Participatory Research �& Equitable Design
JEM | Community of Practice Primer
Q3 2020
JEM overview
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Participatory research & equitable design
Integrated approach
Annex
What is the purpose of this primer?
Internal reference document and “how to guide” for the US Justice, Equity, and Economic Mobility practice.
This is a guided resource that can help us understand, apply, and integrate participatory research & equitable design across projects at Dalberg. This introductory document covers the following topics:
Any JEM practice member – including partners, fellows, and core team members – should read this document when joining the practice and revisit it periodically when developing proposals. Here you can find the language, approaches, and processes that can help us bring more robust equitable participation into our project's framing and execution across the firm. Please feel free to use language from this primer directly in proposals.
Introduction
Who should I reach out to with
additional questions?
Marcus Haymon, JEM practice co-lead Marcus.Haymon@Dalberg.com
Rachna Saxena, JEM practice co-lead
Malé Sandoval, Creative Lead�Maria.Sandoval@dalberg.com
JEM practice
overview
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What is the JEM practice?
Dalberg Advisors’ Justice, Equity, and Economic Mobility* (JEM) community of practice is a group of more than 30 Dalberg staff working to build a more equitable and just society for all people in the United States.
The JEM practice's main objective is to improve outcomes for historically marginalized groups in the U.S. Our work focuses on a range of topics, from strengthening equity in early childhood education, to shifting power in the philanthropic sector, to improving economic mobility through quality employment.
We advance these pillars by partnering with clients, sharing thought leadership, and convening practitioners and leaders. Learn more here: https://dalberg.com/jem/
JEM overview
01
DEFINITIONS*
Justice - Systematic fair treatment of all people that results in equitable opportunities and outcomes for everyone.
Equity - A state in which conditions are just, impartial, and fair, where no aspect of one’s identity predicts how one fares.
Mobility - Ability of individuals and groups to gain access to resources (i.e., financial and social capital).
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How do we approach work?
JEM overview
01
We take an intersectional approach to our work, investigating how all aspects of identity interact with a given issue, and shape outcomes. To ground our efforts, we are committed to building diversity, equity, and inclusion* in our team and leadership, and are continuously working to create and maintain an equitable and inclusive culture.
We take a highly collaborative approach in our partnerships with organizations and leaders who advance social justice in our communities.
The justice, equity, and economic mobility community of practice approach is rooted in the intersection between Dalberg’s multidisciplinary integrated capabilities, participatory and equity centered design methodology, and applied project and team equity lenses.
Participatory research & �equitable design �
Equity lenses
(race, gender, class,
other identities)
Integrated
capabilities
JEM
DEFINITIONS*
Diversity - Diversity is when there is a variety of characteristics within a group. However, definitions of diversity are often limited and largely confined to visible aspects rather than less visible aspects such as ability status or nationality.
Equity - A state in which conditions are just, impartial, and fair, where no aspect of one’s identity predicts how one fares.
Inclusion - Inclusion is the leveraging of difference by integrating diverse
perspectives and creating a better outcome. Inclusion is an invitation that not only accepts differences but celebrates and embeds them.
Participatory research & equitable design
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What is “participatory research & equitable design?”
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Participatory & equity centered design
A designer is anyone who has agency to make a decision, however small, that will impact a group of people or the environment. Every decision we make has an impact on equity.
- Creative Reaction Lab
Participatory research & equitable design is a process for shifting power dynamics and mitigating resource inequalities between stakeholders through an inclusive and equitable research and design process. The approach is highly collaborative, and brings community representatives into the core project team as full partners in the research, design, and decision making processes (in contrast to consultative approaches). To do so, it builds in accountability structures (e.g. of the project, client, and funder team) to the community, and mechanisms for robustly shifting decision making power to community reps.
It is rooted in the lived experience of systems and how they shape people’s values, perspectives, priorities, and outcomes, and it builds the power of communities by centering on narratives that researchers and designers do not otherwise experience. At the core of its practice, it is about democratizing the research and design process. The power shifts from the ‘benefactor’ (and a benefactor led agenda) towards community driven priorities when local needs and aspirations guide the opportunities, individuals define the issues, and lead the process towards outcomes.
Fun Fact
Participatory design was born in Scandinavia and called cooperative design. Cooperative design methods originated in the 1970s and 80s when trade unions reacted against being omitted from the design process of technologies at work. When the methods were presented to the US community, 'cooperation' was a word that didn't resonate with the strong culture of separation between workers and managers. Leading to each group (workers and managers) participating in the design process, but not directly cooperating.
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What is “participatory research & equitable design?”
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Participatory & equity centered design
Like participatory research, the concept of equitable design is not new. For example, “equity-centered community design” is a process developed by Creative Reaction Lab in St. Louis. They define it as a problem-solving process based on equity, humility-building, integrating history and healing practices, addressing power dynamics, and co-creating with the community. This process focuses on a community’s culture and needs to gain tools to dismantle systemic oppression and create a future with equity for all. To practice equity-centered community design, a person may not have formal training or an official title as a “designer” to be a designer. Equity centered design embeds people with lived experience into the design team throughout the development and execution of a project.
Fun Fact
Equity centered design challenges the common belief that a designer’s point of view defines the RIGHT challenge to address within the design process, as well as the notion of empathy (the ability to understand and share the feelings of another) as a substitution of lived experience. Embedded experts with lived experience can balance knowledge power and decision making dynamics when integrated properly within teams.
Principles of participatory research & equitable design
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Community and equity anchored
Recognize projects’ topics and community of focus history. Acknowledge that the expertise necessary to develop an intervention for social justice rests within the community of focus.
Question - not hypothesis - based
Account for internal team biases to prevent slipping into stereotypes. Raise awareness on the team’s identities and how those impact thoughts, choices, and assumptions.
Collectively owned
Anchor knowledge building in the community’s priorities by building collective responsibility and innovative solutions using the design process.
Power leveled
Integrate community members affected by inequality and oppression as lived experience experts to be part of the design and decision-making process.
Co-creation based
Use creative facilitation methods to foster an action-oriented spirit of collaboration and co-invention, necessary for power redistribution.
Empathy & humility focused
Allow for research, design, and facilitation tools to be lead by the community experts. Facilitate collective learning, uncover uncomfortable truths, and remove self.
Participatory & equity centered design
Speed of trust passed
Prioritized building trust within the community of focus over outputs. Move at the speed of trust to ensure buy-in and sustainability of the work over time.
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Taking a participatory and equity-centered approach requires mindset shifts
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Participatory & equity centered design
From leading to
Capacity bridging
Moving away from the traditional consulting approach of defining learning agenda on behalf of clients to capacity bridging by sharing knowledge between academics, designers, community-based researchers, and community individuals.
From defining & prioritizing to
Co-creating
Shifting from problem definition or hypothesis led approach based on secondary or academic expertise to focus on the community's priorities, the change they want to see, and how they lead change management.
From beneficiary to
Partner
Redefining community members' role from 'receivers' or 'users' of programs, services or policies, becoming partners and drivers of the decisions that affect their lives, and having the agency to hold their governing bodies accountable.
From expert lead to
Facilitation lead
The team's primary role is to facilitate the research and design process, moving away from being process, content, or sector 'experts.' Everyone's an expert on their own lived experience and have unique contributions to bring to the research and design process.
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Is HCD participatory and equity based? Sort of, but not sufficiently.
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Participatory & equity centered design
Human-centered design (HCD) is a creative process that starts by building deep empathy with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor-made to suit their needs.
Power rests with the design team and the paying clients on whose behalf it is working, whether in priority setting, creative decision making, or resource allocation. It assumes that an expert’s empathy can replace the lived experience.
Equity and impact are secondary to market viability and/or institutional interests, often making social impact reliant on expanding private revenue, profit, and power and rarely bringing up-front community’s existing priorities.
People and communities participation is deliberately limited, whether to research subjects whose “voices” need to be elevated by designers, or as “end-users” whose ultimate role is to consume, not as co-equal stakeholders. People and communities are often not allowed to participate directly in decision making, creative choices, or resource allocation.
Maintains the power of status-quo institutions when setting priorities, allocating resources, and making critical decisions that directly impact people and communities’ lives, rather than shifting power and resource to the communities themselves, while providing cover by arguing the process is fundamentally inclusive.
