www.fastcompany.com Open in urlscan Pro
151.101.129.54  Public Scan

Form analysis
0 forms found in the DOM

Text Content

FAST COMPANY

Follow
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

Login
 * Co.Design
 * Tech
 * Work Life
 * News
 * Impact
 * Podcasts
 * Video
 * Recommender
 * Innovation Festival 360IF360
 * Subscribe
 * 
 * FastCo Works
    * AWS
    * Deloitte
    * Genpact


 * HOMEPAGE


 * CO.DESIGN


 * TECH


 * WORK LIFE


 * NEWS


 * IMPACT


 * PODCASTS


 * VIDEO


 * RECOMMENDER


 * INNOVATION FESTIVAL 360


 * SUBSCRIBE

Help Center
fastco works


 * AWS


 * BOSTON SCIENTIFIC


 * DELOITTE


 * DEPT


 * ELEVATE PRIZE


 * GENPACT


 * KLARNA


 * LOGITECH


 * SQUARE


 * VERIZON AWS


 * VISA


 * FASTCO WORKS
   
   An award-winning team of journalists, designers, and videographers who tell
   brand stories through Fast Company's distinctive lens

FC Executive Board
collections


 * FAST GOVERNMENT
   
   The future of innovation and technology in government for the greater good


 * MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES
   
   Our annual guide to the businesses that matter the most


 * MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE
   
   Leaders who are shaping the future of business in creative ways


 * WORLD CHANGING IDEAS
   
   New workplaces, new food sources, new medicine--even an entirely new economic
   system


 * INNOVATION BY DESIGN
   
   Celebrating the best ideas in business

Newsletter
Events


 * INNOVATION FESTIVAL

Courses and LearningAdvertiseCurrent Issue
Current Issue
SUBSCRIBE
Follow us:

advertisement

 * 02-11-21
 * designing women


THIS APP IS HELPING SIERRA CLUB, FAIR FIGHT, AND AMERICA VOTES INFLUENCE PUBLIC
POLICY


ADVOCACY GROUPS TRACK COUNTLESS PIECES OF LEGISLATION AS THEY MAKE THEIR WAY
THROUGH DIFFERENT GOVERNMENT BODIES. ENVIEW BY CIVIC EAGLE HELPS THEM ORGANIZE
AND STRATEGIZE.

Yemi Adewunmi [Photo: Foster K White/courtesy Civic Eagle]
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

More Like This
An AR-15 designed for children shocks even the most jaded gun-control advocates
The 5 best Super Bowl ads of 2022 (and the worst one)
Inside Pat Gelsinger’s audacious $43.5B plan to revive Intel
By Doreen Lorenzo8 minute Read

Yemi Adewunmi is co-founder and chief product officer at Civic Eagle. She spoke
to Doreen Lorenzo for Designing Women, a series of interviews with brilliant
women in the design industry.




Doreen Lorenzo: How did you first get interested in design?

Yemi Adewunmi: I actually didn’t realize I was interested in design until my
mid-20s. When I was younger I was really into problem-solving, which I now
recognize as the foundation of design-thinking. I originally aspired to become a
lawyer and I went to college for political science with a prelaw focus. During
college, I realized I didn’t necessarily want to be a lawyer, but I was really
interested in policy, so I started my career as a policy researcher and analyst
for the New York State Legislature, and then pursued a master’s in public
administration.



Civic Eagle Founders Damola Ogundipe and Yemi Adewunmi. [Photo: courtesy Civic
Eagle]I saw policymaking from the perspective of problem-solving and finding
solutions to help improve communities. But I was finding frustration in the
policy space, feeling like there could be more innovation and creativity used in
our systems. Around this time in my career, I was also learning about creative
entrepreneurship, photography and graphic design through online resources. I
started to recognize the synergies between my creative work and my public sector
work when I noticed the opportunities in marketing and communications for
nonprofits and NGOs. I started trying out communications roles for nonprofits
and working with political candidates designing their marketing collateral, and
really saw how I could combine my degree and professional experience with my
passion for design.





