3. Refugees and Asylum Seekers — What Design Thinking Can Do?
Applying the Design and Innovation Framework to the Syrian Refugee Crisis.
This post is a continuation from my last 2 posts on the Design Thinking Bootcamp (June 2016) run by The Design Thinkers Academy Amsterdam.
You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here
Day 4 — Concept
Before I go into Concept development, let’s explore Prototypes a bit more — What is a Prototype?
A prototype is something you can engage with. It is a tool to help you communicate and test ideas. It is refined through iterations as the value proposition is further understood. When a prototype is ready it’s easier to tell (and sell) the story. I couldn’t comment on what the overlap is with what Product managers call Minimum Viable Product. But in my mind the prototype is just maybe a step before that. It is the prototype that will lead to the MVP. It’s something that can be built right away.
We used a methodology that helped us create a concept out of the idea. Using the following resource we created a concept out of the idea.
Tagline
Accepted consumer belief [ACB]
Introduction of the solution/Benefit
Reasons to believe
Price/costs
Following on from sharing our prototype with the stakeholders and persona, including the client we decided to group the feedback and here’s what we learnt.
Feedback
Persona
- Loved the concept as a great networking tool — tick
- Where will we host the workshops? — OK, think.
- All round happy with the concept but some confusion about the mechanics — not bad, but need to articulate better.
- I don’t know if this will help but is a good step — value perhaps not 100% clear. Might be a challenge.
Stakeholder (the Dutch public)
- REALLY happy that someone is doing something to help the new arrivals — BIG tick
- “how can I help?” — OK this was one of the things we would need volunteers for and trainers to run so this is a positive. Take some details of anyone who wanted to actually help. We got a few people.
- “I can’t really donate my time or money, so please don’t ask me” — Fine. Didn’t ask you to. Sounds like the concept is coming across as unwieldy or maybe people are just ignoring us a donation seekers.
Client (The Refugee Company)
- I like the idea, your lego brings it to life — GOOD
- It would be great to focus on the part that helps speed up the process, seems like you’re doing too many things. — Umm, we thought we were focusing on this. OK — take the feedback on board.
- How will you communicate this to the refugees? — Great question. Clearly we didn’t think about this much but we always knew it will be a challenge. Stakeholders like The Red Cross would be detrimental in helping us spread this message in camps. We need a plan.
- How are you going to get the refugees out to the workshop? We had some answers here. Old bikes scattered all over this country could be repurposed — maybe? Seriously though.. anyway.
Our coach on the fourth day was Arnoud Koning from Procter & Gamble. Arnoud focussed on helping collect feedback and used a bunch of tools to then create a concept ready for “sale”. Stakeholder Management was the flavour of the day.
ACAS — Feedback from peers
At this stage we were looking for feedback from the rest of the teams on our ideas and solution. A tool used at this stage was ACAS
Amplify, Combine, Avoid, Substitute
As a group you pitched the idea to all the other fellow groups on the Bootcamp. Once you were done the audience would give you feedback grouped under either Amplify, Combine, Avoid or Substitute. In doing so you got more feedback towards what some of the issues in your solution are that might need one of the above 4 points.
This helped in more than one way. You ended up getting a view from ‘the others’ solving the same challenge. And also heard some other ideas that you could apply to improve your own concept’s iteration.
Iteration
It became clear that the solution was too unwieldy for the persona to understand and the client to implement. As the change agent we were required to iterate and focus on the one thing that would make the client’s life easier yet provide immense relief to the situation our persona is in. Quickly.
Yes, there are important bits in the concept that we created that will overcome and provide a solution to this challenge. Yes, there is a big need for a solution. But if you looked at it realistically with the aim of prototyping and (if need be) failing fast (which mind you we got some great feedback about) the concept ended up being too broad and wide. We started removing things that did not immediately help with “making it easier” to the persona.
more jiggery-pokery
Looking back and grouping all our feedback we learned a few important things and areas where we went broader than the brief. It was necessary as part of the project but when providing the final solution after learning what we had — only the bits that immediately made impact were really necessary.
Our group quickly felt like we’ve taken on too much and now we have to remove bits we were all passionate about. It could become quite hard.
- We started with paring down the co-working space (the Lego model) primarily because it had become too much to manage for our client. As much as the idea was novel it seemed quite hard to manage the whole thing in one go. Almost move the client towards this organically.
- We learned it was going to be quite a challenge getting refugees to come out of the camps in regional Netherlands to a centre in Amsterdam. Travel money, mode of transport, safety issues.
Immediately losing impact of the project, so we removed all camps that didn’t fall within the Amsterdam catchment area. Our focus shifted to Amsterdam only.
