Glide Goods

“Where we’ve gotten mixed up is that we believe actions follow belief. But experience creates belief.”
– The Reverend Cecil Williams

In early 2016 I led a 14 week collaboration between adaptivepath.org and Glide, San Francisco’s radically inclusive non-profit focused on alleviating suffering and breaking the cycles of poverty and marginalization in the Tenderloin neighbourhood. Together we co-created, piloted, and launched a new service offering free access to much needed personal hygiene and health products as well as the opportunity to build relationships with Glide’s volunteers and staff.

Glide is known for their meal program (they serve over 700,000 meals each year), but they also offer a host of other vital services that many of their clients never connect with. Glide is also fortunate to receive generous donations of goods from individuals and corporations throughout the year, but lacked a system to efficiently connect clients in need with these goods. We saw an opportunity for Glide Goods to address both of these needs.

We worked closely with the staff at Glide to develop a service that felt authentic, inclusive and judgement-free. Inspired by the ethos of Glide’s Harm Reduction street outreach team, the service is based around the power of choice that many of us take for granted in our daily lives, but can be truly life-changing to people who have become used to being told “no” at every turn.

For many on the Glide team, it was their first time engaging with designers, let alone service design. We facilitated workshops throughout the process to develop the concept for the service, and rapidly iterate the service interactions through service storming. We worked together to develop the touchpoints, systems and processes for onboarding staff members, running the service, and measuring its impact.

I was humbled to join Glide’s Clinical Director and our partner on this project, Dr. Kenneth Kim at UX Week 2016, to share the work we did and the lessons we learned for designers and non-profits alike.