For the past 8+ years, I have worked at the intersection of customer experience research, product design, and business strategy— predominately working to design transportation systems and places that encourage more sustainable behaviors.
Seeking to understand the needs of all stakeholders and customers, I help organizations navigate towards systemic and sustainable (environmental and financial) growth.
links to selected work
Designing a B2B SaaS solution to manage streets safely & sustainablyRe-designing civic services to be more equitable AND sustainable
Nudging sustainable consumer decisions with behavioral design
Reducing commuter emissions through data-driven decision-making
Measuring the impact of street transformation pop-ups
Publishing best practices on designing streets for kids
Re-designing streets to save pedestrian lives
Launching the first-ever lifespan methodology for e-scooters (link to report)
core skills
Sustainable service design
Visual design (Adobe CC & Figma UI)
Urban design for all ages & abilities
Agile management
Market strategy
Making the case for safety
UX research
Measuring & evaluating impact
Iterative prototyping
let’s connect
@katgowland on all socials
e: katgowland1@gmail.com
A multi-disciplinary humanity-centered-designer at the intersection of research and strategy— passionate about cities, behavior change, and addressing the climate crisis.
quicklinks to selected work
Co-designing a safe & sustainable way to manage trafficA roadmap for a equitable resident-government relationship
How to measure the impact of street transformation pop-up projects
Best practices on designing streets for kids
What must be considered in an e-scooter lifespan methodology?
Painting streets to save pedestrian lives
key skills & interests
Measuring & evaluating impact
Making the case for safety
Iterative prototyping
Participatory research & testing
Agile management
Visual communication design
Sustainable service design
Urban design for all ages & abilities
Market strategy
let’s connect
@katgowland on all socials
e: katgowland1@gmail.com
Redesigning civic services to be more equitable AND sustainable
Designer & Strategist, with IIT Institute of Design (ID), 2023, for the City of Chicago
Context
The systems that have been designed to support city government operations today are complex and often frustrating for city servants and residents alike. The cost of road infrastructure maintenance alone is stifling, municipal financial budgets depend on fines & fees to make ends meet, and the infrastructure in place on streets, like red light cameras, speed cameras, and parking meters, often do not serve the best interest of city voters.
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In this 3-month Sustainable Solutions workshop, my team worked with the City of Chicago’s Department of Finance to address the question:
How might we redesign the fines and fees system in the City of Chicago to be more equitable AND sustainable?
Contributions
In 1 week sprints with groups of 3, my peers and I learned, through rapid prototyping with arduino, how a suite of new infrastructures could enable more sustainable and equitable modes of operation, governance, and revenue generationat the system level.
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Those iterative prototyping sprints inspired us to envision how potential new products and services could have an equitable and sustainable impact on communities in Chicago. When I asked myself the question, “How might we reorient the goals of the fines & fees system to incentivize a shift away from cars and towards more active transit?” I identified an app that incentivizes sustainable transit decision-making with credits towards local civic investments as a highly impactful and equitable solution space and mocked it up as a concept of a product that could be included in our system re-design.
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At the midterm (Collage A) and completion of this course (Collage B), my classmates and I held a public conversation, for City staff and community members to engage in dialogue about how aspects of these multi-scale solutions might be able to be seen to fruition in the City, and what challenges would arise.
Collage A
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Collage B
Capabilities
Iterative prototyping | Adaptive leadership | Communciation design
Outcomes
The prototypes and deliverables we produced to explain the redesigned system were very successful at fueling conversations with city officials and Chicagoans about “what could be.” These types of conversations fuel the energy we need to see equitable sustainable progress realized.
Samples of content from the final deliverable, explaining the redesigned system:
