https://agncy.org Agncy Design Fri, 10 Dec 2021 21:01:26 +0000 https://agncy.org en https://agncy.org/home-hero Tue, 02 Jun 2020 17:19:26 +0000 Agncy Design https://agncy.org/home-hero Using design as a tool to reduce structural inequity. We work with teams and leaders to make the equity and justice they seek in their communities. Used collectively, design can transform people, organizations and systems.  https://agncy.org/changing-systems-is-hard-work Mon, 11 May 2020 02:36:38 +0000 Agncy Design https://agncy.org/changing-systems-is-hard-work Changing systems is hard work. Design is a problem-solving approach that is clarifying, people-first and optimistic. Perhaps you need to engage your community in decision-making. Perhaps you need to help constituents understand where your organization is moving. Maybe you want to know how to apply human-centered design tools to your work and your organization.  Design can be a powerful lever in your work.  Let’s talk about it ︎︎︎ https://agncy.org/core-offerings Tue, 02 Jun 2020 17:19:56 +0000 Agncy Design https://agncy.org/core-offerings Offerings While our approach to work is flexible, we’ve found it helpful to describe it in the following categories: Service system design Designing the touchpoints, interactions, structures and processes to deliver services and experiences to community members in ways that are equitable, reciprocal and reflective of their needs and values. Visioning and storytelling Shaping visions and telling the stories of organizations, coalitions, leaders and movements to make missions clear and tangible, get folks engaged in the work, support advocacy, or rally funding. Knowledge-sharing Helping systems be better at knowing and sharing what they know, recognizing wisdom, creating space for evolving best practices, giving others help with paths already travelled.  Community-led design and strategy Planning and facilitating design processes to engage a range of stakeholders, to share the power implicit in the design process, to build strategic plans and to harness the knowledge and assets of a community to develop solutions. https://agncy.org/We-work-with-teams-and-organizations-at-all-scales Wed, 01 Jul 2020 19:29:59 +0000 Agncy Design https://agncy.org/We-work-with-teams-and-organizations-at-all-scales We work with teams and organizations at all scales. Boston Opportunity Agenda Boston Plan for Excellence Boston Public Health Commission Boston Public Schools Chiefs for Change City of Boston Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative Excel High School Griptape Jeremiah E. Burke High School Massachusetts College of Art and Design New Commonwealth Fund NewSchools Venture Funds Nubian Neighborhood Network Oakland Unified School District Project Hope San Francisco Unified School District Sarah Greenwood School The Boston Foundation Transformative Prison Project Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority Y of Greater Boston https://agncy.org/Hello Wed, 01 Jul 2020 18:20:05 +0000 Agncy Design https://agncy.org/Hello Every conversation is an opportunity to learn and to broaden our perspective. Please reach out; we welcome the chance to talk through what you’re working on and where you are. Email  augusta@agncy.org https://agncy.org/working-together-intro-1 Fri, 10 Dec 2021 21:01:26 +0000 Agncy Design https://agncy.org/working-together-intro-1 WORKING TOGETHER Our design approach is a partnership between our team, your team and those people who the work is in service of; together we build and deconstruct ideas, solutions and mindsets. This requires reciprocity and trust; we all do our best work when we feel that we are in it together. https://agncy.org/what-we-mean-by-design Tue, 02 Jun 2020 16:27:08 +0000 Agncy Design https://agncy.org/what-we-mean-by-design Meeting you where you’re atSome clients come to the table with a clear definition of challenge and desired outcome. Many more begin a conversation by sharing with us where they’re at and welcoming us into the journey with them. We engage in many ways, some paid, some not, some only as paid as they can be, some a prelude to being paid through joint grant-writing or approach to funders. If we engaged only with the groups or people who were “ready” in terms of dollars, capacity or design maturity, we surely would not meet the communities and people who we can do our best work with. What we mean by “design” Design is a problem-solving approach and a set of methods that allow us to be people-centered, generative and optimistic in our work. The designer’s toolkit doesn’t just center us on what’s broken, but rather empowers us in an asset-based approach to problem-solving. So what do we actually design? We design service systems, communications tools, system maps, and specific touchpoints—all in service to the mindsets, values or structures that they make tangible. https://agncy.org/challenges-you-may-be-facing Tue, 02 Jun 2020 16:17:47 +0000 Agncy Design https://agncy.org/challenges-you-may-be-facing Change work is hard. Our clients are all tackling the work of bending hardened structures towards equity. Some are working from within; others are advocating from the streets; some sit atop hefty decisions. Whatever the