ThinkPlace - Digital

Helping governments grapple with the challenge of AI

Daniel Silkstone — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 01:10:35 +0000

New Zealand

Helping governments grapple with the challenge of AI

Topics

Regulating in the age of AI presents unique issues for our society and for those within government who are working to improve it.

Recent advances in AI and machine learning have shown us the scale of complexity and the sometimes-disorienting speed at which change is taking place. Well-publicised cases of unethical practices with AI and machine learning have fuelled mistrust across the global community and have the potential to create crippling uncertainty in the minds of those who might deploy AI in pursuit of greater efficiencies or social benefit.

In this context, governments around the world are beginning to realise that they have both a responsibility and a need to ensure that AI is adopted in ethical ways. But apprehending this need and acting strategically upon it are two different things.

Many government actors are dealing with the same emerging questions about how best to do this: How quickly should the uses that AI is put to and the way in which it operates be regulated? And how can this be done while upholding important human rights and values?

Drawing on our deep expertise with emerging technologies and digital ethics, ThinkPlace recently facilitated a conversation to explore these questions for the World Economic Forum Center for the Fourth Digital Revolution (C4IR) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs. Leaders from across government, business, Māoridom (New Zealand indigenous community) and civil society gathered to have open dialogue about the opportunities and challenges of AI, and potential steps forward.

Kate MacDonald, NZ Government Fellow at C4IR, said the intention was to bring together stakeholders across all sectors to collaborate on designing innovative and agile frameworks for governing AI.

Activities in New Zealand will be based on creating a policy roadmap to guide decision-makers; convening a national conversation; and piloting the most promising approaches and tools - Kate MacDonald, C4IR

This is an opportuntity space not just a risk one

This was a hugely necessary and very timely conversation. For many government leaders across multiple sectors artificial intelligence is an uncharted territory with huge potential. While attention is rightly often focused upon making sure that applications do not create harms for citizens (either intended or unintended) there is also huge opportunity for AI to be a powerful force for public good at a human level.

We’re already seeing some of the benefits – efficiencies, cost savings, error reduction and future forecasting – to name a few. It’s not hard to see the potential benefits when algorithms can assess a wide range of data to make determinations about where aid should be delivered during an unfolding crisis or which portions of the population might be targeted for a public health campaign, a tax audit or a new form of skills training.

But it’s also not hard to see the potential ethical pitfalls if these processes are mishandled. When we empower AI to pick winners and losers, when we use people’s private information and data to aid in decision making we are operating at a new ethical frontier.

Done wrong, AI has the potential to create harms, including privacy issues, entrenched biases, power structures and racism, control issues, and accountability issues. The diverse range of sectors also means that there is a wide range of interests in AI from all sides of the spectrum.

The scale of the potential harms can be intimidating – and there is currently no map, no template for doing this well. This event was a necessary first step towards creating that template and making sure it is co-created by all of the voices who have a stake in its application and success.

We were asking: How might we enable the best of AI in a way that protects human rights and values and meets the needs of our sectors?

Here are the top four insights that we took away from the day.

1. Whose ethics?

When talking about AI and regulation, it’s not simply a discussion about the tools or technologies but also the ethical framework that serves as a scaffold. It includes questioning how decisions are made, how power is distributed and who benefits and is excluded.

2. What will our country stand for?

Regulating AI well means striking the right balance between global scalability and local relevance, and to do this requires a deep understanding of where our nation wants to sit on the spectrum – to appropriately honour the diversity of voices and rights of our citizens.

3. How might we aspire to be trustworthy, not just trusted?

AI will be meaningless if the leaders, data, frameworks and tools for regulating are not considered trustworthy by citizens. AI relies heavily on data inputs – but leveraging this data in the long-term requires the reputation of reliability and a strong alignment in ethics. We’ve seen what happens when companies are trusted, but are not trustworthy with their use of data.

4. How do we honour the cultural uniqueness of data ownership and data sovereignty?

In our conversations we explored the notion of individual, community and societal data ownership and data sovereignty, but also recognised that these are rooted in cultures. In Aotearoa New Zealand, honouring and upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) is critical for ethical application of AI. However, as part of a global community, we also need to identify the expectations of other country cultures and understand how our unique approach may have similarities and differences with our overseas peers.

While these discussions and the insights they generated were specific to a New Zealand context they also have much potential to resonate more broadly.

“New Zealand was chosen as a country to explore this work because ensuring people’s rights in the digital age and keeping citizens safe in a technological world are two key government priorities,” Kate MacDonald says.

“From a WEF point of view, New Zealand is a small country, able to move nimbly and work across the system and sectors. It already has a strong collaborative culture, and is bicultural with a wide diversity within its population.”

“I was thrilled at the high energy and enthusiasm in the room, the wide ranging and respectful conversations and the real passion the people in the room had to see this succeed.”

