Year 2010: making and iterating

6 min readOct 28, 2018

Story #5 of 16-part chronicle: ‘The evolution of my social design craft’

It’s a cold December day in 2010, and I am at City Hall with some fellow Uscreatures making and iterating things very quickly and in real-time as event attendees shower us with ideas for what a DIY Happiness Kit might look like for London’s residents.

Source: https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/our-building-and-squares/how-find-city-hall

This is happening at Well London’s Big Picture event celebrating all the work this Mayor of London programme has achieved over the last year, co-producing interventions for health and wellbeing with London’s residents. One of these interventions is South London and Maudsley’s NHS Foundation Trust’s (SLaM) Wheel of Wellbeing (WoW); an evidence-based framework for promoting mental wellbeing through positive psychology and practical day-to-day actions that encourage us to stay active, keep learning, give back, connect with others, take notice of the world around us, and care for our environment.

I had the priviledge to design the brand and communications for the Wheel of Wellbeing back in 2008, while working with the wonderful Tony Coggins and Sherry Clarke (who remain great friends). Over the following two years, Tony and Sherry designed and ran a number of workshops with over 400 women in London’s most deprived neighbourhoods to support them to take control of their wellbeing, and to initiate local projects that can encourage more women to get involved and join the movement.

But on that celebration day at City Hall in 2010, we wanted to do more. We wanted to leave a legacy that could touch all of London’s residents who need it most. The event was bringing together hundreds of people who helped make the Well London programme happen from across the system; residents, community and voluntary sector organisations, service providers, people from London’s local councils, and uhm… Boris Johnson. What better way to design ways for the Wheel of Wellbeing to leave a legacy than co-designing with all these diverse groups of people who understand London and its residents so well? So there we were — three designers — sitting at a table at the entrance into the event, armed with plasticine, lego, bits of coloured card, scissors, glue, straws, post-its, pens, a box of random found objects, and a printer connected to a laptop kitted with design software. As people entered the event, they were presented with a simple ask:

“If a happiness kit is going to reach all Londoners, what would it look like?”

They could give us their idea(s) there and then, or come back at a later time in the event. Meanwhile, we were working at lightning speed at the table to make prototypes in real-time of the ideas that were being offered up, and then to display these for people to feedback on, build upon, and vote for as they leave the event.

Why make our lives so difficult you ask, when we could just write things down?

Because I believe that visual and tactile (or kynesthetic) learning helps to problem-solve and to progress/kill ideas at a faster rate than any other ways of learning (more on other ways of learning here). If you don’t believe me, here’s some empirical evidence. Often, when an idea floats in the conceptual world and is only manifested verbally through a few spoken or written words, it can be tinted with a romanticised and fictional sense of perfection. It is only when we overcome that conceptual obstacle and start quickly making, building and creating a tangible representation of the idea, that the imperfections start to surface — imperfections about form, function, viability, desirability, feasibility and so on. Because of this, it’s very important to start with lots of ideas and to not feel too precious about any one idea. As we start making these ideas, we also start working on the emergent imperfections through iterative cycles of testing and improvement. We can then decide which ideas are worth progressing with, and which are ok to just drop.

To put it simply, making is about thinking with our hands.

Let’s be clear. When I write about making and iterating quickly, I don’t mean a pilot or a Randomised Control Trial. I mean (low fidelity) sketches, mockups, storyboards, demos, role plays, wireframes, that can be made in hours or days, that can then help us think about the next iteration of (higher fidelity) prototypes, that in turn can then help us think about how to run a test, a pilot, a Beta, and so on.

The benefits of making and iterating

The benefits are two-fold. Resourcefulness to get to something that works quickly and cheaply, and responsiveness to generate feedback early on and multiple times through the process.

Resourcefulness: Making things quickly and cheaply, failing early, and only progressing with and investing in ideas that are starting to demonstrate potential. For the risk-averse amongst us, this is the perfect innovation-risk-mitigation-strategy (after doing nothing of course).
Responsiveness: Showing people who will use the idea early versions of it that are not too polished to put them off sharing honest feedback, and not too rough that they can’t understand what it’s trying to do for them.

Making the leap from thinking to making

Making the leap — from thinking about a conceptual idea to sending commands to our hands to make it — requires two things: hard skills and intentional constraints.

Hard skills: My design background definitely plays to my advantage here. Over the years, I’ve had a go at 3D modelling, screen printing, letterpress, Arabic calligraphy, arabesque, bookbinding, paper engineering, pottery, crochet, coding, and so on. I feel completely comfortable manipulating material to bring an idea to life quickly and roughly, using the resources available to me. This is a skill that can be learned through practice though; the practice of head to hand thinking and coordination. It doesn’t matter what the material is, what you make doesn’t have to be polished, and there are plenty of making courses and activities around to start with for anyone looking!
Intentional constraints: Place conscious limitations to make the making leap less daunting. For example, think about what you could make if you only had an hour, a day, a week; if you could only use material you had to hand in the office; if you could only use skills available within the team; if you could only spend 1% of your project budget, etc.

Iterating for the last 8 years

Since that December morning in 2010, we at Uscreates have been continuously iterating how we release the Wheel of Wellbeing into the world to deliver impact for families initially, and then beyond that into other population groups such as mental health professionals, young people transitioning into secondary school, and stressed employees. Below is a gallery of images showing a before and after series for the various Wheel of Wellbeing products, services and interventions we have made and iterated over the years. In between the two versions are endless cycles of testing to figure out what works, what doesn’t, and how we can move on from there. A necessary plug for Robbie Bates who has been my partner in crime here as we (literally) made our way through these iterations, as well as some great designers who have helped make all of this possible over the years: Francesca Allen, Dominique Sherwood, Ashley Evans, Sophie Walker, and Obie Campbell.