While empathy is a foundational precept of Design Thinking, it is woefully flawed. “User’s” experiences are filtered through participants who likely lack the situational, cultural, and cognitive context to adequately understand core needs.
- Thimothy Bardlevans, Design manager at Facebook
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Are consultative approaches participatory and equitable?
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Participatory & equity centered design
Open ended-interviews
Interviews are designed to follow a certain line of questioning, the answers to which help inform a hypothesis. The relationship between the interviewer and participant is very unidirectional - where the interviewer from the research team decides the direction of the conversation, which is driven by priorities of the client/ donor agenda. Also, while interviews reveal insights about people’s lived experiences, behaviors, and aspirations, the agency to create a narrative, elevate certain aspects of stories, crafting insights to inform directions, lies with the research team.
Interviews with community leaders
Community leaders are often one of the first people a team reaches out for connecting with a community. They are well respected, can identify the ‘right people’ who will for the research agenda, and can foster trust in the community to participate in activities. However, community leaders are often under pressure to represent well and may paint a very selective picture of the community.
Focus group discussions
In order to conduct focus group discussions, a design team decides an agenda and selects a group of participants that will answer or provide inputs to the pre-decided topics. Members of the community participating in the session do not have ownership or agency to decide whether the given agenda is of priority and whether they wish to spend time discussing it.
Digital platforms for surveys/ interviews
Digital surveys can allow for covering the breadth of voices in a short time. Due to COVID, many research efforts are moving to digital platforms like WhatsApp, Zoom, Skype, etc. However, the access and ownership of devices and online platforms are heavily influenced by socio-economic, gender, and other factors, becoming an obstacle to achieving a holistic understanding of the participant's context and limiting the participant sample to only those who are reachable digitally.
The following methods and activities are consultative tools that can be part of broader participatory approach, but applied in isolation may serve to undermine both participation and equity.
Integrated participatory approaches
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Integrated participatory approaches
How can we integrate Participatory & Equity Centered Design into our JEM practice?
Iterate or move on
Iterate or move on
Align with client on objectives / approach & mobilize team
Assess landscape & define solution / opportunity space
Conduct research / analysis & define solution set
Prioritize, test, & develop solution with key stakeholders
Deploy, scale and measure interventions
Participatory research & equitable design shifts power dynamics and mitigates resource disparities between stakeholders through an inclusive and equitable research and design process . The approach is highly collaborative, and brings community representatives into the core project team as partners in the research, design and decision making processes. To do so, it builds in accountability structures (e.g. of the project, client, and funder team) to the community, and mechanisms for robustly shifting decision making power to community partners/reps.
Iterate or move on
Build humility, assess bias, & plan for community engagement
Partner with community to define priorities & reframe project context
Facilitate participatory research, ideation & prototyping with community partners
Co-design intervention, pilot, & MEL plan, prioritizing community preferences & ownership
Co-develop recommendations for scaling intervention with community ownership
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Integrated participatory approaches
What does the Participatory & Equity Centered Design look like in practice?
Iterate or move on
Iterate or move on
Build humility, assess bias, & plan for community engagement
Partner with community to define priorities & reframe project context
Facilitate participatory research, ideation & prototyping with community partners
Co-design intervention, pilot, & MEL plan, prioritizing community preferences & ownership
Co-develop recommendations for scaling intervention with community ownership
Project teams assess both their and the paying client’s interests and biases, including how they may differ from the community of focus. The team also examines the outsized influence they and the client may hold over the process and outcome that affect the community.
The team works with the community to identify a diverse, inclusive, and equitably selected subset of community members to act as as living experts and co-designers as representatives and partners to the project team.
Project teams meet members of the community to understand how they work together, frame relevant issues, and set priorities. Together, the team co-designs mechanisms for instilling accountability (e.g. of the project team, client team, and funders) to the community, and for shifting decision making power to community partners/reps.
The team co-creates with partners an approach for collaborative project execution that works within community framing, addresses its priorities, and engages its representative to own the process and future interventions (where applicable).
Project teams work with community partners to develop and document an in-depth understanding of the community’s attitudes, behaviors, needs, and aspirations and priorities.
Based on this understanding, the team facilitates participatory synthesis, ideation and concept design process that translates learnings into ideas that can address some of the community’s identified needs, priorities, and aspirations.