Want to know more? Inquire about our short course in digital ethics

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Improving the safety of Australian medicines

Daniel Silkstone — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 02:28:09 +0000

Work

Improving the safety of Australian medicines

Service

DigitalResearch & insights

People

Sector

Healthy Societies

More than 250,000 Australians are hospitalised each year, and another 400,000 present to emergency departments, because of medication errors, inappropriate use, misadventure or interactions, according to the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia’s Medicine Safety: Take Care report.

As these figures make clear, usability of clinical systems is an important factor in patient safety, and information about medicines, allergies and adverse reaction is among the most critical health data available in Australia’s My Health Record system.

A poor clinical experience when accessing or entering this health data can have extremely serious consequences.

THE CHALLENGE

The complexity of the health digital ecosystem involves multiple points of care across public and private hospital networks, community pharmacies, general practice and aged care services – using different systems, different levels of digital maturity and complex interoperability challenges.

The Australian Digital Health Agency approached ThinkPlace to provide research and user-centred design capability to improve the display, usability and clinical safety of this information across the sector and to develop a roadmap to guide the agency, clinical stakeholders and developers through implementation now and in the future.

OUR RESPONSE

To gain a deep understanding of the challenges clinical users face, and how they need medicine-related information to be presented at the point of care, ThinkPlace undertook research within clinical environments – talking to doctors, hospital administrators, emergency workers, pharmacists and aged-care workers across Australia.

We also engaged in ongoing discussions with the Agency’s core team of around 30 systems and data specialists and clinical advisors to understand the interoperability of data, policy and clinical safety requirements that needed to govern the emerging designs.

HOW WE DID IT

Insights gained from our research activities were described in journey maps and a series of detailed design hypotheses.

We then took these hypotheses and used them to develop interactive prototypes, conducting further evaluation with users through a series of agile design iterations.

Throughout this process we tracked the evolution of the designs through the lenses of usability and clinical safety and communicated findings through weekly meetings with the Core Design Team, keeping track of the evidence, decisions and outcomes through team collaborative tools such as Trello and Confluence.

“This design process enabled a deep and collaborative user-centred design approach to efficiently and effectively inform decision making, with all decisions being made from a solid and shared understanding of the evidence base.” Project Lead Darren Menachemson.

KEY FEATURES

Contextual enquiry with real-world users provided deep insights into the needs of clinical users at the point of care
User research was tracked and communicated using shared online tools by the project team
Living and collaborative project tools enabled a clear line of sight and record of decisions made through research, prototyping and the final roadmap.
Continuous research and validation feeding into collaborative decision making meant issues relating to governance and clinical safety were quickly identified and efficiently addressed
The collaborative agile design methodology informed the roadmap from immediate release to future strategy.
Evidence-based decision making meant easier prioritisation of features aligned to user need and clinical safety concerns

THE IMPACT

Changes to My Health Record, contributed to by ThinkPlace, have been hugely impactful.

“We are already seeing benefits being realised around improved medication management, improved decision making, reduction in adverse events and savings in time in collecting medical information at the point of care.” ADHA

One such benefit: When serious flooding washed over Townsville in early 2019 many people were cut off from resources, including patients who could not visit their regular pharmacy for essential medications.

“The biggest problem for pharmacists is people being cut off from their home pharmacies – so they’re presenting at whatever pharmacies are open, without much knowledge of their medicines and without their prescriptions,” Pharmacist Paul Willis told ajp.com.au.

“So at the moment, My Health Record is absolutely shining. The doctors are loving it, the nurses are loving it, the traditional relationships between GPs and patients don’t really exist at the moment so everyone’s trying to help each other and My Health Record is able to provide a consistent medication profile.”

The ADHA reports that: “The Medicines view was a key enhancement that has helped ADHA drive their pharmacist adoption rates over the last year... now they have nearly 5,000 pharmacies registered using the system.”

Australian pharmacies signed up to the My Heath Record system in record numbers in the 12 months to April 2019. In April 2018, only 33% of pharmacies were registered with My Health Record. A year later that figure stood at 83%.

Pharmacists are also uploading and viewing My Health Record more often, with a 667% increase in the number of dispense records uploaded to My Health Record and a 942% increase in the number of record views, comparing April 2018 to April 2019.

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Helping businesses benefit from digital technology

Daniel Silkstone — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 23:23:00 +0000

Work

Helping businesses benefit from digital technology

Service

Experience & Behavioural DesignInnovation AmplifiedDigital

People

Sector

Strong Economies

Singapore is a nation that is pushing hard to build its digital future.

The Singaporean government has taken an active role, supporting the nation’s businesses and companies to embrace the efficiencies and growth possibilities made possible by emerging technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analysis.

The response to this urging has been strong and enthusiastic but enthusiasm alone will not be enough to guarantee success.

While many businesses display a willingness to wade into these new spaces there are not always sufficient levels of knowledge or competency for them to do so with confidence.

It’s especially true for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who often lack the resources to run detailed analyses of the opportunities and risks associated with specific technologies. They sometimes find it hard to know where and with who to get started.

