well as what the project design process will entail.

However, because we are a public-private partnership embedded in the City of Oakland, our internal vetting process is not the only process that takes place for projects to be greenlit. Projects must also go through an additional layer of approval, the administrative review process to ensure that there is significant alignment and buy-in within the City. This process, though separate is embedded in the initial step of our design process — “Co-Create the table.” In this step, not only are the relevant City Departments identified but so are potential communinity partners. This ensures that at every step, we are recieving input from community.

Photo of the OakCDL Administrative Instruction process governing project selection.

We are still in the strategic planning and project vetting process but hopefully this will give some insight into how we are thinking. We look forward to sharing updates with you in the future.