ThinkPlace - Scaled systemic change

Dream of a better New Zealand society? Let's make it happen

Sashi Surendran — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 01:42:47 +0000

New Zealand

Dream of a better New Zealand society? Let's make it happen

Topics

Our world is complex, and change is hard… but not impossible.

The age of IoT, Big Data, Artificial intelligence, Robotics, Sharing Economy, etc otherwise known as Industry 4.0 is real and happening across our country in industries and our private lives.

Do you want to be part of making the change you want to see in our society? Do you want to work with us to envision Aotearoa New Zealand Society 5.0 - more equitable, sustainable and productive? Together, we can continue to evolve and build our collective wellbeing.

Japan and several other countries are already thinking about these very questions. As a society, we can ‘drift’ into this future and it will happen to us or we can be very intentional and navigate to it. In an increasingly more connected age of technology, we can become even more disconnected or we can do something about it.

To work on this challenge, ThinkPlace New Zealand is standing up a Society 5.0 design coalition. Together we will realise a vision of Society 5.0 where we resolve social challenges by incorporating the innovations of Industry 4.0 into the fabric of our social life.

Who could be in the coalition?

A group of 20 likeminded people with a mandate for leading change from 10 organisations who want more for this country and all of its people. A group who are willing to invest a small budget and some time to join us to seek an answer to the question we have posed.

Are you someone who cares about our social support for vulnerable people?

Are you someone who cares about our environment and planet?

Are you someone who cares about the wellness and health of our people?

Are you hungry for greater momentum?

Are you building industry 4.0 and also want bigger outcomes for this country?

How we will do this?

The work is a collaborative system design dropping out organisation specific initiatives that you can take into your own organisation’s strategic planning.

At ThinkPlace, we are a passionate group of subject matter experts in the areas of complex systems, human lived experiences and behaviour, organisation strategy and convening collaborative conversations.

The work will be informed by

A clear view of the current system and its flaws
A large-scale deep dive research project with New Zealanders
Merging qualitative and quantitative insights along the views of a number of subject matter experts across complex systems, human insight and behaviour change, organisation strategy and Industry 4.0.

What are the outcomes?

You will get a grasp of our society as a complex system and the possible initiatives you could explore to achieve your organisation’s outcomes and better equity, productivity and sustainability in Aotearoa Society 5.0.

Collectively, you along with other partners in the coalition will be able to see each other’s initiatives, minimising duplication and maximising collaboration so that we can use this country’s scarce resources more effectively and efficiently.

As current (and future) leaders of this country, you will get a holistic view of bi-partisan pathways to a better future.

Why work with us?

We don’t just bring complexity to the table but embrace it to have breakthrough conversations, surfacing what is and what could be. Our expertise lies in understanding people’s behaviour and needs, navigating areas of uncertainty.

Whether it’s world leading behaviour change to save lives, turning around a historically disadvantaged community or a new paradigm for environmental stewardship in NZ, we build partnership, confidence and hope by creating action pathways.

If you need to make your case with your organisation leaders, start the conversation today with a downloadable pdf below.

aotearoa_society_5.0_design_coalition.pdf

The investment is $40,000 per organisation and eight days in coalition working sessions spread across six months.

I’m leading this work and will be joined by three of my senior colleagues.

Get in touch with me if you want more info or to reserve two seats at the table.

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Five steps to designing a successful business model

Daniel Silkstone — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 01:05:21 +0000

Five steps to designing a successful business model

Australia

At ThinkPlace we design change. New services. Organisational transformations. New business models.

And in each case there’s a common thread – a binding philosophy. We design in collaboration with the people who will be impacted.

That’s how we create change that lasts.

I’ve been thinking about that recently as we’ve been working with a large multinational company to create a new business model. So often business models are born in the boardroom; but whenever possible they should be born on the ground.

What do I mean by that? In this case, the work was for a company. It could, just as easily, be for a government department in Canberra or an NGO in Washington DC.

Working with the large food company, we were trying to build a new business model within an existing company structure. We wanted to get a different kind of product into the market in a different kind of way. A different way of marketing that product. A different way of distributing it. A radically different way of selling it.

We wanted to bypass the company’s traditional ways of reaching customers. Our task was to make the product nutritious, aspirational, accessible and affordable.

We saw an opportunity to build a new salesforce, hiring women from low income areas to sell the product to their neighbours and peers. If we could make it work this would result in a double-benefit: Better uptake for the product and a new source of livelihood for women in very low income communities.

This challenged our client to work differently, testing assumptions with people before the point where we had arrived at a perfectly thought through solution. It hasn’t been a smooth process but it has been hugely positive. So what were the ingredients of our successful business model design?

1. FIND A SPONSOR – AND THE RIGHT ONE

In this project we were fortunate to get a senior company executive on board very early. Not only did he care about the ‘what’ of the project, he cared deeply about the ‘why’. Finding and enlisting this person creates multiple positives. It meant that within the company the project had a champion, who has invested in promoting the value of the change to his peers at the top level.

