Welcome Melissa!

Can you share a little about your role and what excites you most about working at the Social Impact Lab Alberta?

As a Project Designer, it’s my job to shape the vision and desired outcomes of all the projects that the team is working through.  Because I’m also a local artist, I’m drawn to work that seeks to make a direct social impact by bringing communities together and exploring opportunities for connection and culture.  The path to social impact can be non-linear, so I get to flex my creative problem-solving muscles every day.  

What do you find most rewarding about community-centered approach in your work?

I get to meet and learn about new people, every day.  In order for community-centered design to work, we need to understand the lived experience of the people who are in those communities. I’m honored to hear stories about how folks find meaning, purpose, connection and belonging in their communities and how those collective histories come together to create new ways of supporting community resilience.

‍

You bring some experience with testing products and services. With the Athabasca kiosk project, what were you hoping would come out of it?

I did spend almost a decade in the technology industry, and the biggest learning from the Agile software delivery method was in order to succeed you needed to understand that product development was an unending test, deliver, feedback, cycle. This supported the creation of new products based on user’s needs, as well as improvements to existing products and processes.  

My hope was to take the project team through the testing and feedback cycle, which required them to be more curious about the feedback that the community provided, and less invested in the ‘success’ of the proposed solution.  A successful testing session isn’t necessarily a confirmation of the proposed solution, but rather a step to learning about how the community would feel about the proposed solution.  Uncovering that knowledge in a real-world scenario and encouraging the project team to get comfortable with the process is how we build capacity and transfer knowledge into those communities.  

‍

What have you learned about the power of collaboration from these projects?

We just finished our Community Champions workshop in Mayerthorpe, which is the first session in the design lab process.  We explored the community champion’s identities and how they relate to the community, what they love about their community and some of the challenges they see.

For me, the most powerful part of the session was at the end where we asked if we had the right people in the room, with the outcome of us generating a list of folks to contact to invite them into the project.  The group was so considerate about the voices that weren’t being heard, and their willingness to advocate for individuals and groups that weren’t currently represented in the room was very touching.  I believe the greatest power of collaboration comes from the group looking around and making sure that everyone’s voice is included and represented in some way.