I recently ran a workshop at the SOCANZ Auckland Innovation Conference titled Design Practice for Innovation:. The focusing question for the workshop was: How can we use creative design approaches to co-create value?

With workshops at the conference lasting only 90 minutes the aim was to provide participants with:

• A hands on introduction to some core principles, practices and process of design
• An exploration of the potential benefits in the context of social innovation and how participants might apply (or be applying) aspects of this in their own contexts
• Pointers for where to go to learn more

Max Adler of Imminent Service Design helped facilitate the session (thanks Max!) and we with worked with 30 fabulous participants from a range of community and social sector organisations from across New Zealand.

Design is an action-based practice and best explored through experiential rather than theoretical means. In this vein the workshop was hands-on and included two ‘Design Doing’ activities (User Journey Mapping & Prototyping). These activities enabled participants to reflect on some of the core principles and practices of design – as well as how they might be applied in their own context – on the basis of (a little!) hands-on experience.

The discussion of the design process was structured around the UK Council’s Double Diamond process (see image below) which is useful for demonstrating how design is as much about framing as it is ‘solutioning’.

The activities, discussion and case studies presented in the workshop focused on two core points:

1. How design practice can provide ways to innovate with users to identify new opportunities and rethink approaches to current services

and

2. How design practice can provide ways to work with users to rapidly generate, explore and evaluate potential new service opportunities and test concept viability

I’ve shared the key summary points, the slides from the workshop (minus project examples) as well as the next steps reference list that participants received as a handout below.

In terms of thinking about how we involve and work with the people we serve during the design process, I find it useful to think in terms of the questions that we are asking at the various stages of the design process. Our focus then becomes how we can work together with our users, clients or constituents to discover the answers. For the purposes of this workshop the questions were framed in relation to the two halves of the double diamond. (See yellow bits in the session summary above). A more detailed breakdown of the different questions that we might work with users to explore as we move through the different phases of design ourselves is included in slide 22 of the deck above.

PDF version of the workshop take outs.

90 minutes is only enough to just start scratching the surface but there are many resources available for those looking to learn more. The What’s Next links below provided some start points for participants keen to follow up.

Big thanks to all the wonderful participants who joined us for the session. I look forward to other opportunities to continue the conversation and hear more about where different organisations in NZ are at in terms of leveraging design to support their innovation process.

What next? 

A number of free toolkits (below) have been developed to support organisations and public services to adopt co-design approaches and apply design practices for social impact and innovation. For people already using similar approaches, the following toolkits and links may provide a resource for extending engagement into the design process. For others these links provide a start point for learning more about the different design methods as well as how they are being applied in a range of global contexts.

Toolkits

Co-Designing Thriving Solutions: A prototype curriculum for social problem  http://www.tacsi.org.au/assets/Uploads/Co-designingThrivingSolutions.pdf  See also http://www.tacsi.org.au/co-design/our-approach/

Design methods for developing services. Design Council, London, UK. http://www.innovateuk.org/_assets/pdf/design_methods_services.pdf

Health Service Co-Design A toolkit for co-design in healthcare developed by Hilary Boyd, Stephen McKernon and Andrew Old and hosted by the Waitemata District Health Board http://www.healthcodesign.org.nz

Human Centred Design Toolkit. IDEO’s Human Centred Design Toolkit (they also have an educators version)

http://www.ideo.com/work/human-centered-design-toolkit/

Prototyping Public Services Guide NESTA (and companion Prototyping Framework by NESTA/Think Public)

http://www.nesta.org.uk/events/assets/features/prototyping_in_public_services

Social Design Methods Menu. Kimbell, Julier (2012)  Fieldstudio Ltd, London, UK. http://www.lucykimbell.com/stuff/Fieldstudio_SocialDesignMethodsMenu.pdf

Further Examples:

Design Thinking at the LA County Department of Public Social Services http://vimeo.com/48490254

ThinkPublic Case Studies www.thinkpublic.com/case-studies/

Participle Case Studies www.participle.net/projects/

ProjectH Design www.projecthdesign.org/

Prototype Barnet – Barnet Community coach project http://youtu.be/F3F78e2AAao

TACSI Family by Family www.tacsi.org.au/solutions/family-by-family/

Articles:

What is Social Design? by Ingrid Burkett, Centre for Social Impact, UNSW, Australia  https://blog.csi.edu.au/2012/01/what-is-social-design/#

Bate P, Robert G. Experience-based design: from redesigning the system around the patient to co-designing services with the patient. Qual Saf Health Care. 2006;15:307–310.