DL: What inspired you to enter the product design space and launch your company,
Civic Eagle?

YA: When we started in 2015, we wanted to build a mobile app that connected
people to information about politics and policy. I met my business partner,
Damola Ogundipe, in undergrad and we later reconnected because he had an idea of
using tech to help people understand how specific policies were affecting them,
like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for example. He was working in healthcare IT
at the time and found it frustrating that you couldn’t figure out in plain
language what the ACA did. That expanded into a larger concept of allowing
people to easily communicate their viewpoint on policy in a seamless way, like
through a mobile app in their pocket. He reached out to his network to figure
out who could help him create this app, and that team included me, who was
working in policy at the time, and our co-founder, Shawntera Hardy. We developed
and launched our app, and received a lot of encouragement from people who
believed in our vision, but they weren’t necessarily active users on our app. So
we went back to the drawing board and approached it from a design-thinking lens,
starting at defining the problem we were solving and who we were solving it for,
and how we could make a business model of it. By 2018, we had pivoted our
product from what was a B2C mobile app, into Eview by Civic Eagle, a B2B
software solution for policy professionals. We discovered that even people who
were policy experts were not using innovative tools to do their work, so we
wanted to give these policy professionals the most user-friendly, modern,
future-of-work style solution that would allow them to be more effective in
monitoring, reporting, and collaborating on policy work.



[Photo: courtesy Civic Eagle]DL: When you say do policy work, what does that
mean? How do people use Enview?





YA: Our users are advocates in nonprofits, lobbyists, and folks who work within
a company’s government affairs team. Essential parts of their policy work
include monitoring proposed laws as they are revised in the legislative process,
communicating relevant updates to their organization, and working with others to
strategize and influence policy. Many of our customers are doing this work
across multiple states and normally they’d have to scour each state website to
find this information because at the state level, this information is
decentralized. Civic Eagle has built a solution that centralizes all of that
legislative data. For example, our customer Fair Fight, which is a national
voting rights organization, uses our platform for research and to track
legislation related to voting rights across several states. Through our platform
users can easily monitor, report, and collaborate on policy. They can search for
legislation across multiple states at one time; they can follow a bill and
receive alerts whenever that piece of legislation changes; and what’s really
cool is that they can markup a bill directly within our platform. Think of it as
centralizing all of your notes, emails, and PDFs into one place so you know
exactly what you’re working on at any given moment, and can easily collaborate
with your team. The policy-making process is a large ecosystem with a lot of
moving pieces and stakeholders involved. Our goal is to remove a lot of the
friction and make policy collaboration as effective as possible. Different
organizations can also find one another on our platform and work on policy
together. When laws are designed, it impacts the bottom line of an organization
or a community and we want to help people gain more access to this information.

DL: From the COVID-19 response to the Black Lives Matter Movement’s calls for
racial justice and reform, how did Enview make legislation and policy more
accessible in 2020?

YA: Our first reaction to COVID-19 was to check in with our customers and see
what was top of mind for them. For most of our customers, there was uncertainty
around the status of the legislation they had been working on and how COVID was
going to impact the progress of their work. Because our system aggregates all
the state legislation across the country, it was a perfect tool for us to be
able to put in keywords like “coronavirus” or “stimulus” and build lists of new
legislation that was popping up across the country. Typically you’d have to be a
customer to have access to the list of bills, but we knew it was really useful
information so we opened up access to our list of bills related to the
coronavirus. Our list included every new bill introduced in a state legislature
in response to the pandemic. After the calls for racial justice and police
reform started over the summer, we created another list of criminal justice
reform legislation across the country. Our goal was to make sure that
information was accessible to anyone who was looking for it. We’ll do what we
can to surface relevant policy information that’ll help not only our customers,
but our community at large because giving more people access to information is
not only good for public policy, but also good for our business.



