2018 | DC Service Jam

The 2018 DC Service Jam

The photos in this story were taken by Jon Kumi (jonkumi.co@gmail.com).
More images from the weekend can be found here.

2018 Presenters & Coaches

About the Organizers

A group of service design aficionados who all share a common belief that collaborative spaces, tools, and design processes can be used to create effective and impactful positive change.

Phil Jones

Phil is psyched to lead the team again this year. He's a positive deviant who guides cross-functional teams to collaboratively deliver impact using design, agile, and analysis practices.

He likes spending time in arts, music, and performance venues, and exploring off the beaten path.

Rachel Clad

Rachel is on a quest to improve the health and wellbeing of communities around the world. A public health researcher by training, she has spent years in the far-off lands working with communities to solve problems. These days, she seeks opportunities to learn and teach innovative, agile solution generation approaches. This is her first DCSJ, the first of many.

Brian LeDuc

Brian works in the emerging future of higher education (he tweets (and writes) about it; a lot). With experience on campus supporting students through leadership education, implementing tech to improve retention and graduation rates, running a code school in DC, he is now helping Universities (re)design the higher ed experience. Placing the student at the center is the common thread in his background. When he’s not at the Lab, he’s probably kayaking, playing golf, drinking an IPA or checking out a new museum exhibit.

Gabriel Arteaga

Gabe is committed to addressing the most pressing issues affecting communities across the Nation. In his role as Principal and Co-Founder of Create&, an innovation consulting firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs launch big ideas, he utilizes principles of community-centered design to drive investments for the greater good.

Grace Rieger

Grace wants to make hospitals better places to be, even when you don’t want to be there. She serves as a Product Manager at GetWellNetwork, and has been a ‘Jammer’ in DC since 2016. An architect at her core and a supply chain manager by training, she loves knocking down ugly walls (in software) and co-designing simpler, more elegant solutions. On most days she’d rather be outside (especially on days as warm as sunny San Diego, where she’s from), and she knows most Golden Retrievers in DC by name.

May Paquete

My happy place is where human centered design meets public health. Former Health for America fellow and WellRooted co-founder.

Things I like: books, tech, and new ideas

Hobbies: pulling pranks

DC Service Jam 2018 was made possible thanks to the support of generous sponsors.

A successful 2018 Jam depended on the hard work of our community collaborators.

About 60 Jammers joined us for the 2018 Jam at the WeWork office's in Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.
Jam participants were welcomed & greeted with open arms, their profiles proudly displayed along the entrance for all to see, amazing Jam t-shirts, fun prototyping supplies and sharpies
to get the night started.

We kicked off the Jam with an activity to inspire creativity using Innovators Box 'SPARK' cards, watching the inspiration video created by the Global Jam, and bonding with teammates through an icebreaker of high-fiving, fist-bumping, freestyle dance and posing as our favorite Marvel comic arch nemesis. Jammers shared their interpretations of the global theme, brainstormed related services and formed teams around the most popular ideas. Ten groups took form and started working on their respective services.

On Saturday, participants heard presentations from design experts on key elements of service design
like user research, synthesis, ideation and prototyping.

Throughout the day on Saturday, Jammers headed out onto the streets in Navy Yard to interview users.
They came back to WeWork 80 M St. to make sense of their findings, ideate solutions, create prototypes
and iterate on their designs. Some groups even took their prototypes back out to test them with users.

Jammers worked long into the night to prototype, iterate, and prototype again. Groups gathered with partnering teams to have an ideation shoutout, to find out from others what was working and what was not during ideation and prototyping. Then, we prototyped some more!

On Sunday, each team presented its prototype and awards were presented to winners by peer voting. Finally, all jammers were acknowledged for all their hard work and dedication but not before viewing our sister cities (Baltimore, MD & Australia) video demos and our dance-off video which was created by DCSJ participants.