For our first challenge of the 2023-2024 program year, we partnered with the Detroit Parks Coalition (DPC), an alliance of organizations that supports healthy, equitable and vibrant parks through fundraising, collaboration and advocacy.. Five teams of Fellows worked alongside the Detroit Parks Coalition staff, park coalition members and community stakeholders as they created deliverables focused on outreach and engagement for Detroit parks – learn more from the perspective of each team here!
“It’s all about trusting the process.” The design thinking process, that is. Our group found this to be a huge takeaway in Challenge Project #1. We were introduced to the design thinking process in our orientation that prepared us to Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test deliverables we created in our partnership with the Detroit Parks Coalition (DPC). Our cohort was prompted to answer the question of “How might we connect more Detroiters to parks through improved outreach and stewardship?” Our team was assigned the focus group of “Non-Tech” park users. We found through research and notes from stakeholder interviews and DPC that non-tech is essentially the 30% of Detroiters who are not digitally included. Digitally included which also means having access to adequate technological devices, running connectivity, and education on how to utilize it all.
With this information it was easy for our team to first Empathize with this population and ask a couple of questions in our interviews, such as “Are there any of your daily activities that also provide you with a sense of community safety?” “What is your relationship with technology and how do you hear about events in the park?, etc.” We then defined through our final questions, where we focused on How might we connect Detroiters who don’t use the internet to Detroit Parks? The Ideation phase was a team favorite because we were able to express each of our personalities in new and creative ways. Because our world constantly advances in technology, thinking of ways to involve people in parks that don’t use it was non-conventional and a challenge. However, in trusting the process we created the following deliverables:
- Passport – A sticker booklet located in Non-Tech hotspots to encourage local Detroits to visit parks and collect event/park-specific stickers created by local artists.
- Non-Tech Hotspots List – A list of 20+ areas where the non tech population frequents that can be used to spread information about the parks.
- Parks Information Pamphlet – “Tips and tricks” for creating effective pamphlets and an example pamphlet demonstrating the recommendations.
- DPC Strategic Partnerships Form – An outreach survey tool aimed at engaging and connecting local businesses/organizations to DPC.
Our Prototypes were colorful and elaborated examples of each of these ideas. In the last phase we were able to Test our work in presenting these ideas an information to the entire DPC today.
Blog by Fellow Team: Malik Gibbs-Ochoa, Kellen Harding, Jane Sun, Madeline Darbyshire, Jordan Ford
***