Our Bay Area chapters at California College of the Arts, Presidio Graduate School, and the University of San Francisco are showing us both the power of design as a tool for impact and the opportunity for regional collaboration in our network.
After meeting through Net Impact’s Impact Design initiative and discovering their proximity and shared passion for design, they decided to form Bay Area Impact Design (BAID). Their goal is to unite students from all over the Bay Area around design and business for social impact. To start, they’ve created an ongoing series of events to share design problem-solving skills and attack hands-on challenges.
California College of the Arts kicked it off with a short design sprint. Small teams rapidly brainstormed and pitched solutions for water access or affordable housing in the Bay. The head of San Francisco-based Kiva Zip, Johnny Price, wrapped up the night with a discussion on how keeping the people you’re serving at the center of your problem solving process enables meaningful, effective, and socially impactful work.
Next, Presidio hosted a speaker series and design sprint featuring user experience and design innovation leaders from Forum for the Future, Adaptive Path, Changeworks Labs, and Environments at Eight Inc.
This month, BAID looks forward to reconvening everyone at the University of San Francisco to hear from a UX design teacher from General Assembly and a designer at HandUp.org.
Manager, Impact Design Programs, Net Impact
Natalia loves finding suprising solutions to tricky problems through human centered design, and helping to tell impact stories through videos, photography, and good design.
