Utilizing human-centered design for increased impact and efficacy — Interview with Rachel Lehrer from International Rescue Committee
Written by Yu Namie
The human-centered design (HCD) approach is booming and is relevant for any organization that wants to innovate. Not only the private sector but also governments and the nonprofit sector have started to introduce the HCD approach.
If you are familiar with international NGOs, you may have noticed that they are also aware of the value of HCD. However, as is the case in any other sector or with any new way of working, implementing a new culture and a new process of working throughout the organization is quite tough. Even if you have an innovation team in place, we all know that this is no guarantee of a culture change.
International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a global non-governmental organization that responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. They have one of the largest innovation teams in the industry.
About Rachel Lehrer
Associate Director of Innovation and Design at the Airbel Impact Lab
Prior to joining the IRC, She was designing the experience for LinkNYC, a communications network that will bring fast Wifi to millions of New Yorkers, a new lobby experience for a prestigious NYC museum, and digital banking with the World Bank for the poorest women in Pakistan.
What is innovative about the Airbel Impact Lab?
Yu: Can you tell us what the Airbel Impact Lab is and what you do there?
Rachel: Airbel Impact Lab is the innovation team of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Using the design thinking approach, we design solutions for people affected by conflict and disaster. As an associate director of design and innovation, I lead the design team while doing the fundamental work of a designer such as researching, designing, testing, and scaling solutions.
I was the first designer hired for the team and the third member of Airbel. After five years, the team had grown to more than 40 innovators including designers, academic researchers, strategists, and behavioral scientists. We have three innovation hubs across the world: Jordan, Tanzania, and New York City.
Difference between the traditional way and the new way of programming
Y: I assume that even in the traditional way of programming, NGOs need field research to identify a problem and design programs. What do you see as the biggest difference between the traditional way and the new way of programming? (Programming here means NGOs design solutions or supporting programs for people in need.)
R: The current programming does a need-based assessment; we ask people on the ground, “What do you need?” and design a program. Sometimes we get to pilot it but mostly it goes straight to implementation. This traditional style of programming doesn’t include prototyping or testing. And then if it fails, it’s a really expensive failure. In the end, people may not want to use the solution or it will have little impact or It won’t be scalable, sustainable, or cost-effective.
On the other hand, we can also integrate evidence-based programming into a design thinking approach. We test to see if the evidence-based solution actually works on a smaller scale. We look to see how we can improve it. We spend more time researching and testing before launching a program.
At the Airbel Impact Lab and at the IRC many projects still proceed without a lot of upfront testing. This is often a time and resource constraint, not a lack of commitment to understanding user needs and improving our programs.
Y: How do you usually start projects with the new approach?
R: We work with an IRC country office team that has identified client problems they don’t currently have the answer to and aligns with Airbel’s priority areas.
Designed violence prevention program with local churches
Y: Can you give us an example of your work at the Airbel Impact Lab?
R: As a recent project, an Airble team and partners from World Vision designed and tested a violence prevention program in Uganda. What we created is a counseling program designed to bring couples closer and prevent intimate partner violence.
The program is delivered by faith leaders at local churches. They guide couples through engaging workbooks that support them in practicing communication skills, emotional regulation, shared control over finances and household duties, sexual consent, and pleasure.
We started by understanding the evidence of how people we’re currently solving the problem themselves — who their trusted resources are. To do this, we conducted field research in a number of regions: Liberia, Ethiopia, and Uganda. We identified local churches as an important resource and a pathway for a scalable and sustainable successful intervention.
In Uganda and many other East African countries, Christian couples are expected and highly motivated to attend premarital counseling programs at their local churches.
In addition, faith leaders are trusted sources of knowledge and advice, skilled in teaching and counseling. They already spend a lot of time counseling couples through conflict; marriage and premarital counseling are sometimes revenue sources for a church. We co-created the program with the faith leaders and couples.
Good collaboration with those closest to the problem is the key to succeeding in a project. In this project, the local churches and World Vision were very passionate about this and supportive in the design and implementation of the program.
Internal awareness on HCD should be a consequence of success
Y: I see that spreading awareness of the value of the design process seems challenging to any organization. It seems that many NGO innovation teams are struggling with increasing their innovation capacity as well. I heard that innovation managers of other NGOs are offering training programs such as design thinking workshops and entrepreneurship competitions internally. How do you raise awareness of the value of HCD within IRC?
