Discovering Data Skills
We’re very excited to have been awarded a grant from the Ufi Charitable Trust to support a discovery phase around the intersection of data and design skills, with a specific focus on how enhanced skills and capacity might help tackle organisational, societal, economic and environmental challenges.
We’ve been working in this area as an organisation since we formed two years ago, although individually we’ve been exploring this approach for considerably longer. This next phase is driven by a belief that cross-disciplinary working in the area of data and design has much greater potential than is currently being realised.
A major part of our discovery work will be finding potential learners and understanding their needs, so we want to talk to people with an interest in shifting careers, starting out on careers or enhancing their skills for a specific purpose; we also want to focus on organisations looking to improve their capacity in this area.
There are many other agencies, educators, trainers and institutions who we’d love to have as part of the conversation. In this first phase we’ll aim to reach as many people as we can directly, but we’ll also be working in the open as much as possible to connect with a wider audience.
As a social enterprise we’re focused on working with those who want to make a positive social, environmental and economic impact, and that impact is one of the primary goals of this project. We’re also aware that the nature of employment is changing fast, and in many places not necessarily for the better. We want to have a positive impact on people’s career opportunities and job satisfaction as well as their ability to engage in meaningful work.
Of course this is a lot to take on and this is only a discovery phase. We’ll start by gathering research and testing some of our assumptions through prototypes; we’ll explore how technology can support this work and where it can’t; and we’ll draw on our own work to build resources and try out new ways of working.
In two years we’ve proved to ourselves and others that data and design skills combined have a real impact. They can help us to use data to solve the right problems; they can enhance design research; they can make data more collaborative and human-centred; and they can help us exponentially grow the range of tools, methods and approaches at our disposal.
If you have a couple of minutes space we’d really appreciate you filling out this short form. If you want to get involved more then please comment on here or tweet us. We’d love to learn about your experiences and ambitions in this area.
