GIA Singapore - Extracts and briefs (Sarah & Chris)

CO-DESIGNING THRIVING SOLUTIONS tacsi.org.au/curriculum

CO-DESIGNINGTHRIVING SOLUTIONSA prototype curriculum for social problem solving

Prepared for...Global Innovation Academy, Pathfinder Programme Series, Singapore 10 & 11 November, 2011

Based on the

Working Backwards

Approach and the work

of the Radical Redesign

Team @ TACSI

Excepts from...

Excerpts from Co-designing Thriving Solutions

Co-designingWorking with people, practitioners and policymakers to develop new kinds of solutions.

Thriving Actively developing.

Solutions A set of interactions and experiences that spread as principles, platforms, organisational models, & programs.

Excerpts from Co-designing Thriving Solutions Excerpts from Co-designing Thriving Solutions

Educational disengagement, crime, drug addiction, unemployment, indigenous inequality. We believe systemic social problems require new kinds of solutions. And new solutions require new ways of working. Welcome to excerpts Co-designing Solutions, a curriculum designed to equip teams with new ways to co-design solutions. Solutions that focus on thriving, not just on meeting basic needs. Solutions that are fundamentally about prompting change, not maintaining the status quo.

We’re here because we kept asking: is there a better way? Too many of our past projects have gone nowhere. Projects where we invested a heck of a lot of ourselves, and used all the methods we were trained in, neither prompted change for people nor systems.

Chris’ design-led projects engaged people through exciting interactions, but failed to impact on the systems around people. Sarah’s policy-led projects engaged policymakers with compelling arguments and new frameworks, but didn’t change people’s behaviour in or outside of systems. We both found ourselves doing a lot of work, but not shifting people’s lives.

Working together for the first time in London on a project to improve outcomes for young people, we discovered behaviours, skills, and tools in each other’s way of working that complemented the limitations of our own. Sarah was new to the design behaviour of prototyping. Chris was new to tools of logic modelling and frameworks for behaviour change from the social sciences.

Over time, and not without some confusion, we began to codify what we were learning about how to change behaviour. We named our hybrid problem-solving process ‘Working Backwards’ because it proceeds in a different order to usual policy development.

Out of our first year of work in Australia with and for The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) came the solution Family by Family, a new network of families helping families. It’s a solution that seems to shift behaviour and which is attracting the attention of policymakers.

We hope to spread the ‘Working Backwards’ approach to co-design more solutions to systemic social problems. This curriculum aims to equip teams, in and out of public systems, with the behaviours, skills, and tools to do that.

IntroductionDeveloping a curriculumPerhaps the only thing that has been more frustrating than our past attempts to prompt change with people, has been our past attempts to prompt change in how policymakers and practitioners work. We’ve run heaps of workshops, lectures, and action learning groups that have done little to shift work behaviour.

We take from this that prompting change is hard, and demands far more rigour and resource. We’re putting rigour and resource into prototyping this curriculum. Over the coming 12-months, we’ll test four big hunches:

Our first hunch is that skills and tools are insufficient for working differently. In the past, we’ve used a ‘toolbox’ teaching method, only to find people struggle to figure out when, where, how, or why to use the exercises and strategies. Now we think the focus needs to be on adopting a mix of behaviours across a range of contexts.

Our second hunch is that changing behaviours requires immersive, experiences. While we’ve long held the view that social interventions need to do more than transmit information to change behaviours, we haven’t followed suit in our own teaching. In this curriculum, we aim to provide developmental experiences through hands-on live project work.

Our third hunch is that this kind of work can really only be done by interdisciplinary teams. We suspect that our past teaching has focused on the wrong unit: individuals. Indeed, we believe the strength of the approach lies in the continuous blend of different disciplines and perspectives.

Our fourth hunch is that the best way to teach a blended approach is to break concepts down into their component parts - to idenity what exactly can be designed - alongside learning about whole solutions.

Like everything we make, this curriculum is a prototype and we value your feedback. The curriculum was written from a UK / North American / Australian perspective. We’d love to learn what’s applicable beyond those contexts and what’s not.