At the same time technological innovators and vendors often have an incomplete understanding of the business problems they could be helping to solve. Experience and context is needed to allow them to better target their innovations and make products work in the real world.

THE CHALLENGE

It's not always easy for businesses and technology providers to work together to create new mutual value. It requires trust.

For these reasons the Singapore Government has established the Open Innovation Platform – a way to connect and facilitate partnerships between businesses with hard-to-solve problems, and technology providers who just might have the answer.

The platform is an initiative of Infocomm Media Development Authority.

OUR RESPONSE

ThinkPlace is supporting the program as a design thinking facilitator.

As part of the platform, we’ve been working directly with businesses and technology solution providers to help them engage with one another, and find what works.

We’re working with a variety of Singapore businesses across areas like construction, insurance, food, retail and sustainability. Using design thinking and other methods, as well as our extensive and diverse consulting experience, we’ve helped them make sense of what they’re seeking to achieve and how to engage the world of technology effectively.

HOW WE DO IT

The OIP is a strong platform for matching and catalysing business and technology partners. It’s based on a model, where businesses construct a design challenge around their problem, and offer a prize to the technologist that can best tackle it.

The process starts with problem framing. Together with IMDA, ThinkPlace works with businesses to help them refine their problem statement, ready to be published to the platform.

Some businesses have a very clear idea of the problem (having dealt with it for years) and we help them to put it into language that is clear for a technologist. With other businesses, we help clarify intent and craft the problem statement that they want to put before a techno

We use human-centred design techniques to ensure that requirements consider real world human needs and context. At other points, we’ll explore the system-level view, walk through critical business processes, and consider business risks. Once we’ve reached clarity, the agreed-upon ‘problem’ is then uploaded to the platform and the IMDA shares it with a global pool of thousands of tech providers, to generate a shortlist of interested parties.

At this point, we support IMDA and the business to evaluate potential solutions, and prepare the businesses to effectively interview a chosen few solution providers.

Once a partner is selected we help the business and technology providers agree to the terms of the design challenge, and the KPIs they are to meet in order to receive prize money.

Next, we assist the business problem owner and technology solution provider to design the solution. We bring in years of design experience to create a proof of concept or prototype (depending on the terms of the challenge) that is effective, efficient, ethical and provides a great user experience.

THE IMPACT

This project provides Singapore’s businesses with critical support from an independent trusted ally who can help them navigate a process that is absolutely necessary but often nervously engaged with and potentially fraught with risk.

“What they’ve really appreciated is our independence and our real commitment to trying to understand and address their specific challenges,” says ThinkPlace Singapore Managing Director Bill Bannear.

“It’s a great thing to have the confidence that you are buying something that is really going to help your business, not just being sold something shiny that you’ll regret investing in six months from now.”

For the technology solution providers, the program has opened up new business opportunities and a platform that makes it easy to co-create valuable products. The partnerships from OIP are already creating a portfolio of new business products, powered by emerging technologies, that will scale across the region.

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An exciting partnership for design education in Singapore

Daniel Silkstone — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 01:05:05 +0000

Work

An exciting partnership for design education in Singapore

Service

Experience & Behavioural DesignDigitalEducation & Capability

People

Sector

Vibrant Communities

In the right hands they are powerful tools but misapplied by the inexperienced they can be little more than buzzwords: User experience design, design thinking, gamification.

And in Singapore, as with many other worldwide markets, there is growing demand for these services.

THE CHALLENGE

When the Republic Polytechnic in Singapore recently decided to expand its suite of adult education services into design thinking, gamification and experience design they didn’t have to work too hard to decide who they needed to partner with.

ThinkPlace has strong capability and global profile across all three areas. We also have a thriving Singapore Design Studio and a strong track record of working with government and non-government organisations in the city-state.

That’s why ThinkPlace and Republic Polytechnic signed a memorandum of understanding to make this new partnership official. The MOU coincides with the opening of Republic Polytechnic’s new Experience Design and Gamification Centre.

This major partnership between ThinkPlace and the Polytechnic cements our role as a global leader in education around design thinking, user experience and gamification.

OUR RESPONSE

The XGD centre will focus on promoting awareness, and developing capabilities and expertise in UX and Gamification via projects, consultancies and training. 

It will help businesses to develop and adopt UX and Gamification solutions that foster innovation and enhance productivity and competitiveness. 

The centre brings together a powerful alliance of industry, private and public sector. This will open up spaces for consultancy work as well as advanced training in methods that ThinkPlace is a world leader in.

There is a growing demand for user experience design services in Singapore and this partnership will allow the building of new capability that allows the Polytechnic to provide the technical support Singaporean businesses are increasingly demanding.

HOW WE'RE DOING IT

Gamification is more than just leader boards, badges and rewards. Designed well, it engages and motivates people across all activities and organisations.

