Evaluating the Change Strategy

Regardless of the change strategy you selected, you must determine if the intervention worked. What difference did the change strategy make in the lives of people in your community? This is a critical step in the community change process and the insights gathered in the evaluation phase feed back into the process. You should not be hesitant to engage in thoughtful evaluation of your work because it is inevitable that you will gain insights that improve your work and have a greater impact on the community for whom you are working.

Remember, the principles of Design Thinking are that most or many of our interventions won’t be successful in the first iteration. That is why we are encouraged to consider them as prototypes. Most will need to be modified and improved upon if they will continue to be our community change strategies. Or, we will need to scrap the ones that are not effective at all, especially if they are seen to be doing harm rather than good. For that reason, our evaluation needs to not only focus on what difference we thought we were going to make but also on the additional impacts that we’ve had on individuals or the community.

We will only learn what needs to change if we engage in systematic evaluation. It is a matter of integrity and professional responsibility.