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The Civic Design Process

Understand the challenge

HUMANIZE. We help teams engage the people most impacted by the problem, exercising empathy to understand the needs and experiences of those involved to put them at the center of the solution-making process.  

What are the needs and desires of the people who are experiencing the problem? How can we ensure they are co-designers in the process?  

DEFINE. We work closely with MCG and resident stakeholders to make sense of the research and reframe the problem. Involving all stakeholders in this step and drawing quality insights are crucial for developing meaningful solutions. 

Which of the needs identified above are we solving for? What are the root causes? What is the context?

Explore solutions

IDEATE. Bringing to bear the data from research, we help teams unleash their imagination and generate ideas to address the specific root cause(s) they have identified.  

What might we do?

PROTOTYPE. We help teams choose from among their best ideas to develop simple, cost-effective prototypes to test.

What do we do? How will we know if it works?

TEST & REFINE. We support teams to test their prototype(s) and determine whether and how to make any modifications before they go live.

Does the prototype work? What did we learn about what modifications are necessary?

Deliver the change

IMPLEMENT. We set teams up for success with implementation by providing clear action items and establishing a plan to make sure we stay on track for success and learning. 

How will stakeholders know and understand how the changes affect them? How will we know if the change had the intended impact? 

Learn more and see examples of each stage of the process (SharePoint link).