DL: How did people react when you pitched this whole new idea? Did you get an
investor right away?

YA: The first time we pitched our new business model, we got accepted into a
Google For Startups program focused on Black founders. The program gave us a
week of mentorship and workshops to enhance our businesses and then culminated
in a pitch competition in front of a panel of investor judges. Although we
didn’t win the first prize, afterwards one of the judges, Arlan Hamilton,
reached out to our company, told us that she believed in us and ended up writing
us our first check for $25,000. We used that opportunity, that first piece of
validation, to apply to our first accelerator program, which was focused on
civic technology companies. That gave us even more of a footing into building
the company. The following year we were accepted into Techstars accelerator,
which was an incredible experience for us and helped us raise our first priced
round of venture capital. The initial barrier was getting that first check,
gaining your first believer. After that, it gave us more ability and flexibility
to explore our idea more.

DL: Do you think governments would be open to using more design thinking
strategies to help them develop more successful civic strategies?



YA: Government is the perfect place for design-thinking strategies to be used.
Governments are meant to be human-centric; that is the point of public service.
I believe that there are a lot of opportunities to solve big problems across the
public sector by approaching them with a fresh lens, which the design-thinking
process encourages. It would require really embracing the empathy, ideation,
experimentation stages of the process. And it would require a lot of investment
in training and transforming familiar systems, which is tough. But the good
thing is that governments already have some experience with structuring task
forces and cross-agency working groups, which is a step in the direction of
collaborative problem solving. It’d be great to see more investment and effort
in ensuring that more voices are heard in the design of policy and civic
solutions.

DL: Designers mostly get into the design world because they want to do good.
What advice would you give them on how to make social impact?

YA: I believe that design can be applied anywhere and in every context, and in
that way I think the world is our oyster, as designers. We really have the
choice to decide where we want our work to leave an impact. There are so many
transferable communications skills that designers have because it’s not just
about our creative talent— it’s about the way we think about human behavior and
psychology, the way we observe trends and our ability to project the future.
Designers are very special people. We have this intuition about what looks and
sounds good. Bringing that intuition to any context that needs a positive shift
is where we can have the most impact, whether that’s getting a job with an
organization with a great mission, or volunteering your skills on the weekend to
a cause that you support.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Doreen Lorenzo is Assistant Dean at the School of Design and Creative
Technologies, and Founding Director of the Center for Integrated Design, both at
The University of Texas at Austin.

More

advertisement



FEATURED VIDEO

1
/
7
Hip-Hop Legend Big Boi welcomes Black homeowners with Realtor.com
Read More

113K
1



Video Player is loading.
Play Video
Unmute

Duration 2:45
/
Current Time 0:04
Advanced Settings

Loaded: 24.06%


0:04
Remaining Time -2:41
 
FullscreenPauseUp Next

This is a modal window.



Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.

TextColorWhiteBlackRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyanTransparencyOpaqueSemi-TransparentBackgroundColorBlackWhiteRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyanTransparencyOpaqueSemi-TransparentTransparentWindowColorBlackWhiteRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyanTransparencyTransparentSemi-TransparentOpaque
Font Size50%75%100%125%150%175%200%300%400%Text Edge
StyleNoneRaisedDepressedUniformDropshadowFont FamilyProportional
Sans-SerifMonospace Sans-SerifProportional SerifMonospace SerifCasualScriptSmall
Caps
Reset restore all settings to the default valuesDone
Close Modal Dialog

End of dialog window.

