[Session2] Design by Community: Advocating for Community Power in New York City Government
Session2
“Design by Community: Advocating for Community Power in New York City Government”
Deana YU / Assistant Director of Service Design Studio, New York City Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity
Introduction
Hi everybody.
Before I even begin, I just want to say it is an immense pleasure and privilege to be here. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Deana Yu, and I am the Assistant Director of the Service Design Studio. And for the next 20 minutes of my presentation, I want to invite everybody here to travel 7,000 miles away—to where I’m from.
I’m from the city of New York, and I think when you think of New York, you think of this glamorous big city, right? The skyscrapers, the landmarks, the history, the Big Apple. But that’s not what my team, the Service Design Studio, is focused on. Instead, we’re focused on the people of New York City—the people who call New York City home. New York City is a big city with 8 million residents, and these folks who live in our city have to contend with a lot of issues in the United States—things such as systemic racism, poverty, and a skyrocketing cost of living in New York City. And a lot of these communities rely on social services to get through life. That’s why my team, the Service Design Studio, is focused on advocating for community power in New York City government.
Today, I’ll tell you a little bit about us—a little bit about who we are at the Service Design Studio. I’ll establish some baseline definitions, so I’ll define service design—how we see it. And then, to get into how we advocate for community power, I’ll walk you through a framework that we use to think about social services and city government. I’ll take you through a few case studies—projects that I and my team have worked on— and also walk you through some key takeaways and lessons for the City of Seoul.
Introduction of Service Design Studio
So, who is the Service Design Studio?
I am a city government worker based within the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity. My agency is dedicated to using innovation to decrease poverty and increase equity, and one of the innovative ways that my agency does that is through our team, the Service Design Studio. We are the United States’ first team dedicated to improving services for low-income residents.
Essentially, this means we’ve been around since 2017, and we’ve worked to make public services more accessible, dignified, and effective for all New Yorkers. To do this, we spread valuable service design and community-centered design methods that aren’t traditionally used in a government setting, especially in New York.
About Service Design and Service
Now, what is service design?
A service helps someone reach a goal. For example, everyone here had the goal of getting to the forum today and sitting in your seats. To reach that goal, you might have used a service such as taking the train or the metro. That’s an example: you have a goal, and you have a service. Another example of a common goal people might have is receiving an identification card—an ID. To do that, you have to go into an office and fill out some forms. Again, there’s a service and a goal. In both of these situations, you use a service to achieve a goal. And in these particular examples, these are actually social services.
And what's a social service?
Well, a social service helps communities meet basic needs. Those examples that I just showed before, talked about transit and identification but you can also think about things such as food, housing, and health care. Those are the services that my team is focused on.
Now that we understand what a service is, let’s talk about design.
When people hear the word “design,” they often think about how something looks. And while my team at the Service Design Studio certainly appreciates a beautiful presentation, we believe that design is really about how things work. More specifically, we believe that service design is about how services work.
So, what does that mean?
In service design, we coordinate all parts of a service to create a seamless experience. To do this, we consider various touchpoints—the people, the tools and technology, and the communications that make up the service. Let’s take the example of obtaining an identification card or a driver’s license. If we are designing for a person’s experience, we consider every touchpoint they interact with. For example, think about people—who will this person interact with? Perhaps the receptionist at the front desk is having a bad day or is in a bad mood. That could directly affect the person’s service experience.
We also think about tools and technology. For example, if the PIN pad is broken, that too can negatively impact the service experience. And finally, there’s communication—the flyers, brochures, handouts, and forms that people receive when going through a service.
All of these influence the overall service experience.
Co-Design Framework
Now that we’ve defined both service and service design, let’s talk about how my team at the Service Design Studio thinks about design in government.
Traditionally, things in government tend to be very top-down. The person at the top — the president or the mayor — makes decisions, and services are then developed, administered, and delivered based on those directives. In this model, the community becomes merely a recipient of the service. While this approach may seem logical, at the Service Design Studio, we aim to shift away from this hierarchical model toward one that is community-centered.
