ThinkPlace - Measuring Impact

User-centred research for an iconic Kiwi brand

Daniel Silkstone — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 02:55:03 +0000

Work

User-centred research for an iconic Kiwi brand

Service

Measuring ImpactResearch & insights

People

Nature Baby is an iconic Kiwi brand that is loved by many and looking to grow. The company has been exporting to Australia for many years selling via e-commerce, department stores and boutique retailers. 

Nature Baby wanted to grow and mature its business and appreciated the value of understanding customer needs and experiences in achieving this.

But could Auckland-based Nature Baby assume the same things that motivated customers and consumers in their native New Zealand would hold true for other markets?

Better by Design, a New Zealand Government scheme that helps businesses create market value through design processes, engaged ThinkPlace to develop a deep understanding of the experience of current and potential Nature Baby customers in Sydney, Australia.

THE CHALLENGE

The aim of the engagement was to deliver insights that could help Nature Baby understand how parenting experiences for people living in Sydney were both similar and different to those in Auckland.

The research focused on understanding how parents research and make decisions around baby purchases. 

ThinkPlace designers specialise in conducting research with hard-to-reach or sometimes-vulnerable groups. Over time, this has included cohorts ranging from people with lived experience of disability to people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, people in remote locations and indigenous peoples around the world.

This project presented a different challenge: How to conduct meaningful research and discovery with another complex group: not just parents but parents and their babies.

OUR RESPONSE

ThinkPlace used an innovative set of methods to help deliver meaningful insights.

Semi-structured interviews uncovered deep contextual information about participants’ behaviours and attitudes. A variety of probes and generative tasks were used in each interview.

Interviews were conducted in parents’ homes  to allow for observation of the home, baby’s clothing, care products, dresser/closet and bathroom.

Researchers also spent time in public areas around Sydney to observe where parents spent their time outside the home.

At the conclusion of the research, the field team ran a full day synthesis session with the Nature Baby team to make sense of what was heard and to uncover potential opportunity areas to move from insights to action. 

HOW WE DID IT

Insights from the research were presented in a format to help the design team make sense of what the field team learned, explore what it means for the business strategy and what the next steps are to move from insights to action.

The insights report also included a customer journey map highlighting key milestones and purchasing behaviours of mothers as well as five distinct personas to help guide and inform future design decisions.

The personas were mapped to the Diffusion of Innovation Model. Adoption of new ideas, behaviours, or products is a process where some people are more likely to adopt the innovation than others. The model helped frame our personas and identify “adopter” groups who adopt an innovation early compared to others who do so later or not at all.

THE IMPACT

Our research produced nine key insights that provided crucial pointers for how Nature Baby could better connect with parents and potential customers in Australian markets.

Some of the areas we uncovered included how shopping frequency changes during different stages of pregnancy, the difference in behaviours of first time mums compared to mothers with more than one child and how Australian mothers perceive organic and ethically produced baby products.

When promoting a new idea, behaviour, or product, there are different strategies used to appeal to different adopter categories to help the Nature Baby business grow in Australia.

Overall, the process was successful in producing beneficial and actionable insights, while building a foundational capability in design research and synthesis for the Nature Baby team.

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Tuesday, 1 October 2019

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Assessing vital mental health initiatives

Daniel Silkstone — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 02:12:08 +0000

Work

Assessing vital mental health initiatives

Service

Strategy & policy designMeasuring Impact

People

Sector

Healthy Societies

Those who work every day in Australia's defence can be exposed to high-pressure situations and stressful conditions, both at home and abroad.

And if not catered to effectively and compassionately, mental health and wellness issues for Defence personnel can have serious negative copnsequences for both individuals, for Defence organisations and for Australian society as a whole.

Significant steps have been taken in recent years to embed new initiatives and better practices that increase wellbeing for Defence staff. But are they working?

THE CHALLENGE

The Department of Defence had implemented a Continuous Improvement Framework to monitor and evaluate the mental health and wellbeing initiatives being implemented across Defence under the Defence Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2018-2023.

That docuiment set as its goal: "For Defence to be a trusted and respected organisation that helps and supports our people in relation to their mental health and wellbeing and one that responds appropriately when they experience mental health problems or illness."