His endorsement also sent a strong message to people throughout the entire organisation. For us, as designers, it provided the confidence to know that the project had strong internal backing. As consultants we should never just assume that because we are hired to complete a project or effect a change, that the organisation hosting us is on board with what we are doing or how we’re working. It’s up to us to help create the conditions that give us license to operate effectively.

2. BREAK FREE OF THE BOARDROOM

A new business model, like any other change, should be prototyped and tested. If you conceive how you want it to operate without talking to people on the ground there’s a good chance you’ll be looking at a failed implementation.

In this case, we wanted to try some ideas and put them out into the world. We wanted to test them with users to see whether they worked. There’s a leap of faith required here. For the company we were partnering with, and for many companies, there can be a nervousness about failing in front of users. But ‘failing forward’ (testing something, identifying why it didn’t work, tweaking it and then testing again) is the essence of good human-centred design. And guess what? When we tested our ideas, some of them didn’t work very well. That’s how we ended up with the business model that’s more likely to work.

3. COMMIT TO HUMILITY

As designers, it’s important that we come in knowing that there is plenty of expertise around us. We don’t know everything. Not all of our ideas will be better than other people’s and we need to be prepared to acknowledge that. I find that when you come in with this attitude you often see it reflected back. Mutual humility and openness breeds a culture in which experimentation and innovation are enabled.

In this case, the company had previously run a pilot project selling and distributing the same product we were looking at. We wanted to try some different approaches but were upfront about saying that testing would show us if our ideas were worth developing and scaling up. It turned out the new way of doing things outperformed the previous trial.

4. TAKE A TEAM APPROACH

Our preference is always to form a core design team for a project like this and to make sure there is good representation from the client within that team. When we’re doing discovery (talking with users about how they might experience products or services) voices from the client organisation are often part of the process. When we are coming up with prototype interventions and testing them on the ground those same team members are right there with us.

This means the client sees first-hand what works and what doesn’t. They are invested in the outcome because it is THEIR outcome. Taking this approach generates buy-in far beyond what you can secure by returning from your testing phase and briefing a project team on what happened while you were away from their gaze. Once again, it’s about breaking out of the boardroom.

5. INTELLECTUAL GENEROSITY HELPS

We’re proud of our methods. Time and again, we have seen them work to successfully design policy, strategy, catalyse organisational transformation and design compelling services and experiences. But they aren’t magic and they aren’t a secret we keep from our clients. For a core design team to work well there’s a capability exchange that needs to happen subtly (and sometimes overtly). We welcome the client and our partners into the design team, knowing they bring subject matter expertise and a sponsoring voice (in our four voices model we call this the voice of intent). But for that team to function at its highest level we also need to generously share ideas, mindsets and tools behind our version of human-centred design in complex systems. When we do this well the impact can be significant.

Seeing these methods at work underscores how much more effective they can be in creating lasting, positive change. Every ThinkPlace designer is (to a small extent) a teacher also. But we must always do it from a position of mutual respect.

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Reframing ageing for a people-centred aged-care system

Daniel Silkstone — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 05:37:32 +0000

Reframing ageing for a people-centred aged-care system

Australia

It is an eye-opening statistic that makes clear the extent to which many communities are set for a demographic change that cannot be ignored.

One in three children born in the West today will live to be 100.

And by 2065 this number is projected to rise to one in two.

The number of older people in our communities is increasing each year. For many, this represents a problem that must be solved – the demographic time bomb that we hear about so often in the daily headlines.

What's more, caring for the older people in our midst is already a responsibility that we are, at times, failing to meet as societies. In Australia, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety will soon report back its initial findings. Among them are expected to be shocking examples where older people and their interests have been failed by the system that is supposed to care for and protect them.

It doesn't have to be this way.

By reframing an older population as an opportunity rather than a burden and by bringing the power of human collaboration and creativity to this challenge, we can not only change the way we think about ageing but improve the experience that older people have in the systems we create and maintain to support them.

That’s why ThinkPlace drew together experts, stakeholders and design practitioners from across the aged-care sector recently for a day-long symposium about the 100-year life and the possibilities it opens up.

Video of 100 Year Life | Lab4Living | ThinkPlace

Jointly organised with the University of Canberra's Dr Fanke Peng, the event featured Dr Claire Craig from the UK’s Lab4Living and was co-ordinated by ThinkPlace Healthy Societies Lead Cybelle Ledez and Senior Designer Susan Atkinson.

The day began with a working breakfast for senior leaders across the sector. It then featured an extended workshop for users, carers, workers and other stakeholders across the system, looking at the hundred-year life and the opportunities it presents. The final part of the symposium was a design session in which participants grappled with how to begin forming the collaborations to coalesce around ideas and kickstart the process of making new system interventions.

Insights generated over the course of the three events will drive a special report into aged care in Australia, being prepared by ThinkPlace. They also give some insight into how stakeholders across the sector will have a role to play in responding positively and constructively to the new playing field that emerges as a result of the commission’s inquiries.

