In the eleventh hour

Posted by Sarah Schulman on 20 August 2010 | 0 Comments
Tags: family project

Good ideas seems to always come in the 11th hour. On Monday, we went to the bookstore, toy store, and zoo looking for inspiration to help us create family-facing materials. On Tuesday, we mocked up some early measurement tools, service propositions, and branding. On Wednesday, we refined those ideas. On Thursday, we made physical models of these things and crowded around the table to play our new time game and family personality test. Now, on Friday, we've decided we didn't get things quite right on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Tomorrow, on Saturday, we'll start sharing and further developing our ideas with families in their homes. So that leaves the next 12 hours to actualise some of our revised thinking (Well, really, that leaves the next 12 hours for Chris to visualise our revised thinking!) 

Our goal is to find out which ideas attract families, which turn families off, and how families can envision engaging with and fitting the ideas into their lives. We have three types of ideas: (1) ideas about new kinds of games to help families work out where they are and where they want to go; (2) ideas about new kinds of people - guides and coaches - to work with families to get them where they want to go; and (3) ideas about new kinds of experiences to do as a family, on your own, and with others. We think the quality of experiences is really important for their effectiveness. Great quality experiences are those which help families, and individuals within those families, develop their group leadership and culture. Group leadership is about trying new things, positive feedback, and strategic decision-making. Group culture is about learning, exploring, trying out different routines, and developing together. We think helping families see change and track what they do over time is really important. And so we'll be testing out some of the language and ways of talking about family alongside the ideas themselves.

 

No doubt, on Monday, we'll realise there is an entirely different and better way of doing things. And that's why we do co-design. Because our ideas are never as good as they could be. We'll let you know how our ideas improve next week.