This is a pilot prototype of DFA's Process Guide. This is very much a work in progress and just includes the first phase, Understand, of the 3 phase process, Create and Implement.

1. D
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a
ft
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2. Dear DFAmily,
Design for America(DFA) is all about creating leaders of
innovation and impact through the implementation of DFA
projects. We use the human-centered design process to
help us achieve these goals. However, this process is rarely a
linear progression, and while it might appear very neat here
it can be more like a roller-coaster when you’re in the middle
of it. That’s why we’ve made this guide- to provide you with
an overview of what you’re getting into and guidance along
the way.
This DFA process guide includes three main phases-
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Understand, Create, Implement, with three steps within each
phase. In here, you’ll find an overview to each step, a story
from a real DFA project, actions to take in each step, and a
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list of criteria to help determine whether or not to move on
or iterate. You can read the guide on your own, share it with
friends, or bring it to your next team meeting to discuss
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what you may want to do next in your project.
If you’re in a time crunch, we recommend skipping to the
criteria sections of each step to get a quick overview.
This guide, is still a work in progress. Like all good designs,
this is meant to be improved on and to do this we need your
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help. Please send any suggestions to:
process@designforamerica.com
Thank you for joining us in this journey to use design to
create local and social impact.
Sincerely,

3. DFA PROCESS OVERVIEW
Understand UNDERSTAND
What is the challenge you are trying to solve?
The Understand phase involves identifying a challenge in your
community you are passionate about solving, immersing yourself
in the context where people confront the challenge and reframing
how you perceive your challenge to determine where design could
make a difference. The more you understand your community the
better the solutions your team is likely to develop and improve the
IDENTIFY Immerse Reframe
world around you.
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Create CREATE
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What are all the possible solutions that fulfill the need?
The Create phase is where you make and test your ideas with
community members, mentors, and professional experts. It
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involves ideating solutions, building prototypes and testing these
prototypes to see what works. You build and test different parts
of the solution tossing out the parts that don’t work, and keeping
Ideate BUILD Test the parts that do. Through this iterative process, you can develop
the best possible solution for your community.
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implement IMPLEMENT
How will you get your solution into the world?
The Implementation phase is about making sustainable impact
with your solution. This stage involves pitching your solutions
to secure needed resources, piloting your solution with the
community and creating an impact by getting your solution into
the hands of people who will use your design.
Pitch Pilot impact

4. DESIGN JOURNEY TIPS
The design process is a journey. There is no one right or wrong
path, but below are some tips to help you along the way.
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Look Ahead: Write it Down: Ask for Help: Tell Stories: Iterate: Reflect:
Life is busy. As a Don’t assume you’ll No one has all the Don’t just tell people You are not supposed Throughout your
student, you have a remember something answers. There are what you are doing, to get it right the process, it will be
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million things going later. Always carry a people all around us tell them a story. first time. Learning important to reflect
on so it takes a pen and notebook and who have unique and Tell them about the the design process on how you’re feeling
little bit of planning write down a thought potentially helpful people you’ve met, is never-ending. and evaluate your
ahead. Create a or observation when expertise. It’s easy their lives, something You become better work. By reflecting,
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timeline and a list of it hits you. When to waste time being they said, and how and better at it over you become more
milestones for each appropriate, take afraid of not knowing they can help. Think time and so do your aware of what you’ve
term, email people a picture of what what to do. Reach about your audience ideas. Don’t stop learned, what you are
well in advance and inspired you. These out and ask for help. and what they would after one good idea uncomfortable with,
put agendas together artifacts will help you Celebrate what you be most excited to or building one good and when to ask for
before a meeting so down the road to don’t know and what hear about. If they’re prototype. Go back help.
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you know what you make sense of your you can learn from excited to hear your to the community
hope to achieve. observations and tell others. story, they’ll be more continuously to learn
your story later on. likely to help. how to improve your
solutions.

