Service Design Apprentice: Meet Paula
I’m excited to be part of the Civic Service Design Studio team at the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity as a Service Design Apprentice this summer. I’ll be working with the team to make public services more accessible to the residents of NYC who need these services the most.
I was born and raised in Porto Alegre, a city in the south of Brazil. I moved to NYC to study at the City College of New York, where I received a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art. I’m an interaction designer with a background in art direction and graphic design, and currently a graduate student in the MFA Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). Previously, I was the Art Director at Americas Quarterly, a nonprofit policy and culture magazine focused on Latin America that shares my vision of democracy, social inclusion, and equal rights for all citizens.
I changed my career path from print to interaction design because I didn’t want to be limited to only one medium to create solutions that can have a more direct impact on people’s lives. At SVA, I was introduced to service design and completed a project for The Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, the only library in New York City that serves the visually impaired and blind. This project allowed me not only discover my passion for service design but also think of creative ways of making public services more useful and accessible. This experience inspired me to work at the Service Design Studio this summer.
During my first week, I got the opportunity to observe a co-design workshop, in which the team brought together key stakeholders to reflect and generate ideas on how to improve public services with a studio client and the New York City residents served by that agency. I also met interesting people that came in for office hours to learn about the work we do and how to incorporate civic service design tools and tactics into their work. I’m really excited to start working on the Studio’s new project, Pathways to Prevention, in partnership with NYC Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) to use design tools and tactics to improve families’ experiences with prevention services.
I hope to work toward the following goals during my apprenticeship:
- Clearly understand user research methods.
- Build empathy towards participants to understand their needs in order to create solutions that can be useful and accessible to them.
- Gain an in-depth knowledge of the tools and tactics of the design thinking process.
- Work in a collaborative environment and learn from my team members’ different points of view.
- Have a deep understanding of how users interact with government services to create user-centered and effective experiences.
Besides my interest in service design, I enjoy doing yoga, biking, going to be the beach, reading, watching TV shows, and traveling.
You can learn more about my work at www.pauladaneze.com and get a sense of my passion for my home country and social impact by looking at my recent project Acredite, an illustrated postcard campaign featuring 12 stories of Brazilians and their small acts of social change.
This post is part of Civic Service Design Tools + Tactics, a resource for introducing public servants to service design, published by the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity Service Design Studio.
We thank our Founding Partner Citi Community Development for generous support. We are grateful for the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City’s partnership.
