IRISS Forum: Design for the Future
This is a summary of the event.
The IRISS forum, Design for the Future, brought together decision makers, policy writers, and organisations to learn about the approaches IRISS have been embracing which fit under the umbrella of service design.
The forum highlighted methods and mindsets such as asset based approaches, co creation, co production which have all been trialled through various projects IRISS have commissioned over the last two years.
The day consisted of;
- Angela Constance discussing the need for innovation and improvement within social services and producing a workforce capable of innovating frontline services.
- Joe Heapy of Engine, a Service Design firm from London talking through why design is important as a process to go from insight into developed idea and questioning how we create the structures to allow design to exist.
- Students from the Glasgow School of Art presented their projects on the Future Choreography of care and support and how they worked with communities in the south of Glasgow to design better outcomes in relation to the reshaping care for older people policy.
- Catherine Macrae and James Baster introduced Here's a hand, a social enterprise being supported by Edinburgh council and IRISS which will launch software to help networks care for older or disabled people.
- Denise Stephens of Enabledby Design introduced her enterprise and talked about her mission for inclusive design to develop better products for people living with disabilities.
Themes that developed from the event include:
- There is a need to take an assets based approach to work on a personalisation agenda which seems a natural extension of design
- Skilling up the workforce to be able to participate in design is needed but we need to break it down into understandable chunks and highlight where it can be used
- Being agile will save money in the long run when developing services. We can transfer agile methodologies from technological development practice to designing services.
- Design is a process that can drive innovation and ensure we save money before implementing expensive solutions
- Policy and think pieces like the Reshaping care agenda can be interpreted into tangible services and products by using a design process which steer us away from creating more regulations and policy
- Storytelling is a great method for communicating ideas and keeping services people centred
- There needs to be more work on cutting down jargon so that people can co-produce solutions to problems in their communities and develop better service provision for care and support
- It is important to establish relationships with people you will cocreate solutions with before engaging in workshops
- Evidence based practice aligns closely with the way designers work but there is a question around what role intuition plays in making decisions on ideas moving forward in a design process
This is a short summary of the IRISS Forum: Designs for the future event.
For more detail you can read a longer thought piece "A designer's response" or view photos from the event.
