Generate-Design-Select Methodology
This is TechSoup’s methodology, initially developed by the team at Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup.
It rests on one principle: community voices, expertise, and interests should guide and inform technology development. We develop with, not for. Communities participate throughout the design process, not just at the end.
The five phases
Our process moves through five phases, each keeping the community in the lead.
- Generate: We facilitate sessions where diverse professionals (experts in an issue area, social workers, researchers, librarians, and community leaders) collaborate to name shared problems and ideate solutions together.
- Design: Participants form teams, develop design questions, and create paper prototypes, using hands-on methods like drawing and cutting to visualize potential solutions.
- Select: Community-designed prototypes become shareable posters displayed in public spaces. Feedback gathered from libraries and community centers directly informs which features get built.
- Build: We hand the community-generated research and feedback to development teams: internal, contracted, or community-driven through hackathons.
- Use: Communities help adopt and promote the tools they created. This is the power of community ownership: tools designed by and rooted in the community.
More to come
We’ll expand this page over time with additional tools and templates that put the methodology into practice. Check back as it grows.