At ThinkPlace we know that the best way to achieve meaningful reform is through co-design and human-centred methods - Cybelle Ledez.

“The role for design and designers here begins with their convening power," Cybelle ledez says. "That means identifying the different actors who need to be part of a strategic discussion, gathering them together and using the skills and tools of the ThinkPlace Design System to cut through entrenched differences and arrive at shared intent.

In this one day of activities we saw just how powerful and productive that approach can be.”

This kind of radical collaborations is what’s needed to create change that cuts through. It's also typical of how ThinkPlace tackles complex problems all over the world.

And, perhaps most singificantly, it represents a roadmap for how stakeholders can work together to co-create an aged-care system that values older people, the experiences that they have and the contribution they can continue to make to shared value for all.

In this context, the work of Dr Claire Craig and her team at Lab4Living in the UK is both inspiring and instructive.

Awarded a British Government grant of £4 million in 2019 to apply design-led practices to the 100-year life and the future home, Lab4Living is at the forefront of a global conversation about reframing ageing.

“For some time we’ve been stuck on a three-stage model of what ageing is,” Craig says.

“With the hundred-year life we are looking at a multi-stage conceptualisation.”

This means the traditional model of education, followed by work and then retirement is replaced by a much longer timeline featuring multiple opportunities for education, retraining, career breaks and career changes.

Design methods, particularly around ways of engaging people, can create very different conversations. We can build new understanding from different people’s perspectives and that is massively important - Dr Claire Craig

Four big themes emerged out of the symposium.

1. The need for people-centred design

People are central to the aged-care system. Users, carers and employees within the system want to be a key part of designing a better future. They are clear that they want the design of the future system to be done with them, not to them. Undertaking a design approach that brings people to the centre means you can co-create potential solutions that are meaningful for the end user and iterate with them to ensure it creates value for all involved.

2. The need to see ageing and older people as an opportunity not a burden

Co-design means making something alongside the people who will use it and who will be affected by it. That means incorporating the voice and interests of older people in the design process. When we do that we start to see the enormous contribution these people can continue to make (to both reframing the system and to the broader community itself). We can posit futures in which aged-care facilities host other parts of the broader community for activities and facilities such as exercise and entertainment. Why can’t aged-care facilities share space with universities? Or child care centres? How can the life experience of older people be a learning asset for younger generations? The possibilities are endless.

3. The need for collaboration within the sector

Within the aged care sector there are multiple actors, with divergent – sometimes even competing – interests and objectives. From government and other regulatory bodies to interest groups, private operators, not-for-profits and healthcare practitioners. Design thinking and design methods are an effective way to bring these people together and break the deadlock of business as usual. By exploring user-centred experiences and then making something together, in the room, new possibilities and collaborations can start to form.

4. The need for cross-sectoral collaboration

Creating a better aged-care system is a challenge that necessarily intersects with other systems. It is related to housing, to product design, to the health system and to social security and financial systems like superannuation. Designing for change means bringing all of these interests (and more) together in ways that are generative and constructive.

Want to talk to us about how our approach can help your organisation? Contact healthysocieties [at] thinkplace.com.au

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Improving testing for Malaria in Guyana

Daniel Silkstone — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 05:43:33 +0000

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Improving testing for Malaria in Guyana

Service

Scaled systemic changeExperience & Behavioural DesignInclusive Co-design & EngagementResearch & insights

People

Sector

Healthy Societies

While malaria remains endemic in the country, Guyana has made significant gains in the fight against the disease.

But despite this progress, 93% of all new cases of Malaria are found in just four of the country’s regions: 1, 7, 8, and, to a lesser extent, region 9.

What these regions have in common is a high concentration of mining, logging and Amerindian communities in remote areas of the Guyanese hinterlands.

THE CHALLENGE

In order to increase access to malaria testing and treatment services in the most affected regions, the Guyanese Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) are working together to introduce rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) and treatment for malaria into mining camps and the surrounding communities.

OUR RESPONSE

As part of the USAID-funded Breakthrough ACTION consortium, ThinkPlace was engaged to lead a human-centred approach to deeply understanding the motivations and behaviours of these communities, and to ultimately develop interventions that improve access to malaria services that can be implemented at scale.

A collaborative Breakthrough ACTION design team consisting of ThinkPlace designers, practitioners from Johns Hopkins University Centre for Communication Programs (JHU CCP), local MoPH officers and regional Vector Control officers conducted a total of 108 interviews across 14 locations in two endemic regions of Guyana.

HOW WE DID IT

From the initial discovery phase, eleven insights were identified that would inform the development of multiple intervention ideas and prototypes. It was found that the malaria parasite was deeply misunderstood for a variety of reasons, and this had a significant effect on care seeking and treatment adherence behaviours.

Through several days of intense co-design workshops, the design team worked with representatives from a range of local organisations to generate 792 raw ideas and refine these into eight emergent concepts to be prototyped.

An iterative ‘Design and Test’ process allowed the design team to develop and sharpen these concepts based on feedback from the communities visited during the discovery phase. Ultimately five interventions were recommended to the MoPH, ranging from comprehensive and targeted communication campaigns, to job aids for volunteer testers, to product-based adherence initiatives.

