Evaluation by Design
Facilitator: Dr. Cameron D. Norman
2021 Sessions
- March 22, 2021, 9 AM – 12 PM
Registration deadline: March 19, 2021
Online
What if we viewed evaluation as a service as well as a means of assessing value and supporting decision-making? A design-driven approach to evaluation is one that brings insights from service design into the practice of evaluation by integrating creativity, craft, and empathy with data-gathering, feedback, and sensemaking into the evaluator’s role. This approach, which brings together design thinking and evaluative thinking, explores ways to embed evaluation into a program’s development structure, particularly for those that are operating in domains of high complexity and need for innovation. Design-driven evaluation is an approach, drawing on utilization-focused, developmental, and participatory evaluation methods and techniques and brings them together with the creative problem orientation, interactivity, and end-user focus from the world of professional design.
This workshop will introduce evaluators to the fundamentals of a design-driven approach to evaluation. It will orient evaluators to the role that design can play in shaping both the evaluation and the program itself and is suited for those interested in expanding their practice, working more closely with innovative or complex programs and for those interested in developmental evaluation. The workshop will introduce design theory and methods, involve interactive activities aimed at illustrating design thinking in practice in ways that can be used both in-person and at distance, and how evaluators can play a pivotal role in supporting product, program, and service innovation in new ways.