Chris Vanstone & Sarah Schulman Co-leads, Radical Redesign Team, TACSI and founders of InWithFor

Hunch 1

Hunch 2

Hunch 3

Hunch 4


Today, the core challenge for most of us living in the West isn’t how long we live, but how we live - how we age, how we work, how we connect to others. We don’t just want to get by - to be insured from risk or protected from social circumstance - we want to be able to thrive. We want to have fulfilling relationships, to find and use our talents, to feel good and in-control, to have a purpose, to enjoy how we spend our time, and probably most of all, to know we matter as people.

If we truly want more people to thrive, existing welfare systems and services won’t do. We need different kinds of social solutions - principles, platforms, organisations, and programs - designed with us, to develop our capabilities, aspirations, relationships, and achievements. In practice, we need social solutions that can shift our behaviours towards where want to go, not just to where systems and services want us to go.

This requires social solutions that can broaden our preferences and motivations, teach us new skills, provide us with feedback, cultivate support networks, help us feel competent & in-control, and remove barriers to change.

The Thriving Outcomes An ongoing set of behaviours that keep lives moving in a good direction.

Thriving lives

Using capabilities

Achieving things

Pursuing aspirations

Building relationships

Feeling good

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Great social solutions aren’t just designed with and for people, but within economic and political contexts. Shifts in political priorities, political leadership, and fiscal resources are often windows of opportunity for new solutions to take hold. By identifying and exploiting these windows of opportunity, great solutions not only enable people to thrive, but are themselves thriving in their contexts.

The life-time and inter-generational costs associated with our existing services and systems - with the stagnation and dependency they inadvertently spawn - are high. Where society has invested in solutions that develop our capabilities, aspirations, and relationships, (rather than just manage risk) we’ve seen impressive financial gains.

For instance, for every dollar invested in high-quality early childhood education, there is a $16.14 return on investment in increased wages, more taxes paid, greater contribution to the community, and less use of welfare, health care, and the criminal justice system.1

When you look at people not as clients or customers, but as co-producers, their capabilities, relationships and aspirations are not only outcomes, but inputs that can further develop the solution’s resource base and reach.

Solutions that thrive

Solutions that thriveSolutions that contribute to thriving lives, generate resources, and leverage the economic & political ecosystem to spread.

Solutions that thrive...Increase people’s aspirations, capabilities, relationships & achievements over time.

Solutions that thrive...Leverage the economical & political ecosystem to spread.

Solutions that thrive...Generate resource: Outcomes generated by the solution become inputs.

1 Schweinhart, Lawrence. “How to take the High/Scope Perry preschool to scale. “High/Scope Educational Research foundation for the National Invitational Conference of the Early Childhood Research Collaborative, 2007.

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Traditional policymaking, like widget making, is a vertical process: decisions at the top flow down the chain of command. People are the last to be reached.

When you want to sell thousands of widgets or process thousands of welfare payments, you need a way of working that promotes mass precision, continuity, and conformity. Bureaucracy is fit for purpose.

When you want to enable people to build aspirations, capabilities, achievements, and relationships, you need a different approach to solving problems and a different way of organising the work.

Traditional problem solving

Classic policy developmentPeople engaged last - at implementation.

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To get to thriving lives we think you need a problem solving approach that starts at the bottom with what people want and are capable of, rather than at the top with what systems and policies want and have available to spend.

We call our problem solving approach ‘Working Backwards’ and we organise our work in interdisciplinary, non-hierarchical teams. Indeed, we work backwards as a team, first to work with people to identify what people want and can do before co-designing and prototyping new kinds of solutions and ways of spreading those solutions (e.g. principles, platforms, organisations, and programs). Each phase of our approach starts with a question. To answer the question we draw on skills and tools from design, social science, business and policy development.

1 Get ready What team fits the problem?2 Look & listen What are good outcomes?3 Create What ideas could improve outcomes?4 Prototype INTERACTIONS What interactions shift outcomes?5 Prototype SYSTEMS What supports new interactions?6 VALUE What value does the solution create?7 Grow How can we spread the solution?

