Our projects » Radical Redesign » A prototype curriculum for Social Problem Solving
Co-design Camp 01: Breaking down a case study into user interactions.
We’re working with our new Radical Redesign team and teams within government to develop a curriculum to spread our approach to social problem solving. Co-designing Thriving Solutions is a curriculum that aims to equip teams, in and out of public systems, with the behaviours, skills, and tools to 'work backwards'. Learning experiences include: camps, classes, workshops, new models of reflection and feedback and the hybrid 'work & learn' model we're prototyping with our own Radical Redesign team.
An introduction to our prototype curriculum for social probelm solving.
We believe systemic social challenges, like educational disengagement, crime, drug addiction, unemployment and indigenous inequality require new kinds of solutions. Getting to those solutions will require a new way of working and people who can do that new work.
Whilst there's great interest and excitment around the results of 'social innovation' there are too few practioners and too few methdologies that move systemically from problem to solution. We want to spread our methodology but our hunches tell us doing that is going to require new kinds of learning experiences.
Co-design Camp 01: Learning about the 6 new work behaviours.
We’ve run heaps of workshops, lectures, and action learning groups that have tried to introduce new ways of working to policy makers and practioners but, to be honest, they've done little to shift work behaviour.
We take from this that spreading our approach will be hard and needs to be an exercise in behaviour change, demanding far more rigour and resource than previous efforts. Over the coming 12-months, we’ll test four big hunches:
Our first hunch is that skills and tools are insufficient for working differently. In the past, we’ve used a ‘toolbox’ teaching method, only to find people struggle to figure out when, where, how, or why to use the exercises and strategies. Now we think the focus needs to be on adopting a mix of behaviours across a range of contexts.
GIA workshop Singapore:Civil servants develop their making behaviours through prototyping.
Our second hunch is that changing behaviours requires immersive, experiences. While we’ve long held the view that social interventions need to do more than transmit information to change behaviours, we haven’t followed suit in our own teaching. In this curriculum, we aim to provide developmental experiences through hands-on live project work.
The Radical Redesign team - combining working and learning.
Our third hunch is that this kind of work can really only be done by interdisciplinary teams. We suspect that our past teaching has focused on the wrong unit: individuals. Indeed, we believe the strength of the approach lies in the continuous blend of different disciplines and perspectives.
GIA workshop Singapore: Breaking down case studies into designed interactions
Our fourth hunch is that the best way to teach a blended approach is to break concepts down into their component parts - to idenity what exactly can be designed - alongside learning about whole solutions.
Like everything we make, this curriculum is a prototype and we value your feedback. What did we miss? What could we do to improve it?
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