Blog

July 13, 2011

Aunty & Uncle social experiment launched

Posted on by admin in Blogroll
1 comment

Last month here at thinkpublic we launched a new social experiment, Aunty & Uncle. It’s still days for the service and we’ve written this blog as we’d really like to get your thoughts on where we should take Aunty & Uncle next.

Aunty & Uncle is a new service that aims to give people the opportunity to meet and form family-like relationships in their local area.

We have developed the service based on insights into loneliness in young and old gained through our social research. We believe many people living or working in cities often find themselves at a distance from traditional family relationships and could benefit from socialising with people outside of their own age group.

Some stats

Half of all older people – about five million – consider the television their main form of company (Age UK survey, December 2009)

  • The percentage of households occupied by one person more than doubled from 6% in 1972 to 12% in 2008 (Mental Health Foundation, The Lonely Society?, 2010)
  • One in ten of us feels lonely often (Mental Health Foundation, The Lonely Society?, 2010)

How can you connect with someone who is older and wiser to get general advice over a cup of tea? How do you meet the neighbour who can offer practical day-to-day help? How can you find the safety, warmth and support that family generally represents when you live far away from other members of your family?

While these relationships might develop naturally from everyday situations, we believe Aunty & Uncle can give the everyday a helping hand by hosting casual and fun events that bring people together.

Aunty & Uncle is like a dating service but for ‘family members’. It is like a mentoring programme but flexible and self-managed. It is like an intergenerational befriending scheme but organic and reciprocal.

We attracted a small group of people to our first matchmaking night last month. This provided a valuable opportunity to talk about what we would like to get out of a service like Aunty and Uncle and how it should work.

Over a few glasses of wine we talked about the nature of the relationships we are trying to foster and how this affects how Aunty & Uncle should be run. We reflected on the fact that family-like relationships cannot be created artificially: not only they take time to nurture, but also there is no explicit need for them.

We also talked about who the service should be aimed at. What kind of people would most benefit from it and how to bring them on board? Is it young professionals looking for new ways to socialise after work, or is it stay-at-home mums, who might want to enjoy the company of their retired neighbour?

The role of convenience was also discussed. How we can make Aunt & Uncle as convenient as possible? Shall we push forward the matchmaking agenda? Or shall we go for a looser format, where we simply facilitate casual social activities that resonate with people of all ages?

What do you think?

Deborah and Fan

June 24, 2011

Inspiring Eats #2 – Kristina Klushkova, Makerhood

Posted on by admin in Blogroll,Collaboration,community,craft,inspiring,inspiring eats,lunch,making,web 2.0
Post a comment

Kristina from Makerhood (far right) with Alice (left) and Fan (middle)

I have set been arranging for people to join us for lunch to speak to us about the interesting, inspiring and fun work they are  doing. As a terrible blogger I hadn’t documented the first one we held a week or so ago…Sorry.

The week before last we had a visit from Alison Thomson. Alison is currently working in the NHS as a designer on the outpatient experience. Alison talked to us about the different ways she had worked with patients and staff, including using food as a visualisation tool.

It was also really interesting to talk with Alison about the similarities and differences between scientific and design research approaches. Alison talked about how in science to prove a research theory another scientist must go through the same process and reach the same outcome and what designers can learn from this rigorous approach.

On Friday we met Kristina Klushkova . Kristina’s day job is working at MySociety but she came to talk to us about her after hours project Makerhood.

Makerhood is an initiative to promote local makers and connect them with people in their neighbourhoods who wish to buy local goods. We believe Makerhood can benefit our communities, economies and environment. It’s also a great way to get hold of cool, unique things. Makerhood is a non-profit initiative in support of makers, sustainable local economies, creativity and skills. They are currently building a website to enable people to buy products made in their neighbourhoods.

I had been really inspired by Makerhood since I saw this blog on their site over Christmas and have been trying to meet up with Kristina for a while. It was great of her to spare some time to share the project with the rest of us.