Gamification has immense potential in engaging customers, improving loyalty and shifting behaviours. It has the power to spur motivation of people and influence behaviours. Customers are not the only group of people that organisations need to motivate and engage. In fact, employees can significantly benefit from these programmes to retain, recognise and spur engagement of staff beyond compensation.

ThinkPlace has long been a leader in this emerging space and a gamification company - Pentaquest - is a part of the ThinkPlace global network.

THE IMPACT

Through both the new XGD Centre, and the broader ThinkPlace-RP relationship, we will be engaging with organisations on User Research, UX, Design Thinking, Service Design, Serious Games and Gamification through: 

Projects - An opportunity for ThinkPlace and Polytechnic staff to collaborate on projects for clients where differing skillsets make this desirable and to share access to labs and facilities. 
Consultancy – A joint effort to establish gamification in Singapore, and realise its benefits for both private and public sector
Industry collaboration - Driving Singapore's industry transformation roadmaps, working with employers and employees alike, to achieve change at scale across sectors
Training – A new platform to provide continuing adult design training for adult learners as part of our collaboration

ABOUT THINKPLACE SINGAPORE

ThinkPlace is a global network of strategic design studios, founded in 2005. Our Singapore Studio opened in 2014 and is led by General Manager Bill Bannear.

Building on ThinkPlace's global reputation as a provider of education and training we have established strong credentials in providing design thinking training and education to public organisations over the past four years. Increasingly, we are seeing interest from the private sector looking for partners that could help them develop and embed design capability in an effort to unlock strategic competitiveness and innovation.

Continuing education is a critical part of building human capital in Singapore and aligns closely with the Government’s plans for workforce transformation. The Singaporean Prime Minister also talks about how design thinking will be instrumental in the nation’s continued development.

There is plenty of ongoing interest in these methods right now. We see this as an opportunity to extend our footprint and to collaborate with the polytechnic to offer a design thinking training programme. Beyond that, we want to introduce new programmes through the centre such as design thinking for specific industries and gamification design - Bill Bannear

“These are areas where we have clear expertise and we can help, not only Singaporean businesses and organisations to flourish but help to build the capacity for innovation across the nation.”

ABOUT REPUBLIC POLYTECHNIC

Republic Polytechnic is the youngest polytechnic in Singapore, offering diploma courses in Engineering, ICT, hospitality, management and communications to interested tertiary students.

ThinkPlace has previously worked with the Polytechnic to embed design capabilities with their staff and lecturers. We have also accommodated students from the Polytechnic’s Diploma in Design for user experience as interns, while maintaining a close relationship to support them in their design growth. The new centre and the memorandum of understanding that create sit are a logical next step in this partnership.

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The one algorithm we are still badly missing

Daniel Silkstone — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 23:56:13 +0000

Australia

The one algorithm we are still badly missing

Topics

#innovation #globalinnovation, human-centred design

We are seeing it constantly; the algorithms that decide which news to place in our feeds like nothing better, it seems, than feeding us news about algorithms.

I am fascinated by the pace of artificial intelligence discourse in everyday media and news. And I see huge potential for the shift that’s underway to unearth systemic root drivers using data in ways that the human mind can’t process.

Take, for example, IBM’s much-lauded Project Debater. This masterpiece of algorithm and programming – released in 2019 – has achieved plenty of fanfare. The promise it offers is tantalising: A tool that can help people make decisions about complex questions, weighing up evidence (in the form of big data) on a computational scale no human could match and using decision-making frameworks to provide advice that is said to be both evidence-based and “not clouded by emotion”.

It’s an interesting metaphor in this context, the cloud. More on that in a moment.

Amid all this change, as I read about new business ideas, services and their possible ethical implications, I can’t help but lean on my own world view, as a human-centred designer and sociologist.

What about Human Intelligence (HI) in this world of increasing AI? As humans, what do we bring? What can we add to both guide and complement the emergence of AI?

It’s important as a species to register our intent: that we are not designing for our own obsolescence when it comes to making sense of the world and working to improve it.

How might we be sure to preserve the role of us, as people, in the way we define and design solutions to our most pressing challenges?

Let’s get back to clouds. In 1966, Karl Popper wrote the famous piece: Of Clocks and Clouds. Decades later, the distinction it makes is still relevant.

Popper observed that clocks are precise mechanisms. It is clear what each component of the clock does and how changing that component will affect the clock as a whole.

Not so clouds! A cloud is composed of many different components and the individual behaviour of each is random and unpredictable. 

“Cloud problems” are complex. They feature interconnections and interdependencies that are unstable and unpredictable. Changing one part of this system will not have a predictable outcome for other parts. These problems cannot be solved in a linear, staged way.

Emotions, relationships, personal connections and private motivations, all are real parts of the problems we see. But most are below the surface. Sometimes invisible. All require human intelligence to build and deploy understanding.

The temptation here would be to presume that, while algorithmic understanding is emerging rapidly and constantly shifting we have “got the human part covered”.

