It’s traditional at this time of year to reflect on the year gone by and make some resolutions for the year ahead. This year, as we enter a new decade, I’ve been giving some thought to the previous 10 years; a period in which I embarked upon a journey into the worlds of human-centred design, service design, design thinking and social innovation. It’s been quite a journey.
Back in 2012, I wrote my first ever blog post and in the years that have followed, I’ve published many more and have been lucky enough to have had my writing featured on other blogs and in other publications. During my journey, I’ve been a founding member of an in-house service design team in a local authority (one of the first in the UK), delivered service design contracts for NHS health trusts in Liverpool, founded a local authority innovation lab, co-founded and hosted Shropshire’s first-ever global service design jam and more recently I joined the Innovation & Design Team at Bromford and became a member of Bromford Lab. I’ve also been lucky enough to have spoken at a few different events and conferences and have met a whole heap of interesting people along the way who have helped inspire, motivate and influence my thinking. It’s been quite a decade.
Throughout my journey, I’ve found that blogging has helped me organise my thoughts. Over the past year, I’ve not done so much here on my own blog, but I have published quite a few on the Bromford Lab Blog as part of our mission to work in the open. I’m planning to make a more concerted effort to publish more work on my own blog as well as continuing to publish work elsewhere in 2020.
I thought that it would be interesting to take a look back at my most-read posts and understand where they fit on my journey and whether they are still relevant today:
Top – Seeking Analogous Inspiration
Back in March 2015, my colleagues and I started work on a design challenge to look at how we might design new ways to help people make healthier food choices. I wrote this post following a research activity which opened my eyes to learning about problems through analogy rather than direct experience. It feels like a key milestone which still shapes my thinking today. This post is by far the most read of any on my blog.
#2 – Social Innovation & Design – Trends & Predictions
In January 2016, I gave some thought to what the next 4 years could mean for social innovation and design. When I look back at this post, I’m not sure that I was able to annotate my thinking in the way I wanted to. The writing feels a little naive and in hindsight, I think I would describe things differently and use slightly different terminology, but I still broadly agree with the sentiment I was attempting to convey. I’m currently writing an update to this post which I hope to make live later this month.
#3 – Speculative Prototyping
In June 2017, I published this post as a summary of what feels like another key milestone along my journey. Having reflected upon a tool I designed to help public sector leaders visualise the future of public services and having been influenced by the likes of Superflux, I decided to iterate the tool by creating a visual narrative inspired by speculative design but which felt more like ‘speculative prototyping’. It’s shaped the way I approach my work and I’ve since explored this concept further in my work at Bromford Lab and have continued to explore the role of speculative fiction in service/policy design through my 2019 series of short stories – ‘Sunk’, ‘Trade-up’ and ‘A Tale of Prophet & Loss’. I believe that helping people to step out of their day-to-day in order to visualise what the future might be like is an essential part of the designer’s role and it’s a skill I want to continue to use and develop.
#4 – Six Years of In-House Service Design: A Retrospective
In May 2017, I started a new role as a Lab Designer at Bromford and I took some time to reflect upon my previous roles, both designing in-house for a UK local authority and externally for the NHS. Six years had provided me with lots of dynamic learning opportunities and I felt like I had picked up a few takeaways to bring into my new role and also to share with others working, or looking to work, in-house. The result was 12 principles which I still standby today.
#5 – Wicked Problems and the Public Sector
In February 2017, I published this post as a call to arms against the pursuit of silver bullet solutions which seek to solve everything but often result in protracted projects which never achieve their true potential. I had become a keen advocate for problem definition and the implementation of an ecosystem of thoughtful solutions which cut across silos to help the public sector evolve, rather than mutate. This is a principle I still hold dear today.
Over the past two years, I’ve also published a number of posts on the Bromford Lab Blog which I also wanted to revisit. Here are three of my most-read posts:
Top – Design Fiction: A Tool For Visualising Possible Futures
In February 2018, we kicked off a set of discovery sessions to help colleagues think transformatively about our processes, services and products. It felt like this provided the perfect opportunity to test out the use of 2D design fiction through a series of posters to describe political, environmental, social and technological themes. We used the posters to help colleagues explore some of the growing tensions between human and machine agency and provoke conversation around the type of future we want to create.
#2 – What We Mean When We Say ‘Design’
In September 2019, I wrote this post as an explanation of what the term ‘design’ means to me and my colleagues. It also serves as a concise summary of my design-thinking journey to-date.
#3 – New Year’s Resolutions: Prototype More, Test Often, Pilot Less
In January 2019, I published this post to help colleagues better understand the different types of test we use and when to use each type to achieve the best outcome. The content of posts #2 and #3 have provided the basis of most of my slide decks over the past year; including an Introduction to Design Thinking session which my colleague and I recently delivered to 22 Bromford leadership delegates.
–
Here’s looking forward to a new year and another decade of blogging. I’m looking forward to sharing more of my thoughts as I continue on my journey of exploration. I hope you find them useful too. Thanks for reading!
Happy New Year!
Simon Penny 