Working backwards

New outcomes

New team

Problem

New scenarios

New systems

New interactions

New solutions

2 LOOK & LISTEN

3 CREATE

4 PROTOTYPE INTERACTIONS

5 PROTOTYPE

SYSTEMS

6 VALUE

7 GROW

1 GET-READY

Working backwardsPeople engaged at every stage of development

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We work backwards to co-design and prototype new kinds of solutions and ways to spread those solutions.

What does that really mean? When you work in the traditional, industrial era way, you design rules, regulations, and processes that can be implemented from top-to-bottom.

Instead, we work with people in their homes, workplaces, and communities to design something far more basic: interactions.

Interactions are back-and-forth actions between people, and between people and things. You’re interacting with this document, and when you turn to your colleague to have a conversation about what you’ve just read, you’re interacting with your colleague.

Solutions are a series of interactions over time - interactions that enable people to thrive, and interactions that enable the solution to thrive. Interactions that enable people to thrive help us develop our aspirations, capabilities, relationships, and achievements. Interactions that enable solutions to thrive help to organise the flow of work, generate and manage resources, grow influence, and expand reach.

We prototype all three kinds of interactions, but first use co-design techniques to understand what thriving means and therefore what the interactions could enable.

What can be co-designed?

Ecosystem level interactionsPrototyping interactions with other organisations, potential partners, funders and policymakers can help determine how a solution will spread.

User level interactionsPrototyping can help us develop user level interactions (between people-people, people-machines, and people-objects) that shape behaviours & enable new aspirations, capabilities, relationships and achievements over time.

Organisational level interactionsPrototyping organisational level interactions can help us develop policies and systems that support user level interactions. e.g HR, governance, and customer relationship management.

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When it comes right down to it, solutions that thrive are a set of interactions that change people’s behaviour. The problem solving approaches we use to get to solutions that thrive also require a change in behaviour. They change the sequence of work (from the bottom-up), who we work with (real people), and how we go about our work (in flexible, interdisciplinary teams).

Indeed, we think great social problem solvers - whether public servants, innovators, designers, business analysts, community organisers or social scientists - think and do different things. They spend time with people in their context; they identify patterns & trends; they turn abstract concepts into concrete concepts; they make prototypes; they give and seek feedback; and they craft compelling stories for different audiences. We call these the people, analytic, generative, making, feedback, and storytelling behaviours.

Enabling you and your team to develop these behaviours is the aim of the Co-designing Thriving Solutions curriculum.

New work behaviours

New work behaviours

Analytic behaviourIdentifying patterns and trends; breaking complex concepts into component parts; asking why and how questions.

Generative behaviourIdentifying and exploiting opportunities; developing new ideas; applying concepts from one field to another; thinking visually and laterally.

People behaviourTalking with; observing; listening; understanding, respecting and contextualising people.

Making behaviourTurning abstract ideas into real, tangible products; using your hands.

Feedback behaviourShowing work; making improvements; offering constructive suggestions to others; failing; persistently iterating.

Storytelling behaviourDeveloping rational and emotive arguments; using different mediums; bringing ideas to life for people versus practice versus policy audiences.

Analytic

People

Storytelling

Feedback

Generative

Making

BehaviourThe actions or reactions of a person in response to external or internal stimuli. What you think, feel and do in a particular situation. e.g. When you’re lost you may look at a map, ask someone, or follow signs.

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Prototyping is a way of rapidly developing early hunches into solutions that work for people. Prototyping involves testing solutions at an early stage with users, in context and using what you learn about what works (and what doesn’t) to improve your solution. Any interaction can be prototyped be it at the user, organisational or eco-system level.

Prototyping can enable you to build solutions that work faster and cheaper because mistakes are made (and learnt from) earlier and with less cost.

Prototyping involves moving through a loop of new work behaviours. Good prototyping means having a clear understanding of the user you are designing for, what outcome you are trying to achieve with and for that user, and what aspect of your solution you are prototyping.

1 People question Who is this for and what outcomes am I trying to enable with and for them?

2 Generative questionWhat form could the solution take?

3 Making questionHow can I best represent the aspect of the solution I am testing?

4 Feedback question How can I best get feedback from the user of my solution?

5 Analytic questionWhat can I do differently in the next iteration?

6 Storytelling questionHow can I communicate failure and lessons learnt?

Prototyping

Generative

Making

Analytic

Feedback

People Storytelling

The prototyping loopPrototyping involved moving through a cycle of behaviours multiple times improving your nacet solution on each revolution.

