Context:
Design for America is a student organization making a social impact through design. During spring semester of my freshman year I worked on a team partnered with January Advisors in order to develop a new participatory budgeting system for Houston.

Initial Challenge:
How can we engage Houstonians in the participatory budgeting process?

Approach:
We began by meeting with our community partner, January Advisors, and selecting a community on which we can prototype the system (eventually deciding on Bellaire). We quickly became experts on everything related to participatory budgeting, understanding what it is, and where it is being used around the nation. In short, participatory budgeting is a system that gives citizens control over a segment of public spending. Below are some photos taken at our team meetings illustrating us working through what participatory budgeting is and how our team can be most useful in implementing it in Houston this semester.

team process understanding the challenge

Reframed Challenge: How can we simplify and communicate the PB process so various users in Bellaire have the understanding, ability, and incentive to participate?

initial digital mockups before stakeholder feedback

Feedback: After interviewing Bellair residents, we discovered that the water tower was not a source of pride, the colors did not make a lot of sense, and the wide open space on the back did left the user feeling overwhelmed and unsure of what to put down. As a result, we replaced the water tower with a vector of the trolley in the center of the town and gave the user more direction on the back of the card.

final designs after stakeholder feedback

michael@morandom.com