We, at Challenge Detroit, use a tried-and-true methodology called the Design Thinking Process to develop innovative deliverables for our non-profit partners during our Friday Challenges. The process is iterative and moves fluidly between five stages: empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and test/learn. For our recent COTS Challenge, my team deftly put the Design Thinking Process into action as we created a marketing campaign highlighting COTS residents – individuals who find themselves in a homeless situation. Through the Challenge, we discovered just how organic the Design Thinking Process can feel and how successful it can be.
We began with a series of interviews, which played a crucial role in guiding our marketing campaign. As we empathized, we noticed the people we spoke with didn’t even identify as homeless. They spoke in sweeping generalizations about “those homeless people,” who they felt sorry for, wanted to help, and who deserved compassion.
Surprised, our team had a powerful “aha” moment. We realized a cognitive dissidence exists in our society between a homeless person’s identity and the state of being without a home. For many of us, the idea of a homeless person brings to mind all kinds of stereotypes as to who the individual is, what they look like, and how they behave. When in reality, a homeless person is simply someone who doesn’t have a home.
Upon this realization, our team resolved to redefine homelessness through our campaign. By defining our objective, we were able to have a fruitful ideation session where a number of us even came up with similar ideas. Our collective agreement added momentum behind our campaign which became “One Step Away“.
Through several iterations of design, prototyping, and feedback we created a comprehensive media campaign highlighting the fact that “we are all one catalytic life event away from the spiral that leads to homelessness,” effectively defining homelessness as a situation and not an identity. The Design Thinking Process had helped us tackle a huge issue and narrow our approach down to something actionable and meaningful.
