#tlab problem-solvers

The 2013-2014 T Lab Prisoner Reentry team is Stephanie Chen, Kris Marich, and Marius Rossouw

OUR CONCEPT:

The transition out of incarceration is a crucial time, and supporting people through it is extremely important. Our concept, First Mile, supports those leaving incarceration in taking their first steps outside the gates in a positive direction, as well as in the weeks that follow. 

First Mile is a facilitated, peer support system centered around reducing anxiety upon release, incorporating a very human approach to reentry, and helping to overcome the small barriers that have potential to lead to permanent obstacles. The service has three touch points:

A meeting on the inside to create a release plan.

This plan informs the creation of a customized release kit, left with the inmate’s property and meant to be claimed on the day of their release.

Finally, the newly released individual attends weekly outside meet-ups to address his/her ongoing needs.

In order to keep moving forward after release, returning citizens must maintain long-term vision, be supported in interim periods of uncertainty, continue to build positive social and professional networks, and become masters of resilience and adaptability. First Mile also enables them to continue working on these goals.

OUR INSIGHTS:

Of the 2.4 million people incarcerated, 93% will eventually be released. Unfortunately, 67% of them will recidivate, which means that they will be re-incarcerated before their probation or parole period is up. However, many of these people are ready to change—they hope to never go back. They want to get jobs, support their families and be productive members of society. Their immediate challenge is in leaving the facility, making it through the potential 72-hour window before meeting with probation, and in the first few weeks out. Longer-term challenges can include things like finding work and reuniting with family.

There are many unknowns that come with reintegrating back into to society, and those circumstances can seem overwhelming at an already vulnerable time. When things are stressful, it’s human nature to fall back on familiar habits and coping mechanisms. With this population, those familiarities are often the things that got them in trouble in the first place. In addition, the consequences of failure are far more dire than for others in our society. Seemingly small slip-ups, like missing a probation meeting, can be devastating and land them back in jail.  

It’s obvious that a reentry solution is not one-size-fits-all. Each returning citizen has unique needs, constraints, and opportunities. At the moment, there are many government, community and non-profit organizations working hard to support people in this transition: a small subset of the soon-to-be released get comprehensive services that begin before they are released; a majority are able to access some services after release via their probation officer; still, some have no probation and are left to navigate all on their own. Employment and housing are two important components in one’s transition, but as is the case for anyone, these can require skills, support and time to acquire. For those who don’t get services right away, there’s an opportunity to support them in the short-term, immediate transition to keep them moving forward in that process.

Prior to running the concept trial for First Mile, we held four focus groups with a total of 27 people, both men and women, currently and formerly incarcerated. We then ran a trial with nine women from the San Mateo County Jail Women’s Transitional Facility in Redwood City. The trial was six weeks long. Over that time, we held two inside meetings, created nine personalized release kits, and conducted four outside meet-ups. Our team of three Problem-Solvers acted as facilitators during the trial, going inside to plan as well as run the outside meet-ups.

At the inside meetings, we told women about First Mile and allowed them to opt-in. For those who did, we worked with them one-on-one to draft a reentry plan, assessing immediate needs for housing, transportation and communication between release day and probation meetings and forming a list of long-term goals.

The release kit included a resource booklet with maps, a Clipper card, service provider contacts, hotlines and customized information (e.g., one woman was interested in culinary training programs in the East Bay). A basic phone was included to call for rides and make appointments, which also gave us a way to contact each person. The gift card enabled participants to buy necessities right away—one participant was thankful to not have to buy underwear at a thrift store the day she got out, for example. A note and release day text invited the participant to the next weekly meet-up. All of the release kit contents, including the foldable nylon bag, fit into a 5x7” manila envelope.

