Design 21: Social Design Network

The 2009 thinkpublic brand book is now available view on Issuu, you can view it here or you can order a good-old fashioned print version by emailing paul.thurston@thinkpublic.com

We received an email all the way from Meena Kadri in New Zealand last week, by the sounds of it our ‘what i learnt last week’ reflection tools have been going down well!

———————— Just thought I’d send you through a few images of the weekly Learnings Initiative I started with one of the small advertising agency clients that I consult with all the way down here in New Zealand – inspired by your own learnings sheets posted on Flickr. I’ll be posting something about it on my blog in time, with due credit to your guys, but am just waiting for their site is re-launched in a month or so. Meanwhile I felt you’d enjoy a glimpse of your Antipodean influence!

The No To Knives Coalition has been tasked by the Prime Minister with initiating and enhancing campaign activities that change young people’s behaviour so that fewer young people carry knives and fewer fear them.

thinkpublic were invited by Bebo, the social networking site and founding member of the Coalition, to run one of our famous Social Labs. The aim of the Lab was to “foster ideas that harness social media to affect behavior change”. Law enforcement agencies, youth violence policy makers, government officials, social media experts and community organisations attended the first event which was held today at Regent’s College in London. Outcomes from the Social Lab included a set of priority challenges, creative solutions for solving these challenges and scenarios for how they might look in the future.

The thinkpublic Social Lab is a space for people to share ideas and design solutions to social challenges, if you would like to speak to someone about running a Social Lab with your organisation please email deborah@thinkpublic.com.

thinkpublic have been asked to conduct a large scale public engagement initative on the Cambridge Road and Cambridge Gardens Estates in Kingston. The PCT are keen to address a number of health inequalities that residents on the estate experience. Working in partnership with the PCT, Local Council, Community Groups and the Young Foundation, thinkpublic have led a number of activities that engage with local residents and involve them in the design of future health services on the estate.

This week the thinkpublic team have been painting large public engagement messages around the Cambridge Road and Cambridge Gardens Estate in Kingston. Over the past two days we have conducted in-depth interviews, informal conversations and vox-pops with over 60 residents, and are looking forward to a co-design event with the community in July.

The project has it’s own website www.youcankingston.com where you can keep track of everything that happens.

thinkpublic have been asked to conduct a large scale public engagement initative on the Cambridge Road and Cambridge Gardens Estates in Kingston. The PCT are keen to address a number of health inequalities that residents on the estate experience. Working in partnership with the PCT, Local Council, Community Groups and the Young Foundation, thinkpublic have led a number of activities that engage with local residents and involve them in the design of future health services on the estate.

This week the thinkpublic team have been painting large public engagement messages around the Cambridge Road and Cambridge Gardens Estate in Kingston. Over the past two days we have conducted in-depth interviews, informal conversations and vox-pops with over 60 residents, and are looking forward to a co-design event with the community in July.

The project has it’s own website www.youcankingston.com where you can keep track of everything that happens.

We have created this short film about what we do and how we do it. This compilation of our recent work and clients should give you a taste for what thinkpublic are about.

If you would like to find out more about any of the work featured in this film please email us on: hello@thinkpublic.com

This is a lovely little video about entrepreneurs. Take a look!

Designing for any large public event always sparks debate and the 2012 London Olympic Games logo was no exception, personally I have grown to really love this design. The fact that everyone knows what it's for has achieved most of what a logo is supposed to do but it's also got people talking about the olympics whether that's in a positive or negative way which can only be a good thing. It also fits perfectly with the web and has been used very well with interactive graphics which will be much more prominent than print come 2012.

Anyway I think enough has been written about the logo!...So, how would you like your logo design to sit alongside it at the vast number of community and education events surrounding the games? Well if your aged between 16 and 21 you can enter an Olympic committee competition to design a "special version of the logo that will sit alongside the London 2012 Paralympic logo and be known as the London 2012 ‘education logo’. It will be seen in communities across the UK!"

My advice is to involve the people at schools and community centre's that will use the logo and find out how it would fit within their work and what would they want to see. Full details of how you can enter can be downloaded here

The experience based design approach toolkit we developed in partnership with the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement has been rolled out nationally. We’re so pleased that the lessons we learnt working with patients and staff at Luton and Dunstable Hospital will be shared with NHS Trusts across the country.

A patient-led NHS is easy to say but hard to do. At thinkpublic, we’re proud to be doers as well as thinkers, and we’re even prouder of the lasting, productive and collaborative relationships we helped to build between patients and frontline staff at Luton and Dunstable and other NHS Trust whilst developing the EBD Approach. Now we’re looking forward to helping NHS Trusts everywhere harness the power of their most valuable asset – their service users.

Download the case study here (PDF)

At thinkpublic we use a process called co-design, we often get asked what this really means. So we made a short animation to explain the story of co-design.