The team facilitates community partners and other stakeholders to prioritize intervention ideas, selecting one or more to build into an MVP (minimum viable product). To do so, the team facilitates community partners and stakeholders to define prioritization criteria (e.g. most pressing needs, most deeply held aspirations, greatest potential for sustainable community ownership) and selects ideas against them.
The team facilitates community partners to co-design of the MVP, pilot plan, and MEL strategy for priority interventions, which community partners will own.
The team facilitates community partners and stakeholders to create recommendations for full implementation and scale based on pilot results and learnings, working with the group to identify community roles, define metrics for success and MEL mechanisms, and allocate resources.
Iterate or move on
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03
Integrated participatory approaches
Strategic planning - Generalized engagement model
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Main
activities
Main
outputs
JEM TEAM
Build humility, assess bias, and plan for community engagement
Partner with community to define priorities & reframe project context
Co-design intervention, pilot, & MEL plan, prioritizing community preferences & ownership
Co-develop recommendations for scaling intervention with community ownership
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2
3
5
4
Facilitate participatory research, ideation & prototyping with community partners
03
Integrated participatory approaches
Strategic planning - Engagement considerations
CHEAT SHEET
JEM TEAM
Considerations for equitable participation
Set common language. Don’t assume everyone has the same beliefs and understandings as yourself. Develop agreed upon definitions for any recurring terms you will use throughout your work.
Ensure all voices are heard. In addition to facilitating discussions inclusive of various personality types, use a variety of activities that highlight everyone’s strengths and comfort at different moments.
Zoom in and out on the need. Scope down the need to be small and specific, from there you can zoom out. Gather insights, perspectives, and expertise from groups whose voices are often dismissed or excluded, such as youth.
Think about who’s inviting you to engage with the community - as well as who you’re inviting (What’s their, and your, agenda?) The community gatekeepers are not just
the people with titles or assigned roles.
Participatory Equity-Centered Design is not a linear process. Instead, it’s helpful to
think about each step as intersectional, and that we must make various combinations as we approach different scenarios.
Considerations for planning
Build relationships and alignment. Cultivate relationships with co-facilitators, the client, and other participants before the workshop. Connecting before a workshop is a good opportunity to hear participants' interests and perspectives, which can help you during facilitation.
Prioritize outcomes over details. Effective facilitation requires flexibility to move agenda items around depending on the momentum and focus of participants. Think ahead about which agenda items are crucial (and which can be sacrificed), as well as scenarios in which the sequencing will need to change.
Plan, execute, adjust. Create check-in moments with your team (perhaps while participants are occupied with an activity that doesn’t need active facilitation) for quick problem-solving or agenda refinements. If you’re facilitating a multi-day workshop, factor in 1-2 hours for at the end of each day to debrief and refine the following day’s agenda and facilitation guide.
Engage community members when choosing tools for research - out of reach methods that have dependencies on access to tech, additional costs etc will exclude participation and ownership
Considerations for execution
Build time to process and reflect on your learnings. At the end of every few remote research sessions, take a moment to regroup with your research partner or reflect on your own. Remember to make space for regular synthesis.
Build on what already exists, abandon the glamour of chasing “new and innovative”. Recognize ongoing and previous efforts that the community has undertaken, build on them.
Align incentives with the context. For example, incentives during a pandemic like COVID may change the day-to-day priorities of leadership and participants. Check project objectives against the context and reconsider as needed.
Create a channel of communication for participants to connect with you and other participants ahead of time during and after the workshop. You can also use this channel during the workshop for quick polls and energizer activities.
Considerations for engaging DD
Understand our approach. Our approach is focused on understanding dynamics between stakeholders across the ecosystem to create solutions and strategies that overcome challenges and develop opportunities to create value and impact. The process we follow is mostly bottom-up, it often works best in concert with a more traditional top down strategy process. Learn more about it on our remote research guide .
Involve us early in shaping an opportunity or a proposal. We can help sharpen framing, expand the opportunity space, and add value to offerings with participatory lense upfront. You will get the most value out of us when you integrate us into the project's core.
Ask for trainings on our methods. We would love to teach you and build your design skills. Take advantage of our more flexible staffing model — we can ramp teams up quickly for short sprints and staff people at 50%.