But due to a number of factors there had been limited engagement by the owners of the various mental health and wellbeing initiatives across Defence resulting in very few requisite M&E plans being completed and the quality being highly variable.

Defence sought to understand what was contributing to this lack of engagement and to improve engagement to help ensure they would have sufficient information to inform the continuous improvement and eventual evaluation of the initiatives and the strategy as a whole.

ThinkPlace was engaged to help understand the factors affecting engagement and to help design an improved and streamlined approach.

OUR RESPONSE

We commenced by undertaking user research with the owners of the mental health and wellbeing initiatives to understand their experience and the factors that were affecting their ability to effectively engage with and complete the M&E activities.

Based on this research we identified a number of factors affecting engagement including; a lack of prioritisation of M&E activities at all levels; limited time and resources allocated; perceptions that the process was too onerous, comprehensive and complicated; and a low level of evaluation expertise and experience.

Based on the findings, we identified that a more streamlined approach was necessary to help overcome these issues and increase engagement and uptake of M&E activities.

HOW WE DID IT

We determined that a Theory of Change Methodology would help achieve this and help the owners of the initiatives better understand why they were doing what they were doing and how they could practically improve their initiatives to improve mental health and wellbeing outcomes across the defence population.

We then co-designed and co-developed the Theory of Change documentation for two such initiatives to test our approach and iterate as required.

We built clarity around what the activities being undertaken were intended to achieve; identified desired outcomes over the short, medium and long term; and identified indicators and other measures which could be used to show whether the desired outcomes had been met.

In completing the Theory of Change documentation we had developed, we also sought to build a framework that showed the relationship and connections between the different initiatives to help show the collective impact of the initiatives in improving mental health and wellbeing across the defence population over the life of the strategy.

Based on our learnings from these two prototype initiatives, we refined our documentation and approach, further streamlining the process and documentation. We then rolled out the updated approach and documentation across all of the defence's mental health initiatives. We held co-development workshops with relevant stakeholders for each initiative, working through all components of the documentation, while building the capability and understanding of the stakeholders present.

The IMPACT

By developing an updated approach that was informed by the users of the M&E documentation, we were able to design a streamlined approach that addressed the key issues while still providing sufficient detail to inform effective continuous improvement and evaluation.

We were able to help Defence develop and implement a consistent approach to M&E and build a solid foundation, upon which future monitoring and continuous improvement activities could be built and which would provide sufficient information to effectively evaluate the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy at its conclusion in 2023.

Our approach and documentation were very well received across Defence and will contribute meaningfully to ensuring that mental health and wellbeing initiatives aimed at defence personnel are more effective and more helpful.

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World-leading behaviour change to save lives

Daniel Silkstone — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 02:25:12 +0000

Work

World-leading behaviour change to save lives

Service

Scaled systemic changeExperience & Behavioural DesignMeasuring ImpactResearch & insights

People

Sector

Healthy Societies

Every day, around the world, people die from preventable illnesses.

How many lives could be saved by working with them to change their behaviour?

Whether it is sleeping under mosquito nets in malaria-ravaged communities, storing drinking water safely in regions prone to Zika virus or using self-testing kits in places with high HIV rates, attempts to change harmful human behaviours into helpful ones have proven stubbornly difficult.

That’s where Breakthrough ACTION comes in.

WHAT IS BREAKTHROUGH ACTION?

Breakthrough ACTION is a 5-year, $300 million mission to address those challenges using a world-first alliance of human-centred design, strategic communication, behavioural economics, marketing science, digital health and community mobilisation and engagement.

It is the flagship social and behaviour change program for the world’s largest public funder of international development, USAID. And it’s a hugely-ambitious initiative that spans 25 countries across the globe.

ThinkPlace is the global human-centered design lead for this project, which is led by Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs and features a consortium of partners. This unprecedented collaboration is driving change that will save lives and create better health outcomes across Africa, Central America, the Caribbean and Asia.

OUR RESPONSE

For ThinkPlace, this project represented an opportunity to apply the stages of design thinking (research, ideate, prototype, reiterate, test, measure, apply) on an unprecedented scale to an intractable set of problems.