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Testing

Learning briefs Prepared for Global Innovation Academy [Pathfinder Programme Series, Singapore 2011]

Brief 1What can be designed?

NOT TO BE OPENED BEFORE10.11.11

The Task...Dissect the following solution into its component parts and map a user-level, organisational-level, and ecosystem-level interaction.

Group 1&4: Green House Nursing AlternativeGroup 2: Girl Scouts / Girl GuidesGroup 3&5: Pratham

The Details…Groups of 6 - 45 minutesSee the next pages for your group’s brief

The Steps...

1 AnalyseLook through the case study materials provided.Divide your team into pairs. 1 pair will focus on user-level, 1 on organisation-level ,and 1 on eco-system level. Using post-it notes, identify the component parts of the interaction you’ve been given.

2 MakeIn pairs, quickly sketch a storyboard detailing the scenes that make up the given interaction, and the actors and props present.Where there’s not enough information, creatively infer what actors / props might be present.

3 Get FeedbackShare storyboards amongst your small group, and stick your storyboard to the wall for larger group feedback.

For more on prototyping see

This is service design thinkingEdited by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider

The starfish and the spiderBy Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom

Systems thinking in the public sectorBy John Seddon

Deconstructing analysis techniques http://tinyurl.com/yknwm2k

Dissect solutions

Briefs >

Group 1&4 Green House Nursing AlternativeThe Solution:The Green House Nursing Alternativehttp://thegreenhouseproject.org/http://vimeo.com/5806884

The systemic problem:Too many older people in expensive institutionalised care with poor quality of life outcomes. Indeed in the United States, half of the 1.7 million people living in nursing homes suffer from untreated pain (USA Today, 2003).

The identified opportunity: De-institutionalize long-term care by eliminating large nursing facilities and creating habilitative, social settings which focus on life and relationships.

Your briefs

Pair 1 / User-level interactions. Storyboard elders’ interactions at meal time within the Green House home (i.e. skech the scenes, actors and props an elder encounters before, during, and after meal time)http://vimeo.com/5808073 Pair 2 / Organisation-level interactions. Storyboard the shahbazim role. How are they trained and how are they organised? (i.e. sketch the scenes, actors and props shahbazim encounter before, during, and after their training). http://vimeo.com/5807912

Pair 3 / Ecosystem-level interactions. Storyboard what it takes for an organisation to sign up to the Eden Alternative Registry (i.e. sketch the scenes, actors and props an organisation encounters before, during, and after they sign-up).

The Eden Alternative is the set of principles & a philosophy underpinning Green House Homes. The Eden Alternative Registry offers a way to spread the ideas behind Green House Homes, not just the physical buildings. http://tinyurl.com/c8uehye

Brief 1: Dissect solutions

Group 2 Girl Scouts

The Solution:Girl Scouts / Girl Guides www.girlscouts.org

The systemic problem:Too few girls have the role models, skills, or values to grow up to be effective leaders

The identified opportunity: To create new kind of leaders - leaders who value diversity, inclusion, collaboration and are committed to improving their neighborhoods, communities, and the world

Your briefs

Pair 1 / User-level interactions. Storyboard how girls earn some of the ‘new’ 21st century badges (i.e. sketch the scenes, actors and props a girl might encounter in order to get a badge).http://tinyurl.com/452gxbhhttp://www.girlscouts.org/forgirls/

Pair 2 / Organisation-level interactions. Storyboard the volunteer recruitment process. How might a community member become a girl scout volunteer? (i.e. sketch the scenes, actors and props a person might encounter in order to become a volunteer).http://vimeo.com/17450655

Pair 3 / Ecosystem-level interactions. Storyboard the Girls Scouts and Dairy Queen (DQ) partnership. How does that partnership play out in Dairy Queen restaurants across the United States? (i.e. sketch the scenes, actors and props that are a result of the corporate partnership).http://tinyurl.com/89xo3b9


Group 3&5 Pratham

The solutionPratham www.pratham.org

The systemic problem:Nealry 80% of children in India do not complete elementary education, and 50% of children actually going to school do not know the 3 R’s after four years of schooling. Universal access to education has not translated into actual improvements in learning outcomes.