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Integrated participatory approaches
Strategic planning - Project example
Africa Center
CHALLENGE
As a young organization with a bold vision, The Africa Center can play a crucial role in advocating for and promoting Africa – its culture, people, and diaspora – in the United States and abroad. As the Center looks to expand its operations, broaden its scope, and refine its mission, it seeks to distill and sequence its approach through a robust 5-year strategic plan.
CONTEXT�The Africa Center seeks to serve as a cultural hub, offering a taste of African art, food, and music, enabling visitors to communicate directly with Africans through a Shared Studios Portal. They also aim to use The Africa Center as a platform to advocate for policies that address current economic, environmental, and social challenges across the continent. And strive to serve as a launchpad for African business and outside investors interested in Africa by convening entrepreneurs and promoting dialogue among businessmen and women.
Dalberg proposal
20
Main
activities
Main
outputs
03
Integrated participatory approaches
Creative facilitation - Generalized engagement model
Creative facilitation is the practice of enabling a diverse group of people to create things together in a collaborative and intentional space.
Build humility, assess bias, and plan for community engagement
Partner with community to define priorities & reframe project context
Co-design intervention, pilot, & MEL plan, prioritizing community preferences & ownership
Co-develop recommendations for scaling intervention with community ownership
1
2
3
5
4
Facilitate participatory research, ideation & prototyping with community partners
Considerations for planning
Build relationships and alignment. Cultivate relationships with co-facilitators, the client, and other participants before the workshop. Connecting before a workshop is a good opportunity to hear participants' interests and perspectives, which can help you during facilitation.
Prioritize outcomes over details. Effective facilitation requires flexibility to move agenda items around depending on the momentum and focus of participants. Think ahead about which agenda items are crucial (and which can be sacrificed), as well as scenarios in which the sequencing will need to change.
Plan, execute, adjust. Create check-in moments with your team (perhaps while participants are occupied with an activity that doesn’t need active facilitation) for quick problem-solving or agenda refinements. If you’re facilitating a multi-day workshop, factor in 1-2 hours for at the end of each day to debrief and refine the following day’s agenda and facilitation guide.
Budget time and resources for a dry run right from the start. Educate clients and the team regarding the importance of doing a dry run and asking them for their time to engage in one before the actual workshop.
03
Integrated participatory approaches
Creative facilitation - Engagement considerations
CHEAT SHEET
Considerations for engaging DD
Understand our approach. Our approach is focused on understanding dynamics between stakeholders across the ecosystem to create solutions and strategies that overcome challenges and develop opportunities to create value and impact. The process we follow is mostly bottom-up, it often works best in concert with a more traditional top down strategy process. Learn more about it on our creative facilitation guide.
Involve us early in shaping an opportunity or a proposal. We can help sharpen framing, expand the opportunity space, and add value to offerings with participatory lense upfront. You will get the most value out of us when you integrate us into the project's core.
Ask for trainings on our methods. We would love to teach you and build your design skills. Take advantage of our more flexible staffing model — we can ramp teams up quickly for short sprints and staff people at 50%.
Considerations for equitable participation
Participatory equity-Centered Design is not a linear process. Instead, it’s helpful to
think about each step as intersectional, and that we must make various combinations as we approach different scenarios.
Set common language. Don’t assume everyone has the same beliefs and understandings as yourself. Develop agreed upon definitions for any recurring terms you will use throughout your work.
Find additional ways to share ideas besides writing. For example, try to draw out ideas to visualize thoughts in a creative way.
Think about who’s inviting you to engage with the community - as well as who you’re inviting (What’s their, and your, agenda?) The community gatekeepers are not just
the people with titles or assigned roles.
Considerations for execution
Add time for delays and overruns. Budget time at the start of the workshop for late arrivals and having a light activity ready to warm up everyone else. Add 5-15 minutes of buffer after each activity or session to accommodate a lively discussion or a re-energizing break. And if your timing is significantly off, consider cutting or reworking your agenda on the fly - don’t try to cram it all in.
Create a channel of communication for participants to connect with you and other participants ahead of time during and after the workshop. You can also use this channel during the workshop for quick polls and energizer activities.
Don’t skip icebreakers or make them too serious or complicated. Icebreakers should be light-hearted moments that help participants ease in to the workshop and make them feel like they are entering a safe space.
