Creative Currency | American Express, San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Innovation & Gray Area

American Express continually seeks to innovate its financial services. With exchange at the heart of those services, AmEx initiated a community-centered project around systems of exchange.  American Express partnered with The Mayor’s Office of San Francisco, Impact Hub, and Gray Area to create innovative solutions based in new economic principles that reimagine systems of exchange in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

Approach:

Creative Currency was a three-part initiative: Outreach, Prototype, Launch. I owned the outreach and design research activities of the first phase, developing relationships with local organizations and the research methodology to create a baseline understanding of the mode of operandum in San Francisco’s most under-served community that would then inform and inspire new solutions.

As Community Outreach and Research Lead, I was the point of contact between the Creative Currency partners and local organizations, informing them of and inviting their participation in the program. I designed and carried out the research methodology, which included more than 20 long-form, formal video interviews with local stakeholders, collecting over 155 surveys with community members and analyzing the data and video assets for the creation of the initiative’s introductory video and the Community Brief. While there was structure to the interviews, I iterated on themes as I learned from the interviews and was nearing information saturation.

Analysis was both qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative analysis of the surveys was executed by a member of the team. Analysis of qualitative data was primarily done through grounded methods and open coding, using affinity diagrams, actors mapping, and system mapping to contextualize and group the emergent themes and understand how the players connect with one another.

Result:

Featured in Applying Cybertechniques to Urban Problems, The New York Times, the program model for the initiative (below) is a first-of-its-kind combination of extensive community outreach, rapid prototyping, and iterative deployment that emerged from GAFFTA’s experience uniting technologists and local organizations. The extensive Community Brief I produced (PDF embedded below) as Author and Research Lead served as a direct input to inform hackathon teams at the Collaboration Weekend. Teams and projects that offered new solutions social challenges faced by the Mid-Market community were chosen to receive ongoing support and funding from Hub Bay Area and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. Creatively applied digital art and technology led to prototypes that address increased commerce, better credit, and access to basic services in the neighborhood. Solutions that were prototyped and launched include: Bridge, streamlining the process required to find and secure a bed in a shelter; RefreshSF, a mobile washing station that people could use to take showers and launder their clothes; and Your SqFt, an online platform that connects retail and food entrepreneurs with idle spaces in blighted neighborhoods.

“Lauren led our community outreach efforts for Creative Currency. This resulted in 20+ interviews with key stakeholders, a survey that captured info from 150+ local community members and business owners, and the outcome, a 20 page community brief that has opened up data about Central Market to general citizens in a way that has produced outstanding engagement from Creative Currency participants. Many have told us that this work, all conducted in a 2 month time frame, is unparalleled work that has been needed for decades. We have Lauren to thank for this. Lauren is completely professional and committed to excellence. She’s bright and proactive and balances that with creativity and a good sense of humor.”  

-Jon Axtell, Impact Hub Partnerships + SOCAP Producer