THE IMPACT

ThinkPlace has assisted in the rollout of high-fidelity pilots of these interventions in specific communities throughout Regions 7 and 8.

Based on the deep learnings from the discovery phase, the interventions currently being piloted cut across all stages of a community member’s experience with malaria and interacting with the health system: from building awareness the need for testing and treatment, to improving access to services, to becoming advocates and spreading accurate information to their peers.

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Researching water storage in Jamaica to prevent mosquito-borne illness

Daniel Silkstone — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 05:21:55 +0000

Work

Researching water storage in Jamaica to prevent mosquito-borne illness

Service

Scaled systemic changeInclusive Co-design & EngagementResearch & insights

People

Sector

Healthy Societies

Forty-five and fifty-five gallon drums are ubiquitous with Jamaican culture, generally used for storing household water.

In many fringe-urban and rural homes, this is the primary source of water, while in urban homes water is kept in drums “just in case” - although water supply is often much more reliable.

But these drums make for ideal breeding sites for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the primary transmitter of Zika, Dengue and Chikungunya viruses. This typically-Jamaican cultural practice is contributing to the transmission of diseases that could be preventable with some behavioural change.

Covering water sources is often promoted as a simple solution to preventing mosquito breeding, however many challenges remain in consistently achieving effective covering.

While the Jamaican Ministry of Health (MoH) Vector Control Unit has identified water drums as one of the most proliferous sources of mosquitoes on the island, there is a strong need to understand the full extent of the environmental, structural and behavioural challenges related to water storage.

THE CHALLENGE

To change behaviour around water storage it is important to know how that behaviour functions and why.

The MoH tasked ThinkPlace, alongside Johns Hopkins University Centre for Communication Programs (JHU CCP) as part of the Breakthrough ACTION consortium, with undertaking a human-centred design approach to uncover rich insights around the use of water storage drums and around water storage behaviours more generally in areas of Jamaica with inconsistent access to piped water.

The ultimate goal? To design and test interventions that could be implemented by the MoH to improve water storage practices throughout Jamaica, diminishing ideal breeding sites for the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

Although much research has been conducted on water storage and mosquito breeding sites, the human-centred approach is novel in the Jamaican context as it allows for solutions to be developed iteratively with community members, rather than developing solutions in isolation for them, which has been the traditional practice to date.

OUR RESPONSE

The discovery research was led by ThinkPlace and also involved a team from CCP and was assisted by local researchers. It uncovered, among other crucial insights, that many misconceptions exist about how mosquitoes breed and why people cover some water containers and not others, as well as deeply-rooted social norms around water storage.

This new understanding of the behavioural challenges surrounding water storage pointed the team towards a range of opportunities for intervention.

HOW WE DID IT

Following a collaborative ‘Imagine’ workshop with key stakeholders from the MoH and Vector Control Services to generate, develop and refine ideas, eight concepts emerged that were tested in-situ with both urban and peri-urban communities surrounding Kingston.

Through this iterative testing process, it was found that some of the ideas were desirable by community members but not feasible, and experimentation with these concepts was discontinued.

Ultimately, four interventions emerged as having the most potential to create sustained behavioural change around water storage practices: a complete revision of the vector control workflow, a multi-channel communication program, a drum exchange program, and a group of structural and product-based solutions.

THE IMPACT

The MoH was provided with comprehensive recommendations and implementation plans for the four interventions, along with briefs for contracting creative agencies to tackle the communication program and product design challenges that remained.

Feedback from the MoH’s involvement throughout the project was very positive.

You have given us much to work with, not just with the solution but with the methodology used and your approach. It was great. A job very well done.

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World-leading behaviour change to save lives

Daniel Silkstone — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 02:25:12 +0000

Work

World-leading behaviour change to save lives

Service

Scaled systemic changeExperience & Behavioural DesignMeasuring ImpactResearch & insights

People

Sector

Healthy Societies

Every day, around the world, people die from preventable illnesses.

How many lives could be saved by working with them to change their behaviour?

Whether it is sleeping under mosquito nets in malaria-ravaged communities, storing drinking water safely in regions prone to Zika virus or using self-testing kits in places with high HIV rates, attempts to change harmful human behaviours into helpful ones have proven stubbornly difficult.

That’s where Breakthrough ACTION comes in.

WHAT IS BREAKTHROUGH ACTION?

Breakthrough ACTION is a 5-year, $300 million mission to address those challenges using a world-first alliance of human-centred design, strategic communication, behavioural economics, marketing science, digital health and community mobilisation and engagement.

It is the flagship social and behaviour change program for the world’s largest public funder of international development, USAID. And it’s a hugely-ambitious initiative that spans 25 countries across the globe.

ThinkPlace is the global human-centered design lead for this project, which is led by Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs and features a consortium of partners. This unprecedented collaboration is driving change that will save lives and create better health outcomes across Africa, Central America, the Caribbean and Asia.