Some of the things we talked about were:

1. Makerhood is an online marketplace – trying to be a “marketplace” in a traditional sense. It isn’t simply a place  to buy things. It hopes to foster communication, community, conversations and relationships in the real world, in the same way a physical bustling market place does.

2. Kristina had the idea for Makerhood after looking for locally made products in her area and finding there was no online resource selling locally made products. Her vision and desire to make this happen led her to connect with like-minded individuals and that collective drive and enthusiasm has made the project possible.

3. Balancing the development of an online presence with meetings, events and conversations in the real world has been key to the project’s development. Meeting informally in pubs and cafes keeps people interested and involved, and has lead to friendships based on place.

4. The organic nature the project has allowed for many different people to get involved. This involvement goes far beyond traditional consultation and engagement; people are invited to help shape the project’s development and direction and collectively make decisions despite having a loosely structured  network.

There are many other interesting things about the project – so check it out here.

Kristina’s vision, passion, new ways of working, making and doing was massively inspiring. And shes lovely.

The project could go in all kinds of directions and we are interested and excited to see how it develops.

June 20, 2011

thinkpublic at Interactivism hack event

Posted on by admin in Collaboration,Design,Innovation,events,internet,prototyping,service design,service improvement,technology,web 2.0
1 comment

The Spotted team wins the Gransnet prize! (left-Right): Lucy (Gransnet), Jo, Makayla, Juan, Francis, Alison (Go Genie), Denise (Enabled by Design)

I’m still buzzing after a great couple of days at the FutureGov/Google Interactivism hack event, which Joe and I took part in.

Interactivism brought together the best student developers, Googlers, designers and other social innovators worked in crack teams to hack a better web that overcomes the barriers that stand in the way of older people accessing the web.

Also present at the event were members of Gransnet, a social networking site for the UK’s 14 million grandparents, who would ultimately judge the quality of the solutions developed by each of the teams.

The weekend was a pretty focused affair, with speaker slots kept to a minimum. Our favourite speaker was YouTube sensation Peter Oakley (AKA The Internet Granddad), who wowed the crowed with a light and funny talk about the difference the Internet has made to his life.

Things kicked off in earnest with lightning pitches from people who had submitted project ideas ahead of the event. I headed off to help Denise Stephen of Enabled by Design and Alison Smith of Go Genie develop a mobile app to help promote inclusive design, while Joe joined Kate Monaghan’s team looking at the problem of missed hospital appointments.

Once in our teams, we worked together to develop and test our ideas. Within my team I facilitated group working and shared my knowledge of accessibility to ensure everyone could use our mobile app. Joe offered his design expertise developing a system to alert patients about late-running hospital appointments.

After much hard work, especially from the software developers and Googlers (shout out to Juan from Google for all his work on my project!), the time came to present our solutions to the group. Nearly all groups were able to showcase working technology, and one group even added an Am Dram flourish for good measure.

Two winning projects were selected from the ten who presented. The main prize went to EZPZ, who developed an easy to use web browser for older people. I am pleased to say my team also won a prize. We won the Gransnet prize for the project they felt older people were most likely to use.  You can see from the picture below how happy we were to win.

Besides basking in my team’s victory (naturally), I’ve also been thinking about what events such as Interactivism ultimately accomplish. For me, the primary benefit of them is to provide a fun way to connect with people from different backgrounds and professions with a shared interest in making a positive difference. Connecting in this way provides the impetus for people to work together after the event is over to make a lasting difference.

Moving forward, I wish to use the buzz from Interactivism to power my projects for thinkpublic. I also hope to have the chance to contribute to the future development of the Spotted mobile app, which I think could make an important contribution to promoting inclusive design.

Thanks to everyone at FutureGov, Google and Gransnet for delivering a fantastic event.

Google is also encouraging applications to its Interactivism Award. Students have the chance to win £1,500 to help them develop other great ideas they have for using software to make their community a better place. For more information, click here.

You can find out more about the Interactivism hack event at the following places:

Twitter – #interactivism

FutureGov website (event write-up to follow)

Flckr – Interactivism group

June 10, 2011

There’s a Fire in the Mountain

Posted on by admin in Uncategorised
Post a comment

I have just returned from a week in a field in Wales, helping with the creation of a beautiful thing that was the Fire in the Mountain folk festival.

