Wow. The Innovation Labs initiative is over. Between you and us we’ve produced seven products, one best practice ebook and an effectiveness evaluation.
But the Labs have also made a lot of memories. Here’s a few of them. [Read more…]
In the Labs
Innovation Labs' "In the Labs" series features posts from the original Labs process in 2011-12 and articles about the design and ideation tools used to generate, winnow and develop the ideas that came out of the process.
Countdown to The End of the Labs
In four months time the Innovation Labs initiative will end. This is a planned process that will follow on from February’s release of the Product Impact Evaluation and mark the end of Comic Relief and the Nominet Trust’s investment in the programme.
The Labs Blog will remain available but will not be updated after April 2015. Until then we’ll continue to push out one Lablet and 3 articles a month covering evaluation findings and real world progress of the seven Labs products.
So far the Labs have produced:
- Seven digital products (3 apps and 4 websites)
- An evaluation of the Labs innovation process
- Ebook Guide to Funding and Delivering Social Tech
- 88 Articles on the Labs process, learning and how to build digital products with a social mission
I’m looking forward to a few more months of sharing the Labs learning with you all.
Happy New Year!
Joe
Labs Editor
How Personas Help Charities Create Better Apps & Services
Picture this.
You’re a charity with a good understanding of your service users. You know how they tend to behave and what they need. On top of this you have a great idea for a new website that will help them even more. So you ask your users what they want, find a local web developer, get everyone together and tell the developer what you want the website to do. The developer goes away, designs a site based on what you’ve told them and delivers it to you a month later.
The website does exactly what you think you wanted it to do. Ace.
But three months later its not getting any traffic and your users are telling you that it’s a good idea but its got the wrong features and doesn’t help them.
If you’re a designer you’ll probably look at this process and ask “where was the design work?”
Well, there wasn’t any. [Read more…]
The Innovation Cool Wall: Where Cool and Practical Combine
If you attended one of our Labs in 2011-12 then you may have experienced Neontribe’s Cool Wall.
The Cool Wall is a simple thing. You get a stack of ideas on Post-it notes, and a wall. You mark two dimensions on the wall: one from not cool to cool, and the other from impractical to practical. Like the X and Y axes on a graph. Then you stick your ideas onto the wall where you reckon they fit best. Usually, one person has the stack at a time, and the rest of the group helps them put each idea in the right place.
It’s a little theatrical, and a lot participatory. [Read more…]
Labs Innovation Process Evaluation 2010-12: What We Learnt
Its been 18 months since the end of the Labs Phase 1. Since then we’ve reflected on the innovation process we used and all learnt a lot. Some of it has been captured for us by our independent evaluator, Venetia Boon. Venetia has looked back and reviewed the process of getting designers, young people and mental health professionals together to ideate digital ideas for improving young people’s mental health.
Here’s some of the innovation process learning that her evaluation highlights. [Read more…]
Lab 2 Product Pitches
These 7 pitches were filmed at the end of Lab 2. Each one captures the essence of one app or website idea to improve young people’s mental health. The work will place between March 2013 and June 2014.
Pitch #1: Mind’s Eye
An app that helps you understand what contributes to your mental health by linking your mood to moments in time. It focuses on one simple action: a record of your mood at a single point. It’s being developed by Mindapples / Unboxed Consulting. Read Mind’s Eye’s specification.
Four things I learnt about user involvement at Innovation Labs
This post originally appeared at www.workingwithjoe.co.uk
Since I started out as a children’s advocate in 2002 I’ve been searching for effective ways of involving children & young people in service development. Not ways where young people are just consulted with, nor where they lead the process and make the decisions, but where they are actively involved as equals, developing ideas and making decisions in genuine partnership with adults. Last Saturday I experienced a great way: Innovation Labs. [Read more…]Lab 2: The end of the beginning
After an intense day, the teams are now ready to present their ideas to the rest of the Innovation Lab participants. Working in groups of around 4 to 6, each team has worked on one idea over the day.
They’ve brainstormed, created storyboards and used empathy mapping to fully flesh out their ideas before moving to the prototype stage. They’ve also created posters, illustrations and charts explaining the best points about each developed idea, and explaining why some features have been discarded or refined. Some teams have even written their thoughts on the back of a cereal box! [Read more…]
A day in the Lab…
Image courtesy of Chris O’Sullivan
This is a guest post by Mark Brown of One in Four on his experience as an Innovator at last week’s first Innovation Lab. Mark is a prolific, vocal and valued UK Mental Health commentator via One in Four magazine and social media conversation.
“If I said to you ‘I spent last Saturday in an innovation lab’ what would you picture? Would you imagine me in a white coat with goggles on, surrounded by bleeping machines and burbling test tubes in an underground research establishment hidden somewhere behind chain link fences? If I told you it was a mental health innovation lab, would you add lots of electrodes attached to heads and lots of machines scratching out brainwaves on rolls of paper? [Read more…]
Chris O’Sullivan’s Reflections on Lab 1
Chris O’Sullivan from the Mental Health Foundation gives us his personal reflections from the UK’s first mental health Innovation Lab.
Today I’ve had the massive privilege of working at an Innovation Lab in central London, with fifty or so of the most innovative people I’ ve met in years. The chance to combine innovation, technology, and mental health is never something I can resist. The opportunity to work with a mix of outstanding, articulate, exceptional and gifted young people and a range of tech people, problem solvers, and facilitators was proper humbling.
This story starts back in April, [Read more…]