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Understand
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6. 10 11
INTRODUCTION
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Identify is the step when you find a challenge
that excites your team, has the potential to make
a positive impact, and when you establish a
community partner.
C C
The design process begins with identifying a challenge
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that you aim to solve. Don’t try to solve everything
Intro
IDENTIFY
at once. A good challenge is daring, feasible, and
applicable; this means that when you talk about your
duction
challenge most people will agree that it’s a big problem,
IDENTIFY
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you should be able to access community members
experiencing the problem, and is relevant across the
country.
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During this step, you’ll want to establish a community
partner. A community partner is someone within a local
organization working on your selected challenge. Your
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community partner can share his or her expertise and
connect you to individuals experiencing the challenge.
Actions in Identify:
• Seek challenges in your community
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• Establish a community partner
• Evaluate and select challenge
How does Identify set you up for success in Immerse?
Identifying provides the team with an area of focus. It also
provides the team with a community partner who can provide
expertise on the challenge and access to users.
Nana and team identifying challenges to kick-off the school year
studio (2010)

7. STORY: WATER CONSERVATION Establish a community partner 13
Working with a campus group who had expertise in water U
conservation gave us access to a lot of information about
the challenge and had the potential to help us apply our
solution later in the process. Although it took some time to
find the right person to talk to, over time, we also established
a relationship with our campus cafeteria. They didn’t let us in C
the kitchen at first, but we established a good rapport with
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the manager and were able to work with the staff on the
Story
IDENTIFY
project to observe how they used water. For these reasons we
felt that the challenge was applicable.
Evaluate and select challenge
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The project team identifies that water conservation in the cafeteria We did a bit more research to narrow the challenge down
was a daring, feasible, and applicable challenges (2009) and identify a place and a specific user. One of the things
that we looked at was the water usage in dining halls and
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restaurants. A huge amount of water is used in dining halls
Seek challenges in your community
and restaurants! Since we were able to establish a relationship
We were looking for a challenge and we knew we were
with a community partner within a cafeteria, we decided to
interested in the environment and sustainability. We read
focus our efforts here. At this point our challenge became
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the local newspaper, and talked to a number of friends and
“how can we reduce the amount of water usage in cafeterias?”
professors to come up with a number of different general
challenges. Through talking about our challenge to friends we
discovered that there was an organization on campus that was
working on water conservation, and this was a topic our team
was passionate about.
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Through these discussions we felt that there would be lots of
opportunities to innovate – after all, water is used all over the
place. At this point one of our challenge questions was “how
can we reduce water usage?” We looked at our challenges
and felt that water conservation had the most potential for
a number of reasons. We realized that this might be a great
Skills to Practice:
place to make an impact because water conservation is a
• A strong ability to communicate DFA’s mission - to create positive
huge problem. We were really excited about it, and felt it
social impact
would make it a really daring challenge. Also, water is used
• Communicating with a potential community partner that DFA projects
everywhere, and so we would be able to access, observe and draw on understanding community members, and that this requires
interview community members in a number of different places, having access to observe and test with these community members.
so it seemed feasible.

8. 14
ACTIONS 15
U U
Seek challenges in your community
Decide as a group your project time-frame and which
challenge theme you want to focus on within the areas of
Health, Education, Economy or the Environment. You can do
C a big brainstorm of potential challenges at the beginning or C
decide who is going to look into what before regrouping and
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determining your challenge direction. It’s often a good idea
ACTI
IDENTIFY
to generate a number of project ideas at first. You can seek
challenges from sources such as: competitions for social good,
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existing campus initiatives, the local or national news, or by
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simply asking those within your community on and off-campus Yuri Malina talking to a community partner about her experiences
what they think is a big need. with asthma. (2011)
Phrase your potential challenges as challenge statements. community partner who is close to campus - 15 minutes travel
Challenge statements are ‘how can we...’ statements, such is a good rule of thumb.
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as ‘how can we reduce water usage?’ or ‘how can we reduce
Reach out to someone within the organization. You’ll want to
childhood obesity?’ Challenge statements describe the
contact someone who has the time to help you coordinate
problem that a project team is trying to solve. They are a tool
interviews and visits. For example, if you’re doing work
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for you to evaluate and reflect upon your project direction.
with autistic children in a school this might be their teacher.
At this stage challenges should point to a general problem, but Overtime, you may need a manager or key decision maker to
not suggest how you will solve the problem. You won’t have ensure you can continue working with the group.
learned enough about the problem to know how to make an
When speaking to your community explain what you are trying
impact. ‘How can we reduce water usage within cafeterias?’ or
to achieve and the types of challenges that DFA teams tackle.
‘how can we improve the lives of the mentally disabled?’ don’t
Focus the conversation on those the organization serves and
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tell you much information or how you will tackle the problem.
try to avoid projects that treat the partner as a client such as
This is the level of specificity you want at this stage of the
website re-designs, volunteer engagement strategies, or fund-
process. This challenge statement will become more specific
raising campaigns. We find focusing on the challenge is where
after establishing and talking with a community partner.
DFA teams can best deliver.
Establish a community partner
Having decided upon a possible challenge you’ll need Keep an eye out for: staying in your comfort zone
to establish a relationship with a community partner. A It’s important to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. It can be
community partner is an organization that can provide you intimidating to talk to strangers. It will often take time and multiple
tries to get a hold of people but persistence is key. Your projects will
with domain expertise and give you access to community benefit enormously if you get advice and feedback from experts in
members so you can really look into the problem. If you’re design and the domain in which you are working. It will also benefit
looking at childhood obesity for example, your community enormously if you can access the community members for whom you
want to design.
partner might be a local school. It works best to have a