Beginning with co-design workshops at each site we set shared intent, creating pathways for stakeholders and users to participate and shape prototypes.

These early-stage prototypes are then aggressively tested and revised in real-world settings across a series of design sprints.

RAPID FIELD PROTOTYPING

Working with our partners we have created a new way of running the design process – Rapid Field Prototyping -- to fully integrate the communities involved: designing, testing and iterating solutions from within their midst.

We have brought our expertise in behavioural insights, behaviour change and communication design to the project, allowing communities to co-create change in real-time.

In complex systems it can be risky to go too far down a design path before testing how an intervention sits in a system. Rapid Field Prototyping begins with an intense period of ideation and research but moves quickly to early prototyping (often within 48 hours).

This allows us to test a broad range of imperfect and experimental responses with humans in the system; in the kinds of challenging environments thrown up by developing countries. Prototypes are often made from cardboard or modelling clay. We make changes to them in real-time in a rolling fashion.

By engaging community members in the processes of research, making and testing we are helping to build local capacity so that the interventions we craft together can be implemented, scaled and retained over time.

THE IMPACT

Human centredness is at the heart of this project. Each intervention that ThinkPlace has designed begins with spending significant time on the ground in local communities, talking with people about how they live, what motivates them and what blockers exist that prevent them adopting healthier behaviours.

We are currently in year two of the five-year project and already we are seeing impact from our work in places such as Nigeria, Zambia, Jamaica and Guyana.

NIGERIA

Nigeria accounts for 13 per cent of all child deaths worldwide. In just this one Breakthrough ACTION site our work (around child health and nutrition) is having a profound impact.

Over a 2.5-week period in Nigeria, we conducted over 290 interviews in homes, workplaces, health facilities and more. These were synthesised into 10 key insights around maternal child health and nutrition that will now form the basis for interventions to be prototyped and tested.

Elsewhere in Nigeria, we have developed designs to increase health seeking behaviour for signs and symptoms of tuberculosis – reducing the stigma associated with being tested and treated. Pilots of these initiatives are currently being rolled out at scale.

ZAMBIA

In Zambia we have implemented interventions that have reduced barriers to adoption of six key behaviours (family planning among adolescents, accessing HIV testing, condom use, optimal complementary feeding for children under two years, timely care-seeking for children under five and insecticide-treaded net use for malaria prevention).

Working with the community we co-designed 40 innovations for tackling HIV prevention, maternal and child health, family planning, malaria and nutrition, prototyped 8 and then refined to 4 after testing.

Using persuasive techniques from advertising we created the Umbrella Campaign, based on what Zambian families see as precious in their lives and using social media to sway ingrained behaviours around reproductive health, contraception and disease prevention.

JAMAICA

In Jamaica we have designed integrated initiatives to increase safe storage of water to minimise the risk of Zika and other mosquito borne diseases.

Our initial research showed many people had little idea about how to prevent Zika, by changing methods for storing water and thereby removing mosquito breeding sites. That has changed.

Our partner, Jamaica’s Health Ministry says: “This was one of the highest quality projects we have seen. What you produced was impressive. You have given us much to work with, not just with the solution but with the methodology used and your approach.”

GUYANA

In Guyana we have created interventions that will improve community access to malaria testing and treatment services in remote regions of the country.

Across all these projects we have facilitated a co-design approach which brings together various agencies and non-government organisations to collaborate in ways that have not been possible previously.

DESIGN FOR LASTING CHANGE

ThinkPlace has helped develop the Breakthrough ACTION Social and Behaviour Change FlowChart. The flowchart incorporates elements of the design thinking process along with methodologies from behavioural economics, community engagement, marketing science and strategic communication for a world-first hybrid approach.

Collaborating in this hybrid way, harnessing the expertise of Breakthrough ACTION consortium partners, allows us to create new methods and maximise impact at scale.

Breakthrough ACTION largely works in locations and communities where human-centred design and co-design are unfamiliar. The project is building new capabilities that will endure.

