This year we kicked off CataCAMP, our first staff training program, out on the Navajo Reservation in Northern Arizona. The objectives of CataCAMP are simple: build our staff’s field experience, create and share a public library of design workshops based on a year of project experience, and allow each member of our multi-disciplinary to teach the rest of us their skills and viewpoints.
Catapult’s work is as heavily rooted in cultural observation and research as it is design and technology. From the moment Tyler and I started this organization, we knew we would have to build a team of “engineering anthropologists” – talented folks who can bridge the technology world with the needs of people in a culture completely outside their own. We focused this year’s training primarily on cultural research methods. In order to practice these skills in real-time, we wanted to immerse the team in a foreign, unfamiliar culture. Why the Navajo Reservation? Catapult serves impoverished communities, and the Native American population is the most poverty-stricken community within the United States. More than half of the Navajo Nation residents live below the poverty level. Yet they have culturally rich lives with many still practicing and preserving traditional ways.
CataCAMPers with Bessie from our host family.
Our Catapult team – comprised of backgrounds in product design, mechanical engineering, anthropology, international relations, user experience design, and marketing and advertising – spent eight days living on the reservation absorbing the culture, visiting tribal entities, engaging with a host family, and conducting a series of workshops.
The first few days were spent outside Sawmill, AZ at a summer sheep camp with the Begay family, our generous hosts. We pitched our tents outside their hogan (the traditional, octagonal Navajo home) and spent three days observing their lives and hearing their stories. We also spent time with the Indian Health Service in Chinle, AZ, interviewing doctors on the health and environmental challenges that the Navajo community faces. We devoted an entire day to the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, the tribal entity responsible for electrification efforts on the reservation, visiting remote families with off-grid power solutions. We finished our trip with a series of cultural events and attended the “Sheep is Life” festival in Tsaile, observed the beginning of an Enemy Way ceremony, visited the infamous flea market and local artisans in Gallup, NM, and hiked to Canyon de Chelly’s White House Ruins.
In the field with the NTUA.
Over the next few weeks, we will release our stories and publish our workshops in a blog series devoted to CataCAMP’s results. Each attendee designed two workshops prior to CataCAMP and had 60 minutes to deliver it to the group and 30 minutes to collect feedback. The revised workshops are being published as part of Catapult’s desire to contribute to the social impact design knowledge space. Every day we receive emails from people interested in our work, and who want to know how to do what we do. Without the ability to hire people, this is the next best thing we can offer – workshops for anyone and everyone to download, experiment with, and use to build their own internal research methods and understanding of the design process.
We welcome feedback and ideas from the public! And finally, we want to thank our generous hosts for inviting our team into their homes and for leaving us with a memorable and enriching experience.
