In the social sector, programs often fail due to a lack of understanding of the norms, knowledge, and needs of the people who execute and benefit from the solutions offered by those programs. Human-Centered Design (HCD) offers a broadly-applicable problem-solving framework and methods for developing an in-depth understanding of people who are directly impacted by development challenges, generating creative ideas, and rapidly learning from small-scale pilots.

As HCD is an emerging practice in the social sector, a critical first step is an exploratory case study. Using the Social Blueprint framework, I characterized two drastically different approaches for teaching and practicing HCD for Social Impact. IDEO.org’s Fellowship program represents a Project-Based Consulting Model in which professional design teams partner with social enterprises, nonprofits, and foundations to design and implement scalable products and services. During the one-year Fellowship program, social sector leaders learn HCD by working on design consulting projects with experienced designers. The International Development Design Summit (IDDS) program represents a Creative Capacity Building Model, in which students and members of low-income communities learn to design appropriate technologies and launch social enterprises. IDDS is an educational conference that aims to put participants on a lifelong path dedicated to social innovation.

These exploratory case studies consist of a qualitative analysis of documents, participant observations, and key informant interviews. All the key informants were employees or volunteers previously or currently working with the organizations in this research study. By analyzing the evolution of IDEO.org from 2011 to 2015 and of IDDS from 2007 to 2015, I identified challenges associated with trying to achieve impact through the dual goals of design education and practice. IDEO.org addressed these challenges by developing programs with distinct missions focused on either goal. IDDS maintained its multifaceted mission, and developed a Social Innovation Ecosystem of complementary programs and resources to better support its dual goals.

The literature on strategic fit suggests that all building blocks of an organization’s or program’s social blueprints must be aligned to achieve its mission or anchor purpose. Despite their shared emphasis on the HCD process, IDEO.org’s Fellowship program and IDDS program produced outcomes that aligned with their respective social blueprint building blocks. My comparison of IDEO.org’s and IDDS’s design processes also suggests that the HCD process is not a static process, but rather is heavily influenced by organizational and project contexts. I developed in-depth case studies of an IDEO.org project and an IDDS project to illustrate the differences in their approaches and identify factors that may influence the progression of projects from the design stage to the pilot stage.

HCD has great potential for generating innovative solutions to address challenges of poverty. This dissertation builds a foundation for understanding how to better design for social impact by examining the experience of two renowned pioneering organizations.