In-country partnerships are allowing innovations that are created, implemented and scaled. Partnerships are built so that in-country organisations can continue to drive change after current interventions expire.

The processes we have brought to this project are helping to create a systematic but innovative wave of change across numerous countries. While many local differences exist, we are seeing the emergence of an integrated and broadly-applicable methodology that spans national borders and connects on a human level.

Many of the world-first interventions that make up this program have broad potential to be applied elsewhere and scaled up. Breakthrough ACTION will have a direct impact on the lives of real people, but it is also a sandbox for innovation and experimentation.

By deploying a hybrid solution that draws on many methods and approaches we are showing that innovation for impact is not always about new technology. Methods that bring together the right people and put them in position to design and implement change for their own communities can be far more powerful than a fully-technical solution.

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Friday, 20 September 2019

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The United Nations Global Compact

Sashi Surendran — Tue, 28 May 2019 00:34:49 +0000

Australia

The United Nations Global Compact

Topics

sustainable development goals

This is our second yearly Communication On Progress Report, issued as part of our responsibilities as a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact.

While we are required to communicate our progress as part of being a signatory to this important set of principles we do so with much gladness and enthusiasm.

Adopting the Sustainable Development Goals as our ‘North star’ has been a hugely-transformative decision for ThinkPlace. As we have gone about enacting this transformation, the Global Compact has been our way of codifying that commitment. It allows us to set out our intentions for all to see and calls on us to explain how we have acted upon them. It gives us the opportunity to outline how instrumental the adoption of the goals has been in driving and shaping our development as a company.

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Why innovation is more than just invention...

Daniel Silkstone — Mon, 13 May 2019 02:10:18 +0000

Australia

Why innovation is more than just invention...

Topics

Co-design and innovation, innovation

People call them lightbulb moments. It’s an instructive metaphor.

The process of innovation is understood as a moment of inspiration. And that moment is represented by a piece of breakthrough technology (the bulb) associated with an infamous inventor (Edison, or the many people who ‘invented’ it before him – more about that later).

It’s a big idea about big ideas. And it’s playing no small part in holding us back.

As designers, and as people wanting to make change in the world, we need to move beyond this restrictive notion of innovation. Because when you spend your time as we do, tackling complex challenges across the globe, it becomes obvious that this isn’t the only kind of innovation we need.

In complex human systems, like health, energy, or employment, it’s rare for a new piece of technology or a sudden Eureka moment to be the catalyst that drives communities forward, creates lasting positive change or crashes through the gridlock of an intractable situation.

There are some factors we repeatedly see that too-often determine whether innovation programs fail or succeed. And whether you’re an aid agency working in Africa or a government agency making policy in Australia if you’re searching for ways to innovate for impact these lessons can help you succeed.

Innovation is not just about new ideas

The first mistake in many innovation programs lies in thinking that innovation is solely about generating a new idea. Processes like hackathons have their place but the cult of the ‘heroic idea’ -- so stunningly simple that it sweeps all problems aside – means we rush past other possibilities that may be far more practical or effective.

Designing an innovation program solely around finding novelty means you are not thinking about how ideas will be implemented and whether they’ll lead to lasting, sustainable change.

This bias towards invention often results in technical solutions (apps, drones, blockchain) because technology can more easily display novelty. Human solutions may be a little less exciting and they are definitely more messy. They may have ‘been done before’ and so hold lesser appeal for those who fetishize the new.

But fast forward two years and that technical innovation may look a little different. Support has long evaporated, the app is crashing and the drones are gathering dust because no one knows how to fix them.

Let’s go back to Thomas Edison. He was by no means the first to have ‘invented' electric light, and not even the first to solve the problem of how to make a light that does not burn up in its own heat.

So why will every school child in perpetuity learn that Edison invented the lightbulb? Mainly because he had in place a means to rally funding and the networks required produce it and sell it.

I would argue this is good innovation – equal parts invention, action and building the partnerships needed to commercialise it.

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A successful quit-smoking program for young Māori women

Sashi Surendran — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 00:19:46 +0000

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A successful quit-smoking program for young Māori women

The secret to designing a great quit-smoking program? It’s not just about smoking. That’s the lesson from the recent project Addressing the challenge of young Māori women who smoke run by ThinkPlace in association with New Zealand’s Ministry of Health.

