CoFo Community Development Design Thinking Session.
Overview.
On August 17, 2023, Marion Design Co. partnered with the Community Foundation of Grant County to host a design thinking session for community leaders in Grant County. This session served as a follow-up to a previous workshop, and had the goal of activating participants through collaboration and driving future economic growth.
Background.
In April 2023, the Indiana Communities Institute and Creative Insight Community Development led a three-day workshop aimed at giving community leaders new insights into what contributes to a vibrant and economically thriving community. Following this workshop, the Community Foundation reached out to Marion Design Co. to develop a follow-up design thinking session. Our team worked closely with the Community Foundation’s community leadership director, Meagan Mathias, and president and CEO, Dawn Brown, as we began ideating for this new project.
The main goals of the design thinking session were to build a renewed sense of trust between people, organizations, and local government, and to empower pride and emboldened self-esteem within Grant County. These goals aligned with the main challenges the county has been facing: blight, political tension, a lack of trust and strategic vision. The Community Foundation’s leaders recognized that the county possessed the resources to drive economic growth and foster an improved quality of life, but lacked the teamwork and shared vision to do so.
The design thinking session needed, then, to stir up imagination, while inspiring greater motivation, unity, and trust.
Objectives.
gather assets
Highlighting the great things already present in our county would help to encourage community pride and ease into deeper trust.
Activate Potential
In addition to identifying assets, participants needed to recognize areas for future growth and ideate opportunities for creative solutions.
unify community
A main goal of the session was to bring various community members and organizations together, encouraging a unified purpose and drive for progress.
Process.
After meeting with Meagan Mathias and Dawn Brown, we decided to center the design thinking session around the creation of an asset map — a map identifying the great things already present in the community. To begin designing the map, our team conducted an audit of existing cultural asset maps. How had other communities visualized their assets to promote flourishing? What could we learn from these efforts?
We also began developing the session’s design thinking activities and weighed which elements would have the greatest impact in the session’s limited timeframe. Our team also created a survey for participants to fill out before the design thinking session. This survey helped participants start thinking about the assets in their towns and cities. It also gave us a better sense of how best to tailor the experience to their current needs.
Results.
The design thinking session took place on the morning of August 17, and was attended by leaders from around Grant County. The morning started off with a welcome, an online humor style quiz, and custom mocktails — a delicious way to start the session, easing any tensions before diving into the main activities.
The session began in earnest with a recap of the previous workshop’s accomplishments and a review of new developments since then. After this introduction, we moved into the design thinking activities. These built on each other as the session went on:
Asset Mapping: Participants were split into small groups and given time to mark different types of assets on custom-designed maps of nine regions in Grant County. This activity encouraged reflection on the strengths and gaps in the county’s many assets.
Power of 10+: This activity drew on the principle that each destination in a city or region (for both tourists and residents) should have at least 10 distinct places within it, each with at least 10 things to do. These “things to do” can be big or small, from exploring a museum to sitting on a bench. Participants used the asset maps to identify these places and things to do within their communities, noting any major empty spaces.
Image of the Future: Grounded in the writing of Fred Polak, author of The Image of the Future, this activity asked participants to come up with an idea that could contribute to the “Power of 10+” in a specific place.
Future Wheel: In groups, the participants expanded on their ideas from the previous activity by exploring their implications and impact.
10-Step Pitch: Using a ten-step template, groups of participants came up with a final pitch for how to foster growth in each region of Grant County.
By the end of the design thinking session, participants had come up with nine unique and powerful ideas to move Grant County toward flourishing, each fleshed out with key people and first steps. In addition, the session sparked new ideas about how to collaborate with Grant County’s nine neighboring counties to promote growth.
Overall, this design thinking session provided community leaders with fresh insights and valuable data on the assets within Grant County.