Creating Solutions Together: Design Thinking, The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) and 3 Grantees
As part of a project supported by the HHS IDEA LAB, OFA tested design thinking’s utility as a creative problem solving approach for social service organizations with three of its grantees. After introducing the grantees to design thinking, the organizations learned the methodology by using it to solve a challenge of their choice. The publication, “Creating Solutions Together: Design Thinking, The Office of Family Assistance and 3 Grantees,” captures the process used and the grantees’ experience and reflections on the project. Not familiar with design thinking? At its heart, design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving. It consists of a set of tools that focus on empathy for the end-user in the creation and consideration of any solution.
The ultimate goal of the IDEA Lab is a more modern and effective government that is responsive to the needs and challenges of our times.
In 2013, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) established the IDEA Lab to improve how the Department delivers on its mission. This effort was started as a response to input from the workforce and public to promote advances in organizational management centered around three core beliefs:
- Every individual has the ability to improve the health and well-being of Americans;
- People are more powerful when working together; and
- There is a solution to every problem.
The IDEA Lab exists as the bridge between the old world and a vision of a new, networked world, where value is found in an individual’s talents and ideas, as opposed to their position in a hierarchical structure.