Service

Experience & Behavioural DesignStrategy & policy designMeasuring ImpactInclusive Co-design & EngagementResearch & insights

People

Topics

Co-design, design behaviours, health, human-centred design, impact, New Zealand

Sector

Healthy Societies

At ThinkPlace we like to say we tackle the world’s most complex challenges. Clients come to us with problems that appear insurmountable.

And there are few challenges quite so complex as smoking.

Our work for New Zealand’s Ministry of Health around smoking cessation in Māori women has given us a significant opportunity to make an impact on the lives of individuals and communities. It has been a fantastic test and a positive validation for some of our methods and approaches.

The problem

Governments around the world, including in New Zealand, have structured efforts to curb smoking around the idea of using methods that are “international best practice.” The logic appears clear: what has worked in one place or with one group will work in another.

But the same interventions may not work for all groups and in all circumstances.

While rates of smoking have been declining overall in most Western nations and in New Zealand generally, young Māori women have proven a more difficult challenge for existing messages around the harm caused by cigarettes. Smoking rates remain stubbornly high amongst these populations, leading to follow-on health problems such as cancer and stroke and further contributing to economic and social disadvantage.

Our approach

This project brought together capabilities and tools around big data with a human-centred, design-thinking approach to encouraging behaviour change. It is based upon the idea of using insights to shape intervention.

In part it also functioned as a sandbox for co-design, assembling a core design team populated by diverse voices and forms of experience including Māori women, health experts, government representatives and smoking cessation contractors – who generally work as service providers for government-sponsored campaigns.

What we did

Our process began with a research period where we sought rich and varied information from more than 50 Māori women about their smoking. We asked them when they began smoking, what influenced it, what triggers it and how it fits into their cultural and family background.

Care was taken to avoid a paternalistic or censorious tone that can sometimes typify government-led intervention in this space.

Rather than asking “why haven’t you quit?” says Project Lead Mondy Jera. “We asked them: tell me about smoking in your whānau?”

Smoking as a journey

These initial research insights led to the creation of personas and innovative use of visualisation to create a ‘daily smoking journey’. That representation effectively shows the role of smoking in the daily lives of Māori women. When do they smoke? What triggers these moments? How do they relate to periods of stress, intensity or the absence of those factors?

“We wanted to know not just why young Māori women smoke,” Jera says. “But where are the opportunities to interrupt, to intervene and to empower change. Smoking cannot be isolated from other factors that women are dealing with so our response shouldn’t be either. What can we offer that is more effective and supportive? What works?”

OK, so where are they?

The next stage of the project involved working with health providers to come up with suggestions, what we call ‘how might we’approach to encourage cessation.

Those ideas were synthesized, iterated and built upon across a series of workshops to produce four different concepts encouraging Māori women to try stopping smoking. These were then trialled at four sites across New Zealand.

Across these trials, results have been hugely encouraging. Women and providers identified a range of emerging outcomes including:

increased self-confidence, self-esteem and self-belief
strengthened ability to develop plans and set goals
greater awareness of personal and whānau options and opportunities
new or strengthened connections to people, information and services
reduced isolation
fewer experiences of domestic violence and increased knowledge of strategies and support services
lower stress and greater knowledge of strategies to manage and mitigate stress
improved relationships with partners, children and whāna

Some women reported outcomes of:

decreased anxiety and depression
reduced alcohol consumption and drug use
more money to meet day-to-day expenses and to provide for their children and themselves
improved parenting skills and improved relationships with children
pride in providing smoke-free environments for their children, being motivated to quit and successfully quitting.
From being homeless, two women and their children have been assisted into accommodation. Another woman was assisted to re-enrol her children in early childhood education, with a debt repayment plan developed to pay off outstanding fees to the early childhood centre.