R: Airbel Impact Lab has the luxury of generally just working on innovation projects. In this sense, we are a little different from innovation teams in other organizations. I understand that many NGO innovation teams have a mission to make the innovation mindset, process, and toolkit accessible throughout their organizations, but that is not our mission. We drive design thinking through a practical application, but being innovative in terms of all of our colleagues taking part in an innovation process is not a primary goal we have.
We think that changing the work ethic in an organization of almost 40,000 people is not really a scalable model. We conduct our project separately from the normal projects. The goal for us is to bring our skillset and to connect people and connect our teams on the ground, each with a skill set that is closest to them.
We believe that organizational culture change happens as a consequence of us running these programs, which use the design thinking approach and getting better results.
Use data as evidence and be self-critical about what we do
Y: Practically, what consequences do you expect?
R: I know this is a super rare thing, but Airbel started with the very strong belief that design was worthwhile and perfect. Airbel Impact Lab emerged from a new strategy that drives the entire organization towards evidence-based programming. We are a very self-critical organization in which we have heavily invested in evidence and research.
So we published academic research papers and people at the IRC knew very early on that our programs weren’t working. And so that opened the door for everyone to say, we need to try something else. We need to optimize the process. It helps us to be serious about seeking more cost-effective and impactful program development.
Y: At the meeting with innovation managers of other NGOs, I remember that they were jealous that your organization had already realized the need to change. I also noticed that 40 people in the innovation team of an NGO is a pretty large scale. How did AirbeI Impact Lab grow its number of innovators?
R: It was about our strong value proposition to our donors. It was NOT about suggesting to donors, “Let’s do innovation.” We show the design thinking methodology as an alternative and strong approach which can produce better outcomes. We also had evidence that this could be effective.
We not only have HCD experts, but we also have other technical specialists in our team. We looked at not only design aspects but also supplemented skill sets that design frequently lacks, such as the skill to analyze cost-effectiveness and integrate with the process and toolset that humanitarian sectors are used to. We show that the design thinking approach can avoid large failures and produce more impactful solutions; it is cost-effective.
To prove the difference, we use the result of randomized control trials (RCT). An RCT is an experiment that randomly allocates subjects to two or more groups, applying a separate treatment to each, and then comparing them with a control group. This methodology is also adopted in medical, social science, and economic intervention.
At IRC, this methodology takes place within traditional programming as well. So we show that the design thinking approach can create much more impact by showing the difference between results.
Bring different skillsets to the people in the field
Y: To accelerate innovation in the humanitarian sector, what could we do?
R: I don’t know if I am accelerating innovation in this sector. But I believe that one of the valuable things we could do is to make the skill set available to the people who are the closest to the problems. In the end, they know the context best, and they will be the best problem solvers.
However, at this moment, what they might lack is the ability to make something quickly and to receive feedback then immediately turn that into solutions. And so a lot of the work that we’re trying to do now is to bring various types of skill sets and sectors together to think about how to address problems in a user-centered way. It’s become essential to find and train designers who are based in the countries where we work.
The answer to your question could be building tools that the rest of the humanitarian sector can use, whether for cost-effective analysis, figuring out how to make evidence actionable, or talking about our hybrid innovation and design process with people in this sector. I think that bringing our skillset to IRCcountry teams who are close to the problem is incredibly impactful and seems to be one of the main channels through which we can make innovation scalable and sustainable at the IRC.
Closing: HCD is a tool to create a better society; innovation itself is not the goal
Rachel’s story told us the power of evidence-based approaches for integrating design thinking into existing organizations’ systems. It is fascinating that IRC takes an evidence-based lens to its conventional programs. I understand that this allows Airbel Impact Lab to focus purely on innovation projects and on making an impact cost-effectively. As Rachel said, the key to being evidence-based is being able to conduct and share research, in that they study and publish the results of their programs openly, including the failed cases.
She also commented that making skill sets available to people in the field is a valuable process because people who are close to the problem should solve problems better. Collaboration seems to be an effective way to create an impact on society.
I understand Rachel’s point, “It is not about accelerating innovation as an end in itself, but making positive impacts effectively.” Design thinking and human-centered design approaches are just ways to make that happen.
The author met Rachel through the Innovators Team by Proportion. Innovators Team offers a safe space in which innovation managers at International NGOs can share their experience and find the path to overcome their challenges together. If you are interested in learning more about the Innovators Team, please check out our website.