9. 16 17
Evaluate and select the challenges
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Now that you have identified potential challenge statements
and established a community partner, evaluate potential
challenges based on whether they are:
Daring
C Successful projects tend to tackle an exciting and big C
challenge.
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Ask yourself: If you are successful, is there an opportunity
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to make an impact on a serious problem? Can you make
explain within 30 seconds why your challenge is a big
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problem?
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Sean Hammett evaluating potential challenge statements. (2011)
Feasible
Successful projects require access to the community
As you identify and talk to a community partner you’ll begin to members experiencing the challenge.
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narrow down your challenge statement further so you can be Ask yourself: Do you have access to community
more focused when you get to the Immerse stage. Ask your members? Will you be able to observe community
partner: Who do you serve? What are the biggest challenges members experiencing the challenge? Can you test or
your community faces? At this point, you can evaluate your
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photograph the challenge?
challenge statement to include a particular person and place.
For example, the water conservation challenge went from Applicable
reducing water usage in general to, “how can we reduce water Successful projects tend to solve problems that are
waste in cafeterias and restaurants?” They also knew from a present in many places across the country, but are within
little bit of online research that water waste was a big issue, a domain in which the team could have influence.
so it’s important to look up some key statistics to determine
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Ask yourself: Will solutions to this problem be applicable
whether or not your challenge is a big problem. to lots of places in the US? Is it in a domain that is within
How can we reduce water usage? your sphere of influence?
How can we reduce water waste in
Use the following DFA Project Scoping wheel with your team
cafeterias?
to help identify your challenge. Once you have identified a few
potential challenge statements, share them with others and
How can we get customers to your community partner to determine which one might be the
scrape their plates? best to pursue.

