In my thoughts, I've written a more detailed blog post about the actual event, which you can read here. This post focuses on the human-centered design activities we organized and how we partnered with the community. To summarize, my Human-Centered Design class and I collaborated with a local teen support outreach program in Springdale, AR, known as TASC (Teen Action & Support Center). Their goal was to reach out to, unify, and become a part of the community they were serving.
Before the block party, we engaged in extensive design work. We branded "Building the Block," a program/system intended to expand to various areas across the country, helping to revitalize and connect communities through a series of block parties. Additionally, we created branding and advertising for the local event. Since it was the first of many, we needed to ensure it represented the community and the message of the hosts. I led the branding team for the main event, developing the name, logo, color palette, and the entire branding system to deliver consistent materials and assets. These included yard signs, handouts, social media graphics, a welcome sign, booth signs, raffle tickets, and bingo cards.
To conclude the event, our group compiled the entire visual experience and our research into a book for TASC. It documented our research methods, the branding journey, prototyping, ideating activities, execution, and our findings and observations. Each of us was responsible for different sections of the book; I was in charge of designing and laying out the introduction and the branding for the main event.