In our approach, communities are placed at the center of service delivery. Social services are designed, developed, and administered around the needs and experiences of the people who use them. We believe that working in this way helps build relationships and promote healing, places equity and accessibility at the forefront, and acknowledges the systems of oppression that, as you may know, exist in the United States.
Ultimately, our goal is to change how we work and how we think.
To do this, we use a framework called “Levels of Co-Design”, which consists of three stages: Design for, Design with, and Design by.
If you’re running a program or working on a service, this framework helps you reflect: Am I designing for people, with people, or even by people? In city governments, services are often designed at communities, rather than with them.
Design For
They are shaped around what’s easiest for the government to manage, rather than what’s easiest for people to use. Some progress has been made as city governments have tried to design for communities—essentially trying to anticipate and guess what communities might want.
However, at the Service Design Studio, we are working to shift toward design with and design by models, where communities play an active role in designing the very services they use.
Now that you’re a bit more familiar with this idea, I’ll walk you through some case studies and project examples, starting with Design With—what it means and how it looks in practice.
Design With
In the Design With model, community members are actively consulted and engaged throughout the process. This means that they are invited to participate at key decision-making points, with multiple opportunities and methods for meaningful involvement.
For example, in 2023, my team collaborated with another city agency in New York—the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health. This office focuses on improving the mental health and well-being of New Yorkers. They approached us with the question: “How might we provide professional development support to frontline mental health staff?”
Their goal was to strengthen the careers of city government employees working on the front lines of mental health services. This particular group included peer support workers and community health workers — individuals who use their own lived experience to help others experiencing mental health challenges. For example, someone who has personally gone through addiction recovery might work alongside another person currently facing addiction. Because this is a relatively new profession in New York City, it was especially important for the agency to understand how to support these workers in ways that recognize and value their unique experiences.
The Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health could have simply assumed or guessed what these staff members wanted. But instead, they decided to collaborate with my team at the Service Design Studio on an initiative we called the “Listening and Feedback Tour.” This approach represents our Design With model in action—working directly with communities to understand their real needs and experiences.
Before bringing people into the room, we first conducted a survey. We asked community members what topics they wanted to discuss with the city and what issues they wished to see addressed in their professional development. In other words, we let the community set the agenda. Through this process, we were able to build a clear understanding of what people wanted to talk about.
After the survey, we organized focus groups where we invited people to share their career experiences and challenges. Because mental health can be a heavy topic, we designed creative and interactive methods to make participation more comfortable. We created worksheets and other tools that allowed participants to discuss stressful issues in less stressful ways. Through this process, we engaged 135 participants, identified 30 challenges, and generated 70 ideas—a remarkable number of ideas.
Most projects might stop there after completing surveys and focus groups. But at the Service Design Studio, we took an extra step. We returned to the community to conduct validation sessions—an opportunity to share what we had heard and ask, “Did we understand you correctly? Is this what you meant during the focus group?” Once we validated that our understanding was accurate, the community members were invited to vote on which ideas they wanted the city to prioritize. We used ranked-choice voting, allowing people to say, for example, “Focus on wages” or “Focus on career growth.” Ultimately, from the 70 ideas, we were able to prioritize 10 actionable solutions—putting decision-making power directly into the hands of the community.
This entire process is an example of our 'Design With' approach—a method that involves ongoing consultation with the community through multiple touchpoints, including the survey, focus groups, and validation sessions.
Design By
All right, now let’s talk about design by.
In the design by method, community members have decision-making power themselves. They play a leadership role in the projects—they’re not just receiving the projects, they’re a part of them.
An example of this is a program that my team hosts called the Design by Community program. This is a participatory action research program—if you know what that means—but if not, Design by Community is essentially a program where we partner with a nonprofit to hire people directly from the community.
