In conversation with SIL’s Design Strategists in Residence 2021
Get to know SIL’s Design Strategists in Residence (DSiR), Francesca Bonifacio and Eesha Patne.
In this interview, learn more about Francesca and Eesha’s journeys to Baltimore, where they obtained their graduate degrees at MICA’s Center for Social Design, and how they brought their design experience to the SIL Accelerator Cohort in winter/spring 2021.
SIL’s DSiRs provided teams with introductory training on human-centered design, support in their customer discovery process, and finally helped to synthesize findings from their 20+ interviews with stakeholders.
SIL: Where are you from?
Francesca: I was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in Chicago, IL. Currently, I’m based in Baltimore, MD.
Eesha: I was born in Pune, India, and grew up in Boston, USA, Mumbai IN, New Delhi IN, and Pune IN. I am currently based in Baltimore, USA.
SIL: What were you doing BEFORE you came to Baltimore and studied at MICA?
Francesca: Before moving to Baltimore, I worked full-time in marketing communications for different financial institutions in Chicago. Beyond my day job, I co-founded Backyard Chicago, an arts education nonprofit that introduced middle school students on Chicago’s South and West sides to poetry and theatre as tools for healing justice. We piloted an after-school program where students devoted time to poetry before writing, directing, and performing their original plays. We also mounted an original piece by Lizzy May across select neighborhoods in Chicago and were invited to perform at the Midtown International Theatre Festival in New York City.
Eesha: Before coming to Baltimore, I worked full-time as a product and industrial designer in different design studios in Mumbai, Pune, and Bengaluru, India. I primarily designed electronic appliances and consumer goods. While transitioning from product design to learning about social design and environmental justice, I co-founded Reuse Therapy. This social initiative discussed sustainability, zero-waste living and textile and fashion waste. We managed and conducted an event in Pune that had a clothing swap and collaborated with 8–10 local brands to highlight sustainable products and held conversations and workshops about ethical, waste-free, and creative living. It managed to bring together more than 150 residents and successfully put sustainable living ideas into action.
SIL: What made you interested in obtaining a MA in Social Design?
Francesca: While working to develop Backyard Chicago’s educational and artistic programming, I grew to understand that everything we interact with is designed — therefore, designers are integral in shaping our internal and external worlds. The difference between good design and bad design — or whether something works as intended and benefits the right people — depends on solid research, diverse co-creators and a holistic view of the challenge at hand. Pursuing design thus felt like an organic next step to hone my skills in research and strategy, while working to transform the field itself. One of my goals is to introduce methods and philosophies that facilitate richer, more complex conversations and allow for alternative ideas from diverse perspectives to flourish.
Though I considered pivoting to a graphic design career after years in marketing, my experience launching Backyard Chicago compelled me to think more critically about design’s potential beyond its familiar purpose as a visual communications tool. While doing research on the design industry, I stumbled upon an article written by George Aye of Greater Good Studio called “Design Education’s Big Gap: Understanding the Role of Power” (2017). I began to see design’s potential to transcend its often prescriptive and exclusionary application to finally involve perspectives that have long been erased or neglected. — Francesca Bonifacio, SIL DSiR 2021
After comparing different social design programs, I felt drawn to the M.A. in Social Design program at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). During a visit to Baltimore, I learned more about the curriculum and the postgraduate opportunities, which provide an avenue for the work to take place in the real world with real people, rather than in a controlled environment. Design’s practical application was important to me, and I concluded that a mid-sized city with an interconnected network of social impact initiatives unfolding on the ground was the right place to dive in headfirst.
Eesha: I noticed the repercussions of my role and work in a waste-generating, unjust system while working as a product and industrial designer in India. Waste was the key trigger that helped me make the shift to conscious design.
