Food Standards Agency User-Centred Workshops across the UK

Published in

Create Flow

5 min readOct 14, 2018

A very Public engagement…

In February 2018, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) have commissioned an industry-wide review of meat cutting premises and cold stores in the wake of serious non-compliance issues identified at two cutting plants operated by 2 Sisters Food Group and Russell Hume.

The FSA asked me to design and deliver six User-Centred Design (UCD) full day workshops around the country during summer 2018. A wide range of stakeholders were invited to the events and with almost 100 attendees from 74 different businesses. Over a dozen FSA-FSS staff were trained in UCD and briefed as table facilitators.

The aim is to gather feedback that will play a critical role in shaping the final recommendations of the Review.

Meat cutting plant and cold store review Workshop Feedback has been published by the FSA

My role: 1 week to design, 3 weeks to travel & deliver.

Service design lead: user-centred design method integration in the workshop agenda, supporting slide deck and facilitator’s guide.
Lead facilitator: orchestrate the physical space, introduce the workshop method, animate the ice-breaker, maintain the energy of the room (chocolate does help!) and keep an eye on the time.

Project Background

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS), are conducting a UK wide review of meat cutting plants and cold stores. Having already carried out an initial evidence review and now we need to engage stakeholders, such as yourselves, to jointly develop recommendations for change and identify implementation issues for inclusion in the final review. We have arranged a number of one day workshops in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The workshops will be 10:00–16:00.

England: London, Birmingham and York
Wales: Llandrindod Wells
Northern Ireland: Belfast
Scotland: Edinburgh

Moving the brief from Agile to Design Thinking

How to gain structured feedback?

Rather than going for the “open microphone” approach where feedback can come from all directions, tempers can flare and frustration is likely to arise among the minority voice… the FSA is eager to provide a solid framework to channel the participants energy and gain valuable, usable feedback.

The original brief was based around “Agile” soundbites…

Use agile techniques to secure stakeholder “buy in” to review findings and how they apply to industry…

With a mix of Empathy Map, User Journey, Pain points and playback sessions, the original agenda left little time for team collaboration on solution-finding and sharing a positive message was relegated to the last 30 minutes of the day.

My proposal is based around the balance of effort and time dedicated to examining the problem and co-creating solutions, with the pivotal “How might we” definition just before lunch so each table’s decision would fuel the midday break conversations.

Proposal: we listen, adopt a point of view, co-create and test ideas

Our overall objective is to listen, we are building a picture of what the meat industry looks like today and how it is regulated in order to:

Understand the different perspectives of stakeholders
Jointly develop and test ideas for change
Identify implementation issues at an early stage

Creation of the agenda:

The key ingredients at my disposal represent as many challenges to

find the right balance of individual/table/group activities,
create a natural rhythm of thinking/doing/choosing/sharing and resting over the course of 6 hours.

Draft proposal articulated around connecting with the audience, conveying the design thinking mindset and then, at the end of the day, share the benefits of this approach, and “convince” it was a worthwhile exercise ( in the CCC model,

Who will be attending?

The principal group of attendees are Food Business Operators, a bit of a catch-all category of actors working in the food chain from farm to fork. I was probably the only one who qualified as solely a consumer.

Wayfinding iteration

Side by side, the original PowerPoint concept in old format, and the 16:9 ratio landscape slide with “Test ideas” rather than “prototype” to avoid the risk of mishandling public expectations as the workshop output are suggestions to be considered by the official reviewers.

How to define the context: scenario categories and key moments

Explaining the User journey layers

The original slide on the left was too complex and has been broken down in two: one for the horizontal description of the visible steps, then on the right, for the vertical

Iterating the User Journey template

Ground rules before take-off

Facilitators core team

Social media

We’ve been to all four corners of the UK gathering views to inform our joint meat cutting plant and cold store review with @FSScot. Thanks to all 90 of you who turned up, your insights are invaluable. Find out more at http://ow.ly/mEo430lfXE8

To give attendees a little boost, a nice individually gold wrapped bar of dark chocolate does wonder!

Attendees feedback

‘Everyone has a say of their ideas — an inclusive method’, Llandrindod Wells.
‘General format and process is really informative and raises interesting questions’, Edinburgh attendee.
‘Good to mix everyone up — FBO/EHO/FSA … Completely different type of workshop — it was interesting to approach things in a different way’, Birmingham attendee.
‘Comprehensive coverage of key issues about regulation from legislation to application including interpretation’, York attendee.
‘Format worked well. A very positive experience. I enjoyed the methodology and the approach’, London attendee.
‘New way of working. Innovative’, Belfast attendee.

FSA feedback on facilitation

What a pleasure it was to work with Gaetan!
Fantastic facilitator, making people feel at ease and getting the most out of them.
Very organised, astute, quick to get the point and totally adaptable to customer needs.
Cannot recommend him highly enough.
Elvira Diez Alarcia, Audit Veterinary Leader at Food Standards Agency