Always plan your workshop sessions in a way that can inform the final requirements you have around outputs. For example, if you need to suggest a path forward that you have arrived at with consensus from multiple stakeholders, make sure you do a roadmapping activity with participants and use those inputs to create the final plan of action.
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Integrated participatory approaches
Creative facilitation - Project example
Financial Health Network
CHALLENGE
The Financial Health Network’s Financial Solutions Lab is establishing a new program, The Collaborative, which seeks to organize immediate relief to urgent pain points experienced by unemployment claimants and active beneficiaries.
CONTEXT�Drawing on this analysis, FHN will organize and facilitate ideation workshops with key stakeholders from the government, the private sector, and relevant experts and non-profits essential to delivering improvements. Through the workshop, the consortium will identify a set of “quick win” solutions to address one or more of the key pain points people experience. Ideally, solutions will use available programs, products, and services to be rapidly scaled to provide immediate relief.
Dalberg proposal
23
Main
activities
Main
outputs
03
Integrated participatory approaches
Participatory research - Generalized engagement model
Participatory research invites communities to actively and collaboratively build shared understanding together using creative tools
Build humility, assess bias, and plan for community engagement
Partner with community to define priorities & reframe project context
Co-design intervention, pilot, & MEL plan, prioritizing community priorities & ownership
Co-develop recommendations
for scaling intervention with community ownership
1
2
3
5
4
Facilitate participatory research, ideation & prototyping with community partners
03
Integrated participatory approaches
Participatory research - Engagement considerations
CHEAT SHEET
Considerations for engaging DD
Understand our approach. Our approach is focused on understanding dynamics between stakeholders across the ecosystem to create solutions and strategies that overcome challenges and develop opportunities to create value and impact. The process we follow is mostly bottom-up, it often works best in concert with a more traditional top down strategy process. Learn more about it on our remote research guide .
Involve us early in shaping an opportunity or a proposal. We can help sharpen framing, expand the opportunity space, and add value to offerings with participatory lense upfront. You will get the most value out of us when you integrate us into the project's core.
Ask for trainings on our methods. We would love to teach you and build your design skills. Take advantage of our more flexible staffing model — we can ramp teams up quickly for short sprints and staff people at 50%.
Considerations for equitable participation
Think about who’s inviting you to engage with the community - as well as who you’re inviting (What’s their, and your, agenda?) The community gatekeepers are not just
the people with titles or assigned roles.
Participatory equity-Centered Design is not a linear process. Instead, it’s helpful to
think about each step as intersectional, and that we must make various combinations as we approach different scenarios.
Set common language. Don’t assume everyone has the same beliefs and understandings as yourself. Develop agreed-upon definitions for any recurring terms you will use throughout your work.
Ensure all voices are heard. In addition to facilitating discussions inclusive of various personality types, use a variety of activities that highlight everyone’s strengths and comfort at different moments.
Zoom in and out on the need. Scope down the need to be small and specific, from there you can zoom out. Gather insights, perspectives, and expertise from groups whose voices are often dismissed or excluded, such as youth.
Considerations for planning
Proactively engage clients and community. Create pauses during research for clients/community to deeply engage and understand how learnings from the context are shaping the outcomes. This may reduce the bandwidth needed for elaborate milestone check-ins which involve prep and production time.
Extend sprint cycles. Given our remote context, research sprints no longer need to be constrained as 1-2 week sprints. They can be spread across the project, providing more opportunities to engage community, assess, and pivot. In this way, research can continuously shape project outcome at various intervals.
Carefully plan for recruitment. Your research and design learning outcomes depend on reaching the right participants. Choose from a range of recruitment approaches, from leveraging existing networks, to clients and partner organizations, to third-party agencies.
Scope for time for setting up community members for success - it is tempting to feel that you can move the process along faster, however real PRD involves time and patience that is not disruptive to the community and accounts for time needed for progress
Considerations for execution
Get consent from research participants. Read out the points of a consent form, and participants to sign their consent. If you are doing this remotely, record participants’ responses via audio or video. Offer to share this consent form or record with participants for their records.
