This narrative highlights how The Design Lab enabled the UC San Diego Advancement Team to break down silos, foster a unified vision, and enhance collective performance through Design Thinking. It’s a story of transformation, showcasing the tangible benefits of innovation, collaboration, and strategic problem-solving.

The Beginning: Challenges of an Interdisciplinary Team

The UC San Diego Advancement Team plays a vital role in building relationships and fostering community engagement, driving philanthropic support for a university known for pushing boundaries. Comprising Alumni, Career, and Pipeline Development, the team works across seven undergraduate colleges, five academic divisions, health sciences, and five graduate and professional schools to promote engagement, participation, and giving.

Despite their shared mission, the three segments often operated in silos, focusing on individual goals rather than collective impact. This disconnect led to confusion, a diminished sense of belonging, and hindered overall performance. Recognizing these challenges, Advancement leadership sought a solution to align the team’s efforts, enhance collaboration, and unlock their full potential.

The Complication: A Critical Barrier to Success

The team’s ability to thrive was impeded by a lack of understanding about how individual roles contributed to broader goals. Alumni Engagement, Career Services, and Pipeline Development teams often viewed themselves as separate entities rather than as integral parts of a unified strategy. This not only created inefficiencies but also diluted the team’s collective impact on students, alumni, and donors.

Cheryl Harrelson, Associate Vice Chancellor of Alumni, Career, and Athletics, and Renee Duci, Chief of Staff and Operations for Alumni, Career, Annual Giving, Pipeline Development, and International, recognized that a fresh approach was needed. They turned to The Design Lab for its expertise in Design Thinking—a methodology known for tackling systemic challenges with empathy, creativity, and collaboration.

The Change: A Design Thinking Workshop Tailored for Success

The collaboration between the Advancement Team and The Design Lab marked a pivotal turning point. Kevin Popović, Education Manager at The Design Lab, crafted a Design Thinking workshop tailored to the team’s unique needs. This workshop centered around a shared problem statement:

How might we help Advancement team members better understand the roles of Alumni Engagement, Career Services, Student Success, Parent Programs, and Fundraising/Development to decrease confusion, increase members’ sense of belonging, and improve overall performance.

Guided by this statement, the team worked through the structured phases of Design Thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

Key Workshop Insights

• Empathize: Through interviews and discussions, team members uncover the root causes of silos and disconnect, building a shared understanding of their challenges.
• Define: Synthesizing insights, they reframed their challenge into actionable problem statements reflecting the diverse perspectives of Alumni, Career, and Pipeline Development staff.
• Ideate: Team members brainstormed creative solutions, exploring new ways to collaborate and align efforts.
• Prototype: They developed tangible prototypes, such as a Research Fair, visualizing how ideas could address identified problems.
• Test: Prototypes were evaluated through a shared video playlist, generating actionable feedback and a data set to guide strategic priorities.

Outcomes: From Fragmentation to Unity

The workshop produced transformative outcomes:

• 13 unique problem statements were identified, each reflecting a critical challenge faced by the team.
• Prototypes addressed pressing issues, such as fostering belonging, enhancing alumni engagement, and breaking down barriers for first-generation students.
• Collaborative discussions revealed systemic root causes, sparking solutions that aligned with the team’s overarching mission.

A singular example of the insights gathered from a prototype for a Research Fair, designed to support first-generation students by alleviating financial barriers, engaging parents and faculty, and increasing paid research opportunities. This process facilitated critical thinking and the prototype not only addressed a key problem statement but also served as a scalable model for future initiatives.

Insights from the Workshop and Prototype Video

1. Centralized Access: The Research Fair offered a single platform for students to connect with research opportunities, reducing barriers to entry and simplifying the search process.
2. Community Engagement: By involving parents, faculty, and financial aid representatives, the fair created a network of support tailored to first-generation students.
3. Addressing Financial Barriers: The fair highlighted financial resources such as scholarships, grants, and paid research positions, directly tackling the issue of affordability.
4. Scalable Model: The Research Fair served as a prototype that could be adapted for other student groups and institutional contexts.

These and other concepts were evaluated using a customized evaluation tool addressing the problem statement, the prototype, the story shared and their perspectives on the feasibility, desirability and viability of the concept. This feedback generated a data set that management could reference to make informed decisions on moving forward. 

Reflection: A Transformative Experience

Reflecting on the workshop, Renee Duci emphasized its profound impact:

“The Design Lab’s Design Thinking Workshop was precisely the experience we needed to rethink how we collaborated and awaken our creative energy to find better solutions. It allowed us to break down limiting beliefs, dig into the root causes of persistent problems, and uncover innovative strategies for achieving our goals.”

By fostering creativity, collaboration, and a human-centered approach, the workshop equipped the team with the tools to move forward with confidence.

Call to Action: Applying the Lessons

The story of the UC San Diego Advancement Team exemplifies the transformative potential of Design Thinking. It serves as a call to action for other departments and organizations to embrace creative problem-solving. By partnering with The Design Lab, teams can unlock new levels of collaboration, innovation, and strategic impact.

This journey underscores a powerful lesson: even the most entrenched organizational challenges can be addressed through empathy, creativity, and a commitment to shared purpose.