Joan Lundell

With Us / For Us was an experiment in participatory design and public messaging. A focus group was formed and carefully facilitated to test the effectiveness of designing in collaboration with the target audience. 

STRATEGY

A light-hearted topic (a campaign to encourage dog owners to clean up after their pets) was selected so that people could easily take sides and develop a campaign. User groups were divided into members of the "target audience" (dog owners) and non-members (non-dog owners). Each group then developed a campaign to influence the target audience to perform an action. The final designs from each group were distributed in a blind survey to determine which campaign was most effective -- the designs created by members of the target audience or non-members.

OUTCOME

After surveying the number of people who met the survey's criteria, it was determined that the campaign designed by the target audience was more effective in evoking a call to action. Interestingly, the runner-up was designed by non-members and favored for its civic service, yet did not evoke the target audience to action. 

 Workshop conducted in collaboration with XPLANE Visual Thinking School (VTS)