Designing for Social Systems Program at Stanford University
The purpose of Designing for Social Systems is to empower leaders and practitioners in the nonprofit, philanthropy, government, and social impact fields to work in more effective, human, and strategic ways. In collaboration with these practitioners, we aim to redesign how this work is done, develop more effective interventions, and advance the sector as a whole.
Designing for social change is complex work. It requires considering the many stakeholders and factors that could affect outcomes, having deep understanding of people while seeing the bigger picture, gaining clarity and conviction despite incomplete information, and discovering and choosing interventions that have impact, in the multitude of possibilities. Our belief and experience is that human-centered design is a powerful methodology and mindset to employ in this work.