Primarily as a design thinker and doer, I recognize the value of design in reimagining societal norms born out of historically oppressive policies and cultures that are alienating all things non-human. Realizing the importance of ecological sustainability and social responsibility of design, it felt crucial to take a step in this direction and better understand the systems that govern our decision making. — Eesha Patne, SIL DSiR 2021
As a first step, a friend and I conducted an event called Reuse Therapy that aimed at discussing fast fashion in our city of Pune, India. Even though successful, the event was still a solutionist approach that fell short of addressing the problem at the root cause. This was when I knew I wanted to learn about systems and holistic approaches to challenges.
I wanted to learn this through doing and by immersing in community-led work. MICA’s M.A. in Social Design spoke of doing that and more.
SIL: Why did you choose to stay in Baltimore for an additional year as a Social Design Associate?
Francesca: As a newcomer to Baltimore entering the social design space, building trust with residents and the communities they’re a part of was an important consideration for me. I quickly observed the cycle of designers opting into a project, involving members of a community (which they may not even belong to) and then leaving abruptly — ultimately, this can breed distrust and jeopardize the integrity of the project and the people behind it.
While collaborating with other people and organizations in Baltimore, I felt it was important to stay and learn more about the city I was working in and the people I was working with. It’s tough to do that in a year. And it’s difficult to form relationships and reap the fruits of our labor if we opt out prematurely. If our vision as designers is to facilitate sustainable systems change, then that must require a solid understanding of the histories, contexts, environments and people that have contributed to shaping the current systems. In achieving this, we can better imagine future systems. Just like building trust, executing good design takes time.
Eesha: Having travelled a lot growing up, I wasn’t necessarily expecting to stay in Baltimore after the program. During my time at MICA, the relationships that were built with communities around me were instrumental in creating a bond with this city. People felt familiar to home in many ways and were warm and welcoming. After my thesis project was put on hold with the onset of the pandemic, I wanted to make sure that I was doing justice to the work that was being done and do my best to honor it. My experience in this city felt incomplete and I knew I had to stay back.
SIL: In your opinion, what’s the importance of design in social innovation?
Francesca: Everything we interact with is designed — even the ways in which we interact. But the reality is that most design decisions are made behind closed doors without substantial input from the people who should’ve been in the room from the start. Consequently, new products, services, systems and policies are introduced to the world that really only benefit a few groups and may not have the kind of staying power their creators hoped for.
By contrast, when we design with the intent to democratize the process and design with people rather than for them, we can actively shift power dynamics to favor perspectives that have been systematically ignored or erased. Rather than choosing from a dearth of ideas, we can actively seek and give weight to perspectives absent in “popular” or conventional design, thus expanding the set of possible solutions capable of meeting diverse needs.
Innovation is often equated with novel invention or manifestation of the unknown, but I believe there’s already a wealth of knowledge and wisdom that predates our modern understanding of “innovation”. One principle I like to keep in mind is: Look for what’s already working. The solutions we seek are likely already there — they just need to be uncovered and uplifted. Doing so may also be more sustainable and environmentally conscious, in that instead of creating new materials, we can leverage existing resources. In turn, the design solutions are likely to feel more familiar and valuable to the people engaging with them in the long term.
Eesha: Social change that tackles large wicked problems requires systemic solutions. Design and design processes have the ability to provide a framework to solve big, messy problems from local transportation services to larger subjects like immigrations policies or climate change. Design has the potential to be the ultimate compass pointing us in the right direction. But I think more than just ‘design’, it is important to design with and not for. There is a chance for Design as a tool and an industry to ensure that community-driven decisions take center stage. I feel that without (ethical) design, there is no social innovation.
SIL: What are emerging trends in the field of design for social innovation that programs should pay attention to?
Francesca: Design for social innovation, or “social design” — whatever you’d like to call it — is still a young field. Right now, I’ve noticed more private corporations and large consulting firms advertising openings for human-centered designers, design researchers, etc. I’ve found this shift intriguing, primarily because my understanding and application of HCD necessitates a sobering analysis of the systemic forces at work that continually harm or neglect specific communities. In other words, I see design at its most impactful and effective when we combine design literacy (the tools) with social literacy (the histories, systems and conventions that determine who wields power and who has been disempowered). So, to see private entities adopt a “human-centered design” approach prompts the question, “Whom are you really centering?”