Strategies that have proven successful include:

Reframing quitting in the context of living well (wholeness)
Starting with and addressing questions of connection: How are you doing? How’s your housing situation? How’s your family?
Asking participants about their aspirations in life
Actively inviting women to participate, not waiting for ‘quitters’ to join a program
Being aware of tikanga (Maori customs and ways of doing things)

Early impact

While there is plenty of development to come, this work is already showing the potential to change lives for the better. An Auckland woman recently told news site stuff.co.nz that one of the trial programs had helped her stop smoking. 

"I just smoked all day. I don't think I was in good health," said Cassandra, who had been smoking since the age of 9.

Cassandra has been part of a program in South Auckland which involved not only talking about smoking cessation but helping arrange childcare for so that participants could take part in activities such as walking, kayaking and shared meals. The women were encouraged to switch from smoking to vaping, which they will attempt to phase out entirely in a second stage of the program.

"I've saved more money, I’m exercising more, taking driving lessons and searching for a job," Cassandra said. 

"My kids are willing to kiss me instead of moaning about how smelly I am." 

What’s next?

The trial sites will be widened to include more areas and the interventions will be sharpened and re-iterated, allowing the contractors who generally provide smoking cessation services for government to work with the new methods and approaches.

Resulting feedback will help to create new guidelines for how the Ministry of Health contracts anti-smoking services.

“This project shows what you can achieve with a client who is genuinely forward-thinking and willing to explore new ways of working,” Jera says.

Project Team: Karyn McLean, Mondy Jera, Jess Lunnon, Margaret Nyarango

Quote

"I've saved more money, I’m exercising more, taking driving lessons and searching for a job."

"My kids are willing to kiss me instead of moaning about how smelly I am."

- Young Māori Woman

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Towards a model of planet-centred design?

Daniel Silkstone — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 04:15:05 +0000

New Zealand

Towards a model of planet-centred design?

Topics

human-centred design

ThinkPlace practices human-centred design. We call ourselves human-centred designers. And we have long believed that this is the best way to design for maximum impact and for positive change in the world.

Human-centred design means using tools and methods to understand the needs of the people we design with and for. It means we go to great lengths to ensure that voices of people throughout the system are heard and included as we design better futures – including services, models and systems.

But recently, a few things have happened that are making us question whether human-centred design is the gold standard we hold it up to be.

Now we’re asking: Is being human-centred enough?

The first catalyst for our thinking was that a number of us from the Wellington studio attended the Design for Social Innovation Symposium in Ōtepoti Dunedin. ThinkPlace hosted the ‘DSI Lab’ – a visual and idea space to capture and pose some uncomfortable questions to our community of practice.

The symposium, held at the Otago Polytechnic, was attended by a range of designers, people working in interesting partnerships and collectives, forming new models of innovation and students practicing design, food design and leadership for change.

Among these design voices a question started to emerge, one which asked whether being human-centred could also extend to plants and animals.

What does animal-centred design look like?

The value of bringing communities of practice together is that we create a safe space to question our own position – the two days afforded us time to provoke, be inspired and dig a little deeper.

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Tuesday, 11 December 2018

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What we learned while working on the DTA's 'Vision 2025' blueprint

Daniel Silkstone — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 04:14:06 +0000

Australia

What we learned while working on the DTA's 'Vision 2025' blueprint

Topics

Co-design, digital, public sector

Australia’s 2025 Digital Transformation Strategy is about delivering a vision for all Australians to thrive in an age of data and technology. It’s the most ambitious digital strategy ever prepared for the Australian public sector.

The strategy, released recently, sets an imposing ambition: To be one of the top 3 digital governments in the world by 2025. That means setting a high bar for all Australians to get quality services and equitable access as agencies and service delivery organisations seek to make dealing with government more seamless across all areas of our lives.

In the days since the strategy was released there has been plenty of praise. But there have also been warnings that the future it envisions - one in which government agencies vastly increase the data they share with each other and the way it is integrated - will not be possible unless government organisations secure trust and social licence from the Australian people to operate in this way. That means overcoming nervousness about increased data sharing (among other things) but also making sure that no Australians are left behind in the race to a digital future.

I had the unique opportunity, as part of a ThinkPlace team, to run a number of community and internal consultations for the Digital Transformation Agency in the lead up to the strategy’s release, giving me a unique view into the areas where everyday Australians see both risk and opportunity.