Designing From the Inside Out a talk by Marc Rettig http://youtu.be/_-YYJWKK_u8  of the Design for Social Innovation MFA Program at the School for Visual Arts new York http://dsi.sva.edu/

Design for Social Innovation: An Interview With Ezio Manzini http://www.shareable.net/blog/design-for-social-innovation-an-interview-with-ezio-manzini

Local Places for Talking and Doing

The Kitchen Co-working space for Changemakers www.thekitchen.net.nz

Auckland Design Coffee Morning (FREE) Weekly coffee and conversation for anyone interested in #design #servicedesign #codesign #socinn #other 7.30am+ Tuesday Imperial Lane, AKL CBD www.meetup.com/AKL-Design-Coffee-Morning/

Design for Good  (Free)  90min morning meet up every 3 weeks for a Design Jam, applying co-design tools – action based. www.meetup.com/Auckland-GOOD-design-network

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Natalie Nicholles of NEF and social entrepreneur Nic Frances closing the SOCANZ conference

I’ve been lucky enough to spend the last two days enjoying the energy,  intelligence and commitment of the amazing attendees and speakers at the SOCANZ conference. (Tweets from the conference on storify though not many of us tweeting!)

SOCANZ is about building and celebrating social innovation and social entrepreneurship in NZ. Over two days 25-26th March we heard from an amazing and diverse group of people about their journey’s, ambitions & achievements delivering social outcomes through innovative models.

It was wonderful to get an insight into the wealth of amazing initiatives being driven out of the community all around NZ and to hear how others are tackling some of our most challenging and complex problems. There were parallel tracks so it wasn’t possible to get to everything, but four highlights for me were:

Natalie Nicholles of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) which is about recalculating how we model and think of economics and wealth. They are also proponents of the co-production model which has great synergies with co-design and participatory design.

George Housakos of Urban Communities Australia who has created an “integrated” or hybrid organisation where social and private sector thinking and approaches work generatively together to create a thriving social housing infrastructure: returning “social and financial dividends”.

Suzanne Kendrick of GreyLynn2030 : A bunch of amazing ‘doing’ by a generous and connected community.

The ever awesome transformational employment program created by the The Te Whangai Trust.

Favourite sound bite was from Jennifer Gill of the ASB Trust. Jennifer talked about the value of tensions: tight and loose being one of them.

“You need to be tight about your values and your mission (what you are doing and why, principles etc) but loose on how you get there. This is what leaves the space for co-design and co-production”.

I thought this was a very simple and powerful way of thinking about how we create the conditions for participation, ownership, and change.

My own workshop on Monday covered the topic: Design for Innovation: How might we use creative co-design approaches to co-create value? This was a hands on workshop with about 30 wonderful participants who generously trusted the process and dove straight into “Design Doing” starting with a Journey Map, and later some low-fi prototyping as way to explore design principles experientially. I will post the slides and notes from that session shortly. It was great to start this conversation with people and I am only sorry that we only had 90 minutes, no where near long enough to find out where all the people in the room wanted to take it!

A big thanks again to the organisers and all the attendees and speakers for a wonderful two days, I look forward to the ongoing conversation and action.

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[Missed the event? Re-live it with us through the tweets]

The Global Service Design Jam is nearly here and for the first time there will be a jam in Auckland, NZ. (Hamilton has played host to NZ’s only Service Design Jam for the last two years thanks to the team at Divergent.

The #GSJ is all about collaboration, experimentation and prototyping…in 48 hours we work together to conceive, prototype and communicate a service concept from the ground up. It’s a great opportunity to learn more about service design but the most valuable part of the jam is an opportunity to experiment with working in a rapid collaborative environment and jamming with people you’ve never met before.  We don’t know who’ll be there or how it will play out until we are in it – a dynamic, challenging and rewarding weekend. There will be around 100 different jams happening at the same time, from all of the continents across the globe. You don’t need to be a service designer, just being interested in getting involved and being open to new approaches is enough.

Join us at the Auckland event:

Register for the event (Free)

And check out our prep on Facebook and  Linked in

Check the official site for more info on the concept behind the Global Service Jam as well as outputs from previous years.

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At the end of 2012 Oslo played host to a one day workshop focused on Innovation Through Social Media. Organised by Asbjørn Følstad, Anna Ståhlbröst, Esbjörn Ebbesson and Jesper Svensson as part of the SociaLL research project the workshop created a forum for researchers and practitioners to share experiences and perspectives around how social media can be successfully employed to support innovation.