Fire in the Mountain was borne from a collaboration between folksters  Midnight Special, Magpies Nest, Cut a Shine, Liverpool’s Loose Moose, and inspiring land-owner and artist Marianne. Together we transformed an out-of-use farm not far from Aberystwyth into a hot bed of music-making, life-inspiring, MAGIC spreading mayhem, featuring amazing international folk bands, workshops, fine local food, and plentiful bunting. Strive for Happiness helped, of course, with their ingenious Happiness Making Machine.

Just a few months ago the farm was nowt but empty fields, and barns gathering random objects and dust. What happened last weekend was testimony to the power of people uniting forces under a shared vision, and just doing something. Thanks to all that came and helped spread the good vibes. Keep ‘em with you… and come back next year!

May 25, 2011

Visual Camp – Meet up at Royal Festival Hall

Posted on by admin in Collaboration,Events,Government,art,co-design,policy,things we like,visual camp,visualcamp,visualisation,visualising
Post a comment

As I previously blogged about, Visual Camp kicked off a few weeks ago with the first event. Visual Camp was an event to bring together policymakers with designers/illustrators/creatives to work out how visuals could help communicate policies and to explore how visualisation can be used in policy development. It aimed to explore how those good at using visuals could work with public services and civil society to communicate policies/issues.

The event was really fun and fast paced and we all learnt a lot about more about how policy people and designers can work together and mutually benefit one another’s work. It also sparked some creative ideas based on linking the two up. Follow #visualcamp on twitter to see some of them.

The event was run as a prototype for further work, and we learnt more about how future events could be structured and facilitated in order to get the most out of them for everyone involved. We want to bring people back together for an informal evening to carry on the conversation.

Therefore you are invited to join us at Royal Festival Hall (5th Floor) on the 16th of June between 5-7pm  for an informal Visual Camp meet-up, where we will carry on the conversations started Visual Camp and hopefully start some new ones!

New to the conversation? You don’t have to have attended visual camp to come along, please join in if the above interests you.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Illustration by Emily Wilkinson – look out for it at RFH

May 20, 2011

Creative Responses to the Japanese Earthquake

Posted on by Alice Osborne in Design,Innovation
Post a comment

In this months Creative Review, Deborah has contributed to an interesting article on the creative response to the Japanese earthquake:

“Deborah Szebeko of London-based social design agency, thinkpublic, also believes that in times of disaster, designers need to have more of an active involvement with aid and relief efforts taking place.

“Designers need to work with the charities or governments trying to provide information and design the most suitable forms to reach people where they are,” she says. “Government information often gets lost in complex language that isn’t easy to understand. But how could you design to direct people to safety, or to reconnect people who have lost each other? These are the design briefs that can really help address the anxiety people face and reassure them in a time of crisis. This means thinking beyond traditional design briefs and becoming social designers, digging out of the information to make sure it reaches the people that need it.”

May 19, 2011

Sounds of rain

Posted on by Alice Osborne in Collaboration,Interactive,art
Post a comment

This super lovely video is of a sound installation by sound artist Zimoun and Architect Hannes Zweifel. It’s made out of small pieces of wire attached to DC motors on large cardboard structures that create a beautiful rain tapping sound.

www.hanneszweifel.ch
www.zimoun.ch

May 4, 2011

A trip to Design4Context Zurich, Design, research and philosophy

Posted on by admin in Collaboration,Design,Events,co-design
Post a comment

Last week I was invited to Design4Context in Zurich to talk about co-design, collaboration, participation and social design projects as part of a three day seminar being held at the institute there.

Design4context brings together experienced practicing designers, artists and creative’s from around the world to reflect on emerging design practice.They are looking at ways in which the design process can be used as a research methodology, as well as taking a critical/ theoretical and philosophical approach to design. It was set up by Ruedi Baur and Clemens Bellut (a philosopher).