10. 18
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DFA Project Scoping Wheel CRITERIA
Now use this guide to help you think about your own project.
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DFA Project Scoping Wheel Have we done the following?
…… Allowed team members to give input on the challenge
…… Created a broad challenge statement that defines a problem,
and a potential location to observe the challenge
C If I had 30 seconds C
with the President, Do I know who …… Secured a community partner(s) with established access to
is this what I would my users are?
I talk about?
community members-within 15 minutes travel of your campus is I
If I had 30 seconds
with the President, Do I know who a good rule of thumb
Can I
Criteria
IDENTIFY
When I explain my users are?
it, do people say
is this what I would photograph or …… Obtained evidence and statistics to communicate why the
talk about? m?
le Is i test the
“oh yeah,that
ob ta challenge is a big problem
is a big pr ne problem?
Can I …… Established design mentors who have professional experience
When I explain g e
bi
problem!”?
it, do people say photograph or
em? Is i with the design process (challenging, but recommended)
d
test the
obl
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ta
y
“oh yeah,that
in
pr
lly eall
problem? Can I …… Established additional advisers who have expertise in the
is a big
FE ne reach users
g
my n m
Can I problem!”? bi G A e domain of your challenge - these may often be the same as your
r
feel in under
es it tacklit aar kle a
IN
the excitement
d
15 minutes?
comm coty?
SIB SI
community partner (challenging, but recommended)
i
in the air?
DAR DAR
Can I
FE
ea
reach users
A
es e t c
G
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LE BLE
Can I feel in under
y
unimmunity?
IN
the excitement 15 minutes?
in the air? Can I
How do we know we’ve identified the right challenge for our team?
Does it ask
partner
a new ques-
with a local
…… Our challenge is Daring: it is a really big problem
PP
Do
A
BL
tion?
E
organization? …… Our challenge is Feasible: we have access to users and can
LIC A
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Can I observe the problem
Does it ask
partner
S?
a new ques-
it with a local …… Our challenge is Applicable: it is a problem across the country
PP
Do
Is
U
A
B L he
tion?
E
a L organization? and is within our team’s sphere of influence
e d t I C A h out t
Is it in ne
the news? h g
ro u Is it in my sphere
S?
it
Is
U of influence?
How do we know if our team should pause or take a step back?
a he
ne t
out
Is it in ed
Is it
thAre thereh …… We don’t have an established community partner
the news? implementable? ro u g companies Is it in my sphere
or non-profits inter- …… We have no evidence that our challenge is a big problem
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ested in this problem? of influence?
…… We can’t reach our community members to interview and
Is it
Are there companies observe them
implementable?
or non-profits inter- …… Our team members are not excited by the challenge
ested in this problem?

11. 20 21
INTRODUCTION
U U
Immersing yourself in the challenge means
becoming an expert on the issue and experiencing
your challenge first hand.
C
It’s important to immerse yourself in the challenge, C
learning everything you can about the subject matter
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and to truly empathize with your user’s experience.
Intro
IMMERSE
This step can help reveal gaps in existing solutions
and highlight interactions and relationships to uncover
duction
unexpected patterns.
IMMERSE
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Immersing oneself includes researching a variety of
sources for background knowledge, but then really
jumping in to learn as much as you can from people
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by talking to them and observing them. You’ll want to
collect enough information and artifacts to help you
better determine where design can make a difference.
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Actions in IMMERSE:
• Get a Google PhD
• Interview experts and users
• Observe the challenge in context
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How does Immerse set you up for success in Reframe?
Provides the team with research and behaviors to derive to help
Yuri and Sheila spending time with kids from the Academy for uncover new perspectives for looking at the challenge.
Global Citizenship to more deeply understand children’s relationship
to the environment (Summer 2010)

12. STORY: HOSPITAL ACQUIRED INFECTIONS encouraged to wash their hands. However, in reality, studies 23
showed hospital staff only washed their hands 40% of the U
time!
Interview experts and users
We partnered with two hospital units, one near the
Northwestern University campus, and another in downtown C
Chicago. In both cases we were connected with a small unit
I
within the hospital, which meant we had easier access to
Story
IMMERSE
people to talk to. We spent most of our time observing in the
hospital near the University, but we also made sure to build
off the knowledge of those who have been doing this for a
long time. We interviewed hospital staff as well as nurses to
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Hand hygiene team (clockwise: Yuri Malina, Mert Iseri, KC learn more about what they do and what they find difficult
Porter, Hannah Chung photographed by coach Jeanne Olson)
about keeping up with their sanitation regulations. These
during observations, (Summer ‘09).
conversations helped us understand how big the challenge is
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and what to look for when doing our observations.
Get a Google PhD
An advisor recommended to us the challenge, “How can we
reduce hospital-acquired infections?” Our initial research Observe the challenge in context
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told us that hospital-acquired infections were indeed a BIG For the first few weeks of the project we spent a long time
problem – responsible for 100,000 deaths every year in the US observing in shifts at the hospital. The hospital ran 24/7 so
alone! However, beyond our assumptions that it was related to we would carry out observations at all times of day. In the
hand-hygiene we realized that there was a lot we didn’t know observations we were looking to see the hospital staff’s
about the problem. So we decided to investigate the ways that working life. During this time, we noticed that staff never
infections were passed around hospitals and different factors washed their hands if they were carrying something. We also
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that affected hospital acquired infections. noticed that staff would wipe their hands on their scrubs after
Some of us read up on different factors and interventions holding something wet and before shaking hands. One of our
that have affected the rate of hospital-acquired infections. team members even ended up in the hospital due to injury
Our research helped us see that although people knew the and counted the times the staff did and did not sanitize their
‘solution’ to the problem – regularly cleaning with antibacterial hands! This experience gave us a lot of insight around hospital
soap or gel - this never seemed to happen in reality. There had staff’s current practices and where design might make a
been countless interventions that had all failed. This helped us difference.
see that one possible route was looking at ways to increase
how regularly cleaning occurred in the hospital.
Skills to Practice:
When we researched current hospital best practices, we found • Ethnography - capturing specific, accurate and objective data about
that there were five check-points where hospital staff were community members in the context of the challenge.

