Social Impact & Innovation

Working closely with partners and the people they serve to reveal the roots of a problem and design a better solution

About

Jane Ouillette is a skilled facilitator, user researcher, service designer, and evaluator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has nearly a decade of experience using human-centred design to include people most impacted by a change in the problem-solving and solution-finding process. She brings creative and curious approaches that enable her partners to put ideas into action.

Clients & Collaborators

What I do

I work with organizations navigating complex social challenges, such as food insecurity and employment inequity to build capacity for engaging people, understanding problems, and implementing solutions

  • I carefully design engaging workshops and discussion that support listening, conversation, and eventual clarity. Examples include:

    • Helping coalitions work together to create a shared vision

    • Building strong relationships and consensus decision-making with a steering committee of community members with lived experience

  • I take a strengths-based and collaborative approach to learning from partners and people with lived experiences. This includes:

    • Hearing from small business owners about their challenges and priorities when hiring staff

    • Connecting with job seekers to gather their feedback on an existing website

  • I co-facilitate workshops with partners and the people they serve to develop creative & evidence-based solutions. I also help you test the service ideas to understand how expectations meet reality. This includes:

    • Developing ideas with frontline staff at a NS Works Centre about how to better connect job seekers with employers in the region who are hiring

    • Testing a small-scale pilot to test assumptions and learn about the benefits for participants and operational costs

  • We work together to capture the impact of your work from many perspectives so you can share successes and understand opportunities for change. For example:

    • Drafting an evaluation strategy and coaching the team to lead data gathering and sense-making

    • Analyzing an organization’s data to share a compelling story about their impact

Projects

My strength is facilitating a creative & experimental process to make public services and community-based programs inclusive, useful, and sustainable with people’s real needs at their heart.

Creating online services for exploring career options

Research about HR services for small businesses

Prototyping ideas to address food insecurity