We aim to teach and practice equitable Human Centered Design methods that build a solid community culture and confident design thinkers who design creative and empathetic solutions for real-world problems.
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Noun: A tight-knit group of students passionate about making a positive impact using the Human-Centered Design Process
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Design for America is a nationwide network of student-led studios that aim to create products and solutions that solve real world problems using the Human-Centered Design process. Design for America at University of Illinois is a highly diverse, interdisciplinary RSO, welcoming students from all backgrounds and majors, in addition to consistently being one of the top performing DFA studios in the nation.
Tackling complex social challenges can be tricky. The Human-Centered Design process is here to help! We form teams of students from all backgrounds and majors in order to design products and solutions that solve real world problems. These projects all follow a guided design process with the ultimate goal of implementing the solution in the real world.
To understand who we are and what we do, we must first understand what Human-Centered Design is! Design for America defines Human-Centered Design (HCD) as a process that “first focuses on the needs of real people, then builds and tests ideas with users, and ultimately disseminates implemented solutions to individuals and communities.” A similar definition can be found with one of our campus partners, the Siebel Center for Design. They define HCD as “an interdisciplinary, problem solving approach that identifies the unmet needs of a population in order to collaboratively and iteratively develop solutions.”
With that being said, Design for America (DFA) is a nationwide network of student-led studios. These studios are nodes of community, HCD education, and localized impact within university campuses across the U.S. DFA Studios are dedicated to connecting interdisciplinary student teams, mentors, and local organizations together by using HCD frameworks to co-create better futures for their communities.
DFA at Illinois is a highly diverse and interdisciplinary registered student organization and non-profit at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We welcome students from all backgrounds and majors to form student teams that will be taught the HCD Process to then employ it in the design of solutions that will solve real social problems in the Urbana-Champaign community.
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