Settings

Playback Speed
Normal
Video Quality
Auto (270p)
Closed Captions
Off
Replay the list
 * Powered by AnyClip
 * Privacy Policy

TOP ARTICLES





Hip-Hop Legend Big Boi welcomes Black homeowners with Realtor.com

advertisement


Today's Top Stories:
01

co-design
The legendary design firm that made Target a star is introducing a new line of
products for CVS
02

ideas
This NOAA map shows how your neighborhood will flood with each foot of sea level
rise
03

leadership
It’s not just you. Science explains how your focus is more scattered now and how
to get it back
04

leadership
Feeling distressed at work? It might be more than burnout
05

ideas
Berlin is planning a car-free area larger than Manhattan
More Top Stories:
PLAY Fast Company Top Articles: Video Settings Full Screen About Connatix
V151552 Read More Read More Read More Read More Read More Read More
Salesforce employees revolt over NFT moves
READ MORE
Salesforce employees revolt over NFT moves 1/1 Skip Ad Continue watching after
the ad Visit Advertiser websiteGO TO PAGE




advertisement

news
Netflix’s Boeing documentary, ‘Downfall,’ is a righteous screed against
corporate greed
news
DWAC stock rises (again) as Trump’s Twitter clone prepares for launch
co-design
Here’s a brilliant idea for what to do with all of those empty malls
leadership
5 insights from behavioral science that can make you better at influencing
others
leadership
5 better ways to get stuff done, according to the science of motivation
technology
AI-generated faces have crossed the uncanny valley and are now more trustworthy
than real ones
leadership
Employee engagement is out. Here’s a better metric
magazine
The World’s Most Innovative Companies 2021
co-design
How Capital B’s bold branding reinforces its commitment to telling Black stories
technology
Google Docs’s new update takes aim at Microsoft Word—and Notion, too
leadership
A true leader actively does these 3 things every day
technology
The metaverse can provide a whole new opportunity for education. Here’s what to
consider
co-design
The most popular design thinking strategy is BS
technology
Is Reddit a better search engine than Google?
recommender
Dreaming of a Cloud sofa? Albany Park’s modular, easy-to-assemble couches are
luxurious and reasonably priced
advertisement

advertisement

leadership
Here is why you should swear at work, according to science
news
3 hard truths about work-life balance that Apple TV’s ‘Severance’ eerily
illustrates
leadership
Your “invisible work” is key to your most productive self
leadership
7 ways to promote yourself on social media without bragging
ideas
5 steps to making better cities
technology
12 incredibly useful Gmail settings you didn’t know you needed
technology
How a Twitter fight over meeting-scheduling etiquette actually boosted
Calendly’s brand
ideas
How former SpaceX engineers are reinventing the freight train
leadership
3 simple strategies that boost your mental fitness and well-being
ideas
What happened after these unhoused people got monthly $500 checks? Two-thirds
have homes
co-design
This $10 add-on makes surgical masks 15 times better at stopping COVID droplets
technology
Before Trump, Cambridge Analytica quietly built “psyops” for militaries
news
Remember when these companies promised to stop funding Republican seditionists?
technology
Your ancient tablet is a lot more useful than you think
advertisement