OUR RESPONSE

For ThinkPlace, this project represented an opportunity to apply the stages of design thinking (research, ideate, prototype, reiterate, test, measure, apply) on an unprecedented scale to an intractable set of problems.

Beginning with co-design workshops at each site we set shared intent, creating pathways for stakeholders and users to participate and shape prototypes.

These early-stage prototypes are then aggressively tested and revised in real-world settings across a series of design sprints.

RAPID FIELD PROTOTYPING

Working with our partners we have created a new way of running the design process – Rapid Field Prototyping -- to fully integrate the communities involved: designing, testing and iterating solutions from within their midst.

We have brought our expertise in behavioural insights, behaviour change and communication design to the project, allowing communities to co-create change in real-time.

In complex systems it can be risky to go too far down a design path before testing how an intervention sits in a system. Rapid Field Prototyping begins with an intense period of ideation and research but moves quickly to early prototyping (often within 48 hours).

This allows us to test a broad range of imperfect and experimental responses with humans in the system; in the kinds of challenging environments thrown up by developing countries. Prototypes are often made from cardboard or modelling clay. We make changes to them in real-time in a rolling fashion.

By engaging community members in the processes of research, making and testing we are helping to build local capacity so that the interventions we craft together can be implemented, scaled and retained over time.

THE IMPACT

Human centredness is at the heart of this project. Each intervention that ThinkPlace has designed begins with spending significant time on the ground in local communities, talking with people about how they live, what motivates them and what blockers exist that prevent them adopting healthier behaviours.

We are currently in year two of the five-year project and already we are seeing impact from our work in places such as Nigeria, Zambia, Jamaica and Guyana.

NIGERIA

Nigeria accounts for 13 per cent of all child deaths worldwide. In just this one Breakthrough ACTION site our work (around child health and nutrition) is having a profound impact.

Over a 2.5-week period in Nigeria, we conducted over 290 interviews in homes, workplaces, health facilities and more. These were synthesised into 10 key insights around maternal child health and nutrition that will now form the basis for interventions to be prototyped and tested.

Elsewhere in Nigeria, we have developed designs to increase health seeking behaviour for signs and symptoms of tuberculosis – reducing the stigma associated with being tested and treated. Pilots of these initiatives are currently being rolled out at scale.

ZAMBIA

In Zambia we have implemented interventions that have reduced barriers to adoption of six key behaviours (family planning among adolescents, accessing HIV testing, condom use, optimal complementary feeding for children under two years, timely care-seeking for children under five and insecticide-treaded net use for malaria prevention).

Working with the community we co-designed 40 innovations for tackling HIV prevention, maternal and child health, family planning, malaria and nutrition, prototyped 8 and then refined to 4 after testing.

Using persuasive techniques from advertising we created the Umbrella Campaign, based on what Zambian families see as precious in their lives and using social media to sway ingrained behaviours around reproductive health, contraception and disease prevention.

JAMAICA

In Jamaica we have designed integrated initiatives to increase safe storage of water to minimise the risk of Zika and other mosquito borne diseases.

Our initial research showed many people had little idea about how to prevent Zika, by changing methods for storing water and thereby removing mosquito breeding sites. That has changed.

Our partner, Jamaica’s Health Ministry says: “This was one of the highest quality projects we have seen. What you produced was impressive. You have given us much to work with, not just with the solution but with the methodology used and your approach.”

GUYANA

In Guyana we have created interventions that will improve community access to malaria testing and treatment services in remote regions of the country.

Across all these projects we have facilitated a co-design approach which brings together various agencies and non-government organisations to collaborate in ways that have not been possible previously.

DESIGN FOR LASTING CHANGE

ThinkPlace has helped develop the Breakthrough ACTION Social and Behaviour Change FlowChart. The flowchart incorporates elements of the design thinking process along with methodologies from behavioural economics, community engagement, marketing science and strategic communication for a world-first hybrid approach.

Collaborating in this hybrid way, harnessing the expertise of Breakthrough ACTION consortium partners, allows us to create new methods and maximise impact at scale.

Breakthrough ACTION largely works in locations and communities where human-centred design and co-design are unfamiliar. The project is building new capabilities that will endure.

In-country partnerships are allowing innovations that are created, implemented and scaled. Partnerships are built so that in-country organisations can continue to drive change after current interventions expire.

The processes we have brought to this project are helping to create a systematic but innovative wave of change across numerous countries. While many local differences exist, we are seeing the emergence of an integrated and broadly-applicable methodology that spans national borders and connects on a human level.

Many of the world-first interventions that make up this program have broad potential to be applied elsewhere and scaled up. Breakthrough ACTION will have a direct impact on the lives of real people, but it is also a sandbox for innovation and experimentation.

By deploying a hybrid solution that draws on many methods and approaches we are showing that innovation for impact is not always about new technology. Methods that bring together the right people and put them in position to design and implement change for their own communities can be far more powerful than a fully-technical solution.