Align incentives with the context. For example, incentives during a pandemic like COVID maybe of the nature of direct cash transfer enabling purchase of food for low income families. Consider advance compensation for airtime/data, and communicate with participants about this. If you want to give participants a gift after the session, think about digital options. See if the third-party fixer/recruiter (if involved) can facilitate the process.
Build time to process and reflect on your learnings. At the end of every few remote research sessions, take a moment to regroup with your research partner or reflect on your own. Remember to make space for regular synthesis.
03
Integrated participatory approaches
Participatory research - Project example
XX
CHALLENGE
xx
CONTEXT�xx
Dalberg proposal
We have not yet had the opportunity to conduct truly participatory research within the JEM portfolio, but hope to do so soon and update this example. Please help us do so!
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Main
activities
Main
outputs
03
Integrated participatory approaches
Design - Generalized engagement model
Co-design builds on existing resources and capacities to re-balance power and craft solutions that are owned and sustained by the community
Build humility, assess bias, and plan for community engagement
Partner with community to define priorities & reframe project context
Co-design intervention, pilot, & MEL plan, prioritizing community preferences & ownership
Co-develop recommendations for scaling intervention with community ownership
1
2
3
5
4
Facilitate participatory research, ideation & prototyping with community partners
03
Integrated participatory approaches
Design - Engagement considerations
CHEAT SHEET
Considerations for engaging DD
Understand our approach. Our approach is focused on understanding dynamics between stakeholders across the ecosystem to create solutions and strategies that overcome challenges and develop opportunities to create value and impact. The process we follow is mostly bottom-up, it often works best in concert with a more traditional top down strategy process. Learn more about it on our Dalberg Design 101 primer .
Involve us early in shaping an opportunity or a proposal. We can help sharpen framing, expand the opportunity space, and add value to offerings with participatory lense upfront. You will get the most value out of us when you integrate us into the project's core.
Ask for trainings on our methods. We would love to teach you and build your design skills. Take advantage of our more flexible staffing model — we can ramp teams up quickly for short sprints and staff people at 50%.
Considerations for equitable participation �Participatory equity-Centered Design is not a linear process. Instead, it’s helpful to
think about each step as intersectional, and that we must make various combinations as we approach different scenarios.
Set common language. Don’t assume everyone has the same beliefs and understandings as yourself. Develop agreed upon definitions for any recurring terms you will use throughout your work.
Ensure all voices are heard. In addition to facilitating discussions inclusive of various personality types, use a variety of activities that highlight everyone’s strengths and comfort at different moments.
Remember that prototyping is meant to be a quick and iterative process. You’re not trying to make the perfect representation of your idea in its entirety. You’re trying to test out assumptions of your idea to make mistakes early, so that you can correct those assumptions before investing more time and resources in making your idea a reality.
Testing and learning should be happening throughout any design process. There must be clear, consistent channels for all stakeholders to share feedback.
Considerations for planning
Proactively engage clients and community. Create pauses during research for clients/community to deeply engage and understand how learnings from the context are shaping the outcomes. This may reduce the bandwidth needed for elaborate milestone check-ins which involve prep and production time.
Carefully plan for recruitment. Your research and design learning outcomes depend on reaching the right participants. Choose from a range of recruitment approaches, from leveraging existing networks, to clients and partner organizations, to third-party agencies.
Engage community members when choosing tools for research - out of reach methods that have dependencies on access to tech, additional costs etc will exclude participation and ownership
Plan, execute, adjust. Create check-in moments with your team (perhaps while participants are occupied with an activity that doesn’t need active facilitation) for quick problem-solving or agenda refinements.
Budget time and resources for a dry run. Educate clients and the team regarding the importance of doing a dry run and asking them for their time to engage in one before the actual workshop.
Considerations for execution
Get consent from research participants. Read out the points of a consent form, and participants to sign their consent. If you are doing this remotely, record participants’ responses via audio or video. Offer to share this consent form or record with participants for their records.
Align incentives with the context. For example, incentives during a pandemic like COVID maybe of the nature of direct cash transfer enabling purchase of food for low income families. Consider advance compensation for airtime/data, and communicate with participants about this. If you want to give participants a gift after the session, think about digital options. See if the third-party fixer/recruiter (if involved) can facilitate the process.
