Applying strategic design as a holistic approach to investigate and address real world challenges

This paper discusses how design can be used strategically to provide a holistic approach for investigating and providing viable solutions for different types of real world problems, which range from helping organizations fulfil their goals right through to addressing social and environmental issues. Moreover, it will be described how design has evolved to become more proactive and strategic. The paper is based around three case studies that explore how design was employed strategically to tackle wicked problems in different contexts. In all cases, the problematic situations will be explained, followed by the investigation processes and proposed solutions. The three case studies will be critically analyzed and compared to extract common practices. The results confirm that design can be used strategically to address wicked problems. From the start, design techniques can be used to visualize and map out relationships of all key issues, which help turn “ill-defined” problems into well-focused questions. Design research also provides a useful framework for investigating problems, gaining insights, analyzing findings and integrating all key issues. Besides, the design thinking and process could be used to create viable solutions that not only address the main problems, but also take other issues into consideration, which make the outcomes more holistic.Keywords: strategic design, design thinking, problem solving process

Co-design for not-for-profit urganization

Co-design has potential to help community-based organizations deliver better services to their beneficiaries, since it encourages users to get involved in designing services that will be delivered to them. Good use of co-design could bring several benefits, e.g. ensuring that services match users’ needs. However, the extent of co-design knowledge among community-based organizations is currently unknown. Hence, this study aimed at investigating their current state of co-design knowledge in order to develop guidance to help them effectively co-design services with their beneficiaries. This project employed a mix-method approach including a survey, interviews, case studies, and a creative workshop. This paper will discuss results of case studies conducted with five organizations, which involved observations and interviews with key staff and users. The results revealed that the level of understanding of co-design among community-based organizations varied greatly. While most organizations have the right mindset for adopting co-design, since they are keen to listen to users’ ideas, only the minority actually involves users in designing services. The lack of awareness may be the main reason of the slow adoption of codesign. Thus, it is important to help them understand the value of co-design and how it can be used to suit their needs.</p

Enhancing service development and service delivery through co-design

Co-design has the potential to help voluntary organisations deliver better services, since it encourages users to co-create services that will be delivered to them. However, the extent of codesign practice in the voluntary sector is unknown. Thus, our research investigated the current state of knowledge of co-design in this sector. A mixed-methods approach, including an online survey and interviews, was employed. The results showed that levels of understanding of co-design among respondents varied greatly. While some participants have successfully applied co-design, others have not heard of it. Iterative prototyping, which is a central feature of most design approaches, was rarely applied by voluntary organisations when designing services. Where organisations were making use of designers, this tended to be in specialist domains, for example web design, but emerging disciplines such as service design were unfamiliar to most respondents. Lack of awareness and understanding may be a major reason for the slow adoption of this approach. </jats:p

Exploring co-design in the voluntary sector

Co-design is an approach to design that emphasises the creative contribution that can be made by potential users, clients and other stakeholders in developing products, systems or services. Co-design is widely used in the commercial sector to accelerate user acceptance and reduce product/service failure. Co-design is also becoming widespread in the public sector as a way of engaging citizens in design exploration. However, little is known about the capability of voluntary sector organisations, particularly small and medium sized organisations to undertake co-design activities; and resources that describe how to implement co-design tend to be oriented towards the needs and the context of larger commercial organisations. This paper presents findings from an ongoing investigation into co-design capability in small-and-medium-sized third sector organisations in the UK. The investigation combines an on-line survey, in-depth case studies and interviews

Design and Creative Methods as a Practice of Liminality in Community-Academic Research Projects

This paper aims to explore the types of spaces and experiences that are created by design and creative practices. More specifically, it focuses on how design and creative practices can engender transformations in the mindset, knowledge, emotions and social relations of people who participate in such practices. To do this, the paper investigates the concepts of liminality and liminal spaces, and the relationships between design/creative methods and liminal spaces using insights from four case studies. The results reveal that design and creative practices may create liminal spaces in many ways, such as neutralizing the working environments, encouraging people to experiment with new ideas and helping them express themselves more freely

On the role of digital consultation tools in public space design: a case study

Organizations increasingly rely on digital tools, such as social media, to harvest public opinion on a variety of issues ranging from brand reputations to political debates. One area in which digital tools have great potential is in consultation on design of public spaces. Public organizations are expected to consult with users of a public space before, during and after occupancy. Digital tools could increase the effectiveness of this consultation because: (i) they are available 24 h and do not rely on the presence of researchers and (ii) data are collected and analysed using automated methods, allowing faster decision-making. Despite these potential advantages, little is understood about how digital and non-digital consultations compare in practice. This paper reports on a live trial with a prototype digital consultation tool called VoiceYourView, which was co-designed with stakeholders and used to canvass opinion on the refurbishment of a major metropolitan library. Over 6 weeks, we used a variety of methods to collect comment from 600 users. VoiceYourView solicits opinion in unprompted form—it does not ask specific questions as in a survey—so users can say anything they like at any time. VoiceYourView carries out real-time analysis of data collected and uses public display screens to summarize comments-to-date in situ. Our research methods focused on observational studies conducted ‘in the wild’: this allowed us to capture user interactions with VoiceYourView in a realistic setting. Our findings indicate that VoiceYourView encouraged more positive feedback than non-digital methods. We also find that positive comments in general contain less actionable information than negative comments, and unprompted comments have similar actionable content to prompted comments. We suggest that this pattern in soliciting more (traditionally difficult to obtain) positive comments with VoiceYourView versus traditional survey methods implies that digital consultation tools of this type can complement existing channels

Better Service Design for Greater Civic Engagement

Generally, people have a good understanding of their local areas. Hence, encouraging them to share this tacit knowledge with local authorities, urban designers and city planners could help improve the quality of public space design significantly. However, persuading people to share their concerns/ideas about their areas, especially through a digital platform, presents a real challenge. One of the main barriers is a lack of trust in the public feedback system. Thus, this research investigates relationships between online trust and service design in order to provide a guideline on how to design the feedback system that addresses users’ practical and emotional requirements. A mixed-methods approach was employed to identify key factors affecting online trust and their implications on service design. Six key factors affecting online trust were identified and combined to form a basis for service design guidelines. The outcomes show that service design can support all components required to build trust.The authors acknowledge the support of the RCUK voiceYourview project EP/H007237/