Thinks & Drinks Diaries #3
Thinks and Drinks is a Service Design in Education series, hosted by #SDinEd but with presentations and talks given by our wonderful community members and network around the world. Each month, we highlight a new theme and invite speakers to talk about their relationship with Service Design and this theme.
In January we kicked off the series with ‘Design Journeys’, and in February we focused on the benefits of service design within Business & Enterprise. This month, our members talked about a theme close to every Service Designer’s heart, Co-Design!
Our Co-Design champions were Paul Bailey, head of co-design at JISC, and the Young People’s Collective from the V&A Dundee, and we couldn’t wait to get stuck in.
But first… we had our 15 minute meet up! This month we asked our audience 3 questions to get them in the mood for the upcoming co-design talks, which also works as a nice bit of social time to get to know each other. The questions were:
- Find something in your house which has a face
- Introduce yourselves and your objects
- Make a story together involving your objects
We had a really enjoyable time reading the stories that groups came up with, which included dog concerts, shrinking humans, Covid Toy Story zoom parties, and highland cows…
Time for the talks!
We had 30 people tuned in to listen to Paul talk to us about EdTech and his team at JISC that have adopted a solid co-design foundation, working alongside universities and colleges to listen to what they do, what they need, interpret their problems and develop products to best fit their needs. His team captured a lot of the process they were using and created the co-design playbook, which dives into the process of understanding, imagining and building products and services with others. We heard about a particular project called the “Summer of Student Innovation”, a competition where the output projects ranged from Rap Poetry to the still-in-use Know It Wall, and even touched on ESports and the gamification of learning, as well as AI for tertiary education! So thank you to Paul for giving us an insight into the world of JISC and possibilities of co-design!
Second up we heard from Freya, Quin and Gareth from the Young People’s Collective at the V&A, a team of 14–24 year olds that consult on what the future of Young People’s programmes at the V&A include. This group co-design their own programme, as well as working with the V&A and its many members and potential audiences to design and construct events, museum days and installations, all run out of the V&A. We learnt about ‘Design Unlocked’, a series of talks celebrating 2020 design graduates from within lockdown, shown through IGTV and Youtube. By formatting this program of talks as a long form talk series, they gave the designers time to discuss their degree show work and ongoing practice in a more in depth manner, an activity that has been taken away by the lack of physical degree shows throughout Covid. A great initiative highlighting all the wonderful things that can come out of working together and co-designing!
Q&As
Following up two wonderful talks, we had a series of questions from our audience such as, “How difficult is it to find the right balance between what the client wants and what will benefit them more?” for Paul, and “what does co-design mean to you?” which was expertly answered by Freya and Gareth. All these questions and comments are captured on our shared Padlet, accessible to everyone throughout the talk and shared with the speakers so they can answer questions directly once the talk is over.
NEXT UP
We had such an insightful time with our speakers this month and are super excited to share with you our next Thinks & Drinks, which will be on the 19th April (rather than our usual 18th slot which falls on a Sunday), from 12:30 to 1:45pm. You can already sign up here! We’ll have Helena and Ruth from Daydream Believers, putting creativity at the heart of education, and a special guest appearance from Arbroath Academy
We look forward to welcoming you!
Like what you are reading? Join our Mailing List and follow us on Twitter for more information and updates.