Build time to process and reflect on your learnings. At the end of every few remote research sessions, take a moment to regroup with your research partner or reflect on your own. Remember to make space for regular synthesis.
Build on what already exists, abandon the glamour of chasing “new and innovative”. Recognize ongoing and previous efforts that the community has undertaken, build on them.
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Integrated participatory approaches
Design - Project example
Compass Working Capital
CHALLENGE
Compass is looking for a consulting partner to design and develop a technology-enabled FSS-escrow based asset building service to support families in subsidized public housing to build assets and financial capabilities.
CONTEXT�Asset poverty plagues one quarter of American families. Families who are asset poor are more likely to experience economic distress, which impacts mental and physical health. Compass Working Capital has ambitions to stem asset poverty, leveraging its unique asset-building model for HUD’s Family Self-Sufficiency Program.
Dalberg proposal
Annex
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Annex
See past JEM proposals with integrated participatory research �& equitable design
As of Q3 2020, The JEM team has developed ~20 proposals that integrate elements of participatory design. The link to the right take you to the JEM dropbox folder where you can find these proposals. We hope that together with this primer, these proposals provide you with inspiration as you develop new opportunities to bring participatory approaches into our JEM work.
RESOURCE FEATURES
HOW WAS THIS RESOURCE DEVELOPED?
We archive in this folder copies of all JEM proposals developed that integrate participatory research and equitable design (and therefore include DD).
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Annex
Learn the design lingo (translated into English!)
Design terms can seem like jargon to non-designers, which can lead to miscommunication. This resource helps clarify the meanings of common design terms through definitions and examples.
RESOURCE FEATURES
HOW WAS THIS RESOURCE DEVELOPED?
The glossary was developed by engaging with a range of global health practitioners and designers who provided input regarding the definitions of terms and examples that help explain each of them.
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Annex
Roles at Dalberg Design
Directors
Overseeing mixed methods research, including planning and aligning complementary methodologies (such as behavioral science and DA/DR/DDI) into our research approach.
Integrating insights and recommendations across workstreams (including from DA/DR/DDI) and developing persuasive cross-cutting narratives.
Conceptualizing business strategies, business models and organizational structures, processes and culture, and presenting a voice of inspiration and provocation to our teams.
Applying these creative facilitation skills to contexts involving challenging stakeholder interests and dynamics, and demonstrating an ability to drive alignment and action.
Combining the communication and design strengths of team members to share insights and ideas with clients and colleagues in compelling and unexpected ways.
Creative Leads
Research planning, including the learning agenda, optimal research methods, recruiting approaches, locations and local partners, and oversight of the research process to ensure continuous learning and adaptation.
Translating research outputs into robust HCD frameworks (such as journey maps, persona models, opportunity frameworks) and compelling client narratives.
Extending ideation and conceptualization to programs, platforms and delivery channels, and calibrating concepts to organizational and market feasibility and viability.
Taking accountability for the quality of creative deliverables in your area(s) of expertise
Planning workshops, including agenda and workshop activities, and facilitating workshops, including leading participants through all workshop activities and ensuring a strong workshop energy.
Senior Designers
Conducting HCD research, including immersion, user and stakeholder interviewing, low-fidelity rapid prototyping, and organized data capture.
Generating and clearly articulating findings, insights, opportunities and design principles from our work.
Generating and evaluating new ideas, and packaging these ideas into well articulated, innovative concepts that are tied to our insights and the broader market opportunity.
Participating in design workshops for alignment, synthesis, ideation, co-design and visioning purposes, and ensuring all participants are engaged and have a positive, inspiring experience.
Taking accountability for the quality of creative deliverables in your area(s) of expertise, including production of thorough and detailed documentation
Designers
Conducting HCD research, including immersion, user and stakeholder interviewing, low-fidelity rapid prototyping, and organized data capture.
Generating and clearly articulating findings, insights, opportunities and design principles from our work.
Contributing to developing and executing compelling, actionable and highly relevant creative strategies for each client engagement that fit within the overall strategic vision
Participating in design workshops for alignment, synthesis, ideation, co-design and visioning purposes, and ensuring all participants are engaged and have a positive, inspiring experience.
Creating visually compelling outputs appropriate for the target audience, which includes clean and organized structure, persuasive graphic design and zero defect writing.