What we do
The i-Team tackles 1-2 priority projects per year within a "priority area."
Every project includes:
- Cross-departmental collaboration
- Data science
- Human-centered design
We also help City Departments with user research, service design and prototyping on smaller projects.
We involve diverse sets of stakeholders from the beginning of every project. Our most important stakeholders? San Francisco residents and community groups.
The i-Team's current priority area is "Accountability in the City's Homelessness Response System." Learn more about our recent work.
We value...
- Resident impact
- Human-centered design
- Research and data analysis
- Performance measurement
- Collaboration and co-creation
- Iteration and prototyping
Our mindset includes the freedom to be wrong. Innovation cannot happen without failure. Through constant iteration and prototyping, we build on failure to reach success.
Our process
Innovation is not a destination - it's a journey. 3 principles guide our work:
- Deeply understand the problem
Every project starts with deep research - user interviews, resident surveys, site visits and exhaustive data analysis.
- Generate and test new ideas
Iterative prototyping and testing is at the heart of our work. We come up with ideas, our partners come up with ideas, San Francisco residents come up with ideas - we test them all.
- Focus on delivery
Our projects are not just fun ideas to sit on a shelf. We work closely with City Departments that will own the project(s) long-term.
We are grateful to our partners at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation for their help in honing our approach.
We need your help
You can collaborate with us in two main ways:
- Participate in a Community Workshop
Help us come up with new ideas, test some solutions, and give us feedback on our work so far.
- Send us your ideas
Have a problem that we should look at? Have an idea that could help San Franciscans? We're all ears!!
Send us an email at stephen.sherrill@sfgov.org.