13. 24 25
ACTIONS
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Get a Google PhD
Discuss as a team your assumptions about the problem to
acknowledge your current understanding and identify areas
that need further investigation. Determine who is affected
C
by the problem and why the problem persists. You’ll want to C
look for “slap-stats.” Slap-stats are statistics that when you
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share them, they feel like a slap and surprise to your listener.
There are numerous sources you can look to help answer
IMMERSE
ACTI
your questions and learn more about the challenge including:
wikipedia, websites of organizations, forums and online Mert Iseri, interviewing nurse and staff at the local hospital.
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communities about the issue as well as academic literature to (Summer 2009)
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see what research is already out there.
Observe the challenge in context
Interview experts and users
Observing the challenge is a great way to find differences
The purpose of interviews is to understand why people do between what people say and do. Determine the best location
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what they do. Throughout your research, share your findings to observe people interacting with the challenge. While in the
with each other and look for surprising information that field, position yourself in a place that doesn’t interfere with the
challenged your assumptions. Before an interview, determine flow or normal behavior of the community members you are
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what information you need to know, and a list of questions to observing. Focus on what is happening and avoid making any
help you find these answers. judgements, simply record what you see. For example don’t
Your questions should start out broad and become more record “child was jealous of his brother’s toy” rather “the child
specific. Ask open ended questions, avoiding questions that cried when his brother was given a toy.”
lead to yes or no answers. For example, “How do you decide Take notes, photos and look to capture many different aspects
which tool to use?” instead of closed and leading questions of the community member’s experience. When you notice
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such as “Do you think education is important?” something important or interesting make a note or a quick
Ask follow up questions such as “what do you mean?” “Can sketch. It’s vital to capture what you see, when you see it.
you tell me more?” or often the best question can simply be, Focus on interactions and relationships. A good rule of thumb
“why?” is to look at AEIOU: Activities, Environments, Interactions,
Try to elicit stories and don’t be afraid of silence. Silence offers Objects, and Users so that you can really see all the variables
up more time for the other person to elaborate. that influence your challenge.
Interviews can be short and informal or prepared and
Keep an eye out for: leading the witness
scheduled to better understand how and why a person acts a
Sometimes, after you do background research, you may think you know
certain way. Ask your community partners for 20-30 minutes what the challenge is and you can start to look for evidence to support
of their time or to connect you to other experts and users you this. This is called “confirmation bias.” When doing interviews, be
can speak to. Thank them profusely for their time and give careful to not ask leading questions to confirm your assumptions.
them a way to contact you.

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CRITERIA 27
U Now use this guide to help you think about your own project. U
Have we done the following?
…… Gathered information from a variety of credible sources
…… Identified potential gaps in existing solutions
…… Distilled slap-stats and research illustrating why the challenge is
C C
a big need
I …… Established relationships with experts and community members I
who we feel comfortable asking for guidance and feedback
Criteria
IMMERSE
…… Collected quotes or stories from community members or
experts that help us and others understand the problem
…… Taken photos and notes throughout our research and shared
with team
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How do we know if we immersed in the challenge well enough?
…… We can explain why our challenge is a big deal in under a
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minute
…… We can highlight potential gaps within existing solutions
…… We can hold a conversation on the subject throughout dinner or
a party
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…… We have some sense of how it feels to experience the
challenge
…… We can tell real stories as to how the challenge affects the
community
How do we know if our team should pause or take a step back?
…… We have only done online research
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…… We have not talked to community members confronted with the
challenge
…… We have no evidence that our challenge is a big need or
community members and experts don’t think the challenge is a
big problem
…… Our challenge can only be solved by a means beyond our ability
to influence