The workshop theme represents several growing areas of research and papers covering a broad range of areas were invited, such as open innovation, user lead innovation, Living Labs, enterprise 2.0, participatory design, ideas generation and management and user and community and involvement. The focus of the workshop closely related to my PhD research into the impact of social technologies on participation in design. I had the pleasure of contributing as a member of the program committee, sadly I couldn’t make the physical trek to Oslo for the day but fortunately all the papers presented at the workshop are available at the ISM website.

The workshop papers that were presented covered three themes:

1. User involvement through social media which included papers on Living Labs and open service innovation

2. User feedback on novel concepts and designs which included papers covering design of software, customer service, sensor-based technologies and the impact of prototype fidelity in supporting user feedback

3. Engaged communities and individuals which included papers on engagement from a community perspective and social media for entrepreneurship

One particularly interesting paper was selected as an introductory talk. “The echoing paradox of SNS” questioned key assumptions that underpin social networking software algorithms. The paper points to the paradox that exists when we assume that diversity is important for innovation, yet homogeneity is what is promoted and drives most of our network connections online. I.e  ”connecting to people like you”, “connecting to other things you might like” “people with similar skills/interests”. Confronting this paradox has the potential to significantly impact how we might approach designing collaboration platforms with an innovation imperative (intranets and internal communications and collaboration platforms for example).

It’s great to see these kinds of opportunities being created to share and promote this growing research area thanks to the organisers and participants for making all the papers freely available. In terms of supporting diverse and remote participation in the design process these papers demonstrate a range of new and experimental approaches and a growing body of knowledge that we can draw upon to support co-design practices. While there are many aspects of face to face interaction and collaboration that are not replicated in online environments the opportunities they presents for mass, distributed and potentially anonymous participation are significant not only for innovation in a business context but also for health, civic and community focused work where participation and collaboration are essential, but not always practical and possible through traditional means at a large scale.

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“One of the key challenges for radically improving young people’s mental health is how to research, design and develop interventions that are not only evidence-based but engaging for young people.” (from the guide).

Earlier this year I had the privilege of working with the amazing team at Inspire and the Young and Well CRC on their first Innovative Methodologies Guide: Participatory Design of evidence-based online youth mental health promotion, intervention and treatment. Officially released today the guide aims to support researchers, policy-makers and the youth, health and community sectors to involve young people in the development of online services and activities designed to improve young people’s mental health. The guide provides a framework to support the integration of different forms of research and participation throughout the design process (within the broader research context) as well as specific methods, examples and case studies and hopefully will be a resource that can be built upon.

The contents of the guide actually reflects years of brave, ground breaking work by many researchers, designers, technologists, mental health professionals and, of course, inspirational young people. It was fantastic to be a part of evolving the intersection between participatory design and youth mental health and to have the opportunity to visualise a participatory, evidence-based approach to design. Thanks too goes to  Shaun Lee and Ludwig Wendzich of Lee Ter Wal for info graphics.

See the Young and Well CRC site for more details and to download the guide. 

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So often, the work and research that takes place in universities is opaque or inaccessible (or even lacking relevance ?!) to those of us in industry. To help bridge the gap in a small informal way the Akl Design Coffee mornings (#akldcm) crew have organised the next NZ Business, Innovation and Design Thinking Drinks to include short presentations from graduating students of the Masters of Design program at AUT. A chance for us to hear emerging research ideas and topics, and for the students to socialise their research beyond the walls of the academy.

Join us for drinks, nibbles, chats and short sharp pressos (sans powerpoint) on the 6th of November from 5.30pm at NZTE office down town.

Get more info or  RSVP

Design Thinkers Logo by Mallikarjun Lingampalli MDes student.

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Join us November 13th for Geek Girls Dinner. Despite the title this event is open to all and follows on from a rich discussion at Gather this year about what we can (all) do to encourage and support more women within the IT sector. It’s nibbles, drinks and the three talks (by Selena Dewar of TVNZ, Erica Lloyd of Datacom and myself) will cover a nice mix of technology, design and business. Thanks to the organisers and sponsors, looking forward to this exciting event.

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Image by Karin Slegers' of their workshop at PDC 2012

Last week the 12th Participatory Design conferencewas held in Roskilde, Denmark. Participatory Design conferences have been taking place since 1990. As with previous years the papers presented at this years conference continue to reflect the evolution of PD principles and practices into spaces well beyond its origins in Scandanavian workplaces including, for example, PD for Well Being in China, PD in Latino Pop Culture and Aging Care. This year also had an amazing array of workshops on topics such as PD and Actor Network Theory, PD of Business Models, PD for Users with Impairments and Prototyping Services. Check out the program for more details, even better, watch the videos, or check out the tweet stream.