IMPACT

Impact


A NEW BASIC INCOME PILOT WILL GIVE $500 A MONTH TO MIXED-IMMIGRATION-STATUS
FAMILIES

Impact


THESE 12-MILE-DEEP HOLES COULD CONVERT POWER PLANTS FROM FOSSIL FUEL TO
GEOTHERMAL

Impact


THE ‘DO-GOODER’S DILEMMA’: WHY PURPOSE-DRIVEN COMPANIES CAN’T LOSE FOCUS ON
PROFITS


NEWS

News


ARM’S $80 BILLION SALE TO NVIDIA COLLAPSES. SOFTBANK WILL IPO COMPANY INSTEAD

News


PELOTON CEO JOHN FOLEY TO BE REPLACED BY FORMER NETFLIX AND SPOTIFY EXEC

News


IRS SAYS IT WILL STOP USING FACIAL RECOGNITION AFTER CONTROVERSY OVER ID.ME
VERIFICATION


CO.DESIGN

Co.Design


AS HIS ‘OUTER SPACE’ BUILDINGS RISE ACROSS THE U.S., THE LUCAS MUSEUM’S
ARCHITECT EXPLAINS HIS APPROACH

Co.Design


ROBOT SWARM! WHEN INTERNET COOKIES CHASE YOU IRL

Co.Design


COVID TESTS MAY BE MORE AVAILABLE, BUT THEY’RE FAR FROM ACCESSIBLE


WORK LIFE

Work Life


4 WAYS TO MAKE TIME FOR ‘WATERCOOLER CONVERSATIONS’ IN THE HYBRID WORK SETTING

Work Life


A SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE TACTIC ALL GREAT LEADERS USE

Work Life


EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IS OUT. HERE’S A BETTER METRIC

 * Advertise
 * Privacy Policy
 * Terms
 * Notice of Collection
 * Do Not Sell My Data
 * Permissions
 * Contact
 * About Us
 * Site Map
 * Fast Company & Inc © 2022 Mansueto Ventures, LLC
 * 






FAST COMPANY

Follow
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

Login
 * Co.Design
 * Tech
 * Work Life
 * News
 * Impact
 * Podcasts
 * Video
 * Recommender
 * Innovation Festival 360IF360
 * Subscribe
 * 
 * FastCo Works
    * AWS
    * Deloitte
    * Genpact


 * HOMEPAGE


 * CO.DESIGN


 * TECH


 * WORK LIFE


 * NEWS


 * IMPACT


 * PODCASTS


 * VIDEO


 * RECOMMENDER


 * INNOVATION FESTIVAL 360


 * SUBSCRIBE

Help Center
fastco works


 * AWS


 * BOSTON SCIENTIFIC


 * DELOITTE


 * DEPT


 * ELEVATE PRIZE


 * GENPACT


 * KLARNA


 * LOGITECH


 * SQUARE


 * VERIZON AWS


 * VISA


 * FASTCO WORKS
   
   An award-winning team of journalists, designers, and videographers who tell
   brand stories through Fast Company's distinctive lens

FC Executive Board
collections


 * FAST GOVERNMENT
   
   The future of innovation and technology in government for the greater good


 * MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES
   
   Our annual guide to the businesses that matter the most


 * MOST CREATIVE PEOPLE
   
   Leaders who are shaping the future of business in creative ways


 * WORLD CHANGING IDEAS
   
   New workplaces, new food sources, new medicine--even an entirely new economic
   system


 * INNOVATION BY DESIGN
   
   Celebrating the best ideas in business

Newsletter
Events


 * INNOVATION FESTIVAL

Courses and LearningAdvertiseCurrent Issue
Current Issue
SUBSCRIBE
Follow us:

advertisement

advertisement

 * 02-11-21
 * designing women


THIS APP IS HELPING SIERRA CLUB, FAIR FIGHT, AND AMERICA VOTES INFLUENCE PUBLIC
POLICY


ADVOCACY GROUPS TRACK COUNTLESS PIECES OF LEGISLATION AS THEY MAKE THEIR WAY
THROUGH DIFFERENT GOVERNMENT BODIES. ENVIEW BY CIVIC EAGLE HELPS THEM ORGANIZE
AND STRATEGIZE.

Yemi Adewunmi [Photo: Foster K White/courtesy Civic Eagle]
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

By Doreen Lorenzo8 minute Read

Yemi Adewunmi is co-founder and chief product officer at Civic Eagle. She spoke
to Doreen Lorenzo for Designing Women, a series of interviews with brilliant
women in the design industry.

advertisement

advertisement



Doreen Lorenzo: How did you first get interested in design?

Yemi Adewunmi: I actually didn’t realize I was interested in design until my
mid-20s. When I was younger I was really into problem-solving, which I now
recognize as the foundation of design-thinking. I originally aspired to become a
lawyer and I went to college for political science with a prelaw focus. During
college, I realized I didn’t necessarily want to be a lawyer, but I was really
interested in policy, so I started my career as a policy researcher and analyst
for the New York State Legislature, and then pursued a master’s in public
administration.



