6 Public sector design projects with impact LIFE Programme (Swindon Council/Participle)
Design methods used: Ethnographic research Observation Prototyping
LIFE is a programme that has been designed to address ‘Problem Families’ with a large number of needs across multiple agencies, services and departments - these families are estimated to cost £250,000 per family a year. Swindon Council identified this as a priority and worked with Participle to design new ways of addressing these families needs. The design team worked with 12 of these families to begin with, testing ideas and prototyping new approaches with them over a nine moth period. The outcome from this design process was a pilot programme which re-designed the welfare state system around them. The results of the pilot programme are impressive, with more than £200,000 saved after 12 weeks of being on the LIFE programme. These savings would build over time as the family disengage from numerous enforcement actions and other consequences of their previous behaviour; The LIFE programme cost is £10,000 per annum per family based on 2 teams working with 38 families.
The Productive Series (NHS Institute for Innovation & Improvement)
Design methods used: Observation Emotional mapping Design Wales: 6 Public sector design projects with impact
The productive series is the most successful service improvement methodology in the NHS in England. The series marries service design and lean processes that reduces waste and increases nurses direct care time with patients. By using design activities such as filmed observation and emotional mapping, NHS improvement leads are able to engage large numbers of colleagues in the programmes. The productive series has proved so successful that the majority of hospital trusts now employ Productive managers to oversee the front line service improvement.
August 2010
6 Public sector design projects with impact Dementia Advisor Service (Alzheimer’s Society/Thinkpublic)
One of the outcomes from Dott07 in North East England was a proposed signosting service for people with dementia and their carers. This design concept was developed by thinkpublic using co-design to involve people in the process and prototyped with branches of the Alzheimer’s Society.
Design methods used: Ethnographic research Co-design Prototyping
Dott Cornwall (Design Council/Cornwall Council)
Design methods used: All projects use different methods based around a co-design process.
Design Wales: 6 Public sector design projects with impact
By using a design approach the Alzheimer’s Society were able to involve their members in the service design process and create a superior, user-led proposition. The design was tested so thoroughly that the Department of Health were convinced to commission the service for 19 of the 22 Dementia Advisor contracts in the UK.
Dott Cornwall is part of a programme of events developed by the Design Council, driving designled solutions to economic and social challenges throughout the UK. The Design Council, Cornwall Council, University College Falmouth and Technology Strategy Board have partnered to deliver the Dott programme throughout Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly during 2010. Example Project: Cornwall Works 50+ The good news is we’re living longer. Consequently the workforce is getting older and by 2017 about 34.4% of the workforce is predicted to be over 50. As the demographic of the workplace changes, its provisions for older workers will have to adapt. Working hand-in-hand with businesses and communities, Cornwall Works 50+ will look at all sorts of ways to improve and extend employment opportunities for older people. Its key concerns include how to encourage employers to take on older workers and how to overcome barriers faced by older people wanting to return to the workforce. August 2010
6 Public sector design projects with impact Buddy (South London & The Maudsley NHS FoundationTrust/Sidekick Studios)
Buddy is a social care service for people living in the community who have longterm mental health conditions. Sidekick Studios were asked to investigate how networked technologies could help people suffering from long term conditions manage their conditions better. The response is Buddy, a simple service system focused around a social media radio that enables people recovering from different mental illness monitor their mood, and share it with their community of carers, including their professional NHS community nurses and clinicians.
Design methods used: Co-design Cultural probes Product & service prototyping
Make it Work (Sunderland City Council/ Live|Work)
The device allows patients suffering from depression to ‘broadcast’ their mood to a selected and secure social network. Users turn a dial on the Buddy radio to share how they are feeling, and the service updates their status in real time via email, SMS, Facebook and Twitter. This creates a new level of responsiveness and collaboration across professional and non-professional carers reducing reliance on acute services.
Over 280 practitioners, employers and clients contributed to the design of the Make it Work service that has trialled a number of new service propositions. The Northern Way Worklessness Pilot – Make it Work, brings together a number of specialist community organisations covering mental health, drug rehabilitation and carers, in a coordinated approach to worklessness. Make it Work partners ensure that their clients are well and socially stable before promoting them into mainstream training, and then into jobs.
Design methods used: User insights Customer journey mapping Co-design Design Wales: 6 Public sector design projects with impact
To date the scheme has provided support to over 800 people, 200 of whom have already found employment.
August 2010