My learnings on Service and Experience Design workshop

As part of the Service and Experience Design workshop, we explored possibilities and limitations of Service-System Design to enhance and sustain livelihood for People with Disabilities. The area my team and I chose to work on is to overcome stigma around disability in gated communities.

Following are my learnings over the two weeks of the workshop.

1. Reflect and connect

This workshop helped me to reflect and connect on my lived experience. For a very brief time, I had temporarily experienced physical disability after my wrist surgery. Though not comparable, I understand how it feels to be dependent on others for your day to day activities. It requires constant support and encouragement to live one’s full life for people with disabilities.

I reflected on my brief interactions with people with disabilities.

How I avoid conversation with a person with hearing disability and mental disability. Why? Because I don’t know how to approach them.

How I was amazed at the hospitality of people with hearing disability at Mirchi and Mime, Mumbai.

How we need to challenge our assumptions and notions about disability.

I was once interviewed by a blind recruiting manager along with another interviewer for a software company. Though recruiting manager could not see me, he correctly pointed out that I seemed worried. I was worried about the contract position the company was offering as I was looking for permanent position. This experience broke the stereotype I had about people with disabilities. I always had thought, people with disabilities end up taking roles that are tailored according to their disability. That’s how I thought how role reversal — beneficiaries to providers would bring in change in the way how we perceive disability.

2. Building a sustainable design — Social and Economical

While designing the concept of AbleWay and CareForce, we had to think about how to make the idea socially and economically sustainable. We knew building another NGO or relying on existing NGO services is not economically sustainable in a long run.

We were introduced to ‘Social Enterprises’. A social enterprise is an organisation that is directly involved in the sale of goods and services to a market, but that also has specific social objectives that serve as its primary purpose. Source: Investopedia

We thought AbleWay as a Social Enterprise could be more economically sustainable and put a thought on how AbleWay can earn profit as well as work towards greater cause.

To make the concept socially sustainable, we introduced the idea of CareForce. We were inspired by Meta-Design principle of how we can enable people to take ownership and solve their problems. Needs change, so the concept of CareForce can also extend to cater problems with senior citizens. All of this happens at the hands of people.

Service and Experience Design

The mapping exercise of finding gaps and opportunities, helped me to look at the bird’s eye view of existing systems working towards overcoming stigma around disability. Identifying gaps and opportunities helped us to shape the experiential activities over awareness campaigns and more inclusive activities.

Journey map of a person with disability helped me further understand and narrow down why I should be working towards overcoming stigma around disability at a society level.

The roadmap of Ableway (proposed social enterprise) led to the roadmap of Careforce. While carving the roadmap for Careforce, we considered the sustainability and the greater cause of overcoming stigma.

Scenarios and 3d model were good way to visualise and design the concept.

The idea of making a complex system do just what you want it to do can be achieved only temporarily, at best. We can never fully understand our world, not in the way our reductionistic science has led us to expect.

— Donella Meadows, Dancing with the systems

Finally I understand the proposed idea is not flawless. It has its limitations and threats. We have taken certain assumptions, that might not work practically. Like the very idea of forming a CareForce. We can’t impose how it should be formed and work. We can listen to what the system tells us, and bring forth something much better.

We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!

— Donella Meadows, Dancing with the systems