Jax Wechsler

Social innovation / HCD / service design resources

Curious about applying design thinking methods to solve a tricky problem?

Some really great design tool-kits have come across my radar.
Check out the list below. Perhaps you have a problem you can apply them to.

Feel free to leave a comment about these or if you use any others which are useful?

 
The Social Design Methods menu – Lucy Kimbell & Joe Julier
Check out Lucy’s blog for more social design goodness. This is a really great collection of methods with templates. It also gives some great rationale for why use design methods for problem solving. Check this one out!

A guide to prototyping new ideas put together by Nesta and ThinkPublic.
Once you have generated some ideas – next it’s time to prototype them. This is a great guide for the prototyping process.

 Collective action tool-kit from FROG design:
Part of frog’s commitment to social impact, CAT is a set of activities and methods to enable groups of people anywhere to organize, collaborate, and create solutions for problems impacting their community.

IDEO Human-centred design tool-kit
A free innovation guide for social enterprises and NGOs worldwide.

Introducing design methods from the UK Design Council
20 design methods grouped into three categories: Discover, Define and Develop. These are based on the first three stages of the Double Diamond, the Design Council’s simple way of mapping the design process.
‘Designing with People’ methods
20 research methods from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art that help designers engage with people during the design process. Some methods are widely used; others represent emerging practice. To help you find the right methods for your project, each method is explored and assessed here from a number of different angles.

Health Service Co-design
This guide from the Waitemata District Health Board in New Zealand will help you work with patients to understand their experiences and make improvements to healthcare services. It provides a range of flexible tools for working effectively with patients in service improvement work. While the focus is on patients themselves, the tools can be equally applied to other groups such as frontline staff, family, and carers.

SILK method deck from the Social Innovation Lab for Kent, United Kingdom
The Social Innovation Lab for Kent (SILK) was set up in 2007 with two ambitions. First, to provide a creative environment for a wide range of people to work together on some of the toughest challenges the county faces. And second, by drawing upon best practice from business, design and social science, as well as our own experiences here in Kent, SILK set out to establish a way of working that places it’s citizens at the very centre of everything we do. They have case studies about design solutions relating to Dementia care.

Service Design toolkit : Introduction to Service Design methods
Posters, manuals and templates you can download and try on your own projects. Check out the case-studies about use of the methods on social design projects