Week 11

Lecture Material

George Lee – Age of No Retirement studio. This is Real Art studio. Then Commonland studio

Jonathan Collie – Living Well With Dementia.

Ageism is their focus around projects and how different ages can result in greater happiness.

The Common Room

Double diamond model – four stages: Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver.

“Our urban communities are broken. They are more like groups of strangers, than the intergenerational, interdependent communities. We must reverse this trend, and draw people of all ages inwards and reconnect them in inspiring ways to help each person achieve greater things in life, and become a more valued and participating citizen of the world.” The project was funded for 6 months, during which time we were able to navigate the first 3 stages of the double-diamond design process, and conclude with the delivery of a blueprint for a service that would address our hypothesis.”

• This project has summarised the current problems that urban communities are facing and what the desirable outcome ideally would be. The double diamond was used to identify the project priorities and keep the project focused.

Human centred design is getting out into the community: “We use a range of methods in combination — one to one interviews, walking tours, observations, creative workshops, meditations, storytelling, surveys, language analysis. The richer range of methods the better.”

• To get to the root of a problem, ask why and discover what makes the client happy, what do they like? Keep asking questions (five w’s and how) and really identify what the clients needs are.

These posters are striking and capture attention – there is a heavy influence taken from political posters/campaigns which I find interesting! The use of exclamation suggests power. The capital letters are engaging. The simplicity of the posters with words makes the messages important:

“Build trust and collaborative relationships with your funders. This is the key to your design freedom! Get someone on board who believes in the potential power of design, is an advocate of the double diamond design process, and who has used it successfully before!”

• If someone is consistently negative it may be impacting the idea or project without you realising, so be careful with who you select to work with you. If its becoming a burden in any way; take it in another direction and explore. This includes mixing up who you speak to, interview with and collaborate with. I think this is so fundamentally important in a project as it needs to be enjoyable for the most part; you need to be passionate about what you believe in and stand for.

“Use every technique you can think of and have fun doing it. It is a real privileged and joy to spend time with people and for them to trust you with their thoughts.”

• This is a great reminder to not be afraid to use different techniques and even in the research process – I could really use my service design hints and tricks for this week and test them out.