Finding Connection while Physically Apart: Creating Collective Impact–Service Design at the Center of Good
In place of pizza and chit chat, the evening started with a (remote) collective deep breath as a moment to pause and acknowledge the current situation. Just like every other second Tuesday of the month, the Service Design Network (SDN) New York Chapter gathered to build community and learn something new. Only, this time, the group wasn’t able to gather in-person. So, chapter leaders did what designers do best — come up with a solution that best meets the needs of who they serve, within tight constraints, while using available tools.
Many events hosted by the SDN New York Chapter are oriented around hands-on collaboration, learning, and getting to know one another. Their goal has always been to bring people together in an interactive way through activities and workshops. But, in times like these, sometimes it’s best to simply let the experts do the talking, listen, and take a note or two. So the SDN NYC brought in subject matter expert Jenny Kempson, Social Impact Program Lead at Capital One, to take the Zoom mic for the chapter’s first webinar style event.
With 10+ years of experience in human-centered practice, Jenny has worked to bring experiences to life in non-profit, civic, community, and private sectors alike. In her talk Creating Collective Impact–Service Design at the Center of Good, Jenny walked us through the unique challenges, practices, and roles that service design plays in the nonprofit sector amongst a variety of disciplines; such as public health, city development, small business entrepreneurship, and economic inclusion for older adults.
Service design can be a driver for global growth, development and innovation within any sector. While the discipline continues to gain traction and become more widely recognized, many practitioners recognize that organizations across industries and sectors are all functionally designing services and leveraging similar methodology, even if the term service design is never used.
Even when they have similar missions, not all organizations, are created equal. By walking through several projects from her last decade of work in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York, Jenny highlights the similarities and differences in the role of a service designer (titled or not) inside a nonprofit organization, a social agency, and in a corporate social responsibility program. Her walkthrough focused on the outcomes and lessons learned from each effort, zeroing in on the common the tools, languages barriers, and impact metrics that are important to practicing service design for good in different settings focused on creating social impact — from nonprofit community-oriented spaces to corporate-backed programs.
For Jenny, service design is about “looking at the end-to-end experience of anything.” In the social sector, she says that practitioners may have to “put their stake in the ground,” but are also granted the opportunity to educate and empower impassioned people into coming together for the collective good.
The full recording of Jenny’s talk is available on Vimeo. To learn more about SDN New York Chapter and register to (virtually) join our next event Tuesday May 12th check back on our Meetup page for details, and find us on Slack!