15. 28 29
INTRODUCTION
U U
Reframing means finding patterns from within your
research, more clearly defining the challenge you
aim to solve, and setting goals for what you hope
to achieve.
C C
Reframing helps you find patterns within your research.
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During this step, you are looking for “truths” or insights
REFRAME
Intro
that help explain why people make the decisions they do,
what motivates them, and what influences them. These
duction
patterns then become the driving force and rationale for
REFRAME
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the solutions you come up with.
This step entails finding patterns and insights from
your research, looking at the problem from multiple
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perspectives and defining key moments where design
can make a difference.
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Actions in REFRAME:
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• Make sense of your research
• GENERATE & Choose challenge statements
• Define DESIGN goals
How does Reframing set you up for success during Ideation?
Provides the team with narrowed down challenge statements
Lulu and others evaluating their challenge statements using the DFA and insights that help the team come up with solutions
Project Scoping Wheel (Leadership Studio 2011)

16. 31
STORY: CHILDHOOD OBESITY GENERATE & Choose challenge statements
U
After we looked for patterns within our research, we still
weren’t completely sure of the direction we were headed.
So we individually brainstormed all the potential challenge
statements we could according to different people and
locations the challenge occurs, coming up with close to 40
C
different challenge statements.
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We all then starred the ones we liked the most, which
narrowed things down to about 10 statements. We made a
REFRAME
Story
matrix with one axis being a scale of how excited we were
about the statement and the other axis was how feasible it
was. We took all of our starred challenge statements and
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discussed each one to evaluate it. Feasibility and accessing
James, from Fruit Buddi, mapping the in-store grocery experience to
users became a big issue for us and so as we discussed
determine where design might make a difference. (Summer 2011)
our options, we decided that we could access children and
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families in a grocery store nearly any day. Therefore after
Make sense of your research going through all of the options the statement, “How can we
We did a lot of research both online and mostly by provide kids with their own shopping experience and reward
healthy choices?” was both the most feasible and the most
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interviewing and observing kids, parents, schools, and
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community centers. It was somewhat overwhelming to exciting to us as a team.
have so much information, but luckily, we connected with Define DESIGN goals
professional designers to help us make sense of all of our
Based on our insights, we determined the following design
information. We used a variety of techniques to help us look
goals for our project: encourage ownership, provide a sense
at all of our information in different ways such as asking
of reward, and make a game out of selecting fruits and
ourselves, what is it about flaming hot cheetos that kids love
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vegetables. We then used these goals to help guide our
so much? What are all the moments throughout their day
brainstorm and ideation session.
when they decide to eat? Who controls these decisions? We
made diagrams of their day, we listed out all the different
stakeholders involved in these decisions and how they affected
the situation according to their own motivation and biases.
From this pattern finding, we were able to derive insights and
key lessons such as: kids want to eat healthy, culture plays a
big role in food choice, kids have most control over their snack
choices above other meals.
Fruit Buddi’s brainstorm of Challenge Statements according to
different stakeholders and locations. (Summer 2011)