Preparing and collectively designing futures where people and institutions can thrive is core to the work we do at ThinkPlace. Digital transformation in Australia truly has great power, but also great responsibility to ensure that the information of each Australian is used in accordance with community expectations and that the result makes accessing government services a better experience for all.

Here are the big lessons we learned from these sessions...

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Codesign means telling a story (but it might not be the one you think....)

Daniel Silkstone — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 22:58:26 +0000

United States

Codesign means telling a story (but it might not be the one you think....)

Topics

Co-design, Co-design and innovation

The ACT Government’s recently-announced Family Safety Hub has been widely and rightly celebrated.

"We absolutely think this work could save lives," ACT Coordinator-General for Family Safety Jo Wood said at the project’s launch.

"It's a different approach,” said ACT Deputy Chief Minister Yvette Berry. “An innovative approach, doing things in a way that we've never even thought about before

“This is a terrific project,” said the judges of Australia’s oldest design prize as they bestowed a Good Design Award ‘tick’ upon it.

Like all successful designs it now appears as though this hub was the obvious, predestined solution to the complex challenge of bringing together a disparate and sometimes confusing web of family violence services and resources.

That couldn’t be more wrong.

Because as so often happens with genuine co-design processes, we didn’t set out to design anything like the outcome we ended up with.

That much was made clear during a recent in-conversation event, where key design voices from the project got together to talk through this hugely-important innovation and the co-design process that gave birth to it

The ACT Government invited Jo Wood, myself, Project Lead Steven Portelli, Mirjana Wilson from the Domestic Violence Crisis Service and ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates to a discussion hosted at the Legislative Assembly about the experience of using co-design on this project.

Here are our three big takeaways:

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Understanding complexity for a (Ful)bright future...

Daniel Silkstone — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 05:53:43 +0000

United States

Understanding complexity for a (Ful)bright future...

Topics

complex systems

At ThinkPlace we specialise in using design thinking and a design-led methodology to tackle the kind of problems that emerge in the complex systems that we live in as humans today.

It’s an approach that traces back to founding partner John Body who, more than a decade ago, began marrying his academic expertise in chaos and complexity theory with the then-emerging discipline of design thinking.

And it’s a focus that ThinkPlace Chief Innovation Officer, David Ireland, is looking to advance as he takes up a prestigious Fullbright Scholarship in the United States.

We’ll be checking in with David every now and then to see what he’s picking up as he spends time with some of the greatest design and complex system minds in the world today, and how those insights relate to the work ThinkPlace does across the globe.

ThinkPlace - Measuring Impact

User-centred research for an iconic Kiwi brand

Work

User-centred research for an iconic Kiwi brand

Service

People

THE CHALLENGE

OUR RESPONSE

HOW WE DID IT

THE IMPACT

Assessing vital mental health initiatives

Work

Assessing vital mental health initiatives

Service

People

Sector

THE CHALLENGE

OUR RESPONSE

HOW WE DID IT

The IMPACT

World-leading behaviour change to save lives

Work

World-leading behaviour change to save lives

Service

People

Sector

WHAT IS BREAKTHROUGH ACTION?

OUR RESPONSE

RAPID FIELD PROTOTYPING

THE IMPACT

NIGERIA

ZAMBIA

JAMAICA

GUYANA

DESIGN FOR LASTING CHANGE

The United Nations Global Compact

The United Nations Global Compact

Why innovation is more than just invention...

Why innovation is more than just invention...

A successful quit-smoking program for young Māori women

Work

A successful quit-smoking program for young Māori women

Service

People

Topics

Sector

Towards a model of planet-centred design?

Towards a model of planet-centred design?

What we learned while working on the DTA's 'Vision 2025' blueprint

What we learned while working on the DTA's 'Vision 2025' blueprint

Codesign means telling a story (but it might not be the one you think....)

Codesign means telling a story (but it might not be the one you think....)

Understanding complexity for a (Ful)bright future...

Understanding complexity for a (Ful)bright future...

READ MORE: DESIGNING IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS - THE THINKPLACE APPROACH