Pop-up shop co-design — designing a Digital Health Hub on the high street
10 insights from our 2 day open co-design session in Nailsea
How do people use digital technology to stay healthy? How can a high street shop help people with digital and health literacy? How do you encourage people to walk into a new place for the first time?
These are just some of the questions we were asking when we ran a 2 day open co-design session at 65 High Street in Nailsea, North Somerset.
65 High Street was originally the butchers shop on the High Street. The Town Council have recently purchased the building with the intention to turn it into a Digital Health Hub.
That’s where we come in.
Good Things Foundation is funding the Digital Health Hub at 65 High Street for the next 12 months as part of the NHS Widening Digital Participation project.
But before creating a new, picture perfect high street shop, we wanted to test some of our ideas and assumptions by asking local residents.
This post explains what we learned about opening a pop-up shop and how to get people through the door over the 2 days.
1. Stand out
When a new shop opens, you often see them do it with a big song & dance. Balloons, freebies, mascots dancing in the streets. We didn’t go that far but we did want to stand out enough that people noticed us and talked to us. A couple of bright t-shirts and some fabric pens later, Pete and I were ready to hit the High Street in our custom ’65 High Street’ t-shirts.
It worked, when we were outside, walking to the shops and even in the local pub in the evening, people were curious and asked us what the t-shirts were for. The perfect conversation starter.
2. Give people a reason to stop
One of the biggest assumptions we wanted to test while we were in Nailsea was ‘People will stop and come into the shop’. We knew that this wasn’t as simple as just opening the doors and having a logo above the door.
So we experimented.
The concept of a digital health hub is not the easiest thing to explain in a shop sign, so we came up with a short story to write on the window to explain what 65 High Street is and why people should come in and speak to us.
This worked brilliantly. The story caught people’s eye and instead of walking past, they stopped and took the time to read it. This gave us the perfect opportunity to pop our head out of the door and ask them if they’d like to come in for a cup of tea and a chat.
3. Get out of the shop
Outside 65 High Street is a low stone wall — the perfect height to sit on and watch the world go by.
When the shop was quiet, that’s exactly what we did — being outside the shop, you can say hello to people passing by and quickly judge if they’re up for a conversation (or just want to get on with their day in peace).
We even had a couple of really insightful conversations with local residents without them even coming into the shop.
4. Keep it informal
65 High Street has two main parts to it. The front of the building is where the butchers shop used to be and is a typical open space with big windows. The rear of the building is an extension to the original building and is more closed off and private.
We were focussing on the front of the shop during the 2 days and set it up in an informal ‘coffee shop’ style. The aim of this was to help people feel comfortable to come in, have a drink and relax in a familiar environment.
This informality allowed people to wander in and take a look around without any expectation on them. We were able to give them space to explore and then talk to them once we felt they were ready.
5. Make people feel part of it
65 High Street is a Community Asset. A place that anyone in Nailsea should feel comfortable coming in to. We wanted to make the people who came through the door feel part of it.
We pinned up a map of Nailsea and asked people to add other community spaces and assets that they use to it. This helped us to build up a richer picture of what’s already happening around digital and health in the town.
We had an ideas wall that they could add to and we also asked everyone who came in to fill in a profile postcard to add to our Nailsea People hall of fame.
Everyone who came in had something insightful to say and added to our understanding of what the residents need 65 High Street to be.
Seeing their thoughts and ideas stuck on the wall allowed them to see that we were listening to them and that we valued the time and thoughts that they gave to us.
6. Be flexible
We’ve never opened a shop before. We knew very little about what would and wouldn’t work.
We were very fortunate to get some invaluable advice from Lauren Currie from her experiences of running the Know Sugar and Start Up Street Stirling projects.
The biggest thing we would recommend is to be flexible and prepared to adapt as you go.
We didn’t go to Nailsea with a fully kitted out shop with professional signage and shop fixtures & fittings. We went with wipeable chalk pens, Post-it notes and Blue-tac. We knew that we would need to change and try different things across the two days to see what had the greatest impact.
7. Find your Community Champions
Another piece of invaluable insight from Lauren was to find the community champions — the local hustlers — the people who will be keeping the shop open when we’re not there.
In Nailsea — these were the members of the Town Council. Nailsea Town Council is a non-political council, working tirelessly to make the town better for it’s community. Members spent both days with us and out in the town talking to residents and encouraging them to come along to 65 High Street to talk to us.
Without them, it would have been a much quieter 2 days.
8. Open all hours
One of the big themes from our initial ideas workshop with the town council was to accessible to all residents, not just the elderly members of the community. This meant being open in the evening (until 8pm) and early morning (from 7:30am) so those who are at work 9–5 don’t miss out.
Although these times were much quieter, we’re glad we did. We had a handful of people come through the door including volunteers wanting to help run the hub and health professionals from the local surgeries who gave us some really great insight.
9. Be clear about your mission
This is something that I don’t think we totally cracked. From a project point of view, ‘Creating a digital health hub on the high street’ means something. To a local resident, less so.
Pete and I played with a few different ways to explain what the plan for 65 High Street is with varying success. Certain phrases seemed to land okay such as ‘A community space’, ‘use the internet to help you stay healthy’ and ‘an internet café with a difference’ but others such as ‘digital’ and ‘manage your health’ didn’t.
There is still a lot of work to do with this but over the course of the 12 month pilot, we’ll have space to experiment and get this right.
10. Use the right language
Finally, following on from point 9, language is crucial to getting this right.
We need to make sure we’re using the right language so that the hub is seen as a positive place for anyone to be and try and remove the negative association people have with their health. 65 High Street is not somewhere you go only when you’re feeling ill.
We used phrases like ‘staying healthy’ instead of ‘when you’re unwell’ and ‘keeping your mind active’ instead of ‘managing your mental health’.
It’s early days but this felt like it could work.
It was a brilliant 2 days. We experimented a lot and we learned a lot.
We’re now in the process of writing up our recommendations and supporting the Town Council to get 65 High Street ready to open it’s doors in October.
We’ll be posting updates on the progress of 65 High Street over the next 12 months in our Widening Digital Participation blog so follow us to keep up to date.
In the meantime, feel free to comment below or email me tim@goodthingsfoundation.org with any questions.