Civic Eagle Founders Damola Ogundipe and Yemi Adewunmi. [Photo: courtesy Civic
Eagle]I saw policymaking from the perspective of problem-solving and finding
solutions to help improve communities. But I was finding frustration in the
policy space, feeling like there could be more innovation and creativity used in
our systems. Around this time in my career, I was also learning about creative
entrepreneurship, photography and graphic design through online resources. I
started to recognize the synergies between my creative work and my public sector
work when I noticed the opportunities in marketing and communications for
nonprofits and NGOs. I started trying out communications roles for nonprofits
and working with political candidates designing their marketing collateral, and
really saw how I could combine my degree and professional experience with my
passion for design.



advertisement


DL: What inspired you to enter the product design space and launch your company,
Civic Eagle?

YA: When we started in 2015, we wanted to build a mobile app that connected
people to information about politics and policy. I met my business partner,
Damola Ogundipe, in undergrad and we later reconnected because he had an idea of
using tech to help people understand how specific policies were affecting them,
like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for example. He was working in healthcare IT
at the time and found it frustrating that you couldn’t figure out in plain
language what the ACA did. That expanded into a larger concept of allowing
people to easily communicate their viewpoint on policy in a seamless way, like
through a mobile app in their pocket. He reached out to his network to figure
out who could help him create this app, and that team included me, who was
working in policy at the time, and our co-founder, Shawntera Hardy. We developed
and launched our app, and received a lot of encouragement from people who
believed in our vision, but they weren’t necessarily active users on our app. So
we went back to the drawing board and approached it from a design-thinking lens,
starting at defining the problem we were solving and who we were solving it for,
and how we could make a business model of it. By 2018, we had pivoted our
product from what was a B2C mobile app, into Eview by Civic Eagle, a B2B
software solution for policy professionals. We discovered that even people who
were policy experts were not using innovative tools to do their work, so we
wanted to give these policy professionals the most user-friendly, modern,
future-of-work style solution that would allow them to be more effective in
monitoring, reporting, and collaborating on policy work.



[Photo: courtesy Civic Eagle]DL: When you say do policy work, what does that
mean? How do people use Enview?



advertisement


YA: Our users are advocates in nonprofits, lobbyists, and folks who work within
a company’s government affairs team. Essential parts of their policy work
include monitoring proposed laws as they are revised in the legislative process,
communicating relevant updates to their organization, and working with others to
strategize and influence policy. Many of our customers are doing this work
across multiple states and normally they’d have to scour each state website to
find this information because at the state level, this information is
decentralized. Civic Eagle has built a solution that centralizes all of that
legislative data. For example, our customer Fair Fight, which is a national
voting rights organization, uses our platform for research and to track
legislation related to voting rights across several states. Through our platform
users can easily monitor, report, and collaborate on policy. They can search for
legislation across multiple states at one time; they can follow a bill and
receive alerts whenever that piece of legislation changes; and what’s really
cool is that they can markup a bill directly within our platform. Think of it as
centralizing all of your notes, emails, and PDFs into one place so you know
exactly what you’re working on at any given moment, and can easily collaborate
with your team. The policy-making process is a large ecosystem with a lot of
moving pieces and stakeholders involved. Our goal is to remove a lot of the
friction and make policy collaboration as effective as possible. Different
organizations can also find one another on our platform and work on policy
together. When laws are designed, it impacts the bottom line of an organization
or a community and we want to help people gain more access to this information.

DL: From the COVID-19 response to the Black Lives Matter Movement’s calls for
racial justice and reform, how did Enview make legislation and policy more
accessible in 2020?

