Browsing by Subject "Social-impact"

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    Uncovering Talents and Interests in At-risk Urban Youth: Co-designing a path to self-fulfillment
    (2015) Smerdel, Jennifer; Napier, Pamela
    The designer’s role has evolved greatly over the past few decades. We are no longer asked to simply create a poster or a web page, but to solve complex problems towards socially relevant topics. Through utilizing a people-centered approach to better understand complex socio-material interactions, designers are able to create meaningful change in organizations, communities, and individuals lives. This new role has opened up the door to the possibilities of how designer’s can create a significant impact on a large scale as well as on an individual level. By seeking to create a change, design researchers identify groups who can be best served with a people-centered approach. This includes those who do not have an active voice in our society and therefore are potentially forgotten. One such group is that of at-risk urban youth. At-risk urban youth are defined as "adolescents who face disadvantage determined by a level of poverty, social, and family conditions whilst living in an urban community, which hinders their personal development and success (UN-HABITAT, 2003). This can lead to a decreased sense of self-fulfillment, which is exacerbated by a lack of opportunities. The path to self-fulfillment can be reached by bringing to fruition one’s deepest interests and capacities or talents, and by giving at-risk urban youth the opportunity to uncover these, an actionable plan for their future can be developed. By employing a co-design approach, youth collaborated with one another while working with creative tools and methods. Co-design is a process in which designers and non-designers work collaboratively in the design development process to create holistic solutions to problems (Sanders & Stappers, 2008). This research explored how a participatory design approach, such as co-design, can be applied in the development of a process for at-risk urban youth to uncover their latent talents and interests and develop an actionable plan for them to fulfill their future goals. Engaging youth in the process helped to identify, select, and iterate on appropriate co-design tools and methods in order to enhance the inherent creativity in youth and guide them toward the path to self-fulfillment. With the help of at-risk urban youth, this thesis produced a new process, along with facilitation guidance tools, to help solve this social issue. In a rapidly transforming world, at-risk urban youth can be considered as the forgotten generation of our time. By challenging ourselves to rethink and redesign the process in which youth are accessing their future goals and bringing them to fruition, we are able to pave the way for future social innovation.