- It became clear by paying attention to the emotional journey of the persona (as plotted by our team) that at this particular point in time our persona is feeling a bit disillusioned by either the lack of reliable information and in some cases too much information on what to do next. This made us focus on one particular stage of the journey — right after the persona is accepted to stay in The Netherlands.
This helped direct all energy and focus on the most vulnerable moment, the point in the timeline where the client can really make a huge impact.
- Success will breed further success — if we can prove the concept in one location we can prove success and the value added. This will potentially bring in funding and further change in the landscape. Allowing us to build on this concept further. Our client can then be equipped with a reliable, tested concept to replicate this solution in other places.
- The organisation relied on volunteers who donated time and money; and some part-time paid staff to run the operation. They have existing relationships and workload to manage and adding more staff in a short amount of time would prove difficult. For an organisation running on the smell of an oily rag it’s crucial to deploy resources where most impact can be generated.
The concept thus created was one which satisfied the persona, was focused on a specific time in the journey where most impactful and enabled the client to execute tomorrow. There was nothing stopping them from implementing this and was a scalable model. Specific, impactful, generally awesome.
Final Concept
We named our solution “&UConnect”
The Refugee Company will connect Dutch entrepreneurs and organisations who are able and willing to share their time. We will promote the connection and use their expertise guiding newly accepted & skilled Syrian refugees waiting for work permits, to further develop their skills in their respective fields. In return the entrepreneurs gain great talent to help build their business, can become part of a solution.
The concept hinged on leveraging current workflows that exist between the client and refugees in camps. Volunteers will promote a day at the Refugee Camp office where refugees in a certain skill-set (in our case Hamouda will be interested in attending Programming and IT) will be invited to enrol to register their skills with The Refugee Company.
At the same time The Refugee Company will use volunteers armed with information about a new program designed to help newly accepted & skilled refugees who are now looking to network and speed up their assimilation and integration into the society. They will use a combination of Social Media profiles and reach out to local businesses with this message.
Once we establish enough interest with 3–5 employers and 15–18 new refugees. We will put on a networking event where our personas, (Hamouda) can connect with these organisations. Once the contact is established volunteers will help identify skill gaps and with input from the businesses and local government-funded training programs these gaps will be filled.
In case there are no significant skill gaps, Hamouda can continue to explore and network with the entrepreneurs and businesses matched and interested to work with, until the work permit is issued (which is generally a maximum 6 months).
Dragon’s Den
Using the distilled concept the team now planned how to present the solution to the judges. We followed the principles of Sales101 and always keeping stakeholders in mind.
Focus on the situation — quickly crystallising and pointing out the stage in the journey of the persona. Bringing the reality of the struggle and the critical challenge to life.
State the idea and mechanism — matching Dutch employers with newly accepted and skilled refugees. The how.
Argue the key benefits of the solution and quickly move on to closing by demonstrating the easy next steps involved.
We decided to showcase this in a 3 minute skit. There might have been elements of interpretive dance — just kidding.
Hamouda, played by Lina Alzate. A newly accepted refugee who is a bit unsure and unable to find the best way to start networking to utilise his skills and get back to normal living.
I played a local Dutch employer, struggling to find good coders for my start-up in Netherlands. There is a lot of demand but very limited supply which in turn impacts my production schedules and sprints.
Estefania Farah played the service “&U Connect” and brought us together.
Pamela Caillens tied up the concept with an introduction to the what and the how. With supporting roles played by Robin Souter, Andrey Ivanov and Charlotte Schmidt.
Overall a smash hit. We fielded questions form the judges and explained the simple concept easily. At the end it turned out to be quite an easy job since we had put so much time into thinking of any possible questions that may arise. A key focus on the specific point in the timeline and an always-on mode for “how does this help our persona” followed by “does this answer the client brief” ensured we stayed on track. The detailed journey we planned earlier helped us a lot. There were no new technologies needed, could be started tomorrow with limited (existing) resources and most importantly with a lot of scope to scale.
Final Day
The final day of the workshop encourages you to now think of how you are going to apply what you’ve learned. By using a set of tools to help you formulate and distill the learning experience towards a plan for yourself.
Overall it was a great experience. Run by a very switched-on facilitating team - Arne van Oosterom, Jeroen Weide and Tim Schuurman.
Plus great coaches, Els Dragt, David Kester, Ralf Beuker and Arnoud Koning as mentioned in my posts. The highlight for me was the networking and the opportunity to work with some really smart and amazing people from all over the world as part of the bootcamp, all trying to apply Design Thinking into their profession.
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About me:
Service Designer based in Sydney. With a background in Marketing Strategy and Digital. I love designing for Services and can help you work through the Design Thinking framework for your organisation. I like a challenge and love to hear from like-minded people.
Website — kartik-sharma.com
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Co-Founder drømme — dromme.com.au
