RMV 18 Stanford d.school Civic Innovation Fellows: You Can Design Impact at Scale

In our last episode, community architect Sandra Kulli talked to us about fostering human connection through the design of extraordinary places.

Today we are excited to share this very special episode of Results May Vary. We’re featuring this year’s Stanford d.school Civic Innovation Fellows, which this year was sponsored by Knight Foundation. This event was recently recorded live as the fellows wrapped up their program and reflected back on their journey of learning design thinking.

Fellows are “restless experts” in their field, accomplished professionals who are focused on accelerating large-scale impact. Over the course of the year, they learn human-centered design and use it to explore, experiment and advance ambitious projects in their sector.

You’ve already met one of the fellows. In Episode 16, Dr. Mick Smyer, talked about his organization Graying Green which is focused on tapping older adults as a resource for climate action.

Today you’ll also be introduced to Angie McKee, the Director of Innovation and Strategy for San Francisco Unified School District's Future Dining Experience. Her project uses student input to reimagine and redesign the school dining experience in order to make it more equitable and enjoyable for all students.

You will also meet Mark Brand, one of Canada’s most recognized social entrepreneurs. Having successfully created eleven businesses in Vancouver, Mark and his teams are determined to breathe new life into marginalized and isolated communities through food, training and meaningful employment.

Mario Lugay is a one-time community organizer turned philanthropy entrepreneur with his initiative, Giving Side. Mario explores bringing the best of technology to the best side of ourselves, testing initiatives that will catalyze and support our society's single largest, shared civic act: giving.

And finally, a fifth fellow, Sydney Smith-Heimbrock was unable to join the conversation. But her work is no less than helping make our government a workplace that unlocks creativity to solve the complex problems facing our Nation. Within the Federal government, she leads the Innovation Lab@OPM, where they teach human-centered design through workshops and immersion projects with Federal leaders and professionals.

Tracy had the honor of working with these fellows over the past year and we are pleased to introduce them to you today in partnership with the Stanford d.school.

Show Notes:

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves by Christian Rudder, Co-Founder of OkCupid

Design Thinking Stokes: Workshop warmups

RMV 15 Jenny Jin: You Can Design For College (and Beyond)

In our newest episode, we introduce you to designer, Jenny Jin, whose motto is “always be learning!” A graduate of Stanford and MIT, she recently worked at the Alicia Foundation, founded by world renowned chef of El Bulli, Ferran Adria, to promote healthy eating for everyone.

Jenny is an entrepreneurial learner and doer, and is here to inspire us with her a sense of optimism, and roll-up-your-sleeves, kick-open-your-own-door attitude. Living up to her motto, we recently caught up with Jenny as she was preparing to lead a class at MIT’s Edgerton Center for Experiential Learning to teach undergrads how to apply design thinking to their lives.

Always the collaborator, Jenny wanted us to let everyone know that she is grateful for her amazing graduate TA's for the class - Lea (background in education), Nila (background working in oil rigs), and Prerna Sekhi (background in social enterprises) - who all dropped other classes to make helping facilitate this class a priority.

RMV 7 Dr. Kyra Bobinet: You Can Create A Well Designed Life

Today we are proud to introduce you to Dr. Kyra Bobinet, whose specialty is combining two medicines together: behavior change and design thinking. After completing med school at UCSF, she decided to change course in order to dig deeper into the science behind behavior change.

After graduation from Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Bobinet worked in the healthcare industry, building programs and algorithms to change behaviors at the million-person scale. Today she is the founder and CEO of EngagedIN, a design firm to help people and organizations change behaviors for the better.

Like Chris and I, she believes that every individual is a designer of their own life every day, and that all we need is to recognize and expand this intuition into full-blown life design skills. In her new book, Well Designed Life, she gives you many of those skills, as well as the approachable science behind it all.

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Well Designed Life is Dr. Bobinet's collection of the most helpful, useful concepts from her decades of studying neuroscience and design thinking.  The primary goal of this book is to empower you as the designer of your life.

EngagedIN is a behavior design firm for the health and wellness industry.

BJ Fogg creates systems to change human behavior. He runs the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, which focuses on methods for creating habits, showing what causes behavior, automating behavior change, and persuading people via mobile phones.

Carol Dweck researches “growth mindset” — the idea that we can grow our brain's capacity to learn and to solve problems. Her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success  explains why it’s not just our abilities and talent that bring us success—but whether we approach them with a fixed or growth mindset.

RMV 2 David Kelley: You Can Design For Creative Confidence

Today we want to introduce you to one of the most influential people on the planet when it comes to design, innovation, and creativity. Founder of IDEO and the Hasso Platner Institute of Design at Stanford (The d.school), David Kelley has spent decades helping students, employees, and organizations apply unleash the creativity that lies within each and every one of us.

We thought, if there was one person most qualified to give advice on how you can design your life, it would be David.

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Show Notes:

Creative Confidence A powerful and compelling book by David and Tom Kelley on unleashing the creative potential within us all.

Stanford d.school The Hasso Platner Institute of Design brings students and faculty from radically different backgrounds together to develop innovative, human-centered solutions to real-world challenges. The transformative experiences of students and faculty have fueled the d.school’s explosive growth.

IDEO An award-winning global design firm that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to helping organizations in the public and private sectors innovate and grow.

Albert Bandura Psychologist known as the originator of social learning theory and the theoretical construct of self-efficacy, and is also responsible for the influential 1961 Bobo doll experiment. 

Mindfulness Popularized by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.

Mind Mapping David Kelley uses mind maps to foster creativity. "Mind maps are organic and allow me to free associate. They are great for asking questions and revealing connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. The cool thing is that you allow yourself to follow your inner thoughts, which is different than making a list where you are trying to be complete and deal with data."