YA: Our first reaction to COVID-19 was to check in with our customers and see
what was top of mind for them. For most of our customers, there was uncertainty
around the status of the legislation they had been working on and how COVID was
going to impact the progress of their work. Because our system aggregates all
the state legislation across the country, it was a perfect tool for us to be
able to put in keywords like “coronavirus” or “stimulus” and build lists of new
legislation that was popping up across the country. Typically you’d have to be a
customer to have access to the list of bills, but we knew it was really useful
information so we opened up access to our list of bills related to the
coronavirus. Our list included every new bill introduced in a state legislature
in response to the pandemic. After the calls for racial justice and police
reform started over the summer, we created another list of criminal justice
reform legislation across the country. Our goal was to make sure that
information was accessible to anyone who was looking for it. We’ll do what we
can to surface relevant policy information that’ll help not only our customers,
but our community at large because giving more people access to information is
not only good for public policy, but also good for our business.

advertisement


DL: How did people react when you pitched this whole new idea? Did you get an
investor right away?

YA: The first time we pitched our new business model, we got accepted into a
Google For Startups program focused on Black founders. The program gave us a
week of mentorship and workshops to enhance our businesses and then culminated
in a pitch competition in front of a panel of investor judges. Although we
didn’t win the first prize, afterwards one of the judges, Arlan Hamilton,
reached out to our company, told us that she believed in us and ended up writing
us our first check for $25,000. We used that opportunity, that first piece of
validation, to apply to our first accelerator program, which was focused on
civic technology companies. That gave us even more of a footing into building
the company. The following year we were accepted into Techstars accelerator,
which was an incredible experience for us and helped us raise our first priced
round of venture capital. The initial barrier was getting that first check,
gaining your first believer. After that, it gave us more ability and flexibility
to explore our idea more.

DL: Do you think governments would be open to using more design thinking
strategies to help them develop more successful civic strategies?

advertisement


YA: Government is the perfect place for design-thinking strategies to be used.
Governments are meant to be human-centric; that is the point of public service.
I believe that there are a lot of opportunities to solve big problems across the
public sector by approaching them with a fresh lens, which the design-thinking
process encourages. It would require really embracing the empathy, ideation,
experimentation stages of the process. And it would require a lot of investment
in training and transforming familiar systems, which is tough. But the good
thing is that governments already have some experience with structuring task
forces and cross-agency working groups, which is a step in the direction of
collaborative problem solving. It’d be great to see more investment and effort
in ensuring that more voices are heard in the design of policy and civic
solutions.

DL: Designers mostly get into the design world because they want to do good.
What advice would you give them on how to make social impact?

YA: I believe that design can be applied anywhere and in every context, and in
that way I think the world is our oyster, as designers. We really have the
choice to decide where we want our work to leave an impact. There are so many
transferable communications skills that designers have because it’s not just
about our creative talent— it’s about the way we think about human behavior and
psychology, the way we observe trends and our ability to project the future.
Designers are very special people. We have this intuition about what looks and
sounds good. Bringing that intuition to any context that needs a positive shift
is where we can have the most impact, whether that’s getting a job with an
organization with a great mission, or volunteering your skills on the weekend to
a cause that you support.


advertisement

advertisement

advertisement

advertisement



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Doreen Lorenzo is Assistant Dean at the School of Design and Creative
Technologies, and Founding Director of the Center for Integrated Design, both at
The University of Texas at Austin.

More




VIDEO

Why we’re still talking about the ‘Sopranos’-themed Chevy Super Bowl commercial
Jeff Beer is back with another Hit from the Super Bowl commercial spread that we
can’t stop thinking about—Chevy’s ‘Sopranos’-themed spot. Here’s why it deserves
the hype. This is Fast Company’s Brand Hit and Miss of the Week.
More Videos