I wasn’t able to attend this year but happily @kittyrahilly of the Inspire Foundation presented a paper on behalf of myself and Mariesa Nicholas “Using participatory design methods to engage the uninterested”  which details some of the co-design workshop techniques used in the redesign of Reachout.com. The next PDC will be in 2014 in Windhoek, Namibia, see you there!

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Co-design method/technique Overviews

Liz Sanders is the first start point for Co-design Techniques and methods, she makes all her presentations and papers available at www.maketools.com

Convivial Toolbox: Generative Research for the Front End of Design by Liz Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers provides extensive coverage of generative toolkits and how they can be used in practice.

A Framework for Organising the Tools and Techniques of Participatory Design by Sanders, Brandt and Binder this paper provides a framework for thinking about how, when and why different co-design methods and techniques work and can be used.

Creativity-based Research: The Process of Co-Designing with Users: A great over view of some of the methods and techniques by Catalina Naranjo-Bock (also drawing on Liz’s work) for UX Magazine

Enabling Co-design A discussion of principles and techniques by myself and Natalie Rowland for Johnny Holland.

Creating Together, Building Value with Participatory Design: An overview and case studies of different methods from experience design agency Experientia

Not to prime is a Crime: An article on the value of “pre-tasks” to sensitise participants before workshops by Jodie Moule of Symplicit (using generative techniques such as collage).

Specific Techniques/examples

A Game, Making your way: An example of using board games as a research technique developed by Mel Edwards for the IRD

Inspiration Card Workshops A paper describing a card technique to support inspiration and design sessions with users by Kim Halskov and Peter Dalsgård

Playful Triggers to Visualise Knowledge Explanation and example of a method developed by Yoko Akama and Daria Loi (example is community workshops to increase bushfire awareness in Victoria, Australia)

Co-design methods for designing with and for families A paper reporting on a specific project and various techniques by Bo Westerlund et al.

An Iterative and Participatory HCI Design Process in the Industry Context: Bringing together Utility, Usability and Innovation …within Budget A paper reporting on techniques used for prototyping interfaces in participatory workshops.

Service innovation through touch-points: the AT-ONE touch-point cards A description of the development of At-One touchpoint cards and mapping technique, valuable for cross functionality and multi-disciplinary teams.

Facilitating Collaborative Design Workshops – a step by step guide for rapidly creating a shared vision for execution A very detailed description by Jason Furnell from Thoughtworks of their internal collaborative design process

Time for a new approach? Rapid prototyping at the Social Change Collaboratory A blog post by David Hood explaining a team-based rapid prototyping activity (board game based) originally developed at Deloitte.

Connecting Generations: Developing Co-Design Methods for Older Adults and Children   An exploratory paper exploring how co-design methods can support cross generational design and research by Xie et al.

Empathy Probes An overview of using “empathy probes” to support the design process by Tuuli Mattelmäki and Katja Battarbee (Mattelmäki has done extensive work on this approach e.g., Examples of Probes Planning).

More general

Some lessons learned, regarding prototyping and framing, from PD workshops Very interesting and useful discussion paper reflecting on how co-design and participatory workshops work, things to be aware of etc, with example by Bo Westerlund

Experiencing, exploring and experimenting in and with Co-design spaces A paper exploring the notion of co-design spaces by Liz Sanders and Bo Westerlund.

Futures/Scenarios Planning Tools
Scenario Planning: Scenario Planning Tools and Techniques from http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/

Visions, Scenario Maps and Innovation Paths for Sustainable Futures -Workshop-Facilitator’s Guide  This is a practical and detailed description of a Futures Workshop technique designed by Idil Gaziulusoy as part of her PhD thesis (Pdf).

(Blog post Edited 9 July to add scenario planning tools).

Blog posted edited 4 May 2013 to include Convivial Toolbox)

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Last Saturday was the annual Gather event (previously known as Barcamp). Organised by @ludwigw Gather is an unconference of 275 attendees from all over NZ – largely hailing from the tech/design industries. I spoke alongside @rowansimpson and @Avon as part of the Gather en Masse keynote session but the day proper is made up of sessions nominated and delivered by attendees themselves. I very much enjoyed @haunanipao’s talk on UX and Agile and @wigsgiw’s session on ownership and ethics surrounding bank data. The impromptu session on the lack of women in tech (and what we can do about it) was also great, very well attended and produced what seemed to be some fairly concrete outcomes.

I also had the pleasure of being part of a great session by the @shift_nz crew titled: “We love bikes”. In this session 5 amazing and very different proposals for creating a safe, comfortable, happy biking future for Auckland were collaboratively developed by attendees.  A true demonstration of the power of collective creativity and whats possible in just 40 minutes.

Tweets from the day Storified after the jump.

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