Let Them Eat Cake

On 16th July 2013 the Guardian raised the important question:

“Is food the future of philanthropy?”

This was as part of their report on Free Cakes UK – a service that matches keen amateur bakers with families struggling to provide their child with a birthday cake – delivering its 1,000th cake. Proving that perhaps, in this case anyway, cake is the answer to big questions.

Meanwhile, somewhere else in the world (Glasgow), on the same day, I (Fiona Wood) was starting my journey as a new IRISS employee.

I came to IRISS from a series of academic research posts in collaboration with various Scottish Higher Education Institutes and NHS Boards but I don’t have a healthcare background. In fact my background is as an academic researcher specialising in designing programs of activity for children’s outdoor play and learning.

So what’s it like for an academic/designer suddenly finding they work in the field of social services after years of working in education and health care? Well, let me tell you….

IRISS is different from any other place I’ve ever worked before. The office is large and open with all staff (including our director) sitting in the same space. At one end there are three sofas used for meetings, chatting, eating, reading and so on.

At the other end there is a bright pink wall with the words “learning, partnership, creativity” embossed in white across it. Below this phrases like “you are what you share”, “an essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail” and “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” inspire the organisation.

There is bunting on the ceiling and always a fresh supply of chocolates, biscuits, lots of fruit and, of course, cake!

But, does this style of working work I hear you ask? Well, a colleague, also new to IRISS, summed it up pretty well I think when they said:

“Happier workers are more productive. Get the environment right and everyone functions properly and you produce some nice work”.

So yes, I think it works.

Now, how does this compare to other organisations I’ve worked for? Well, before IRISS I worked as a researcher in a hospital. There were not open offices, there were not sofas or relaxed spaces for staff to interact with one other and there certainly weren’t any pink walls with inspirational quotes. But there was cake.

However, in the hospital the cake wasn’t shared across hierarchies because there were doors in the way. The doctors had their cake; the nurses had their cake; the researchers had….well we would steal everyone else’s cake. The point is, everyone had a specific role and they stuck to it. They didn’t share ideas, they didn’t listen to one another, and they didn’t know what was going on with each other’s work. Instead, day in, day out, they came in and did their work and didn’t stop and think and question one another. This is not co-production.

At IRISS, there is a lot of listening and asking colleagues what they are working on; there is a lot of sharing ideas; and a lot of engaging with one another and openly questioning each other in a friendly way. Each of the staff members have a broad range of skills that they creatively feed into the organisation. This supports the wide variety of projects currently taking place within IRISS, allowing a spectrum of social service issues to be addressed and considered from a wide perspective.

The resulting difference is that in IRISS there is no room for egos or hierarchies.

I am reminded of the striking difference between these two approaches when I attend meetings with external partners. I’ve observed Health and Social Care professionals pointing the finger at one another and complaining about the ‘arranged marriage’ they are facing at the start of 2014. There is no conversation, no listening, no questioning, no engaging – instead I see more closed doors, more talking, more blaming.

It is clear more needs to be done to create a happy and collaborative relationship between these groups.

Perhaps they could learn from IRISS.

But what is the solution I hear you ask? Well, it’s been 9 weeks so far and I’m not yet sure, but as a starting point I suggest that if we really are going to work together to make a difference for people in Scotland receiving care through Social Services then we have to be willing to listen to one another and actually hear what the other parties are saying.

In short, if you’re going to have your cake and eat it, at least share it with your colleagues too [and that includes your external colleagues and those from other sectors].

October 3, 2013October 3, 2013

So who designs and what are we designing for?

Before you read this post you may find it useful to read – What do we mean by design?

So who designs? Everyone of course!

“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” Simon (1996).

Design and social work and care professionals, to a certain extent, approach the design of situations in a similar manner. Donald Schon (1994) explained that many professionals work using spontaneous and largely unthinking actions that go hand in hand with a more conscious approach. This spontaneity Schon describes as ‘knowing in our action’ and a conscious approach ‘reflection-in-action’, or ‘knowledge in action’ – depending upon whether a person applies their sensemaking or theoretical knowledge (or both) to a situation.

Schon found that professionals tend to reflect-in-action when dealing with ‘situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value conflict’ and use their training and experiences of similar situations to respond. He also points out that reflective practice, whilst widespread, suffers from a lack of acceptance in many professional circles due to the perception that professionalism is identified with technical expertise (in whichever guise), and that reflection-in-action is not considered a form of ‘professional knowing’. And the negative aspect of this practice can be that professionals can think in rather specialised, narrow view, and can become selectively inattentive to particular phenomenon that do not fit with their categories of practice.

And what are we designing for?

Philips Design believes Western societies are moving from industrial economies to experience, knowledge and transformation economies. An overview of these categories and an explanation are provided in the image below (Brand and Rocchi 2011).

From a design perspective some designers roles are changing as they engage with these new economic paradigms. A role that tended to be solely focused upon the making of things in the industrial economy, to one that is emerging as a facilitator, researcher, co-creator, communicator, strategist, capability builder and entrepreneur (Yee J et al. 2009). This has resulted in a challenge for designers in terms of how they are educated and trained ( Forlizzi and Lebbon 2002), and in some instances has resulted in designers becoming involved with human-centered methodologies (Badke-Schaub et al.), rather than being solely focused on the making of things. In such cases design can be said to be designing for experiences, the transfer knowledge and the transformation of how people contribute to society.