We were able to iterate the curriculum of the outside meet-ups over the course of four weeks to figure out how to best keep our participants moving forward. It evolved into five activities that were done at each meet-up: 

Social time with refreshments, plus introductions to get to know each other as people outside of incarceration

Group discussion to create/review guidelines that set the tone for a supportive environment

A ‘Say It All’ Wall as a place for participants to visually share their emotional state of mind

A goals and achievements activity for participants to revisit pre-release plans, list achievements, big or small, and set weekly goals

An exercise called ‘Cracks and Patches’ as a way for participants to name barriers and have the group or facilitators crowdsource helpful solutions

OUR LEARNINGS:

The first week is intense. Emotional support is necessary and appreciated. Even participants who were hopeful and confident when we met experienced big emotional dips upon release. It’s no surprise that moving from an incarceration environment of high structure and low responsibility, to the release environment with low structure and high responsibility, is overwhelming. Getting a personalized release kit and time to share release stories at the first meet-up provided much needed emotional support.

Plans create continuity. As release dates near, inmates have high hopes and goals for success, but it’s easy to forget about those hopes and goals during the overwhelming weeks immediately post-release. Creating a pre-release plan on the inside and being able to revisit it on the outside provides important reminders of intentions and goals.

Having a say creates buy-in and accountability. This population is accustomed to being told what to do. Both incarceration and probation rely on strict rules and mandated compliance. First Mile encourages participants to create the guidelines for the meet-ups and choose their goals each week thereby increasing participants’ motivation and allowing them to feel accomplished.

The formerly incarcerated have a lot to offer each other, even early on into their own transition. With a community of support and compassion for the little things, participants were able to get on with the bigger things.

WHAT’S NEXT:

At the last outside meet-up, during the Cracks and Patches activity, one woman listed the fact that this was our last meet-up as a ‘crack.’  We are actively looking for a partner to trial part or all of concept. In the next pilot, we aim to: 

Include people from different facilities among current trial participants to better understand group dynamics in that scenario, as well as prototype best practice for facilitating relationships

Include successful formerly incarcerated people in the facilitator role

Increase length of trial period to best identify duration of support needed and/or ways in which successful members could shift into more of a facilitator role

If you are interested in partnering with the T Lab to pursue a further trial of First Mile in your area, please contact Bryan Malong, T Lab Manager, at [email protected].

By Rachael Wussow, Micaela Hellman-Tincher + Donna Chan

As with any complex social issue, solving the child care crisis in the Bay Area doesn't hinge on any one factor alone. As we move into prototyping our ideas, we wanted to account for four areas that, when examined and addressed all together, begin to untangle the issue. These are supply, cost, access and quality.

Without an adequate supply of spots in child care, there simply is not enough care for all those who need it. However, even with enough spots, if each costs too much, low-income families either cannot obtain care (which may result in jeopardized employment or education for parents and siblings), or drain their budgets in doing so. A large supply of affordable slots is similarly futile if slots are hard to access (if common hours of care do not match the hours that a working parent needs, for example; or if parents are unaware that child care subsidies exist to help cover costs). Finally, as child care is essentially every infant’s first educational experience, child care spots must be of high quality.

   Thus, for every child care solution we seek, we aim to address not only these four issues but to also develop ideas that are based around the insights we gathered from the many parents, providers and child care domain experts we have interviewed. Here’s a quick peek into some of the ideas we are developing.

Idea No. 1: Make A Space

For the thousands of kids waiting for subsidized access to child care, which can cost an average of $9,492 per year in San Francisco, we are looking to develop alternative funding streams to help kids get scholarships for these spots. Why wait until college to award kids funds that set them up for academic and social success?

From Kickstarter to Kiva, we see how effective multiple, small-scale donors can be. Why not use this model to help child care providers raise money to partially cover the cost of a child in their care?

Here are a few slides from the storyboard we are developing for this model. These slides follow Sandy, an innovative child care provider, who is asking all the parents in her child care to contribute an extra $50 per month in order to provide a 50% scholarship for a child in need from their community.

Idea No. 2: Child Care to the People

For parents with non-traditional work schedules for whom 9-5 child care options do not fit their needs, we are looking into low-cost alternatives to replace the expensive and inconsistent babysitters they are often forced to rely on. By exploring the intersection of underutilized public buildings and co-op models, we are considering possibilities where we can help these parents get reliable, enriching and affordable child care options in their community.