That said, at the same time, the definition of design and what it constitutes has noticeably expanded. Concepts circulating right now that I’ve encountered include: futures thinking, speculative design, service design/er (as a formalized term and job title), biomimetic design, design justice, inclusive design and design for accessibility, to name a few. None of them are mutually exclusive, and in my opinion, the magic of design is in being able to harness the unique capabilities of different disciplines.
While trends can be useful in informing a particular strategy or philosophy, they’re still just that: trends. And as with all trends, I think it’s important to think critically about why they’re emerging at a particular time, who has popularized them, and how they’re being used to either maintain the status quo (which we know isn’t working) or to intentionally strive to reshape and redefine it.
Eesha: Primarily revolving around human-centered design (HCD) as a process, this field of social innovation or social design is expanding its tools and methods. During my work with the Baltimore Office of Sustainability, along with HCD, we used biomimicry and life-centered design as a method and philosophy to work around food waste and look to nature for a sustainable, holistic solution. The creation of MyOak Public Market also used service design tools to ensure food service that was geared towards a diverse customer and vendor base. The work around COVID-19 vaccine access and hesitancy was primarily rooted in inclusivity and accessibility along with unique approaches through design justice principles and service design tools. The Oyster project is future-focused, systems oriented and built on oral histories and archival research. Terry Irwin does a great job of tackling the wicked design challenges with a systemic approach in a field she calls Transition Design.
A key trend that stands out to me from all of these experiences and all the work that is being done by individuals all over the world, is the need for a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach. We’re moving away from a purist lens to design and looking at more of a cross-disciplinary, contextual, pluriversal lens as the problems get bigger and more complex. I wouldn’t necessarily call this a trend as it feels more like a necessary shift.
SIL: What linkages do you see between Human Centered Design and the customer discovery process?
Francesca: Human-centered design (HCD) and the customer discovery process are both intended to gain an understanding of the end user/ person/ group/ community that will be engaging with a specific design solution. Specifically, both methods seek to challenge assumptions and to identify patterns across individual narratives that reveal motivations, desires, challenges and needs. The goal is to design something that benefits the intended “customer”.
HCD in particular draws from a range of disciplines — like ethnography, anthropology, data analysis, etc. — to shape the research process. You might hear the term HCD in conjunction with “mixed methods research”, which is exactly what it sounds like. In this regard, HCD has the capacity to go deep and have an added emphasis on involving the “customer” throughout each phase of the design process. When thought of in the context of social design, HCD might also devote more attention to understanding the social, historical and political contexts around a problem.
Eesha: The core of human-centered design is rooted in research and understanding the context of the problem from the community or the individuals perspectives. After an idea has been developed, prototyping and testing of the idea is extremely crucial. This is where it shares the pool with the customer discovery process. The latter aims at identifying the stakeholders and target customers to test your business hypotheses and product concept. This is after the idea has already emerged. HCD focuses on ensuring consistent testing and validation by involving the key stakeholders through research, even before an idea has been developed. This method can help ensure that a venture or an innovation stays grounded in the social context while the customer discovery process can get into the specifics of customer feedback.
SIL: What has been the most rewarding part about your interaction with the SIL teams thus far?
Francesca: My favorite moments when working with anyone are always those that lead to someone saying, “I never thought about that before.” It’s a powerful inflection point that, when gently handled and thoughtfully nurtured, can lead to important discoveries about each other, our communities, the larger ecosystem we exist in and ourselves. In design, there’s always the risk of being too narrowly prescriptive with our “solutions” or interventions. Or there’s the risk of letting our personal worldview do too much of the guiding just because it feels familiar, rather than being open and humble enough to pause and ask, “What’s missing here? What do I need to know that I don’t already know? Whose experience would be invaluable here?”