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How the power of empathy is turning around an entire community

Daniel Silkstone — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 11:34:44 +0000

Work

How the power of empathy is turning around an entire community

Service

Scaled systemic changeExperience & Behavioural DesignInclusive Co-design & Engagement

People

Sector

Healthy Societies

This 3-part series offers a deep-dive into a community being transformed and the unique methods that are helping make it happen.

To the leaders and members of the Del Norte County community the request was almost unthinkable.

Tell us how you are changing the unchangeable. Show us how you’ve done it.

The request came from The Ford Family Foundation in nearby Oregon. In the audience were more than 60 community development foundations, funders and NGOs.

And all were hungry for the secret sauce.

Four years after setting out on an ambitious program to improve health outcomes for members of this traditionally-disadvantaged community in Northern California something extraordinary has happened.

It’s working.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation each year ranks the 58 counties across California according to how they are tracking across a range of health outcomes. These include quality of life, mental health, smoking, obesity, alcohol abuse but also associated indicators like high-school graduation rates and poverty.

In 2009, Del Norte ranked 55 of 58. It had long been so.

But by the time Del Norte leaders were recently asked by neighbouring Oregon to come and present their formula for success those rankings had flipped. In the most recent assessment Del Norte ranked 39th of the 58 counties, having leapfrogged more affluent neighbours and shown stunning gains across a host of areas.

Video of Something's Happening Here Del Norte & Tribal Lands Building a Healthy Community

For those everywhere who strive for healthier, happier and more resilient communities this kind of change demands further study. For ThinkPlace Senior Executive Designer and Partner Leslie Tergas, who has been part of the transformation, it was a significant moment.

“These are complex, multigenerational problems and addressing them requires that an entire community pull together in the same direction,” she says.

“People feel that things can never change, that they will never change. Well in Del Norte they have changed. And they are continuing to change. It’s just so exciting.”

Del Norte County sits at the top of California, bordering Oregon.

ABOUT DEL NORTE

Del Norte County occupies the Northwest tip of California. Its 1200 square miles run along the border of neighbouring Oregon, all the way to the Pacific Ocean and are home to many of California’s famous redwood forests.

Those majestic trees are imposingly large, famously old and very-much entrenched. The socio-economic challenges faced by Del Norte and its people have long shared similar characteristics.

Demographically, the county and adjacent tribal lands are home to a diverse population with around 14 per cent of people sharing Hispanic background and almost 9 per cent Native American (2000 census).

Native American Tribes the Yurok and Tolowa Dee-ni form an important part of the community and culture but have long been overrepresented when it comes to economic and social disadvantage.

Prior to the start of the Building Healthy Communities project, Del Norte was tangled up in what authorities called a “health crisis”. But that language masks a broader truth: the crisis wasn’t just about health.

Instead, a web of interconnected complex challenges spanning areas like poverty, education, transport and land-use were contributing to poor health outcomes and acting as a handbrake on local communities.

Indicators everywhere were demoralising. Nationally, across the United States, Kindergarten absenteeism runs at 10 per cent. In Del Norte it was three times higher at 30 per cent.

As the school journey continued things did not improve. A 2013 study found that 50 per cent of third grade students across the county were not reading at grade level – a rate much higher than the national average and a key indicator for continuing disadvantage in the education system and in life.

ABOUT BUILDING HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

Building Healthy Communities is a ten-year, $1 billion project funded by The California Endowment to boost health outcomes at 14 sites across California. Del Norte is one of those sites. Building Healthy Communities was created to address the social determinants of health outcomes, such as poverty, education, justice, food security and more.

This meant that money was suddenly available for programs and projects in Del Norte. But in the early days of the project, progress proved painstaking. Service providers and community leaders had access to funding and shared a desire to change their community but had not explored in an integrated way how the individual initiatives they were pursuing might connect with each other.

They had a shared view about where they wanted to get to but it wasn’t specific enough to be implementable. And even if it had been, the skills to implement this ambitious agenda of radically changing systems and policy change to improve health equitymostly did not exist within the community.

And then things changed. A renewed sense of purpose from the community saw ThinkPlace get involved in 2015. Together with community leaders, and service provider partners we began work on co-designing a completely different approach.

Underpinning this work are some simple but powerful ideas. The first – and one that is at the heart of the California Endowment – is health is not an island. Health outcomes are inextricably linked to employment, education, economic opportunity, housing, the environment and more.

As the Wild Rivers Community Foundation website notes: “These interrelated problems require interrelated solutions. So we’re working across all systems that impact community health – schools, human services, economic development, transportation, and land use.”

What we set out to do was to transform the way this community was working and to give them the tools to re-ignite the spark of hope and change. This has the potential to transform how we do community development and the pace at which we do it - Leslie Tergas

WORKING TOGETHER AND BUILDING CAPABILITY

At the heart of the success being witnessed around Building Healthy Communities in DNATL is the collaborative nature of the interventions it has spawned and the capacity-building that accompanies them, spreading across the community.

Many consultants fly in, fly out and then wait eagerly for the next billable opportunity. The ThinkPlace methodology, however, is about building internal capacity. It focuses upon developing the skills, mindsets and conditions within communities that will enable a broad range of change initiatives to take root and grow.