0 seconds of 3 minutes, 46 secondsVolume 0%

Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts
Keyboard ShortcutsEnabledDisabled
Play/PauseSPACE
Increase Volume↑
Decrease Volume↓
Seek Forward→
Seek Backward←
Captions On/Offc
Fullscreen/Exit Fullscreenf
Mute/Unmutem
Seek %0-9
Next Up
Pour a cold one for your dog with Anheuser-Busch’s latest brew
06:09
Settings
OffBrand Hit And Miss 021822 Site V1 Aq
Font Color
White

Font Opacity
100%

Font Size
100%

Font Family
Arial

Character Edge
None

Background Color
Black

Background Opacity
50%

Window Color
Black

Window Opacity
0%

Reset
WhiteBlackRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyan
100%75%25%
200%175%150%125%100%75%50%
ArialCourierGeorgiaImpactLucida ConsoleTahomaTimes New RomanTrebuchet MSVerdana
NoneRaisedDepressedUniformDrop Shadow
WhiteBlackRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyan
100%75%50%25%0%
WhiteBlackRedGreenBlueYellowMagentaCyan
100%75%50%25%0%
facebook twitter Email
Linkhttps://www.fastcompany.com/video/a-name-change-alone-wont-fix-the-washington-commanders/sWULcH0M?jwsource=cl
Copied
Auto180p1080p720p406p270p180p
Live
00:00
03:46
03:46








 



IMPACT

Impact


A NEW BASIC INCOME PILOT WILL GIVE $500 A MONTH TO MIXED-IMMIGRATION-STATUS
FAMILIES

Impact


THESE 12-MILE-DEEP HOLES COULD CONVERT POWER PLANTS FROM FOSSIL FUEL TO
GEOTHERMAL

Impact


THE ‘DO-GOODER’S DILEMMA’: WHY PURPOSE-DRIVEN COMPANIES CAN’T LOSE FOCUS ON
PROFITS


NEWS

News


ARM’S $80 BILLION SALE TO NVIDIA COLLAPSES. SOFTBANK WILL IPO COMPANY INSTEAD

News


PELOTON CEO JOHN FOLEY TO BE REPLACED BY FORMER NETFLIX AND SPOTIFY EXEC

News


IRS SAYS IT WILL STOP USING FACIAL RECOGNITION AFTER CONTROVERSY OVER ID.ME
VERIFICATION


CO.DESIGN

Co.Design


AS HIS ‘OUTER SPACE’ BUILDINGS RISE ACROSS THE U.S., THE LUCAS MUSEUM’S
ARCHITECT EXPLAINS HIS APPROACH

Co.Design


ROBOT SWARM! WHEN INTERNET COOKIES CHASE YOU IRL

Co.Design


COVID TESTS MAY BE MORE AVAILABLE, BUT THEY’RE FAR FROM ACCESSIBLE


WORK LIFE

Work Life


4 WAYS TO MAKE TIME FOR ‘WATERCOOLER CONVERSATIONS’ IN THE HYBRID WORK SETTING

Work Life


A SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE TACTIC ALL GREAT LEADERS USE

Work Life


EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IS OUT. HERE’S A BETTER METRIC

 * Advertise
 * Privacy Policy
 * Terms
 * Notice of Collection
 * Do Not Sell My Data
 * Permissions
 * Contact
 * About Us
 * Site Map
 * Fast Company & Inc © 2022 Mansueto Ventures, LLC
 * 





search by queryly Advanced Search



WE VALUE YOUR PRIVACY

To deliver the best possible experience, we and our partners use techniques such
as cookies to store and/or access information on a device and provide
personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and
product development. Precise geolocation and information about device
characteristics can be used. Personal data such as network address and browsing
activity may be processed.

You may click to consent to the processing described above or review options and
make granular choices. Some processing may not require your consent, but you
have a right to object. Your preferences will apply to this site only. You may
change your mind at any time by visiting our privacy policy.


review options accept & continue
#browser_notifications_enabled

#browser_notification_subscriber_blocked

#session_pageviews_1

#capture_slider_active

#capture_lightbox_active