Launching the Design Lab

A working session with a cohort of thinkers at the Design Lab.

Much of the work we do at Careful Industries is about understanding how communities can more actively shape digital technologies, so we’re really pleased to get the chance to spend the next year working with seven emerging infrastructure organisations. The Lab has just started in earnest and we’ll be blogging regularly over the next ten months to share what we’re doing and learning. This post is a “what have you been doing since April?” catch-up.

What have we done so far?

The first thing was to hire a Lab Manager. This role is even more important than it would be in non-pandemic times, as we won’t have the chance for a few months to get everyone together and chat in real life. It’s not just about programming the content, but about making space and time for people who already busy running organisations to learn and explore, and growing a feeling of mutual support in the group. Hiring well can take a while, and after advertising the role in April, Craig Grady joined us in July from The Children’s Society. Craig brings both experience of working in the voluntary and community sector and expertise in building and growing communities of practice. We’re very pleased to have him join the Careful Industries’ team.

While we were hiring, we were also getting to know the seven emerging infrastructure organisations — understanding their needs and how best to support them over the next ten months. They are all really different (find out more about them on the participants page)  but share some questions and challenges. This meant that understanding how to craft a programme that would work for individuals, organisations, and the whole cohort took a little while. We’re still experimenting with formats and ways of running sessions, but we’ve made some progress with understanding what the group needs.

We were very lucky to have brilliant creative producer Kim Plowright  join us to help navigate these first stages of discovery and programming.

Pace and context

Before we even get to the digital part of it, the most important things to understand were really about pace and context. These are all mission-driven organisations that work quickly in changing contexts, often supported by lightweight internal systems. They are working hard to make change happen now.

All of the cohort work with or support groups of people who have been historically under-represented in positions of power - including young people, Travellers, disabled artists, young women of colour, and people living in poverty - and the upheaval of the last 18 months has not made that easier. I spent several years running a small charity and know that the balancing act of making change in the world while also keeping an organisation running is difficult to maintain: the skills and the headspace needed to do both are completely different, and sometimes it can feel impossible to prioritise nurturing your own organisation when pursuing the outward mission is urgent and feels all-consuming. This tension has become even more fraught for many small organisations in the pandemic, when usual planning and strategy cycles have fallen completely out of synch with the real world.

The broader context of change makes it an interesting time to think about organisational infrastructure. It means that many of the Lab members have a keen sense of things they want to change, but not the time and space to  work methodically through the steps to get there. We need things that work, and work quickly: that doesn’t mean we should create a situation where we implement at speed and repent at leisure, but it does mean we won’t be taking a traditional “digital transformation” approach.

So what are we doing?

The Lab started at the end of June. We’re still working on forming the group and how to work together, but we’ve started with some digital infrastructure 101 - practical, actionable things that people can take away and do tomorrow.

Our first session was an introduction to GDPR with the redoubtable Rowenna Fielding, aka Miss IG Geek (IG stands for “information governance”).  Everyone is also getting the chance for a one-to-one session with Rowenna to go through any pressing information governance issues.

Everyone in the Lab works with data they collect from people who are historically under-represented in positions of power; as well as the basic legal obligations, they all have a duty to protect and safeguard the communities they work with and represent, and understanding more about GDPR is important in that context. Community-driven data is something we’ll return to throughout the programme: it’s not just a case of copy-and-pasting a way of working from the corporate sector, government or large charities: there’s also an opportunity for us to develop a more representative and sympathetic way of collecting, analysing and understanding data.

Over the summer, we’re also running introductions to data ethics and data justice, digital accessibility, and cyber security.

We were also incredibly lucky to have Stefanie Posavec run a data selfies workshop with the group, in which everyone drew a picture that represented certain things they wanted to share. It was part “getting to know you” exercise and part an experiment in how to think about data as material. Not just something you collect and put in a spreadsheet or a CRM system, but something that can make other things, and that can make other things possible.

We’re also finding mentors and coaches to work with the Lab members on specific issues. These include measurement and KPIs in the context of uncertainty and systems change; understanding more about user-centred design and service design; and implementing CRM systems. Everyone is at a different place in their journey, so the difficult bit is working out how to introduce new ways of working and build capabilities in ways that are useful, appropriate and not overwhelming.

As we get into the summer, we’ll share more about our progress and you’ll get to hear from some of the people in the Lab about their thoughts and experiences too. For now, we’re busy getting properly started.