That’s not what I’m arguing. While human intelligence is something we all possess (and something older than human civilisation itself) this does not mean that we don’t need to develop, update, rethink and redesign how we apply it.

For those who seek to make a positive change in the world, this is the truly great challenge of our time. At ThinkPlace we are increasingly working to pair our understanding of human behaviours and the social with the information-gathering and analytic power offered by emerging technologies. Together, both are stronger.

So I’m throwing out two challenges: How  might we increase our sophistication of HI as fast as we work on improving artificial algorithms? 

And how might we define HI in a way that means it is built into future decision-making so that AI will only work if HI is involved? 

Why does this matter? If we pay attention to HI as a critical partner to AI, then complex issues will be solved in dignified and socially sensitised ways, and we have a much greater chance of producing the results we most need. 

It’s possible that algorithms can and will get better at “cloudy thinking” to tackle the kinds of complex problems Popper identified (problems that we see are increasingly common and increasingly complex in the connected, globalised, digitally transforming world we now inhabit). But we know that humans offer some powerful capabilities right now that can be put to use with great impact.

What if we proposed HI as an algorithm too? At its most basic an algorithm is a recipe; a set of assumptions and instructions that can be applied to determine decision-making. So here’s a new recipe for a new human intelligence…

Understanding the social + enrolling the social + optimised collaboration capacity + strengthened learning models. 

Pause for a second and read it again. Think of the power this recipe might hold. If we start to think of things in this way, we can then devote meaningful attention to the work needed to create HI at the same rate we are furiously building AI.

Here’s an example. ThinkPlace recently led an award-winning project to co-create a Family Safety Hub for the ACT Government. The idea was to remove some of the friction or disconnection points between available services and resources for both survivors and perpetrators of family violence, increasing connection and accessibility to make seeking and receiving help a more seamless experience.

To do this we spent plenty of time speaking with survivors of family violence from a variety of backgrounds, as well as discussions with stakeholders in the system and even perpetrators themselves. The ostensible purpose of this was discovery. By seeking, gaining and synthesising insights from users of the system we hoped to use that understanding to create a better system (this is the heart of what human-centred design and co-design are all about).

But we quickly noticed something else we hadn’t built into the project intentionally. The act of coming together to discuss these matters in a shared and safe environment had value in itself. Lots of value. These “focus groups” became “conversation circles”. They physically and emotionally brought people together who would otherwise have remained disconnected and isolated.

To some extent, the research became the intervention. We are now following up how “conversation circles” (both physical and virtual) can be built into the future system.

I’d humbly submit that an entirely data-driven, algorithm-decided look at this problem would not have achieved the sense of collaborative catharsis that our process uncovered (and would not have been ready to pivot and capitalise on the value that emerged).

That’s why human intelligence will continue to play a vital role as our ability to tackle complex problems increases over time.

Responsibility for building this capability lies with leaders in organizational settings - government, corporate, community - to invest in the balance of HI and AI. 

It’s as leaders we can pay attention to how people in our organisations are given agency to be participants in this HI. It plays to very real areas of organisational culture expectations: as issues get more complex this requires even great HI. 

The cultural imperative to build HI - as a collective concept, in temporary and more permanent settings, can help us more fiercely focus on what matters. 

Nina is Global Chief Methodologist, and is driving new models for collaboration and innovation. 

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Digital strategy for a scientific leader

Daniel Silkstone — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 05:43:40 +0000

Work

Digital strategy for a scientific leader

Service

Digital

People

Sector

Sustainable Environments

Whether it is predicting earthquake risk for heavily populated areas, identifying water resources far under the ground or searching for mineral deposits that can lead to valuable export opportunities Geoscience Australia has a critical role to play, providing geological and geographical advice.

So it’s no surprise that the agency’s slogan reads: Applying geoscience to Australia’s most important challenges.

A well-managed, sustainable and efficient digital investment that enables leading-edge science and its leverage will enable GA’s to meet the high bar set by its policy intent. It’s a strategic imperative that means the organisation must position itself well to navigate the digital transformation that is taking place across the globe.

THE CHALLENGE

ThinkPlace was engaged by Geoscience Australia in June 2018 to:

Develop a Digital Strategy for the organisation that creates a whole-of-GA vision for ICT, how it can enable science and policy outcomes, and how it can be efficiently managed and sustained in the future
Use a co-design approach to ensure that stakeholders are meaningfully brought along the strategic journey and that there is convergence on the vision and roadmap
Design the strategy in a way that is simple, content-rich, visual and that enables clarity among stakeholders

OUR RESPONSE

ThinkPlace used a rapid co-design approach, grounded in our world-leading complex systems design philosophy, which looks at an agency’s full ecosystem and higher-order outcome but also zooms in to understand the needs, preferences and experiences of individuals within and beyond the agency.

In this way, we ensured that we were creating the right impact and avoiding unintended outcomes.

