Citation

Gerber E. Interactions 2014; 21(2): 42-47.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Association for Computing Machinery)

DOI

10.1145/2567840

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Design for America (DFA) is a national organization that connects and activates voluntary teams of university students, faculty, professional designers, and community members to confront illiteracy, tackle violence, beat poverty, and more. DFA guides student-led teams as they learn and lead a community centered innovation process that emphasizes participatory design, rapid iteration, and interdisciplinary teamwork. DFA starts by teaching teams to identify problems in their own community that are personally meaningful to them and if solved, could scale globally. DFA teams go out into the community to talk to people to understand what is not working and what could be working better. They talk with community members to get a sense of the pressing challenges, take digital pictures of what's broken, and do research to learn about the significance of the problems and which problems resonate personally with them.

Language: en