‘Social Inclusion, not just Physical Integration’
Service Design unpacks over time. Some parts of service are visible to the users; these parts are called front stage. Some part of service are not visible to the users; these parts are called back stage. As a general rule of thumb, it’s safe to assume that most services are shaped like icebergs, with an enormous amount of complexity at the back stage. Humans and digital systems both together contribute to the service and experience design.
At Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, we tried our hands at the concept of Service and System Design. During two weeks of extensive workshop focusing on -“Service And Experience Design for People with disabilities (PwDs)”, we explored different tools of Service and Experience Design. Topic for the workshop was
“How can we enable the ecosystem for persons with disability (PwD) to gain livelihoods and be active citizens of the country, with a focus on technology?”
Under this topic each group had the freedom to choose different sub categories provided by “Enable India” organization. We targeted around “Connecting Peers — inclusive spaces”. With very scanty amount of information regarding the topic and behavior of able-bodied & people with disabilities, we relied mostly on secondary research available. Talking of Peers, we see that parental influence plays a very prime role in mentoring any kid’s mentality, approach among each other. Many schools now-a-days have enabled physical inclusion for children with disabilities by providing various necessary facilities, but the main need is for social inclusion as well by connecting peers and removing invisible barriers.
In short, it’s not just about physical integration, but about social inclusion.
Key learning from this workshop -
1. Visual Representation Of Collective Thoughts
We started with one specific idea — Inclusive Spaces. We mapped various elements around inclusive spaces i.e school types, stakeholders around it, curriculum, etc and how they are interlinked. Working it out on brown sheet of paper and pouring out all ideas helped us with narrowing it down. It opened new doors for us which we initially ignored based on few assumptions. We tried clubbing various system tools which gave us more accurate findings funneling down till ‘emotion map’.
2. Limitations & Threats
In system & service design nothing fits like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. After designing the system, we looked at possible threat matrix considering each stakeholder. There is always a huge rift between — ‘How you think service will work’ & ‘How it actually turns out to be’. Different stakeholders have different degree of effect on overall system. Their behavior, their actions (being human) are bound to be unpredictable. Thus, no service design can be full-proof. This made me rethink on my earlier assumptions regarding the same.
3. (Social) Self-Sustainability
Going by the standard norms of product/service easing work load and helping individuals out with their tasks throughout. But we learnt here that there are the service providing NGO cannot be associated or taking active participation in implementing those kits all the time. There has to be a hard stop or at least passive participation in their inputs. Taking into account self-sustainability, the service providing NGO can be associated with these schools just for short span of time. Later they can themselves carry forward with these activities resulting they being self-sustained. Being self-sustained helps reduce on efforts, be it economical or physical efforts. And also, each stakeholder gets substantial motivation for their contribution.