Here’s a sneak peak of this model:

Idea No. 3: KidConnect

We’ve heard over and over again about parents who missed out on subsidy opportunities because they didn’t know about them, or who had to make hard last-minute decisions because they didn’t plan for child care early enough. We are working on an idea to help parents get connected to information about child care options soon into their pregnancy so that, by the time their baby comes, they have a plan for their child’s first educational experience and are connected to all the options to pay for it. 

Here are some of the parts of the KidConnect journey:

We’re taking these initial ideas back to the community to gauge desirability among users, dig into the specifics of feasibility, funding viability and how to measure impact. We’d love your thoughts. If you want to join the discussion, please reach out to us at [email protected].

By Kris Marich, Maurius Rossouw + Stephanie Chen

The past month, the team worked toward developing design concepts for the prisoner reentry space. Although we researched the prisoner's entire journey, from pre-incarceration environment through to post-release and re-integration, we decided to focus our attention on the timeframe more immediately pre- and post-release. The three concepts described below aim to address key problems in that timeframe.

1. Career Year

More than half (53%) of business leaders say that their companies face a challenge in recruiting non-managerial employees with the skills, training, and education their company needs (Across the Great Divide: Perspectives of CEOs and College Presidents on America’s Higher Education and Skills Gap). At the same time, most new jobs in the U.S.—and an estimated 64% of all jobs by 2018—will require at least some postsecondary education and training (Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018, June 2010). These are positive indicators, showing that if proper training can be provided, many job opportunities may exist for formerly incarcerated individuals to be employed in higher-paying, professional careers. 

Career Year is a concept for an organization, inspired by the national success of Tipping Point grantee Year Up, that provides professional training and paid internships to motivated and capable inmates, who have historically lacked the opportunity to succeed. Career Year aims to better integrate the formerly incarcerated into society by providing them with the training, experiences and support that empowers them to reach their potential in professional careers. The program has two main components. The first is a rigorous, industry-specific classroom training module that develops both professional and life skills. The second is a paid internship with one of Career Year’s corporate partners, paving the way towards a prosperous career path as a professional.

2. Post-Release Success Accelerator

We have heard repeatedly that there is a need for success stories and advice from people who have ‘been there’, but that successful, formerly incarcerated individuals are often too busy trying to support themselves to mentor others.

Post-Release Success Accelerator is a peer mentorship program that pairs successful, formerly incarcerated individuals with newly released probationers. The program aims to do the following: reduce recidivism; accelerate the success of “stars” who have completed probation; and lighten the caseload of Probation Officers. Probation Officers would identify successful probationers on their caseload that might make good mentors. Selected mentors would then be given a two or four-year paid mentorship position and tuition to City College for a degree of the mentor’s choosing in exchange for mentoring new probationers while getting their education.

California recidivism rates are currently just under 70% with almost 1/3 of recidivism happening in the first month post-release. Mentors would provide high-touch support to newly released probationers in order to reduce recidivism, especially during this critical initial period.

Paid mentor positions and continued education would provide opportunities and incentive for successful, formerly incarcerated individuals to mentor, while their mentees would gain support of ‘someone who’s been there’. Probation Officers would receive secondary support for their typically large caseloads.

3. Spotlight

Another insight from the research phase was that often a jail sentence is short enough to ‘hurt’ but not long enough to ‘help’, i.e., short jail sentences don’t necessarily offer the time needed to initiate change in one’s life, whether self-motivated through reflection or via programs offered while incarcerated.

Currently, ‘wraparound’ service provision involves multiple programs and organizations working in unison to provide housing, employment, and health services for newly released probationers. It has been shown to be effective in reducing recidivism and increasing the success of this population upon release, especially when initiated in the weeks prior to release, while an inmate is still incarcerated.

OurSpotlight concept aims to offer a similar high-touch and customized approach to in-jail programming that also provides a method to highlight the achievements of inmates, and allows for these positive accomplishments to be kept and displayed on a permanent record. Spotlight invokes a wraparound model for programming on the ‘inside’ by assessing an individual inmate’s program needs at intake and creating a customized plan for their success as early as possible. 