HOW WE DID IT

Phase One - Intent and orientation

In the initial phase of work we rapidly orientated ourselves, consuming existing strategic, architectural, persona and Geoscience Australia program documentation to help us understand GA’s current position.

Following this we held an Intent Meeting with the Project Sponsor and Project Team to confirm the intent of the project to map out the context, scope, plan and priority stakeholders to to be involved in the process.

Phase Two - Explore

ThinkPlace conducted discovery research, including one on one interviews with internal and external stakeholders to understand their perspective on the strategic opportunities, barriers, priorities, current pain-points and inefficiencies, as well as anticipated initiatives, emerging demand or policy changes that needed consideration.

We also conducted a mini-workshop with the ICT and operations staff, to get their collective thinking on what could be different in the future.

Following the initial research we brought together GA's executive and other stakeholders for a Strategy Discovery Workshop.

This conversation helped establish important parameters for the work, and kick-started the strategy journey.

We explored questions such as:

What are the organisation’s (and its clients’ and partners’) strategic priorities and strategic risks, and how must ICT support them now and in the future?
How does ICT enablement work today, and what are the strengths, challenges, barriers and opportunities of the current model?
What is the future vision for ICT, and what shifts and initiatives would be required to achieve this at a high level?

Phase Three - Create

We worked with the project team to co-design the draft strategy, across 3 sprints:

Sprint 1: We confirmed what the strategy will contain, and developed the visual design and the content “spine” – the table of contents and key points for each section – and showcased it for the project team.
Sprint 2: We completed a first draft of the content, and showcased it to the project team and the project sponsor. This version was then refined based on the showcase feedback.
Sprint 3: We refined the strategy based on feedback and developed a final draft for review. We then showcased with the relevant senior executive, to undertake a final round of refinement.

Phase 4 - Close

We held a retrospective with the Project Sponsor and Project team to share what we had learned on our strategy design journey and deliver the final document.

THE IMPACT

ThinkPlace's expertise in co-design, and digital allowed us to create a strategy for Geoscience Australia that will enable them to sustain, grow and innovate their platforms, skills and approaches to realise the potential offered by the digital age.

Through the co-design approach ThinkPlace was able to create a strategy that was relevant and useful, with buy in and support from across the wider organisation.

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Redesigning a critical interface with citizens

Daniel Silkstone — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 03:57:05 +0000

Work

Redesigning a critical interface with citizens

Service

DigitalInclusive Co-design & EngagementResearch & insights

People

Sector

Strong Economies

A year can be a long time when it comes to digital. A decade is more like an eternity.

So when a website becomes outdated and is no longer fit-for-purpose, the ripples of impact can spread throughout an entire organisation.

Such was the case at the Department of Finance, a critical part of Australia’s government interface with citizens that had not redeveloped its website in ten years.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the website was considered cumbersome to navigate and content difficult to find. And that meant staff spent valuable time responding to a high volume of support calls for low value tasks that an otherwise highly functional website would support.

Users would rather have dealt with their queries in a faster, more efficient manner. And staff would rather have had more time for complex requests that could not be dealt with easily by a website. There was a clear and demonstrated need for change.

THE CHALLENGE

Finance’s corporate website had last been redeveloped in 2008. Changes to the department’s functions, as well as ongoing content changes had led to the information architecture degrading since that time.

There wasn't a clear and supported guide for how content created and published, which had resulted in the current website being outdated and laden with poorly-targeted content.

The client had a strong internal desire to shift towards a self-serve model that reduced the demand for low value support to higher valued support.

The department was evaluating how it operates and supports the APS - and hoped that the website would play a pivotal role as a communications channel to signal the positive shift to the APS. There was also a strong push to align the future website with the next release of GovCMS.

OUR RESPONSE

ThinkPlace conducted a series of stakeholder engagement sessions to identify the goals and expectations of internal and external users of the Finance website through interviews, focus groups, workshops and contextual enquiry research.

Our design team took an agile-sprint based approach with weekly sprints involving development, usability testing, synthesis, showcase and retros with the clients and partner teams.

HOW WE DID IT

ThinkPlace began by conducting a Discovery workshop with about 30 external and internal stakeholders to understand the research insights, and identified and prioritised a set of design challenges and ideas.

Based on the insights gained through the research, we developed personas to understand the different profiles of users. These artefacts created a robust evidence base that was used to generate Information Architecture, navigation and content concepts.

The high value concepts were developed into paper prototypes and eventually HTML prototypes that were tested with about 28 internal and external stakeholders in a series of weekly usability testing sessions.

Information Architecture was tested through online tree-jacking tests that involved nearly 90 people. Content Guide Focus Groups were conducted with 20 content writers across Finance to build a content strategy and guide for users.

The whole report is great and has all the information we requested. I’ve already used it to have some high-level discussions with other business areas and they are all impressed with the direction we’ve plotted and the features we’ve been exploring. (client)

THE IMPACT

This project delivered a design that was evidence-based and which demonstrably improved usability and functionality of the website https://www.finance.gov.au/. A compelling co-designed content strategy was created to guide development work for the next phase.