Thinking about how the social services designs for people, I would guess that most people from this sector would identify more readily with the experience, knowledge and transformation economies. It could be said that aspects of an outcomes focused approach (Scottish Executive 2006), when designing systems, services, knowledge and interactions, align with human-centered designerly approaches.

So, if designers that apply human-centered design approaches and the social services workforce are both designing their working practice around and for individual empowerment and collective issues that affect communities, what skills, knowledge and benefits can these professions contribute to support this ambition?

Through these posts I aim to explore the application of design in the social care sector to think about synergies and differences between approaches and practice. Importantly I want to reflect on the outcomes of these approaches to the individuals and communities who are the focus of such work ,and would like to hear from others interested in this topic area too – so please follow this blog, receive RSS updates, and comment away!

References

Badke-Schaub et al. – http://www.designresearch.nl/PDF/DRN2005_BadkeSchaub.pdf

Brand R, Rocchi S (2011) Rethinking value in a changing landscape, a model for strategic reflection and business transformation, Phillips Design.

Forlizzi J. Lebbon C (2002) From formal to social significance in communication design, Design Issues, Autumn 2002, Vol. 18, No. 4, Pages 3-13.

Schon D (1994) The reflective practitioner, Ashgate Publishing Limited, USA.

Scottish Executive (2006) Transforming Public Services : the next phase of reform, p31.

Simon H (1996) The sciences of the artificial, MIT Press, USA.

Yee J. Tan L. Meredith P (2009) The emergent roles of a designer in the development of an e-learning service, First Nordic Conference on Service Design and Service Innovation, 24th-26th November, Oslo.

September 27, 2013October 4, 2013

What do we mean by design?

I’m afraid it is quite difficult to explain, is something others struggle with, and others ignore the need to define.

“Design is a particularly fertile and challenging subject for the historian because it occurs at a point of intersection or mediation between different spheres, that is between art and industry, creativity and commerce, manufactures and consumers. It is concerned with style and utility, material and artifact and human desires, the realms of the ideological, the political and the economic. It is involved in the public sector as well as the private sector. It serves the most idealistic and utopian goals and the most negative, destructive impulses of human kind. The task of a design historian is a daunting one requiring as it does a familiarity with a multitude of topics and specialisms.” (Walker 1989).

This fertile ground is illustrated by the use of the word design in the English language. It is used as a noun and a verb, and its use in English vernacular takes on common and descriptive meanings. For example, when referring to the look and desire of something – ‘I like the design of those shoes’, or being used as a preprocessor and therefore having some kind of cultural significance – ‘designer jeans’, ‘designer brands’, ‘designer babies’.

In the field of designer, designers themselves find it difficult to agree on a definition of what design means and so many develop their own interpretations, definitions and meanings of design (Ralph and Wand 2009). Unsurprising really when the breadth of how design is categorised in design libraries ranges from: the history of design, materials, styles, fashions, the evolution of products, systems, environments and structures, theoretical perspectives, design movements, schools and institutions, design from different continents and countries, fashionable or popular designers, design groups, organisations and businesses, conferences, manufacturing companies, brands, journals and magazines, as well as different design fields, subjects and disciplines – which in themselves can be hard to categories or distinguish between in their purley textual, pictorial or a mixture of the two formats.

So with all this confusion it’s a wonder that anyone is able to design at all! Not so suggests one design researcher,

“…definitions serve strategic and tactical purposes in inquiry. They do not settle matters once and for all… Instead, they allow an investigator… to clarify the direction of their work and move ahead with inquiry in a particular thematic direction.” (Buchanan 2001)

However in this instance a perspective of design what resonates with the I&I programme is that:

“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training; it is the principal mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences.” (Simon 1996).

At IRISS our relationship between design and innovation and improvement (I&I) in the social services sector is evolving.

Part of our role is to test and reflect on what design can offer those in contact with social services. The blog posts I am writing will focus upon design, participatory design, visual communication and service design which all take a human centered approach but are rather large an ill defined areas. So to support understanding around the perspectives I am engaging with check out my other post – So who designs and what are we designing for?

References

First image sourced from – http://www.nngroup.com/articles/tag-cloud-examples/

Second image sourced from – http://www.123rf.com/photo_16578812_abstract-word-cloud-for-user-innovation-with-related-tags-and-terms.html

Buchanan R (2001) Design research and the new learning, Design Issues, Autumn, Vol. 17, No. 4, Pages 3-23.

Dilnot C (1984) The state of design history: part I, in Design Issues, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring, pp. 4-23, MIT Press.

Ralph P, Wand Y (2009) A proposal for the formal definition of the design concept, in Design requirements engineering: A ten-year perspective lecture notes in business information processing, Volume 14, 2009, pp 103-136, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Simon H (1996) The sciences of the artificial, MIT Press.

Walker J (1989) Design history and the history of design, Pluto Press.