I think designers, or maybe just students in general, are dreamers.
Like every other project I’ve worked on, our team seems to have overshot a bit. We ambitiously framed our problem area as the intersection between historical preservation, immigration, and blight. And were confident such an intersection existed. We were equally confident that we could find a way to assist in this intersection. In a 4 month period.
As we dig into the area, it’s becoming increasingly clear that this just isn’t possible. Problems are always more complex than they seem on the surface and, really, that’s what makes them worth investigating. My team has been forced to focus, and focus again. Instead of finding this disappointing, I keep hearing comments about how excited one team member or the other is about the direction we’re moving in because the area is so rich and full of potential.
This phase of the project, my team has focused primarily on expert interviews to learn about what is happening in Pittsburgh right now and what is coming down the pipeline. There is a lot of planning, a lot of dreaming, and a lot of talk going on right now. I think design processes will be excellent at helping move things forward. Welcoming Pittsburgh, the initiative started by the mayor’s office to help immigrants in the city and to make Pittsburgh more appealing to potential immigrants, is still in its infancy with the Advisory Council only meeting for the first time next week. Betty Cruz, the head of the initiative already has a lot of great ideas from looking at precedents set by other cities around the US. She helped us identify some of the biggest issues facing immigrants. I think participatory design activities can help the people working on this begin to understand how to address these issues in a localized way. Betty has a great deal of research about precedents from other cities around the US, but they will need to be adapted to Pittsburgh’s unique cultural and geographic climate. I think an interdisciplinary design team is a great way to help an interdisciplinary group of stakeholders develop ideas on how to improve immigrants’ situation.
On a personal level, I am excited to work on a developing some sort of service, as it’s looking like we will. A lot of the design work I’ve done previously has resulted in designing a thing. A service, for me, implies greater human-to-human contact. There’s greater potential for interdisciplinary work. Social innovation doesn’t live in a bubble and a service is forced to work within the world it exists in a way that products aren’t. A service should really be a living thing and this is especially important in social innovation work. Good design always works with user feedback, but a service can be ever evolving when structured correctly and built in an environment welcoming of change. The relationship should also be fostered with policy makers so that the improvements from the service can serve as proof for the need of policy changes which can in turn improve the service, in a potentially never-ending cycle. I look forward to examining more how my team can work with stakeholders to develop something both that serves immigrants and inspires policy makers to improve immigrants lives and the city’s diversity and economy.
Design and Policy 