WEST MICHIGAN - What do you get when you link cross-disciplinary design students with a nonprofit organization to help in problem solving and identifying new opportunities?

That's what the Design West Michigan advisory board wanted to find out. Their quest was realized in a collaborative design project involving Kandu Inc. and Kendall College of Art and Design.

The idea for the project, said John Berry, executive director of Design West Michigan, was to find examples of how design thinking could be applied to help various organizations meet their existing needs and identify growth opportunities, thus exposing more groups to the role design plays in economic development.

But the discussion "became somewhat problematic" when the board realized it didn't want to be in the position of deciding cost or which practitioners worked on the project. The thought shifted to nonprofit organizations and involving design students.

"Nonprofits have some needs for the kind of help design could bring about," Berry told Knowledge.

Two board members –Matt Blair, Kandu's director of operations, and Gayle DeBruyn, assistant professor at KCAD and partner at Lake Affect Design Studio –jumped at the idea.

Kandu provides training and work opportunities for those mostly in the Ottawa County area with barriers to employment. The organization has long-standing contracts with various local manufacturers and the government and provides placement services and employment training.

"We have one mission, but we need to be pretty diverse to fulfill it," Tom Vreeman, CEO of Kandu, told Knowledge.

DeBruyn offered her collaborative design class – including students of various ages in several different design disciplines –to come into Kandu to help them in their marketing and manufacturing operations.

"They had a real client with real budgets and real timelines – real constraints they might not have had before," DeBruyn said. "We'd never done a project that was an economic development project."

A key piece of the student experience was research. Students had to spend about a quarter of the class time researching "all key elements" of the issues they identified in their immersion at Kandu. Having the research allowed them to put weight behind their recommendations.

"A good design practitioner needs to understand that (research) is a critical element to their success," she said.

Design students especially didn't have the prior experience in identifying potential business opportunities or grant sources, so they got to delve into new territories and learn important skills applicable to their future positions, she added.

Moreover, since the group of eight came from different disciplines, they got to drive the project to their areas of interest. An industrial design student, for instance, looked at the manufacturing side of the business because it was a good fit.

For the midterm of the class, students presented a needs statement, which recognized the growing demographic of people with barriers to employment in Kandu's service area and created an opportunity for the organization to explore new markets.

In their final collaborative design report, the students presented the company with several areas they identified as growth opportunities, as well as chances for Kandu to diversify.

They listed grant agencies where Kandu could find additional help as well as resources for the organization to identify new federal contract opportunities.

The heart of the report contained new market opportunities for Kandu, including horticulture, medical and alternative energy. In each of those segments, students identified the opportunities for Kandu, why policy or demographics made that opportunity valid, how Kandu's customers (their term for employees) would benefit from the new segment, and how Kandu could engage the broader community about the project.

In the horticulture segment, students built off Ottawa County's farming tradition and the increasing demand for locally grown foods to identify ways Kandu could engage its customers in planting, growing and selling food, and the costs and profits associated with that plan.

Students looked at how to brand and market various functions within Kandu, developing a series of logos for different functions within the company.

"Particularly on the medical side, we were considering how we could promote that more, how we expand that out into contract manufacturing for medical devices," Vreeman said.

With alternative energy, the company had a green council in place and was looking for ways to move its conservation and recycling efforts into the operations by working with alternative energy manufacturers to assemble components for wind turbines, for example.

"This is a growing area and a viable option," Blair said.

While the students handed off the report to Kandu to do with it what it wanted, Vreeman and Blair say the company is engaged in internal discussions on several aspects of the plan.

Other aspects have been implemented. Kandu has begun planting a few crops on some of its property.

"We've dug dirt, and we're planting and planning," Vreeman said, referencing the horticultural recommendation. "That was a project I wasn't that excited about, but they convinced me. I didn't see the fit … in terms of employment and training –how it truly could be valuable … as well as I do now."

He was caught by the negative historical context that Kandu's people –who may have physical, mental or behavioral disabilities –had often been "put on the farm," a context DeBruyn said never entered the students' consciousness.

Vreeman was also pleased with how the students treated the logo design. He had prepared for them to come in with an entirely revamped design – which would have been a hard sell –and was pleased when they built on Kandu's existing identity in creating new, division-specific logos.

Vreeman was also impressed with students' understanding of Kandu's nuanced operations.

"Kandu is a fairly complex organization in some ways," he said. "It's not like a standard business. The things we produce are not dissimilar than other companies, but the mission for Kandu is to provide jobs for people with disabilities, and training. Students came in and spent time thinking about the business side and the mission side and really combined that well. It's very evident in their final product."

"The students have a lifetime impression," DeBruyn said. "I don't think this class will ever leave them."

Berry said Design West Michigan hopes to build off the Kendall-Kandu project and look for other future potential educational opportunities

"This was quite a successful venture from the educational standpoint and for Kandu," Berry said. "We're going to look at other opportunities to try to … connect design to economic benefit."