Business Innovation Factory (BIF) partners with leaders of communities, industries, companies and institutions to help make functional and ethical transformational change by prompting them to look at problems differently and explore solutions through new frameworks. These efforts have been mostly enacted through vertical interaction and collaboration within each partner.

 

For six weeks, I interned at BIF to develop Random Collisions Initiative, RCI. RCI facilitate and guide horizontal interactions between leaders and members of various partners and across sectors who don't interact otherwise. RCI activates the space between sectors, silos, and industries to merge ideas and create rich inspiration and opportunities shared by all.

The first step was sketching a primarily plan for goals and design process timeline. Design Process started with research and interview to identify the RCI's participant, Core challenges in each sector that are not resolved easily in their vertical problem-solving framework, and, elements that spread and sustain the outcome of possible collision.

 

BIF is comprised of three Experience Labs that works to transform business/social models in education (Student Experience Lab), health care (Patient Experience Lab), and, community (Citizen Experience Lab). BIF also holds an annual summit which has been held in Providence every September for 11 years. I interviewed with the directors of these lab and other BIF members and staff, ten people, to identify the participants of RCI, and define the development and feasibility of the experience. 

Based on the reseach, I designed the following six step process that would shape the RCI experience. These steps recreate the conference/summit experience in which random people would meet but in a more frequent and informed way. 

Then I showed the role of BIF, RCI, and participants in taking the steps.

Research showed that RCI requires an online platform and offline meeting sessions to reach its goal. Online platform would prepare the participant for face to face meeting sessions. It also serves as a place for feedback and follow up. I prototyped a few webpages to illustrate the spirit and function of the digital experience using Illustrator and Invisionapp.  

My internship ended prior to implementing the design. Aside from learning from the process, this internship experience thought me how to bring fresh ideas as a new designer to a community with years of experience.  

I would like to thank Chief Design Strategist at BIF, Mickey Ackerman for giving me the internship opportunity and Chief Market Maker, Eli Stefanski who provided me feedback on the process and progress.