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United Way of Pierce County’s annual Poverty to Possibilities Summit on November 12, 2019, opened up an exciting project for the GID Lab. From an initial question of “What are the barriers to affordable housing?” to “How might we create a solution to Affordable Housing that is practical and sustainable?”, the GID team, led by Executive Director Dr. Divya McMillin, engaged in a three-month-long effort to generate innovative and far reaching solutions to affordable housing. The effort culminated in a design thinking workshop for over 250 attendees at the summit, with rich materials from which the team produced a Report that further outlined design challenges for the next year.

For the background research, United Way of Pierce County conducted three focus groups during August-October across Pierce County, addressing the initial prompt of barriers and solutions to affordable housing, and sent out a survey to over 250 people. Using this data, the GID team which included Program Administrator Krissy Kimura and Fall 2019 GID Award students Lan Allison and Chris Sim, broke the process down into two steps: a design thinking workshop in October with United Way executives to assess the scope and develop materials for the November 12 event, and a design thinking workshop emphasizing solutions, at the event itself.

UWPC

At the Summit on November 12, United Way of Pierce County CEO Dona Ponepinto emphasized in her opening speech at the Poverty to Possibilities summit, that collaboration is key to achieving significant and lasting social change as no single policy, government department, organization, or program can tackle or solve the increasingly complex problem of poverty.

Dr. McMillin led the design thinking workshop, while the rest of the GID Lab team helped to facilitate at tables, along with the United Way of Pierce County executives. Participants used resources from their folders, including a persona, research summary, ideating and prototyping worksheet, and materials on the table (markers, moldable clay, and pipe cleaners) to ideate solutions and create prototypes. In the last twenty minutes of the session, participants shared their prototypes, which highlighted many creative solutions – from policy recommendations and new technology innovations to a call to serve with compassion.

United Way of Pierce County has further employed the GID Lab team for Winter 2020, to collate summit solutions for vote by the wider community. Winning solutions will be vetted by United Way and prototyped at a small scale to verify viability.

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