Crisis: “We want to rethink how we could organise ourselves and leverage the potential of digital, data and technology to achieve our goal of ending homelessness”.
Client: Crisis. UK Homelessness Charity.
Project Outputs: A report organised in 4 sections: a discovery describing the key macro insights and the needs of people experiencing homelessness, a set of key opportunities, an audit of the current digital products & proposed concepts for a set of digital products and an appendix that included a set of early personas co-designed with the team.
The Challenge:
A Crisis strategic discovery and review process identified that - in some cases - Crisis services could be unintentionally supporting people in their homelessness more than effectively ending it. This work triggered the need for a programme to rethink and realign the delivery of Crisis services and what Crisis could achieve, considering the ways financial resources and support have evolved across the wider homelessness sector which have directly impacted what Crisis role needed to be today. The Client Services Vision programme aimed to create an ongoing method for how Crisis developed services in the future. However, the pandemic hit and Crisis services had to adapt significantly and rapidly to respond to the increasing needs of the members and people on the brink of homelessness as a result of COVID-19. As Crisis quickly shifted operating within a hybrid model because of the pandemic, it became clear the organisation needed to also consider developing a more strategic offering that combined digital and face-to-face support, as well as identify digital, data & technology opportunities to scale support and free up time for staff to focus on what really mattered for members.
The project:
My colleague Julie Thiery and I, on behalf of FutureGov now TPX Impact, worked with Crisis programme owners to build a collective understanding that could help them to align goals, operating models and service offering to effectively be able to end homelessness. Taking a participatory approach, their goal was to have a organisation wide set of workshops were they could answer:
How the current Crisis service model works and what is needed to meet any gaps.
Where there are opportunities to enhance and design services to end homelessness for our existing members and for people whose homelessness is not being ended by partners and local services.
What are our opportunities to maximize the potential of digital, data and technology to end homelessness.
Design Process:
Determining ways of working & roles
We were brought to the project by the Data, Digital & Technology Transformation team (DDTT) and were embedded to provide a mix of service design expertise and ‘boots on the ground’ support. Our first task was to bring the Client Services directorate closer which was leading the organization wide transformation program. Taking into account the project outputs, the timelines, the organizational dynamics, our expertise and available time, Julie and I decided to split roles. While she took the lead on supporting the DDT director on conducting an audit of the current digital products, I took the lead and focused on supporting the Client Service director to lead the transformation program. “Splitting roles” allowed us to provide space for these two programmes and teams to integrate while also working on the delivery of our contracted outputs. Despite this strategic load distribution, Julie and I were constantly checking in, aligning our approach and using one another’s time and expertise to deliver practical outputs.
Understanding organizational goals
The Client Services directorate already had an agenda, approach and timeline agreed. 11 workshops across the organization were already scheduled with the goal of gathering evidence to inform how the organization should work from now on. More than 300 staff, volunteers and people with lived experience of homelessness were invited to participate in these workshops and my role was to support the team to make sure the effort was worth it as they were asking the right questions. I focused first on understanding what Crisis really wanted to learn from this collective exercise, what was the purpose behind this transformation, what were the potential impacts and how the organization currently worked. My goal was to not only design some materials for a set of workshops but to co-design an approach, a way of taking decisions and designing organisational structures.
Translating Crisis ambitions into a participatory research strategy
Over a period of a month, We held internal sessions with DDT and Client service leaders to identify specific workshops goals and learning outcomes that we used to build a set a toolkit to empower Crisis to run the “evidence gathering process”. We focused our efforts on making sure the approach was not only participatory but was decolonised as we were able to understand the system and stay away from extractivist research. Through the tools and the approach we co-designed, we were able to create spaces for participants to reflect and collectively built the shape of the new organization.
Setting the team for success
We were embedded as members of the DDT team and we were brought to provide a mix of service design expertise and ‘boots on the ground’ support to DDT & the Client Service Team. This meant that we were not running the workshops to “gather the evidence”, our role was to empower the team to co-design their own operating model. Therefore, we not only had to co-design a set of participatory tools but also make sure the facilitators felt confident on their role and on how to make the process truly participatory. We co-designed a toolkit, held planning sessions and tested and refined the tools during the first workshop, which we co-facilitate.
Making evidence digestible & providing Crisis with the big picture.
While the Client Services Team held workshops across the UK, we were synthesising data and building a cohesive picture of the participatory effort. We summarised the findings into a rich but simple and very visual report. We used strong visual storytelling to put people experiencing homelessness at the centre of the model, while clearly connecting it to their goals as an organisation. Finally, we provided Crisis with a high-level roadmap with clear and actionable next steps for how to continue their journey.
Crisis Team
Linking goals & toolkit
Tool to help crisis understand their role
Testing & refining workshop tools
“I’m really proud of what we achieved together in such a short period of time. Partnerships based on shared values are such an important tool in delivering change. We now have a much clearer sense of how we can continue to build on our strengths as well as look to achieve even more impact through our services, particularly through data, digital and technology.”
Key Macro Insights & Opportunities
Project Outputs
As part of this 6 months process, we summarised Crisis goals into a high-level service model, mapped the digital, data and technology solutions put forward by frontliners and members across the end-to-end journey of people facing homelessness and summarized the next steps into a high level action plan. The report, which was our final output, was organized in 4 sections: a discovery, a set of key opportunities, an audit of the current digital products and some proposed concepts and an appendix that included a set of early personas co-designed
Discovery
This section explained in detail the key macro insights and summarized the vital & basic needs of people experiencing homelessness as well their needs when looking for support to end their homelessness.
Key opportunities
This section unpack each opportunity, providing specific examples on how this could be done according to the evidence gathered during the workshops but also our field expertise.
Digital Products Audit & Future Concepts
This section contained the audit of all Crisis digital products (software, apps, CRM systems etc) and a set of proposed concept to maximize the potential of digital, data and technology to end homelessness.
Appendix
Finally in this section we add the materials developed during the 6 months engagement including the toolkit for facilitators, the personas and the synthesis report of the 11 workshops held across the UK.
“Laura and Julie were always constructively challenging, worked to an exceptional standard and were a real joy to work alongside. The work that they have helped develop here will lead directly to long lasting and embedded improvements in our services and therefore will directly lead to more people’s homelessness ending for good.”
Self Reflection & Learning Outcomes
Decolonising one step at the time : Allocating time to truly understand the organisational dynamics is absolutely key for these types of transformation processes to work. It is what ultimately allow me to embed different perspective that are transformative and regenerative. My experience managing change, allowed me to truly pace the process, understand when and how to embed new paradigms and open space to build and nurture relationships.
Building common language through visual storytelling: As designers, we are largely the translators. The ones building bridges to help the collective understand each other and speak a common language. It is absolutely necessary we take time to adapt our approach to allow this to happen before and during the design process. The goal is not only to build a services but give birth to new paradigms, dynamics and discourses with a transformative effect on people and society.
Decolonialise the approach through speculative design: Many organisations working very hard to have a societal impact need support to 1) build a cohesive narrative, 2) define their approach/ways of working and 3) Imagine other possibilities. By leveraging speculative design tools, approaches and visual storytelling, we were able to challenge rooted, outdated and colonial concepts around homelessness that otherwise would have shaped their future operating model. I learned that placing more time on the imagination than the broken paradigms allowed us to unlock fruitful conversations.