vantage, the challenges are considerable. Here is how we’ve found design to be helpful. Understanding where to focus There’s a lot of stuff that’s inequitable, but where are the points of highest leverage? What are the conditional elements that can unlock additional solutions? It’s hard to know what to tackle first. The things that can feel most urgent can actually be symptoms of a more serious underlying need. And the work that is most critical is often the cross-disciplinary, cross-silo work that folks will need additional support to make happen. Bringing multiple people and organizations together around a shared understanding of the issues is hard when each bring their own point of view. How design can help System mapping helps make complex and often invisible relationships legible. It can make implicit or unseen elements explicit,  surface the habits and mindsets that seem baked into an organization or system, and make evident gaps, points of leverage or key players.   Case study ︎︎︎ Building a shared vision of changeChange work is communal. It requires a ton of folks be on board and see their part. A shared vision of change can be a critical motivator.It translates vague, aspirational words into clear terms and crystalizes the work to be done. It makes tangible what success can look like and mean for people. Great visions are created jointly, held by many, and easily told. They are stories that many see themselves in, the first step in the collective action necessary for change. How design can help Design is a storytelling tool. Crafting the story makes it stronger, tests its strategic resilience, finds points of wobble and clarifies the core. Bringing it to life makes it sing, helps people see the beauty of the end goal and understand how they are important in steering towards it. Case study ︎︎︎ Engaging community effectivelyWhether a system leader or a grassroots organizer, change makers need to engage their communities. This may mean articulating a coherent message across silos, crafting intentional space for feedback and dialogue with constituents, or co-creating solutions in partnership with community members. When done right, engaging your community moves from a box-checking activity to one that effectively shares decision-making power. How design can help Well-designed facilitation and experiences can authentically bring community members into change processes. By working with (not at) communities, teams can make ideas stronger, find more powerful collective voice and take an asset-based approach to their work. Case Study ︎︎︎ Keeping people at the center of your work We’re all in this to make more just experiences for people. But when you are good at your work, so often you are pulled farther from these people, into the halls of administrative buildings, behind a desk, off the streets, out of the classrooms. It can be easy to feel removed from the people who originally motivated the work. But when people are blurred into data points solutions are distanced from those who they most need to work for. Folks can start thinking like the systems they work within, reverting to the norms or regs that make the system tick. Keeping people at the core of the work frames the challenge in ways that instead can move systems, change mindsets and recenter the problems to solve. Design can help Human-centered design puts the needs of people up front. We use design research to make tangible the realities that any work must meld with. We sit at kitchen tables, in tiny pre-school chairs, in the corner of physician exam rooms to understand people in their own spaces and their own terms. And we bring these truths to the folks leading change.  Creating more equitable service systemsThere are so many good-hearted, strong-willed people doing the work of running service systems. In all our work, we see folks going above and beyond to meet the needs of those they serve: running down to the transportation office to check on a SPED bus for a parent or calling around to find the person who can help with rent assistance. The challenge is that this makes for fragile systems. It makes for systems that reward the persistent, the enfranchised. How can a system be equitable when it relies on catching the right person in the right mood? Building the structures, processes, interactions, tools and trainings to ensure equitable service delivery creates more just systems.Design can help Service design considers the experience we want to deliver to people and organizes people, departments and resouces to enable these services. We design the front-end touchpoints and interactions and the back-end systems necessary make them real. https://agncy.org/our-values-intro-2 Wed, 01 Dec 2021 04:43:13 +0000 Agncy Design https://agncy.org/our-values-intro-2 OUR  VALUES We’re noodling on how to make design practices more equitable and how to de-bias our work. This has resulted in some edits to core design methods as we continue to evolve what we do and how we do it. https://agncy.org/our-principles Mon, 11 May 2020 03:34:47 +0000 Agncy Design https://agncy.org/our-principles Our mission is embodied not only in the outcomes of our work, but in the doing of it. These are the values that ground us.