CONNECTING THE ROOT
- with YOUNG LAMBETH COOP
Project Brief
Young Lambeth Cooperative is an organization that focuses on integrating services offered for the young people and their families through the support of partnerships.
Young Lambeth Coop wanted to develop a framework that could better support voluntary and community sectors in the areas of Lambeth, which include Brixton, Norwood, Clapham, Streatham and North Lambeth.
Service Concept
The final concept is a combination of a physical and virtual space that allows
for networking, communication, project management and sharing of resources primarily between youth and playworkers.
My Role: Service design, User-Centered Research, Concept Development, Prototyping, Graphic design. I was one of the team member among 4 people.
Keywords: Youth Play Worker, Young People, Roots, Digital Platform, Off-line Platform
Time & Location: 01/2017 - 03/2017, London
ABOUT CONNECTION THE ROOT
PROJECT OBJECTIVE
The team looked into the opportunities that could be delivered as service experience designers from UAL.
RESEARCH OVERVIEW
Streatham is more focused on the social aspects that make up the community. Social communication gap, since there are a large amount of international communities present, has created an issue and this would go in parallel with social unacceptability because of the dificulty in situating yourself within a diverse range of communities. In the graphic, we can see the areas the team visited and how these are associated with the factors seen below. It gives us an overview of how each service providers works within what area.
VALUE PROPOSITION
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Creating a skill- knowledge sharing touchpoint.
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Facilitating knowledge access across managers and the team members.
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Creating a way to view staff requirements.
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Acknowledging staff accomplishments, skill and strengths
PROTOTYPE/ ITERATION
INSIGHTS
Based on the interviews we had with members of YLC, such as the service providers, youth workers and young people, we identi ed three insights that may have impacted how regional issues can be considered for YLC.
PERSONAS
DESIGN SPACE
From our insights, we realized that youth workers do not have a direct channel of communication to YLC. They have concerns and ideas regarding the young people that, in the current circumstances, cannot be communicated towards funders such as YLC. For this reason, we believe increasing the visibility of youth workers can help YLC in the sense that regional issues can be identi ed due to their close position with the young people.
DEFINED QUESTION
Based on all above information, we defined below question as our design brief. How can we increase the visibility of youth workers with YLC to better support the emotional and social needs of service providers and service users children, young adults and their families?
DEVELOP THROUGH CO-DESIGN SESSIONS
In the develop phase, the team took what was considered with our design space and looked at various methods to develop concepts that could address our research question. This primarily revolved around co-design sessions, which the team found to be instrumental in shaping our service concept. The co-design sessions were split into two; co-design session with service provider and a co-design session with youth/ playworkers.
However, as the concepts began to develop, we saw that the first co-design session and service concepts proposed could not work for the organization as gaps were identi ed within the concept. We refined our concepts more and for the second co-design session, the outcomes proved to be a success.
DEVELOP THROUGH CO-DESIGN SESSIONS
A visualization of how the co-design session was structured is shown below. Before presenting the service concept, we went through three stages that allowed for the workers can brainstorm ideas about possible projects that could be used with this platform.
FEEDBACK ON SERVICE CONCEPT
They believed the concept could help initiate communication with other youth workers. The idea of sharing project ideas was very much relevant to what they’d like to do, and identifying who does what within Streatham would make creating project much more e cient as they can nd other people with similar priorities and could be much more cost-e ective.
However, there were concerns regarding how funding search engines can play into this, as funding, from their own experience, will not work necessarily well with smaller projects. Other challenges with this concept are listed on the graphic.
DESIGN SPACE
After the develop phase, the team took the concerns to the table again and we decided to revisit our service concept and narrow it down to the main features of the system. We needed to keep our concept simple so as to make the service more cost-e ective and adaptable for YLC, as well as creating a much more seamless experience that could only be created by one, candid service.
SERVICE CONCEPT
The final concept is a combination of a physical and virtual space that allows
for networking, communication, project management and sharing of resources primarily between youth and play workers.
By using the our platform (online & offline ) we are able to connect and bridge community & regional gaps by creating the space (physical & ditigial ) for youth /play worker to sharing and exchange resources, network and project management. Furthermore, we aim to address the budget cuts and increase saving within Lambeth.
This correlated process of the physical and digital follows a two fold process. The physical builds the engagement required to cultivate the interest and the relationships amongst youth workers. The digital platform is a support to the physical space. The translating between these two spheres will be aided by not only the physical interaction and digital execution but through the use of a toolkit.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
The proposal services model will not only bridge this communication gaps, but will aid to support YLC in their 5 year -24% cashable savings plan. Through reduction of duplication of CYP projects within Steatham and collaborative work through joint proposals and funding/grants application , it will increase community knowledge and resource sharing/ exchanging at an ‘grass root ‘ level, which would have a massive impact in the amount of money that can be saved within the CYPS Lambeth.
Future
Taking this project further, we hope that this concept could be applied as a resource sharing platform that goes beyond the toolkit, where people can engage on the actual platform to share articles, create projects and allow for these projects to be funded. However, we realize that this could take more time and fundings to be appropriated and therefore we believe that
the physical space combined with a resource such as the toolkit and regarly informal meeting like “Breakfast Club” could increase awareness of youth workers in a more cost-e ective and convenient way save Lambeth Council and YLC and the Brough in whole money , especially in time to nical di culty and budget cuts.