Participants completing programming collect badges, certificates, reviews and recommendations that are recorded in a new part of an inmate’s permanent records—their ‘Spotlight’. These positive accomplishments can be highlighted on a resume and would be included on a background check or RAP sheet, in addition to the potentially negative record.

This would aim to put inmates on a forward path from the start of incarceration, and to make any positive attributes apparent for both themselves and potential employers.

By Stephanie Mattero, Anna Xu + Dan Goldstein

The positive impact of high-quality early childhood education (ECE) on children from low-income families is real. To break the cycle of poverty, seminal research demonstrates that children from financially unstable households who participate in high-quality preschool improve their socioeconomic outcomes and generate as high as $17 of social benefit per one dollar invested[1].

 In the San Francisco Bay Area, 566,910 children under age six[2] are in need of ECE. However, there is not enough supply of high-quality, formalized preschools due to affordability, program variables and licensing requirements.

  Of these children, 146,803 are eligible to receive government subsidies to participate in ECE, but 79,714 children (54.3%) are not accessing these subsidies[3]. Accessing preschool can be challenging due to cultural, language and transportation barriers.

Third, children from low-income communities experience economic instability and other stresses of poverty, which negatively impact their progress in preschool. There is not enough support to ensure parents’ economic self-sufficiency and stable home environments.

How can we address these unmet needs?

We have synthesized 50 interviews with parents from low-income environments, educators, academics, policymakers and other stakeholders, along with extensive secondary research, to generate and evaluate potential solutions. From thousands of ideas generated in brainstorms with designers and domain experts, we have filtered the ideas by impact: Does this idea improve high-risk children’s outcomes in early learning and developmental standards? Does this idea increase supply of and access to high-quality preschool for the most marginalized children in the San Francisco Bay Area?

Here we show two ideas we intend to explore further, the Discovery Bus and the Dual School.

1. Discovery Bus

Discovery Bus is a full-time, licensed, mobile preschool providing evidence-based, high-quality curriculum to children from low-income communities, enabling them to enter kindergarten on the same level as their higher-income peers. Discovery Bus brings preschool to the front door of underserved families, potentially increasing supply, increasing access and improving school readiness.

2. Dual School

Dual School is a dual-generational approach to preschool, in which children from low-income communities participate in evidence-based, high-quality curriculum, while parents participate in an evidence-based, career development program to ensure their families’ economic stability. Dual School supports both the children and their parents, creating a positive feedback loop in which parents’ economic self-sufficiency protects and enhances the gains children make through quality early childhood programs. 

We welcome your feedback, information and contacts and would love to have a conversation with you about these ideas! To contact us, please email [email protected].

[1] Anoshua Chaudhuri, Michael Potepan, “Key to Economic Success in the 21st Century: Investment in Early Childhood Programs,” Bay Area Council (May 2009): 3.

[2] Ibid, 27.

Marius Rossouw:

Sitting in my first Engineers Without Borders meet-up for the Bay Area, my heart was full of hope, yet my head was spinning with not knowing where this career shift may lead. Halfway through a project debrief a two-page printout found its way in front of me: “T Lab: Designing and testing new approaches in the fight against poverty” it said.

Anxiety and excitement wrestled within me as I walked through Tipping Point’s doors. Slowly one after the other, more and more smiling faces turned angst into tranquility. In an instant it all just made sense to me - this was the culmination of many leap-of-faith decisions. I have finally arrived where I was meant to be.

Public speaking has rarely featured in my repertoire of strengths. When asked to explain my passion for fighting poverty, I reached for a safe reference that I have treasured ever since I had to leave Zimbabwe - an ornate ironwood carved necklace of the Zambezi River God, also known as Nyami Nyami. There is a symbiotic relationship between the people of the river and the snakelike creature in times of prosperity and hardship. I have been blessed with education and opportunity and have reached a point in my life where I can turn the tables, give back, and hopefully make a difference.

What struck me most about this first week at T Lab was self-exploration. Believing that self-awareness is key to best serve others, I took a step back to reassess my strengths and weaknesses. I was happily reminded that acknowledging shortcomings opens the door for growth and that others are there to support you on that journey.

