On the night the student-run On Call Café opened its doors in Old Union, the line wound through the courtyard, stretching nearly to the Claw. After months of successful pop-ups and lobbying for a permanent space, Lucy Duckworth and the other members of the cafe’s team were seeing their vision of a welcoming place for students to connect with one another realized – custom merchandise and all.
“I was running around giving out postcards and free stickers to people, and it was packed!” Duckworth recalled. “I was seeing all these people who didn’t really know each other but were starting to meet. It filled my heart with so much joy to see them sitting on the couches we had bought, and interacting with the conversation-starter napkins we made the way we thought they would.”
Duckworth, who graduates in June with a bachelor’s degree in design, was one of On Call’s co-founders, responsible for bringing the brand and physical space to life. The cafe was envisioned as an approachable, relaxed space that would nurture student connection and community post-COVID. “Libraries were still closing at midnight, COHO closed at 10, so everyone was up until 1 a.m. doing their work alone in their dorm rooms,” she recalled. Campus needed a place “where we can all kind of hang out and work and run into each other.”
After graduation, Duckworth says she wants to continue to focus on bringing people together.
Duckworth walks to class with a friend.
Meeting at the On Call Café to discuss new art arrangements and permits for an upcoming project.
Heading to the d.school for a meeting.
Two years later, the team has trained 65 student workers and secured funding to ensure the cafe stays open after its founders graduate. Duckworth comes in on Tuesdays for her shift as “toastmaster” and to hang out with the staff, which includes many frosh.
“I get to talk to them about what classes they’re taking, what they want to do for the summer, and just check in. Like, ‘what’s a struggle you’re going through and how can I be helpful?’”
‘I love making things for other people’
Duckworth grew up in and just outside Philadelphia, and was drawn to create from a young age. She loved Christmas morning, she said, because she got to watch her parents open the elaborate gifts she had made them. “I’ve known my whole life that I love making things for other people, to make people happy,” she said. She imagined becoming a pastry chef, and spent the summers of her middle and high school years working as a pastry cook at several different restaurants and learning about the hospitality industry.
At Stanford, Duckworth’s passion for making things that engender positive experiences found a home at the d.school. She remembers when she first understood that design could be a powerful tool for bringing people together.
Her final project for Design 11 sophomore year was an installation in front of Green Library that gathered letter-writing essentials in one place. (The project’s prompt: Solve a need in your life with design. “My problem was that I didn’t write thank you letters enough, because there are so many moving parts that I just never got around to it.”) More than 200 students stopped to pen notes to loved ones, which Duckworth mailed. Then she started hearing from people who had interacted with her installation.
I think the most meaningful things will have been the spaces I worked in that help people feel more connected and close to one another.”
“I was getting physical letters and people were also DMing me about positive experiences they’d had with the project, people who had reconnected with an old friend they hadn’t seen in years, or sent a note to their mom that had made her day,” she said.
The experience, she said, showed her that “design can really touch people’s lives and make connections that weren’t there before.” Her other realization: “I have to do design. I have to make more products like this.”
Design for belonging
Helping people connect is important to Duckworth, who has mentored high school seniors through the non-profit Matriculate and worked as a SPOT (Stanford Pre-Orientation Trips) leader on five-day outdoor retreats designed to help incoming frosh acclimate to Stanford life. Because of her own experience approaching Stanford post-pandemic, she said, she knows “how normal it is to be so nervous and insecure and worried about impressing your peers. I feel so much sympathy for that moment of transition.”
For her senior capstone project, Duckworth worked with four other group members on Notes from the Farm, a book of 50 stories collected from seniors and alumni to help incoming frosh get to know Stanford. She also helped secure funding and laid the groundwork so that, like On Call Café, the project will live on after she graduates. The books will be printed and mailed over the summer to incoming students who request one.
Duckworth says she wrote her book 'Notes from the Farm' because she knows “how normal it is to be so nervous and insecure and worried about impressing your peers."
Collaborating with classmates on the book.
Meeting with her professor, Lisa Kay Solomon, to discuss and review a book proof.
Making breakfast with friends at the Xanadu House.
“The idea is to increase feelings of belonging and pass down Stanford traditions before students even get here,” she said. “We had to think about, how could you make a product that will genuinely ease someone’s fears about entering a new place and allow them to be the best version of themselves?”
In the fall, Duckworth will be moving to NYC to work for Partiful, a party-planning start-up. She plans to pursue a career in designing for social connection, whether through spaces, experiences, or materials that facilitate community.
And, of course, through food. In April, she and some of her On Call teammates produced a dinner at the O’Donohue Family Farm for students, faculty, and food industry professionals interested in networking around sustainable food. The printed menus designed by Duckworth included her illustrations; the team made butternut squash and green curry soup, braised white beans and greens, and olive oil cake. Everyone was happy.
“Food is still a huge part of my life, and I think the best part about it is that it puts people together at the same table and gets them talking,” she said. Looking back on her time at Stanford, she said, “I think the most meaningful things will have been the spaces I worked in that help people feel more connected and close to one another.”