Reflecting on our purpose
The end of one year and the start of the next is always a prime moment for reflection. I know you’re going to be shocked when we say this, but we were no exception to the reflection jam! During the last three weeks, we took some serious time to look back on our Founders story, why we started PinPoint in the first place, how our work to date laddered up to that vision, and began projecting on how to more thoughtfully execute our purpose in our everyday actions.
Since there are a few new faces in the crowd, here’s a brief review of how PinPoint came to be:
Faith – an actor who spent more than half of her life “walking in other people’s shoes”- ran into Stacy – a recovering architect wanting to design for people over ego – at one of the most prominent human-centered research & design agencies in Chicago. Together, they followed each other around for upwards of ten years until they realized they could – and should – do more than grow the fortunes of Fortune 500s.
As Faith describes it, they locked themselves in a room only allowing themselves to apply human-centered design methods TO the human-centered design field until…. TADA! PinPoint was born. And with it came a new purpose. By (their) definition, human-centered design is the process of listening so deeply to the people you are creating for, that you have no other choice than to design with empathy vs. ego. That’s what PinPoint was made for – as a means to approach people as individuals and incorporate underrepresented voices into the design process so their context and needs could directly influence businesses that cared to listen.
Fast forward, PinPoint is nearly 3.5 years old and during this time of reflection as 2022 kicks itself off, we once again locked ourselves in a room (this time, it was a magical cabin in the woods of Wisconsin with our business coach) and took a long, hard look at ourselves in the mirror. What we learned was that since PinPoint’s initial days, we had both honed our purpose, but also steered away from it. We let ourselves get excited by some shiny objects that didn’t necessarily align with our ‘why’. And at the same time, we have found dynamic words to finally articulate what our ‘why’ is.
Perhaps the greatest gift coming out of that blustery cold cabin was finally writing on paper PinPoint’s purpose and values. No longer are they strewing about in our heads, but rather they are the north stars our co-founders, our team, our clients and even our research participants can strive for. We promise over this next year to share all of our values with you in detail, but until then we’ll leave you with our purpose.
We, PinPoint, are on a mission to create more inclusive communities.
And we promise to shape a better future with great research that incorporates underrepresented voices who deserve to be heard.
We hope you share that mission. We hope you signed up to receive these tidbits because of that. And we also hope you find your own purpose and values that drive you day in and day out. Whether or not you share ours, know someone who does, or need help to define your own, we’re always down for a coffee talk. We hope you join us.