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ACTIONS
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MAKE SENSE OF YOUR RESEARCH
Below are a list of ways you can make sense of your research.
Each one can lead your team to uncovering new ways to look
at your challenge.
C C
Clustering
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Write down each individual observation you’ve made on
a post-it note, especially things that surprised you while
REFRAME
ACTI
immersed in your challenge. As a team, cluster words or
topics that seem similar or related. Circle each cluster and
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label them with a theme that ties them together. This will
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Fruit Buddi’s clustering their observations to look for patterns.
help you find broad themes about your challenge. (Summer 2011)
Journey Map
After using some of these or similar methods, write down
Reflect on the stories you heard from your users and
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3-5 main take-aways you have from doing this process.
community. Diagram a person’s day and highlight These take-aways are called insights. An insight is a new
moments where they are interacting specifically with the understanding of the problem.
challenge. This will help you see potential key moments GENERATE & Choose challenge statements
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where design can make a difference.
Generating new challenge statements can help your team
Stakeholder Matrix look at your project from new perspectives and more clearly
Create a grid using marker or masking tape. On one axis, understand what you aim to solve . There are several ways
write down all the various people who impact or influence you can generate new challenge statements. You can use your
your challenge. On the other axis, write down all the stakeholder matrix or journey map to think to stimulate many
places where people interact with the problem. This will difference challenges statements.
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help you uncover opportunities for design you may not
have considered before.
Pain Points & Bright Spots
On post-it notes, write down and cluster all the moments
that seemed to cause the most difficulty for those
Keep an eye out for: analysis paralysis
interacting with your challenge. Similarly, write down all
It is easy to feel like there is always more to understand and more
the times where a person or group of people overcame research is needed before moving forward. However, you can spend
a challenge that the rest of their peers still face. This will so much time researching that your team might lose steam. Although
help you uncover extreme scenarios and gaps for where deep understanding is key, it’s also important to be confident in your
knowledge and fearless in moving forward. The process is iterative
design can make a difference. and you can always come back to do more research, while still making
progress on the project.

18. 34 35
Ask yourself: Do you have stories from the community
U
depicting how they experience your challenge? When you U
share your insights with your community partners and
users do they confirm this is a challenge?
Applicable
Successful projects tend to solve problems that are
C C
present in many places across the country, but are within
I a domain in which the team could have influence. I
REFRAME
Ask yourself: Do others share their own stories about
ACTI
how they or someone they know has experienced the
challenge?
ONS
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Fruit Buddi’s evaluating their potential challenge statements.
Once you have 1-3 Challenge Statements, share them and their
(Summer 2011)
rationale with your community partners to get their feedback
to decide if they are challenges worth pursuing.
Define DESIGN goals
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Another method is to create a map of existing solutions
Design goals are properties you intend for your solution to
and see where the gaps are. These gaps can then help you
have. It is simply taking your insights and translating these
generate new challenge statements.
into goals. For example- an insight that “kids are more likely to
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To choose a challenge statement you can start out by voting eat food they pick out themselves” becomes a design goal of
on your favorites as a team. Then use these and evaluate them “encourage children to select their own food.” Therefore your
using the DFA Project Scoping Wheel previously discussed on solution should encourage children to pick out their own food.
page 18. It’s good to have 3-5 of these design goals before starting
Unlike the identifying step, your challenge statement after your ideation. These design goals are important to help guide
reframing should be one that inspires solutions and prepares your team before ideation and evaluate your ideas afterwards.
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your team for ideation.
At this point in the process, a well defined challenge is:
Daring
Successful projects often highlight a challenge that
everyone can agree is a big challenge.
Ask yourself: When you share your challenge, are they
surprised by your insights and excited to learn more?
Feasible
Successful projects base their solutions directly from
insights from the community.

19. 36
CRITERIA 37
U Now use this guide to help you think about your own project. U
Have we done the following?
…… Shared our research with our team members
…… Analyzed our research to gain new perspectives
…… Written down 3-5 key insights
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…… Established 3-5 design goals
I …… Developed a Challenge Statement with a specific user and I
context based on research
REFRAME
Criteria
…… Collected quotes or stories from community members or
experts that help you understand the problem
…… Re-told these stories from community members or experts that
help others understand the problem
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…… Shared your challenge statement(s) with your partner or experts
to get feedback on your project direction
How do we know we’re ready to start ideating solutions?
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…… We can identify specific behaviors we would like to encourage
with our design
…… We’ve uncovered insights about our community members that
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are not obvious
…… We’ve uncovered insights about our community members that
give us a sense of how you might start to solve the problem
…… Our challenge statement make us imagine many different types
of solutions
How do we know if our team should pause or take a step back?
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…… We have not talked to community members confronted with the
challenge
…… We have only done online research
…… We feel really overwhelmed by the challenge and don’t feel we
can make an impact
…… Community members and experts don’t think the challenge
solves a big problem