The client and their stakeholders were impressed with the features we explored and the direction that we took the website in.

Internationally relevant

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Saturday, 30 November 2019

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A better digital experience for all New Zealanders

Daniel Silkstone — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 05:05:59 +0000

Work

A better digital experience for all New Zealanders

Service

DigitalEducation & CapabilityResearch & insights

People

Sector

Trusted Institutions

How do you build consistency of digital services and user experience for citizens across more than 20 government agencies? And once you’ve built that consistency – how can you sustain it?

The goal of the Department of Internal Affairs’ Government Information Services was to ‘empower the system’ by building its capability. ThinkPlace was charged with helping bring this empowered system to life.

THE PROBLEM

The lack of seamlessness in government digital services occurs because government agencies are not fully structured to deliver joined up services.

Research and studies have identified citizen expectations that such connections should be the case but several barriers are dissuading agencies from working together. These barriers include strategic, structural and systemic. The Department of Internal Affairs Government Information Services (GIS) is aiming to deliver government information services that are flexible and tailored to New Zealanders’ needs.

To tackle this problem, GIS established a programme of work to modernise the ‘behind the scenes’ of govt.nz – the government website that effectively enables citizen’s digital engagement with the government.

The programme is charged with providing all government agencies with the capabilities, tools, ways of working and technologies to enable a consistent experience and level of digital engagement for New Zealanders engaging with government information and services. ThinkPlace was asked to help deliver insights about the experiences of agencies at the heart of this challenge.

OUR RESPONSE

ThinkPlace partnered with DIA team members and took an emergent and action-learning approach to the problem. We shaped an all-of-Government Strategy for a Digital Public Service and built the programme as we went.

While this may sound a little unconventional, it enabled the team to be highly responsive to the environments they were observing, and the key learnings from a range of stakeholders. The team spent the bulk of its effort on building, testing, and learning from initiatives and prototypes.

HOW WE DID IT

ThinkPlace guided the team through an end-to-end process using the ThinkPlace Design System™. In order to understand the context of digital information and service design in government and beyond, we reviewed a range of resources, including white papers, case studies, models, and strategy frameworks. Initiatives for empowerment were developed, informed by the accumulative research.

We completed a series of one on one interviews to complement the insights from the literature review, and to gain an understanding of the current context of digital capability in government. Our interviews explored what worked well and where the gaps were that required support.

This was followed by co-design of new initiatives and some evaluation activity from those who are immersed in the system, both government and non-government agencies.

These initiatives tackled specific problems identified within government, and aimed to increase digital capability across all of government, and all roles, not just those with a digital focus.

We facilitated three workshops, two with government staff and one with vendors (those digital agencies working with government), in order to test the 23 initiatives. During these workshops, attendees prioritised the initiatives and chose those that stood out as the most beneficial for agencies. These initiatives were then further developed by attendees, who added information such as risk factors and measures of success.

THE IMPACT

To support the Strategy for a Digital Public Service, GIS has initiated the Digital Service Design Framework as a way to frame how the various pieces of work the team is focused on fit together. The framework brought together the selected seven initiatives and showed where they fit within the wider government digital strategy.

The initiatives we prototyped act as foundational pieces supporting the understanding, uptake and implementation of the DSDS and web accessibility standards and facilitating the use of the core tools provided by the Design System and Content System.

Experimentation of prioritised initiatives is taking place in a live prototype phase, allowing the DIA design team to learn quickly what works and to iterate their ideas in the context in which they will exist.

ThinkPlace will continue to guide the DIA to develop these experiments from opportunities we identified during the process and grow the prototyping capabilities.

Internationally relevant

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Expiry

Monday, 16 September 2019

Position

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Bespoke education for Australia's public sector leaders

Daniel Silkstone — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 04:28:23 +0000

Work

Bespoke education for Australia's public sector leaders

Service

DigitalEducation & Capability

People

Sector

Vibrant Communities

For government, and for citizens, the world is changing rapidly. We live in an era characterised by rapid digital transformation. In this context, the nature of what government ‘could do’ is in danger of outpacing questions around what it ‘should do’.

Questions of how to deliver most efficiently for service users must be balanced with strategic intent at organisation level as well as public concerns about privacy and other ethical questions.

For government departments and agencies there is a clear need for leaders who understand these challenges and who have the tools and mindsets need to flourish in this context.

And for citizens, who rely on government to meet their needs and protect their interests, it is vital that present and future public sector leaders are up to the challenge.

THE CHALLENGE

Within this context, the Australian Government established the Building Digital Capability Program to transform the way it delivers services to citizens, businesses and other users.

As part of this program the  Centre for Leadership and Learning a t APSC engaged ThinkPlace to develop and deliver an executive leadership development program. This ‘Leading Digital Transformation Program’ was needed to position SES to lead digital transformation in their agencies, and across the wider public sector.