Using design thinking for social innovation is a new approach to me. Coming from a strictly engineering and management field I often have to remind myself to “trust the process.” Prisoner re-entry is my focus area. Having never experienced any kind of incarceration or rehabilitation, my reference point is a little skewed. I am however inspired and excited to start this incredible journey with some amazing people and enthusiastic to see what the next six months may bring…

  Stephanie Mattero:

Humility is something I believe takes a lifetime to acquire, and I’m a work in progress.

Our T Lab cohort and the Tipping Point staff all gathered for lunch last Monday. We were tasked with sharing why we are each passionate about fighting poverty. Elizabeth, the first person to speak stood up before us, her eyes toward the ceiling. I felt my forehead crunch between my eyebrows as doubts flooded my mind. Had I made the right choice to come here?

I’d left my job as a third and fourth grade teacher in the Tenderloin where I had a classroom full of children whose families didn’t have many resources. I knew their struggles intimately—the grandmother who spent all of her savings to raise her two grandsons, the single parents who were working many jobs, taking public transit and exhausted all the time. And if there was anything that my years as a teacher and studying the education system taught me, it was how much paperwork, contingencies and other barriers easily got in the way of making real progress. Could this room full of successful, well-educated professionals really understand and feel the same way I did?

Elizabeth spoke of her niece, a young woman who struggles with her mental health and needs help to keep from slipping into poverty. She expressed desires, concerns and hopes for this special young woman and how she’d helped her connect with a clinic and find other supports through local nonprofits – organizations very similar to those Tipping Point funds. She turned her back to us and push-pinned a photo to the wall. I let out a quiet breath and let my guard come down.

As a teacher, I knew I was making some impact on the individual lives of my students. I’d chosen T Lab with the hope that I might be able to have impact at an even greater scale, but coming in, it still felt like a gamble. I saw that first day that the men and women of Tipping Point and T Lab are indeed an extraordinary group of people, kneaded together in a powerful way. They authentically aspire to make the world, beginning with the Bay Area, a better place. I am invigorated by their thoughtfulness, care and determination, and I am privileged to work next to them.

  Micaela Hellman-Tincher:

In the 1970s, Aboriginal activist Lila Watson began using the following phrase in her activism: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting our time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Having always worked in international poverty alleviation and justice, I’ve had to ensure that this message rang true to the people I worked with, as I was often the outsider, working with people in developing countries or countries affected by conflict.  While doing this work, I lived far away from where I’d grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area, moving from Washington, DC, to Ghana to Rwanda. When I moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area after living away for six years, I wondered if I’d still be able to make a difference the way I had tried to in places around the world where war and poverty had run rampant. Last week, as my first week in Tipping Point’s T Lab, I got my first taste of what working on injustice and poverty in the Bay Area looks like.

While visiting Year Up, one of Tipping Point’s awesome grantees that focuses on providing professional training for disadvantaged youth, we spoke with some of the determined students. Speaking to one of them, I was reminded of a young man I worked with in Rwanda. Even though their hardships were different—one a child of war, and the other a child of poverty—their coping mechanisms and their drive to overcome hardship were similar. Just like the student in Rwanda, this young man had spent a lot of time alone as a child. He’d found ways to entertain himself by learning new languages by listening to music from other countries. Just like the student in Rwanda, he had not been offered many opportunities, but when he found one through Year Up, he jumped to meet it wholeheartedly.

For both the student in Rwanda and for the student at Year Up, I was somewhat of an outsider, having been raised with many more opportunities than either of them had been offered. But, with both, I aimed to make clear that even as an outsider, I felt that our lives were tied together, and that my own dreams wouldn’t be achieved unless theirs could be also.  I’ve practiced this intention abroad, but there was something rather humbling considering this notion with someone who lived just a few freeway exits away from where I grew up. As a global citizen, aiming to be a part of building positive communities everywhere, I’ve so far not had the chance to explore doing this in the community that raised me.

