H.E. Butt Foundation < Greater Good Studio

Co-designing community-centered solutions for rural child care

with H. E. Butt Foundation

Client

Supported by The H. E. Butt Foundation, the Real County Community Initiative, or RCCI, acts as a hub of resources in healthcare, education, and mental health for local residents and a meeting place for local leaders.

Geography

Texas

Topic Areas

Community Development
Health
Youth Development

Project Types

Programs & Services

Real County is a sparsely populated area of southwestern Texas. Residents there face many of the same complexities as other rural communities: lack of quality child care, healthcare, and early learning opportunities. The H. E. Butt Foundation recognized that although these issues aren’t unique to their county, solutions would be. They wanted to work on promoting the health of children and families in the region. Even more importantly, they wanted to build local capacity to take initiative and co-create these locally-driven solutions.

GGS partnered with The H. E. Butt Foundation to explore human-centered design solutions to the issues facing children and families in Real County. We worked closely with a “design team” of local leaders to research, design, and eventually pilot new approaches to childcare.

Our Process

#/#

We convened local leaders for a one-day kickoff workshop, representing different areas of the community: parents, teachers, child care providers, volunteers, and folks from local institutions such as the church, library, and foundation, who all shared an interest in “Healthy Children and Families” in Real County.
Although we had planned on conducting in-person research, we pivoted to engage parents and other caregivers remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Not to be deterred, we created and distributed hands-on learning kits to understand their experiences, needs, and priorities. Activities included a daily journal, a video documentation assignment, and a care mapping exercise. Then, we held phone interviews with each respondent to walk through their materials and learn more about what they had shared.
Once we gathered research data, we looked for patterns and themes using the digital whiteboard Miro. Several key insights emerged across four main categories: Why childcare matters, Barriers to care, Assets for care, and How we might respond. This helped our client and stakeholder teams understand the most critical aspects of challenges faced and guide next steps.
We brainstormed concepts to address what we had learned through three in-person convenings, supported by a local design team made up of several community members. The GGS team provided structure, materials, and facilitation modeling during the first workshop, and the local design team held the other two convenings with GGS coaching support. Rooted in community perspective and discussion, over 75 ideas were generated for further prioritization and selection by the local design team.
We worked with the broader team to prioritize 10 concepts from the original 75 generated, and selected 5 for further definition and testing. GGS created visual prototypes with illustrated storyboards and concept descriptions. Continuing to support the local design team, we showed them how to conduct prototyping sessions, and provided protocols for easy use.
Design team members conducted 12 feedback sessions with friends and neighbors, gathering concept feedback and additional insights. Then the GGS compiled the prototyping feedback and mapped impact and feasibility for each concept based on all the learnings gathered so far. From this analysis, the team chose four concepts to move into piloting, including a rotational pick up and delivery service and a financial assistance coordinator who could serve as a community resource.

Project Outputs

In order to share our community-based research, we created a presentation that gave depth and nuance to the experiences of caring for young children, and walked through both barriers and opportunities for design. View our full presentation here.

In order to design programs that would be embraced by the community, we created visual prototypes to share key aspects of each program’s experience. See our full set of prototypes here.

Client & Community Outcomes

The H. E. Butt Foundation embraced deeper listening and partnership with community members to address important issues. Through the design team format, they elevated local leaders as peers and thought partners. And those individuals built human-centered design (HCD) skills, which can be applied to the development of new programs and solutions, and which center more equitable processes moving forward.

GGS provided more than just a design framework — [they] showed us how to use design. This process has been inspirational and very clear…and I think it’s taught us a lot. This hasn’t just been about letting a consultant do their thing — [they’ve] created a skillset for us.
Perri Rosheger Vice President of Community Engagement

Team & Studio Impact

At GGS, we typically categorize our projects as either consulting or capacity-building. Consulting is where we are hired to solve a problem using HCD, whereas capacity-building is where we are hired to teach others to solve problems using HCD. This project was the first one we truly could not categorize, because it so seamlessly blended consulting with capacity building. We followed an “I do, we do, you do” approach where our team led the kickoff, research and synthesis, with support from the local design team. We shared ideation and concept development pretty equally. And then the design team led the rounds of prototyping and piloting, while we stepped back into a support and coaching role. This approach led to both elegant solutions and local capacity, which felt like a “best of both worlds” scenario. We hope to be able to dial each of these modes up and down in future projects!

I sing [GGS’] praises often, and loudly, to other organizations, who are wanting to do community engagement work, where the community is leading the work.
Dana Williams Former RCCI Community Engagement Director

Client

Geography

Topic Areas

Project Types

Our Process

Project Outputs

Client & Community Outcomes

Team & Studio Impact

Honoring student writing through a digital platform

Designing new models of equitable care for complex patients

Co-creating healthier communities for children and families

Client

Geography

Topic Areas

Project Types

Our Process

Project Outputs

Client & Community Outcomes

Team & Studio Impact

See More Projects

Honoring student writing through a digital platform

Designing new models of equitable care for complex patients

Co-creating healthier communities for children and families