These folks are trained in service design research, and they carry out projects for their own neighborhoods. So, it’s essentially a partnership between an organization, a local nonprofit, and people with lived experience from that community.
We partnered with a nonprofit called Phipps Neighborhoods in New York City. After COVID, they came to us and said, “We want to increase digital access in our neighborhoods. This is a big problem in the Bronx.” They wanted to do this by creating a shared space equipped with technological tools—but the question was, what exact tools does the community actually need and want? How should this room be used?
So, we began the project with Phipps Neighborhoods and hired six community fellows—people from the Bronx who were interested in supporting their neighborhood, had experience in technology, and were deeply connected to their community. And I just want to give a quick shout-out to these folks—they’ve become great friends.
We went through a six-month process following five main stages.
First, we aligned on what the project was about.
Through workshops and brainstorming sessions, we defined our main research question: “How might we provide a multicultural and intergenerational space for Bronx residents to explore digital tools?”
This meant engaging people of different ages — youth, adults, and elders.
My team at the Service Design Studio supported the community fellows as they conducted research directly in their neighborhoods through interviews, focus groups, and surveys. In total, they reached over 75 Bronx residents, collecting insights about digital access and community needs.
After gathering the data, we came together to synthesize findings and identify key challenges residents were facing. With their lived experience and local knowledge, the fellows brainstormed ideas for how the community could use a shared technology space.
These ideas were then organized into an implementation plan and presented to our nonprofit partner, along with recommendations for classes and programs.
We found that adults were most interested in career development, while youth were curious about starting small businesses. Using these insights, the fellows helped allocate a $40,000 budget, which Phipps used to launch a community Maker Space. Over the following year, it hosted a range of workshops led by local artists, technologists, and residents.
This project became a strong example of how design can empower communities — by inviting residents to participate directly, shape their own solutions, and support one another. And Design by Community continues today; I’ll be returning to New York to help lead the next round when I go back.
But the main idea behind this project is that we can design and run programs in a truly participatory way — programs that are created with the community, not just for them. We are now partnering with another city agency, the Civic Engagement Commission in New York City, which operates the Participatory Budgeting Program to strengthen community power and give residents a direct voice in decision-making. So going forward, we’re excited to continue building more partnerships and launching more community-led projects across the city.
Key Takeaways for Seoul
I’d like to leave you with a few key takeaways and lessons for Seoul.
First, build the capacity of existing government teams.
As the Mayor mentioned earlier, I truly believe everyone is a designer. Design can sometimes sound like a fancy word, but service design is really just a method—a set of skills that anyone can apply to their work. Government is a big system with many workers, and service design is a mindset that helps us improve how we serve people.
For example, my team at the Service Design Studio has partnered with agencies such as the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health to apply this mindset. We show teams how to approach their projects differently — helping them think beyond what they already know.
I also created a tool called the Power Checklist — a simple, reflective guide that outlines steps and opportunities for sharing power in everyday work. If you’re interested in applying service design in your own projects, you can visit my website and use this tool to assess whether you’re creating meaningful opportunities for community engagement.
Another key lesson is about shifting power through participatory action research. People shouldn’t just be consulted — they should be the ones doing the research and making decisions.
As a city government, we already hold power, but our communities hold the knowledge and capacity to make change. It’s about trusting them and inviting them in — or even better, removing the table altogether and letting them lead. This is exactly what we try to do with Design by Community. Thanks to everyone who made this possible, we’ve shown that community power can be part of city government. It’s not always easy — especially in a city like New York with its layers of bureaucracy — but service design helps us begin to think differently.
So as you leave today, I hope you’ll reflect on this:
Are you designing for your community — making assumptions about what people want? Or are you designing with them — inviting them to the table and giving them real choices? Ultimately, our goal at the Service Design Studio is to move toward design by, where community members have the power to decide and create change themselves.
Thank you so much for having me today.
Thank you
