What I learned from the Third Sector Design Community of Practice

A few weeks ago, I hosted the first Third Sector Design Community of Practice. This is a meetup for user-centred designers who work in or with charities, social enterprises or voluntary groups.

I came up with the idea for the Third Sector Design Community of Practice after discussing some of the challenges that we were facing at RNID with my colleagues. I realised that other charities were probably experiencing similar challenges or trying to solve similar problems, and we should talk to each other so we could learn from what others are doing and identify opportunities for collaboration.

I started off by creating a survey to learn more about how people in the third sector connect and what they might want to get out of a community of practice. Most people said that they only connect with other designers in their own workplace or through informal chats. This showed that there might be a gap for a more structured space for third sector designers to talk about their work with others. People said that they would like to have the opportunity to:

• share experiences
• network
• learn new skills
• problem solve with other designers.

Challenges for designers in the third sector

A frame from the Miro board that we used at the session

At the first meetup, we discussed the challenges we face as designers in the third sector and how we might overcome them. Some of most common challenges that people mentioned were:

• lack of buy-in for or understanding of service design in their organisation
• finding the right ways of working — for example, moving to agile ways of working and working with multidisciplinary teams
• designing with funding restrictions — projects may start and end abruptly due to funding, and it can be challenging to balance funding needs and user needs
• inclusive design and research — how to co-design services with people with lived experience and do user research with underserved communities
• burnout and imposter syndrome — people talked about having to ‘wear every hat’ as a designer working in a small team
• moving from design to delivery.

How we might overcome these challenges

We spent most of our time discussing ways that we could help people across our organisations understand the value of service design. These included:

• sharing success stories about how taking a service design approach has benefited users and the organisation by writing blog posts or hosting show and tells
• sharing resources to support people’s understanding of user-centred design
• spending time with senior leaders and stakeholders so they’re involved in the design process
• identifying people outside your team who you have worked with successfully who could be ambassadors for service design.

What we want to talk about next

When I asked people what they might want to discuss at future meetups, the most popular answers were:

• service design patterns for the third sector
• anti-racist design and research practices
• examples of how other organisations have used co-design/co-production
• how design teams are set up and work in other organisations.

Developing the community

I’m planning to host another Third Sector Design Community of Practice in May, and I’m hoping that we can meet monthly to discuss the challenges we’re facing and share what we’re working on.

If you have an example that you would like to share at a future meetup, send me an email at katie.dickerson@rnid.org.uk.