From the outset of our involvement, a large number of community leaders have been trained in design thinking methods that begin with empathy and track through gathering insights and working together to iterate, test and refine interventions. These methods and mindsets are now deeply embedded in how the community approaches challenges.

“From our point of view we are planning for our own future disappearance,” Partner Leslie Tergas says.

“We want our partners and collaborators in the community to no longer need us there. That’s not something you hear from consultants every day.”

Geneva Wiki from The California Endowment says she keeps hearing from partner organisations who went through the training that these skills have transformed those who received it far beyond the project itself, as organisation leaders, as parents and more.

“We hear stories of ripple effects often,” she says.

Coming soon: PART 2

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ThinkPlace USA is growing

Daniel Silkstone — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 05:03:21 +0000

ThinkPlace USA is growing

United States

Topics

Design Profile

This will be fun.

It’s a great way of approaching any challenge and it’s a mindset that the newest member of the ThinkPlace USA studio makes her own.

“I take my work seriously but not myself and therefore I aim to approach challenges with a 'this will be fun' attitude and opportunistic outlook,” Brooke Barker says.

ThinkPlace USA is growing. After opening our first American studio in Washington DC earlier this year, we are adding our first American designer to the team.

Brooke is American-born but has spent most of the past six years working in West Africa and India.

“I’m passionate about examining and tackling complex challenges using a community-centered empathetic approach,” she says.

She has deep experience with inclusive business modeling, microfinance and rural enterprise development as well as project management. She seeks out environments where human-centered design can make impact, scaling interventions, improving economies, and reducing poverty in emerging markets.

Brooke holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management and International Business from Iowa State University and a Master’s degree in Emerging Economies and Inclusive Development from King’s College London.

We sat down to ask her a few questions…

TP: Welcome to ThinkPlace. Tell us a bit about yourself…

BB: Thank you!

I adore traveling, challenging myself, and learning from different perspectives and ways of life. A strategist by training, I’ve worked with a number of diverse clients to help them define their visions and values and design strategic plans toward achieving their missions.

While I enjoy the comforts American life brings such as 24-hour supermarkets and good coffee, some of my happiest and most fulfilling moments have been living and working in remote villages around the world.

I’m also a strategy and design nerd who spends a lot of her free time reading books and articles about our craft--someone stop be from enrolling in another course about Innovation Design!

TP: Complete these sentences!

When I’m not at work you’ll find me… reading, exploring, or hanging out with my cats

Good design is… making complex ideas clear, simple, and inspiring

One thing most people don’t know about me is… I was a dancer for 14 years

What really matters to me in life is… my family, my friends, and having adventures

My heroes are… Amartya Sen, Nelson Mandela, Hillary Clinton

TP: What will you be doing at ThinkPlace? What is your role?

BB: As a Strategic Designer at ThinkPlace USA, I’ll be applying human-centered design methods and processes to create healthier environments and improve health behaviors in some of the poorest and most underserved countries in the world.

I’ll be using co-design and user-driven approaches to ensure solutions are designed to meet both the expressed and the latent needs of many different stakeholders, making their lives easier, healthier, and more fulfilling.

TP: Why ThinkPlace? What attracted you to this company and this role?

BB: While initially I was attracted to the breadth and variety of design challenges ThinkPlace has spearheaded, I was ultimately drawn to the incredible work culture of creativity, collaboration, innovation, and freedom ThinkPlace has cultivated across its studios.

I also love how field-focused ThinkPlace is, realizing that so much of what we do requires understanding complex conditions and being right in the thick of them to be impactful.

Plus, we have an incredible team of dedicated, thoughtful, and fun people! Who could say no to working here?

TP: You’ve worked in many different countries all over the world. Is there a moment or two that stands out, when you realised the power and potential of what we you do as a designer/project leader?

BB: Last year I worked with a health technology start-up in Delhi who was interested in expanding their business model beyond their initial focus on air pollution but did not know where or how to concentrate their efforts to drive the most impact based on beneficiary needs and their own capabilities.

After three days of intense design co-creation, we emerged with a business strategy so innovative and unique, it exceeded all of our expectations around what it means to be a healthcare services provider and create better health for all. Those inspiring moments are what makes being a designer so interesting--guiding people from a place of little to no direction to ending with an audacious solution they never imagined possible.

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Human-centred sexual health services forTanzanian youth

Sashi Surendran — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 06:03:21 +0000

Work

Human-centred sexual health services forTanzanian youth

“In our village, when a girl gets pregnant at a young age, before marriage; you become like a curse to your family and everyone in the village.” The words come from Lorraine, a staff member of Marie Stopes in Tanzania. But the sentiment, and the problem it makes clear, are common throughout rural Tanzania and many other parts of Africa. And that’s why increasing access to services and information around family planning is a crucial challenge for Marie Stopes Tanzania. It is a challenge that ThinkPlace was only too happy to collaborate on. At ThinkPlace, we specialize in designing within complexity. At understanding complex systems and creating interventions that function within those systems to create positive change. And there is a great deal of overlap between this kind of user-centered design and the dynamic, unpredictable and complex nature of adolescents.