This year at T Lab, I’ll be focusing on the need for affordable and quality child care among low-income families in the Bay Area.  As someone who hopes to one day raise children in the Bay Area, there’s no question that my liberation is bound up with those I’m hoping our work will impact. As a member of the Bay Area community, there’s no question that working to improve the lives of the lowest-income members of our community will help improve our entire community (and I’m having a blast studying the numbers that prove it—stay tuned!). And, as a member of a global community, I’ve learned that positive change can and needs to happen everywhere, from San Francisco to Rwanda, in order for all of us to be truly liberated from injustice.

  Anna Xu:

Let’s have a heart-to-heart, human to human. I tell you, you tell me; we share, we learn, we understand. Let’s ask the hard questions. You know, like Oprah.

What is “human”?

Sometimes I imagine people as essences. Let me explain. For any given person in my life, sometimes I let their appearance, their gender, their age, their ethnicity—any physical characteristics—gently fall away, so that I only see the human. Without those distractions, I can see whether or not I truly understand their thoughts, opinions, feelings, values, hopes, dreams, disappointments, and so on. If I cannot, then I ask questions. “Who?” “What?” “Where?” and “When?” can give you the facts, the physical. But “How?” and “Why?” can give you the core of a person. Usually, people do not ask “How?” and “Why?”, maybe because we are afraid of potentially offending others, but most often, because we simply do not engage with the core or the humanity of those around us. However, when asked “How?” and especially when asked “Why?”, people might be prepared for such questions, but usually, they are surprised. In this surprise, people tend to be open to considering your question, and to responding thoughtfully—maybe they have never been asked before, maybe they have never verbalized feelings or thoughts surrounding your question before, maybe they have never considered your question before. It is in this moment of consideration that I hold my breath. What will they say? What will I learn about their core, their essence, their humanity?

Every time, I learn something new. My eyes are opened to a world that I see with their eyes.

Of course, we can engage with others as humans on a simpler, smaller scale as well. Smiles. Looking others in the eye. Gestures so fleeting, yet so easy. When you smile at a stranger and he smiles back, why does that feel like you both connected, human-to-human?

I feel like I should have an answer.

I have searched through neuroscience, psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, philosophy – yet, I really do not know why. Nonetheless, I acknowledge this to be true. I am curious to learn your opinion.

So, why does this matter?

There are people we do not see and people we cannot hear. Sometimes we actively choose not to look and not to listen, while other times we passively neglect to look and to listen. The blue-eyed, elderly man asking for change at the corner of Sutter and Montgomery, in the heart of the Financial District. The men in sweatpants or business suits waiting in line for a free meal at GLIDE, unknown to most of us, just a few blocks from luxury retailers. We listened to their stories this week. However, as we learned, these are the people that others do not engage with by asking “How?” or “Why?”, and these are the people that others do not smile at or look in the eye. Why does this happen? What does that mean for their humanity?

More fundamentally than social justice, equality of opportunity, or realization of human potential, I fight poverty because we all deserve to feel human.

  Donna Chan:

I was nervous starting T Lab. With the opportunity to tackle incredibly important issues from scratch, work with talented folks from a diverse set of backgrounds, and be a part of an amazing organization whose model and values I really believe in, doesn’t it all sound too good to be true? I thought, “Am I worthy of this? How am I possibly getting paid to do this?” And the essential and sweet, sweet cherry on top is using design thinking to ensure our solutions are anchored in the people.

When I first learned of Tipping Point Community, the organization’s values—"we serve,” “we celebrate generosity,” “we are always learning”—struck and resonated with me immensely, immediately. In fact, this refreshing, thoughtful approach startled me a bit, especially when other organizations seemed to have a prescriptive, authoritative, and, at times, stingy approach. So, I was a bit skeptical. It’s one thing to talk the talk and another to walk the walk.

However, the proof was there from the beginning. Tipping Point’s approach to funding and supporting its grantees holds true to its values of generosity and humility. Throughout the interview process, the questions they chose to ask and how they were framed reflected a sense of openness. And, since day one of T Lab, never have I ever been surrounded by people so consistently and relentlessly open and humble—and, not to mention, smart and passionate. In fact, to later find out that there was an intentional effort to select T Lab problem solvers for openness and humility is further testament to Tipping Point’s forward thinking.