The morning was really challenging and the discussion theoretical and provocative about the role of design in social projects, as well as the role of the designers in co- design/ participatory projects. There was some unease/ discomfort amongst some in the group as to the designer’s role in these types of projects, and the lack of ownership over any “designs”.We talked about co- design taking two paths. One in which it is used as a way to bring people into the design process and allow participation, and another definition where design is used as a method to engage people in conversations/ debate and discussion over sensitive or complex topics.

What was also fascinating was to hear opinions and thoughts on design from a philosophical perspective, and to see how that had come together with design education to explore deeply the role of design. Clemens talked about wanted to explore how visualisation can be used as a communication method completely in its own right and also how visual thinking was not just a way of thinking but had an ability to allow people to think in a completely new way that maybe hasn’t been explored to its full potential. They are also focused on trying to redefine the role of design research – and to explore what design research offers in its own right as an alternate approach to more scientific or psychological research.

The afternoon was a bit more practically focused. I ran a small workshop using some creative tools to think about models for education, and then in the evening was then on a panel with Christian from www.anschlaege.de/ to talk further about social design projects, and compare the work we have been doing at thinkpublic and the work those guys are doing in Germany.

It was really fascinating seeing the work they had been doing, and although the tone was slightly different the values of the work were extremely similar. There was huge crossover in the approaches being taken and what we thought was important when conducting social projects. We discussed that there wasn’t anything inherently “good” about the design methods or co-design, but that why you were involved in the projects you are doing is what’s important.We both talked a lot about respect and trust being vitally important to us, and also for successful projects. We also both had referred to the importance of creating spaces where people can be free to think differently and not get permission. We also both said that ownership needs to not be something that the designer has, but that the challenge is how you design your exit from projects, so others take ownership of the projects.

Being able to reflect and share ideas and experiences was useful and helped me focus a lot of my thoughts as well as challenge them.

It was an exhilarating and exiting few days and great to meet so many great people doing interesting work. I learnt a lot, and hope to keep up the relationships.

Visual Camp

Posted on by admin in Collaboration,Design,Engagement,Events,Government,co-design,friends,visualising
Post a comment

On May 10th some of us at thinkpublic are going to be part of Visualcamp. The event aims to bring together policymakers and designers/creatives to explore how visuals could be used to help communicate often complex issues and policies to a wide audience.Visualisation is something that we use an awful lot in our work here at thinkpublic, and isn’t necessarily about shiny, highly finished communications being unveiled. Instead, we use visualisation more as as a catalyst to bring people together around a particular issue or set of issues . It is an extension of good conversations and an extremely powerful way to engage and encourage wider participation because:1. Visualisation helps make complex services/systems/ideas understandable.2. Quickly generating visuals helps participants talk through and explore ideas together.3. Visualising experiences and stories is an amazingly powerful way to begin to see patterns and connections between often abstract and conflicting ideas.4. Visualisation can help clearly communicate to the public why decisions were taken, promoting greater understanding.The team at thinkpublic and I are chuffed to be involved in this great event and to have have the chance to work with some people we really respect. We hope it will spark more conversations and future events on visualisation. It would be great to get as many  people as possible along to the event, so if you are a sculptor, artist, doodler, designer, or a policy maker interested in how visuals can improve how you work, please be sure to sign up. See you at visual camp.

April 13, 2011

Happiness and Gratitude

Posted on by Ella Britton in Innovation,Uncategorised,collaboration,community,creative thinking,events,friends,people we like
Post a comment

Yesterday Alice and I got involved in the Action For Happiness launch event. An event which saw lots of interesting and interested people coming together to share ideas for how we can build a happier society.

The event brought a lot of different yet like mind people together to talk seriously about the role of happiness and well-being in the world. It was not about any one person or organisation thinking they know the answer, instead creating a movement that encourages everyone to take responsibility and take action.

Alice and I, as part of The Strive For Happiness, designed a Thank You Letter Box, and encouraged everyone to create their letters of thanks. It was a real privilege to listen to people think through who and what made them grateful.

We would like more people to write thank you letters. It is important. You should try it.

« Previous Page - Next Page »