The APSC sought ThinkPlace’s curriculum development and subject matter expertise to develop existing program learning standards into an engaging course complete with knowledge, practical activities and course materials.

APSC also required an initial program pilot, the learnings of which would then be used to iterate and deliver the program to 12 additional SES cohorts.

OUR RESPONSE

ThinkPlace partnered with Adapt2Digital to deliver three services including a digital mindset assessment, a one day workshop and the curriculum review and design.

Key stakeholders from APSC and DTA worked closely with ThinkPlace to co-design the approach for the review of existing curriculum material.

Over a three-week series of intensive agile sprints, the core design team deployed a Digital Leadership pre-course assessment tool and then curated and reviewed pilot self-directed learning materials on Canvas (an online Learning Management System).

They also developed course workbooks, guide slides and course materials from both the Context Day workshop and a 3 day Digital Leadership Immersion workshop.

HOW WE DID IT

Key project activities included:

Conducting an assessment of course learning outcomes against Bloom Taxonomy, as well as a gap analysis of the self-directed learning framework
Development and facilitation of Context Day (including materials and facilitation)

Creating materials in support of the Digital Leadership Immersive 3 day course
Producing 10 modules of curated content with associated learning outcomes, then engaging participants

THE IMPACT

This work has created a program that unlocks untapped potential within the APS to accelerate the digital transformation agenda. It showcases the ability of ThinkPlace to create bespoke learning experiences that draw on deep expertise, purposeful collaboration and an understanding of the needs and context for public sector leaders.

The program consists of four key areas: a training marketplace; talent attraction; talent retention; and culture. Senior Executives who participate in the Leading Digital Transformation Program are inspired to transform their agencies by building and leveraging digital teams and driving a progressive digital cultures.

Ultimately, the program supports the transformation of government services to be simpler, clearer and faster for citizens, businesses, and internal users. SES-level leaders are equipped to identify potential barriers and ways to overcome them, and learn how to motivate teams to create easy-to-use digital services for citizens.

Internationally relevant

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Expiry

Monday, 16 September 2019

Position

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A new website for a national icon

Daniel Silkstone — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 03:18:17 +0000

Work

A new website for a national icon

Service

Digital

People

Sector

Vibrant Communities

We cannot understand the present or plan for the future without the knowledge of the past

So said then-Prime Minister Harold Holt at the ceremony to lay the first stone for the National Library of Australia in 1966.

Since that moment, the National Library of Australia has been one of the nation’s most important cultural institutions. That simple foundational idea - holding memories of the past while planning for the future – led to a need for this important project.

An organisation such as the NLA, which is a crucial repository of the nation’s knowledge and history, must have a website that reflects changing digital habits and adapts to the emerging needs of users over time.

User behaviour at the library had changed over time and the site was struggling to keep pace and meet expectations. People struggled to find the resources they needed and were often unaware of the curated information that the NLA had published with specific audiences in mind. For some, finding the catalogue was a challenging task.

THE CHALLENGE

The NLA’s vision was for users to be able to access content wherever they want, whenever they want, and with a particular focus on digital content. The Library had commissioned a Digital Engagement Framework that identified a range of initiatives required to enhance public awareness and usability of content.

The  NLA Executive engaged ThinkPlace and partner agency Oxide to assist them with understanding the user experience of the NLA website, with a view to identifying necessary improvements to the look, feel and usability of the site, to improve the browsing experience and make it easier to find content.

HOW WE DID IT

The Library sought the help of ThinkPlace and Oxide to refresh and rebrand its website. To meet  user needs in a digital world it is necessary to first meet with users.

ThinkPlace led a discovery process to obtain a  deep understanding of key user cohorts, their perception of the library’s brand and their motivations and experience in using the library’s content.

Building from the library’s own strategic decisions regarding perception and target audiences we gathered insights over 10 hours of user research activities with external users, and via a series of conversations and focus groups with internal stakeholders. We ran an internal workshop that brought together a wide range of staff, during which the group collectively re-envisioned the NLA’s brand persona.

We refreshed the branding  of the NLA website in a way that fed into the whole of NLA rebrand work, carrying out and then deploying brand perception research with external stakeholders

We produced  an initial design system that created a look and feel for the website that could be built upon in later stages. The scope for this work included layout of content and sub-navigation on key landing pages.

THE IMPACT

The library’s new website design incorporated the end user's voice and views in terms of bringing the brand values that their cohorts valued most.

ThinkPlace provided library staff deep but deployable understanding of the user experience and their engagement process. Staff described how excited they were by their involvement in the process of adapting the NLA branding to future website needs.

By providing a website design with a contemporary look and feel that resonated with their audiences, ThinkPlace helped the Library's digital development progress towards an engaging and user-centered site. It is a site that much better meets the needs of those who depend on it for timely and pain-free access to critical information about our nation.  

Internationally relevant

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Expiry

Friday, 13 September 2019

Position

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