In every interaction, there is so much openness towards each other’s background, thoughts, emotions, and input. In other words, we have a culture that allows each of us to be our squishy, human selves and therefore gives us the freedom to contribute fully and in our own unique ways. But this freedom is not just an investment in us and our personal growth but, more importantly, is in service of the work we are doing. Exploring broad, complex issues and generating creative, out-of-the-box solutions necessitates this generous, fertile environment.

T Lab is off to a busy start! Our nine Problem-Solvers share their thoughts on poverty in the Bay Area, their opening design challenge, and what this journey means to them.

Kris Marich:

Growing up in a blue-collar community with declining industry, I saw the effects poverty has on people and how those logistical and emotional impacts can feed the cycle of poverty. In the Bay Area where there’s so much innovation and wealth, it’s startling that one fifth of our population can’t meet its basic needs. Like many designers, these big, meaty problems were the ones I was most interested in trying to solve. When I heard about Tipping Point Community’s T Lab I was really excited. Here was a quantitative, data-driven organization that emphasizes measuring impact willing to invest in blue sky R&D and qualitative, human-centered design processes. To me, that meant we were going to be given room to decide what constraints were important, and that we would also be held accountable for developing solutions that have impact.

The beginning of any project is filled with ambiguity and a little anxiety. There’s a lot you don’t know… like where to begin. To ease us into our six-month projects we spent the first week doing a design challenge so that together we could go through all the phases of the design process:  research, synthesis, ideation, concept development, prototyping, concept refinement and storytelling. It was a lot of work for just a few days and there was no time to think. We had to just do it. We spent time with the residents of the Tenderloin, ate at soup kitchens, and talked with caseworkers at SROs. We jumped in without a plan, and I think we were all amazed how we learned so much so quickly.

For the next six months, my team and I are going to be working on the topic of prisoner re-entry. The U.S. has the world’s highest incarceration rate, and incarceration often exacerbates poverty. Figuring out how to disrupt that cycle and turn ex-offenders into thriving members of our community is imperative. As I’m starting to wrap my head around this design challenge, I can’t help but feel a little jazzed about working on something that could have such powerful effects on both the lives of individuals who have been incarcerated as well as the entire community.

Stephanie Chen:

T Lab kicked off last week in a blur of activity. Our first week was devoted to learning or honing human-centered design research skills though a mini design project around low-income populations and their challenges around getting food. For the nine of us, this meant bravely (and for the San Francisco newbies like myself, slightly blindly) hitting the streets of some of the most notoriously gritty parts of town, chatting directly and honestly to those people who face these issues every day. 

To be sure, having moved to the city only a few days prior, this is a somewhat terrifying yet truly brilliant introduction to San Francisco; one that I’m extremely thankful to have gotten, as it effectively framed the work of the T Lab for me, giving poverty a personal human face.

In the swirl of internal emotions and external expectations that goes along with starting a new job, meeting a new group of people, and facing a new design brief, it is nice to be brought back to reality and humbled by a man in the park, who sneaks onto the bus to get to Daly City because he’s treated better at the soup kitchen there, and whose day seems to have been made slightly better by the simple act of listening to his story and sharing a few laughs, in light of a genuinely terrible situation. I took a photograph of him that day and printed it out—it now resides on my wall.

There’s a bit of East Asian folklore that describes a red string tied to each of our ankles. In the story it’s invisible, but it connects people who are destined to meet one another.  It may stretch, twist and tangle, but it never breaks. To me, the metaphor of being invisibly connected to each other is a powerful one. Often it seems that problems, like poverty, are created and maintained by existing systems—ones to which we are all connected, but in ways that aren’t necessarily apparent. I like the idea of illuminating these systems, so that we may become more personally aware of how we are each connected to the problem, and thus the solution. Design research informs this work, and the T Lab is an exciting environment in which to do it—well-aligned, strongly-supported and focused on social impact.

There was a photograph on Humans of New York (a fantastic photoblog) recently of a woman who studied poetry.  The photographer had asked her how she defines a good poem, to which she replied “It’s a good poem if I’m a different person when I’m finished reading it.” I often feel similarly about a day’s worth of design research work—one way I know I’ve done enough is when I feel like what I learned that day changed me. Here’s to many moments like that to come.