Service

Scaled systemic changeInclusive Co-design & EngagementResearch & insights

People

Topics

health

Sector

Healthy Societies

THE CLIENT

Reaching out to adolescents was an important task that Marie Stopes Tanzania, the largest specialized sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and voluntary family planning organisation in Tanzania, wanted to explore.

Marie Stopes had launched rural outreach services that target poor and vulnerable women, adolescents and men, especially those living in rural and peri-urban underserved areas. They asked ThinkPlace to help them gain greater uptake for these services – specifically family planning and sexual health services – from Tanzania’s population of young rural people.

THE CHALLENGE

Marie Stopes and their staff understand on a personal level what adolescent girls in Tanzania go through. For their staff, the importance of building connections with adolescent girls begins very close to home.

“My passion for adolescents started with my own upbringing,” staff member Lorraine says.

“My family couldn’t afford to pay for me to go to secondary school and I met my first boyfriend who promised he would talk to his parents to help once I accepted to be with him. I did and got pregnant.

My father chased me out of home. I was considered an embarrassment … My mother pleaded with her sister’s family to take me in. My life in school was very difficult. Everyone laughed at me. But I was empowered through education, that is why today I am supporting other girls.”

Lorraine’s experience and the environment she grew up in signifies the reality of many adolescent girls living in Tanzania today, a fact that has been instrumental in Marie Stopes setting up their outreach services.

Marie Stopes strongly believed that engaging adolescents was not only possible, but a unique entry point for their outreach services. And they turned to ThinkPlace Kenya to help them create and drive greater demand for family planning among adolescents.

OUR RESPONSE

Marie Stopes’ Outreach program is built upon an ambitious goal of reaching about 2 million new users by 2020.

Through intensive user-centered research, Thinkplace Kenya sought to understand adolescent’s behaviors, drivers, attitudes and needs that would encourage uptake of family planning.

ThinkPlace designers spent considerable time on the ground, turning interactions with young people into insights about their views on family planning and their behaviours in relation to the services and information on offer.

Quite often, we found, family planning services were a last resort for adolescents who were at times influenced by cultural traditions that stigmatised early childhood sex education or terrifying tales of the side effects of family planning heard anecdotally from their peers.

Having no control of their future was a recurring idea voiced by young people, signifying the importance of designing interventions that allow adolescents a feeling of self-determination and help provide them with what they ultimately desired: A sense of security.

As a result of the insights derived from this research phase Marie Stopes Tanzania were able to implement immediate changes to their services that resulted in significant increases in adolescent interest around family planning.

THE IMPACT

In addition to designing interventions for adolescents, Thinkplace tested each intervention to determine the most desirable that would articulate the adolescent’s needs.

Evidence shows that many of those interventions are working. But the capacity-building impact of introducing human-centred design methods within adolescent communities has been just as powerful.

“I am now an expert in HCD! I enjoyed seeing the transformation from research,” Marie Stopes Tanzania staff would utter in delight. Following the project, at least seven members of the Marie Stopes team have advanced their careers applying knowledge and tools gained during this work.

The biggest success has been the elimination of bias by influencers around family planning within the communities. This has been achieved by engaging influencers like parents and religious leaders and by better tapping into adolescents’ imaginations via entrepreneurship activities such as soap-making, henna-painting and batik.

Pilot outcomes indicated a significant increase in client visits for adolescents. In the first pilot location clinics improved from 27 clients a day (pre-intervention) to an average of 70 clients a day afterwards. In the second location, client visits increased from an average of 13 to an average of 50.

Adopting the interventions in their service model has enable Marie Stopes to generate more demand for family planning and build capacity within the outreach team, while also allowing team members to gain additional entrepreneurship skills. Success is not only evident in the increased need for family planning, but also through adolescents’ restored confidence and acquired skills, much of it the result of the actions that have been part of this project.

Quote

"My father chased me out of home. I was considered an embarrassment … My mother pleaded with her sister’s family to take me in. My life in school was very difficult. Everyone laughed at me. But I was empowered through education, that is why today I am supporting other girls"

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The United Nations Global Compact

Sashi Surendran — Tue, 28 May 2019 00:34:49 +0000

Australia

The United Nations Global Compact

Topics

sustainable development goals

This is our second yearly Communication On Progress Report, issued as part of our responsibilities as a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact.

While we are required to communicate our progress as part of being a signatory to this important set of principles we do so with much gladness and enthusiasm.

Adopting the Sustainable Development Goals as our ‘North star’ has been a hugely-transformative decision for ThinkPlace. As we have gone about enacting this transformation, the Global Compact has been our way of codifying that commitment. It allows us to set out our intentions for all to see and calls on us to explain how we have acted upon them. It gives us the opportunity to outline how instrumental the adoption of the goals has been in driving and shaping our development as a company.

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Tuesday, 28 May 2019

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