One SIL team I worked with early on in the program went from revising their interview questions to analyzing the limitations of their proposed solution to evictions in just one session. There was a moment when our conversation shifted from how to ask good questions to considering what systemic factors might be contributing to evictions. That discussion opened up new avenues of exploration for them, from which communities to consult with moving forward, to trust-building with interviewees in light of the sensitive nature of the topic, to addressing tech accessibility. It was rewarding to arrive at that moment together.
That said, I think any team that wants to get the most out of HCD must demonstrate a commitment to the principles of “unlearning” and leading with inquisitiveness. They ought to leave their assumptions at the door, or maybe bring those assumptions along and kindly ask them to sit quietly. Without genuine interest in and respect for the people whose lives will be directly affected by design decisions, these moments of meaningful discovery will be difficult to come by.
Eesha: Very similar to Fran’s experience, the most rewarding part of SIL has been the unexpected revelations, realizations that the teams have experienced through conversations and candid banter. From thinking about broad challenges to working through how those challenges trickle into opportunities for interventions, to talking through stakeholders and interview questions — this has been just as much a learning experience for me as I hope it has for the teams.
This is also where social innovation differentiates itself from other entrepreneurial ventures because the social literacy context is just as important as the methods or tools (HCD) to do research and deliver products. Knowing and understanding your place as a designer or innovator is important in order to better serve needs for the people you are designing with. It is crucial to reflect and be aware of the assumptions and the implicit biases that you walk around with and invite into spaces. It was refreshing and definitely rewarding to see that the teams had a sense of that introspection and were handling each of their work with care and utmost seriousness.
SIL: Where do you hope to take your expertise in social design in the future?
Francesca: As a design strategist, it’s been wonderful to have collaborated with many different partners on a range of projects. The evolving nature of my work (and of the field itself) has affirmed how much I value variety on the job. For example, in addition to serving as a DSiR for SIL, I’ve also worked with the Baltimore City Health Department, the Mayor’s Office of Performance & Innovation and the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development on various projects, from developing public messaging around COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and access, to engaging communities around HIV and STI prevention, to improving the job-seeking experience for Baltimore residents. I’ve also felt blessed to have connected with other Filipinx/a/o-Americans (Fil-Ams) in the Baltimore area through a self-initiated project on designing a more culturally responsive mental health care model to better support Fil-Ams.
I’m looking forward to aligning myself with more opportunities at the intersection of either design and healthcare or design and government (including civic tech). These are two spaces in which I’ve experienced firsthand the growing appetite and need for dedicated design practitioners. Though still nascent in healthcare and government, formal design methods and practices are gaining traction, and it would be an honor to help shape the future of design in these two sectors, both of which directly impact our quality of life.
Thinking long term, I’d love to start my own design consultancy. It’s gratifying to work with individuals and teams across different sectors to develop design strategies that not only help them achieve their goals, but also encourage a more holistic and systems-oriented approach to generating solutions.
Eesha: Social design is a vast field. Even though the end goals and the design processes are universal in a way, the application of these tools can change the nature of the work. Having worked as a product and industrial designer prior to social design, my fields of interest lie primarily in the intersection of ecological and social justice. My work has extended from creating a credential on creative placemaking in Baltimore and conducting research and proposing communications strategies with Baltimore City Health Department on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and access, to working with the Baltimore Office of Sustainability to look at food waste and access during crises and mentoring the Sustainable Design Practicum at Johns Hopkins University.
One of my most rewarding projects has been about looking at the connection between depleting oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and the loss of legacies of black oyster farmers. While my current work spans across multiple sectors, I do imagine my future work being primarily around environmental justice and social justice, through a future-focused lens, whether that is through city or institution-led initiatives or community-driven work through private or public funding. I look forward to working in the overlaps between the seemingly separated spaces of design for ecology, society and technology.
