What if I can’t attend all five Design Lab sessions?
We still need your voice! While we encourage participation in all five sessions, we welcome your contributions during the sessions you can attend. After each Design Lab, members will receive a brief summary highlighting progress, key insights, and completed stages of the design process so you can stay connected to the journey.
What are the benefits of participating?
Your participation is an investment in the health, safety, well-being, and future of Chicago girls, and in the future of our city. As a Design Lab Member, you will have the opportunity to:
Contribute your knowledge, expertise, and perspective to Chicago’s first Quality of Life Plan for Girls
Help translate priorities identified by girls into actionable recommendations for policy, practice, investment, and coordinated action
Learn and apply human-centered design tools and methods
Connect and build relationships with leaders and organizations across sectors
Engage in five Fridays of collaborative ideation, innovation, creativity, and problem-solving
Learn from girls’ lived experiences, research, community knowledge, and the perspectives of other Lab Members
Be recognized as a Design Lab Member in the final Quality of Life Plan, including your name and organizational/contact information
Become part of a growing citywide network committed to improving conditions for Chicago girls
What is Human-Centered Design?
Human-centered design (HCD) is a collaborative approach to problem-solving that begins with the experiences, needs, and perspectives of the people most affected by an issue. Through a process of listening, making sense of what we learn, generating possibilities, designing solutions, and validating them, HCD helps move us from assumptions to understanding, and from ideas to actionable solutions.
How should I prepare?
Come ready to listen, learn, share, and create. Before the Design Labs begin, we encourage you to review CUG’s Are the Girls Well? Reimagining Well-Being for Urban Girls in Chicago White Paper and Sinai Urban Health Institute’s Empower Your Voice report. You will receive access to the Design Lab Member Guide at the Launch, along with additional information before each session to help you prepare for the next stage of the design journey.
What can I expect at each session?
Expect to be welcomed into a lively, creative design space built for thinking, connecting, and creating together. Each session will move your Lab through a specific stage of the human-centered design process and produce tangible outputs that build toward the final QLP.
You can expect:
Morning coffee, tea + light bites to get us started
Brief summary of each Lab’s progress
Engaging, large-format Design Sheets that guide your Lab through each stage of the HCD journey
Hands-on HCD tools and activities that help us listen deeply, uncover root conditions, generate possibilities, and design actionable recommendations
Design challenges that push us beyond the obvious and encourage bold, creative thinking
Small- and full-group collaboration with people bringing different experiences, expertise, and perspectives
Girl voice at the center, with opportunities throughout the process to identify what we still need to ask girls
Space for ideas that may extend beyond the QLP, so promising opportunities and connections aren't lost
Fidgets (yes, we got you!) because good thinking doesn't always happen sitting still
Lunch at the close of each session, with time to connect and continue conversations
Will I learn what’s happening in the other Design Labs?
Absolutely. While each Design Lab focuses on a specific Quality of Life Condition, the Labs are intentionally connected. Each session will include a brief update on what is emerging across the other Labs, along with opportunities to identify shared themes, overlapping challenges, and ideas that could strengthen work across Conditions.
Throughout the process, CUG will help facilitate cross-pollination across the Design Labs by surfacing connections, sharing emerging insights, and creating opportunities for Labs to learn from and build upon one another’s work. The Design Labs are the working units, but the citywide Quality of Life Plan is the shared product.
Chicago, come ready to roll up your sleeves, challenge assumptions, move some Post-its, meet new people, and help design what’s possible for our girls!
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