Genius Interview #5 - CE

Raw notes: UNHCR innovation service

Org at a crossroads needed to do more innovations. Series of iterations Product centric approach to innovation. Ended up at an approach that focuses on values that drive innovations.

Culture & capacity building. Going beyond the product or system to make the ‘thing’ more sustainable. Future and foresight tech. Emerging tech & practices.

AI to predict displacement etc.

We do a lot.

Use design a lot in our work not just in our end product but design processes as to create more inclusivity. Appeal to more diversity etc. Using design in creative ways.

OSD has been on the radar but not fully engaged. Sometimes we need off the shelf solution because of iterating quickly

Biggest lesson: People don’t understand what design is? For people that consume the thing. If they don’t understand that then designers get stuck as the people that ‘make the posters’

Communications element both on design side and citizen side.

What happens after the event? How is design percieved? ***build into the post event methodology: Surveys, interest, engagement. Community building capacity.

3 pipelines of people: Designers, open source software owners, beneficiaries we need to serve all these people.

Longer term goals written from my perspective

The concepts of design are too northern lead (developed countries) global south participation. What does it mean to include those populations. What kinds of visuals/aestihics are included there? The symbols included, the design sprint. What kind of reflections are there?

Good pre-briefings/post mortems on events. Here’s a problem, do the thing, hand over and all the design process then gets missed there.

Mike Butcher 2015 2016 tech for good projects. Mobilise a big community of people to build tech for other people that were trying to help refugees. Over focused on the tech rather than the needs. Tech for good for refugees and migrants

What’s the edge or the hook? What designers are we looking at specifically. Sustained engagement from them?

Got assumptions - testing assumptions - Is there anything that we can do to test these sooner rather than later? What do those experiments look like and iterating the approach? Appeal to the values of that design community.

What values bind that community? (design) Need to be okay

Doing a pre-mortem on the events/process with the team etc. Lock them in the room

Assumption = worst case scenarios and then work backwards. Change in thinking or approach.

Deliberately talk to naysayers.

**talk to agencies around very resistant people. Talk to the enemies!

Talk to one of the design teams for depth on the ideas. Nairobi based and Geneva

Would be useful in many ways for them. If it was created. Too many ways. Humanitarian orgs get poor design support but needs to be sustained.

Hasn’t worked: working with volunteer groups is challenging. Good will is great but sustainability has been challenging. That’s why we invested in designers.

Interested in people's brains and experience not platforms and products. That’s where we see partnerships. Learn a lot from people on organisations.

ushahidi / opendesign

Genius Interview #5 - CE #95