In March the Supporting Pipes Grand Finale took place in the form of a two day event at Glasgow’s LCAS centre. With over 70 people attending, this event was all about ‘testing the Engine’ …
With the materials, ideas and insights from the three workshops in Glasgow, Perth and Edinburgh we grouped all ideas and themes together. We then invited designers, developers, people who live with a condition and people who provide services to come together to use these ideas to bring the Engine to life. Here’s the Framework we started the 2 days with.
After a brief Introduction and an explanation of the rules of engagement, the Groups set off on their 2-day voyage
We asked the teams to work on the ideas that emerged from the February Workshops, and make them even more real, imagining what they would need from an Engine – and also what resources they might contribute to it. We were joined by James Munro from Patient Opinion, AnneMarie Cunningham a GP and Clinical Lecturer from Cardiff, Katie Brown from MIND in Leeds and Gillian Easson from Nesta’s Age Unlimited Program.
The ideas that have been generated throughout the workshops have been fantastic and these potential services will need good information to make them work and this is where the Engine comes in!
We have had great feedback from the participants: “I really enjoyed the workshop last week. It was a very different way of working for many of us but judging by the presentations at the end & the general air of excitement I think we pulled it off.”
All the participants, service users and providers alike, were very interested in finding effective ways of information gathering and dissemination. Lot’s of conversation happened around story telling, communities, education, enabling feedback, databases, libraries, pulling and pushing information, ecosystems, information sites, widgets, signposting, safety, identity… to mention a few!
Interesting questions were asked such as:
how can we tell people about our service through sign language ?
how are information sites used nationally and locally?
how do people share experiences online?
A recurring theme was the challenge of managing the online vs offline – the need to cater for both audiences and make this link seamless but a suggestion that kept reoccurring was that the Engine could be a vehicle for helping people to get online.
Every team had a to do list of items that would help being their idea to life: elevator pitch, story board, business plan and future visioning.
And here is a short video snippet of them hard at work on the second day:
We were lucky enough to be joined by 4th year students from Glasgow School of Art who all pitched in to the co-design process and helped the six small groups wonderfully, to move an outline idea (or indeed melange of ideas) towards a service proposal over the two days. Not only did they facilitate their groups’ process, but they also helped us with a mid-flight review and adjustment on Thursday evening.
One of their number, James Porteous has written a brilliant write up of his experience. You can see the final presentation of all the groups: Jame’s group created ‘People Helping People’ | Lauren Coleman’s group created ‘It’s about time’ | Megan Lambie ’s group created ‘Plugged In’ | Iain MacMillan’s group created ‘First things First’ | Greig Robinson’s group created ‘Inca’ | Kirsty Sinclair’s group created ‘Reach’ (Kirsty also touched on her experience when writing about story-telling and Design)
Big thanks go to Gemma Teal, Gayle Rice and James Vale who dipped in and out of the groups offering their support and advice… and thank you to Kyle Murdoch for filming the event.
The event was a success, the stories told, the plans made, the ideas generated and the visualisation of the Aliss engine were brilliant.
We now know what you need the engine to do … we have proved people need it!
