Thanks to technology, more people are creating content and collaborating online in ways that were not possible before. But transformation in society doesn’t happen when it adopts new tools, it happens when it adopts new behaviours. Many young people have grown up adopting these behaviours to interact with people, solve problems and get things done.
What has this got to do with local government? While it is essential that we use technology to tackle issues, it is just as important that we involve the people we serve in this process.
A few years ago, I developed Transformed by You; working with entrepreneurs, local groups and students to research and design solutions to local challenges.
One of the programmes I led as part of this was focusing on how technology can help people help each other and how it can help people stay fit and stay healthy.
Here are some tips on how you can get local people involved in uncovering needs in their community and designing solutions to them.
Supporting people in this way only helps them develop solutions to needs they’ve identified, it helps people understand the world around them and how technology can help them tackle issues that matter to them.
Involve people in finding out what needs and assets they have in their neighbourhood
Coming up with ideas sounds easy, but sometimes to get the most effective ones it’s worth thinking about how to stimulate them. Breaking up the stages of developing ideas makes the process more meaningful to the people taking part and more likely that they will want to work together to develop the ideas.
We started off by getting people to discuss together what skills they enjoy using and what they’d like to learn, from sharing recipes they’ve made to showing people how to fix their mobile phones.
We learnt that people are more likely to get involved in their community if it builds on their intrinsic motivations. Asking people what they do to keep fit and stay healthy and what would make it easier for them to do those things helps them connect what they do with what they’d like to do.
Getting people to discuss how they currently keep fit helps them to form ideas about other ways they could stay healthy. It also helps them find out about initiatives in their area and perhaps most importantly, take away personal connections that they can build on outside the workshops.
Tips: Ask people
- What skills people want to learn and share
- What would make it easier for them to use technology
- How people want to make their neighbourhood a better place
- How people want to help each other
Design solutions that build on people’s motivations
When people want to help others, I identified five types of approaches they might take based on identifying their motivations for helping others:
- Supporters want to help out but aren’t necessarily comfortable with leading the way or standing out. They will walk your dog or help keep the neighbourhood clean and are vital cogs in any community activity.
- Growers lay the foundations for others to be able to help each other, however big or small. They will set up coops or community gardens. They come up with ideas and channel their energy into planning activities.
- Learners are the bridge between people, as they spend time listening to their motivations and spread the learning so supporters can feel empowered to be involved. They will be involved in skills exchanges. They will help you understand what’s going on in the community.
- Performers are too impatient to share learning and do not want to be responsible for organisation. They want to help now and they want others to know about it. They will take activities like bungee jumping off a cliff for charity. Give them the opportunity to be in the spotlight but stretch what they can do!
- Organisers take on the baton from the growers, provide the environment for the learners, but most importantly, they get the supporters to turn up and get on board. They will be facilitators or community organisers. Nurture them so they don’t burn out.
These methods are increasingly being used to help people research their own needs and solutions. From Social Spaces who use creative ways to help people map their assets to New Local Government Network who describe different types of future citizens to help produce policy recommendations.
Tips:
- Use the insights from finding out how people want to help each other and identify patterns
- Think about how you would involve the different types of people in helping you redesign a service
- Map out a participation ladder of how different user groups could move from receiving support to become more independent in meeting the needs themselves
Help people put themselves in other’s shoes
If we are to design technology solutions that start with people’s needs, the emphasis should be on empathy. That’s why I helped peoples think about what would make it easier for different groups to use technology, from those who’ve grown up with augmented reality to those who struggle with texting.
I turned these insights into design principles that students use to develop the technology solutions. Rather than specifying individual requirements, they provide a set of principles that ensure that users are front and centre of the people’ minds.
Finally, people need to put themselves in the shoes of potential investors of solutions they are designing. What better way to do this than to get “student consultants” to work with local groups to help them plan how they would turn their solution into a business model that’s viable in the market or in the community.
Tips:
- Use insights on how people want to use technology to create design principles that you can use to commission the development of online services
- Don’t just put yourself in your users’ shoes, help put them put themselves in other people’s shoes
Help people make the best use of their digital skills to design solutions for their community
As well as community groups, entrepreneurs and service users, I collaborated with hundreds of 500 young people from a range of disciplines — from business to computer science via design. Whether they’re storyboarding a user journey to describe their concept, using creative ways to help motivate people to change behaviour or prototyping concepts, what they produce is assessed as part of their respective qualifications and showcased on their CVs and in interviews.
You can see a methodology whereby the solutions put forward produce structured insights into how people want to use technology to help each other. Councils, businesses and community groups can use this technology to better meet the needs of potential customers that live on their doorstep.
Build trust from the start to be able to scale the solution
Through the approach, students from colleges and universities learn from each other through designing solutions to tackle local needs. An example of this is where we worked with them to develop a programme to help school students spot and tackle bullying amongst their social networks. Such was the trust between the groups, that the school pupils peer-reviewed the university students so that they could learn how to develop research projects themselves.
Tips:
- Understand what users would like to get out of your project involving them
- Help users develop the skills they want to take forward the solution they’ve helped develop
If public services are to meet the challenges of the digital era, there are clear benefits to collaborating with young people — helping create in the process the next generation of social designers.