Dan Goldstein:

For weeks I have been trying to describe my new job to friends and family.  The job description is not one that is easy to explain. And the title “problem solver” is not something many people understand immediately. Unlike lawyer, architect, or waiter there is no precedent for “problem solver.” I was transparent about the parts of the job description that include “being comfortable with failure” and the fact there are no predefined outcomes at the end of my six-month tenure. The fun part is that for many weeks leading up to T Lab’s launch, I didn’t understand exactly what my new job would be either.

Of course I wasn’t the only one looking forward to our first day at T Lab. I had even laid out my clothes the night before, like a giddy child before his first day of school. The first week has felt like a month. Programmed activities, new faces, field trips, challenges, food, beverages, and plenty of laughing. Summer camp is how I’ve described it to friends. I know it won’t be like this every week. But I do know I am in for an adventure.

The amount of thought that has gone into this program is incredible. Renuka, Bryan, the Daylight team and the staff of Tipping Point have really created a space (physically and abstractly) for us to be. Nobody has ever done anything quite like this before. Which makes planning a bit of a challenge. For example: Should T Lab be in the same building as Tipping Point? (Yes, but with a door between us, and each their own kitchen.) How do we orient and introduce ourselves? (Through a series of choreographed introductions, presentations, and conversations with the Tipping Point staff and their grantees.) Will there be snacks? (Yes!)

Here are some thoughts I had over my first week:

It really feels like an honor to be here. We have a team of people and resources supporting us. They have been expecting us for months, and really believe in our mission.

The quality and diversity of the team is impressive. It is a rare opportunity to have these types of people in the same room, on the same playing field, with the same goal.

I’ve never worked so immediately in the social justice world before. The motivations of everyone at Tipping Point are true and clear and ever present. The empathy is real.

Everyday has been busy enough that I haven’t had time to even check my email. Yet the days don’t feel stressed or over planned.

Tipping Point is an extremely impressive organization. The quality of the organizations (of which we have visited a few) they support and the impact they have is breathtaking. 

The “meat” of the week was a two and a half day design challenge (or charette as we say in architecture) looking into the challenges low-income and homeless people have in getting food. It was a headfirst dive not only into all the stages of design thinking but also into our community. I’m not one who interacts with strangers in the street often, so parts of the research and prototype testing definitely had an emotional intensity. Other parts like the synthesis and brainstorming felt more comfortable.

My description of my new job is much improved. But by virtue of the process and the learning that continues to happen, nobody knows exactly where we are going. We are all looking forward to see where this adventure takes us.

Rachael Wussow:

We didn’t waste any time these first few days. “Learn by doing” is our motto here at T Lab.  By the afternoon of Day 2 we were hitting the streets of the Tenderloin getting to know our target for a 2-day design challenge. The experience of getting familiar with a new context firsthand, before you know all the answers, is both intimidating and exhilarating. There’s a humanness to it, where showing up and being present can prove more insightful than reading yet another report in the comfort of your lab.

Our challenge focused on hunger issues of those who are low-income or unemployed, so our team elected to visit areas where people might go if they needed food. For us, that was a visit to Glide Memorial and St. Anthony’s dining halls where daily meals are distributed for free to those in need. While we started talking with people in line about how they got here, it quickly became clear that to understand more about challenges and opportunities, we had to experience what it’s like for ourselves—to join the line. After expressing our concerns about taking a meal that wasn’t prepared for us and that others may need, were assuaged by the staff, we jumped in and continued our conversations on the other side of the rope.

After participating in both meals (yes, we had two lunches), we found that we could connect on an emotional level. Our participation also shed light on an opportunity that provided a jumping-off point for many of the groups during ideation. This exercise that initially seemed out of our comfort zone proved to be a very insightful experience.

Here at T Lab, we are taking on complex challenge areas. While applying the design thinking framework, there is still no clear “how-to” for each step of the way. We are required to take action in the midst of ambiguity and not let the lack of a precedent or fear of the unknown get in the way. I have a feeling that the push to “learn by doing”—this slant toward just getting started—will continue to take us to new and unexpected places.