The identified opportunity: To improve achievement in schools - and show how that drives improvements in enrollment and retention rates. To rapidly improve learning outcomes though inexpensive, scalable interventions in schools and in communities.

Your briefs

Pair 1 / User-level interactions. Storyboard the Read India programme - a mass scale, rapid, learning to read campaign. In other words, sketch the scenes, actors and props a child might encounter if they were part of the Read India programme. http://tinyurl.com/789svdx

Pair 2 / Organisation-level interactions. Storyboard the volunteer mobilisation and training process. How might somebody come to volunteer with Pratham? In other words, sketch the scenes, actors and props somebody might encounter before and during their time as a volunteer.http://tinyurl.com/7q59s2j

Pair 3 / Ecosystem-level interactions. Storyboard how the Annual Status of Education (ASER) Centre goes about implementing the Annual Status of Education Survey and Report. In other words, sketch the scenes, actors and props underpinning data collection. ASER is a centre sponsored by Pratham that collects data in order to influence government policy & philanthropic practice. http://tinyurl.com/85kx3n5


Brief 2Prototyping


The task...Co-design and prototype an “organiser” to hold your partner’s conference materials (eg this book, their pens, notepad and workbook.) The outcome we’re after is your partner feeling organised.

The details…In pairs - 30 minutes 1 person = user1 person = maker

The steps…1 AnalyseHow does your partner currently keep track of their conference materials? What kind of bags, purses, cases, etc. are they currently making use of? What’s working? What’s not working?What does it mean to ‘feel organised?’What would a great container to ‘hold & organise stuff’ look like? What would a bad container look like?

2 GenerateDrawing on the available materials and other resources, sketch a concept for some sort of device to hold & organise your partner’s conference materials - and to complement any other bags or organisational devices they may already have.

3 MakeConstruct a first version of the “organiser”.

4 Get FeedbackAs you are making your “organiser”, seek feedback. Keep track of the number of iterations / alterations you make to the “organiser”.How does the “organiser” work in the context? How could the “organiser” be made more usable, useful & delightful?

For More, see...The CraftsmanBy Richard Sennet

Designing a handbaghttp://productdesign.dundee.ac.uk/productprocess/?p=18

Prototype an “organiser”

Brief 3Prototyping


The Task...Co-design & prototype an experience to build connections between conference participants & to achieve the following outcomeGroup 1&4: Aim to enable enjoyment & funGroup 2&5: Aim to enable supportive relationshipsGroup 3&6: Aim to enable knowledge sharing

The Details...Groups of 5-6 / 1.5 hours The Steps...1 GenerateHunches: what behaviours might underpin the outcome your group was given? What kinds of interactions & experiences could enable those behaviours?

Ideas: drawing on the available resources, how could you put those interactions & experience into practice?

2 Makea) A storyboard describing the experienceb) Two props (i.e. touchpoints) to bring to life the experience

3 FeedbackTest & tweak the props with another group. You might use role play, or walk through an experience step by step.

4 AnalyseObserve how ‘users’ from the other group react to the storyboard and props.How do the scenes play out?What seems to work? What doesn’t?What could be different?

Build connections

Inspiration >

Inspiration

Inspiration

Inspiration

Notes

Notes

The Australian Centre for Social Innovation exists to identify and support the innovative ideas, methods and people that will contribute to and accelerate positive social change. tacsi.org.au

TACSI’s Radical Redesign team blends design thinking, policy thinking, social science and business to solve social problems and demonstrate new ways of working with and for social services. tacsi.org.au/design

This curriculum was developed by Chris Vanstone and Sarah Schulman, based on the Working Backwards Approach and the work of the Radical Redesign Team.tacsi.org.au/curriculum

Contact [email protected]@tacsi.org.au

© The Australian Centre for Social InnovationNovember 2011Attribution: TACSI & InWithFor