Open Glasgow SD

Using service design to make Glasgow a better place in the future.

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Generating Ideas

This week we focused on generating ideas. We started analysing and synthesising the results of our POPIIE sessions in which we evaluated Problems, Opportunities, Principles, Insights, Ideas and Evidence. We defined our service principles and grouped our ideas into core themes.

We tried to move away from our first set of ideas and explore new solutions in an open brainstorming session. This process made it evident that we needed the input of outsiders to generate new ideas. Because we are so immersed in the project, we felt it would be beneficial to get new perspectives on the insights we generated.

We invited Dr Colin Birchenall Lead Architect for Glasgow TSB Future City Demonstrator to the next idea generation session. He updated us on the technologies connected to Future City | Glasgow and opened our eyes on a series of projects related to Smart cities, TSB and emerging technologies that we can use to inspire, shape and justify our ideas. To generate solutions with Colin we used the Lotus Flower idea generation method.

A brief explanation of The Lotus Flower

The Lotus Flower is a method to generate high volume of ideas, using problems and opportunities as a starting point. The structure of this method makes it easier to organise your thinking around significant themes, helping you to explore a number of alternate possibilities and ideas.   

How does it work?

Participants are asked to brainstorm themes related to a certain topic or brief using post-its. When they are done, they are divided into teams, ideally 3 people per team. They are asked to choose a theme, write it on a post-it, stick it on the wall, start writing problems related to it (on post-its of a different color) and place them all around it. The way problems are positioned resembles the petals of a flower, hence the name of the method.

Here is an example:

The next step is to choose one of these problems “peel it off the flower” and position it at the centre of a new flower. Using a different post-it color, repeat the process and write 8 different solutions around the problem. You can find a more detailed description of the method here.

We adapted this method to our needs and decided to use the problems and opportunities that we identified in the research phase as starting point to develop the “flowers”.

The idea generation session was followed by a reflection to understand which ideas to select and develop. The lotus Flower worked well, but we recognised the need for another idea generation session with less constraints, more blue sky thinking and the input of people that were not involved in the project. We also felt the need of extra research on smart cities and emerging technologies.

The second idea generation session required a Snook team effort. We used the Lotus Flower again but asked six co-workers to join us. We wanted to work in teams and get ideas from people that were disconnected from the project. Struan and I worked separately, facilitating others rather than generating ideas. After a discussion on all the ideas generated we identified four macro idea areas:

After a discussion on all the ideas generated we identified four macro idea areas:

- The Waste Bin - an important touchpoint        

- Citizen Behaviour - encouraging a shift        

- Bulk Uplift - Crowdsourcing citizen help

- Road Repairs: Predictive technology and data analysis to prevent potholes and ensure ongoing communication between citizens and the Council

We chose to work individually and develop two macro concepts each. We did rough sketches of how they could look like on a storyboard or timeline and presented them back to each other. After this we worked together, building on each other’s ideas and developed them further.

We found it quite useful to alternate individual and team work, moments of concentration and informal discussion. Presenting ideas back to each other helped us structure our concepts and make them simple to understand. Sketching ideas helped us create a narrative and connect each stage of our concept.

We have scheduled two idea testing workshops that we will use to see people’s reactions to our concepts and gather the extra information we feel it’s currently missing to make our concepts complete.

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Service Principles

We analysed, evaluated and categorised our research findings in 2 POPIIE sessions. This helped us define the following service principles: Simple & Automatic - This is a principle based on a good customer experience. Our engagement has highlighted that many people just want waste collection service that simply works and that they don’t have to think too much about. Responsive - Our engagement has shown that people are regularly let down if they try to communicate with the council. We want to bring things back to the city by closing feedback loop and rewarding people for their feedback. Engage the Community - This must be voluntary. Realistically we recognise you cannot engage all citizens but there must me a system that encourages and rewards people. Ultimately we want to increase engagement and social responsibility through ownership. Inclusive - Not everyone understands and regularly uses technology. Not all citizens want and need the same level of engagement. Services should be designed thinking of citizens with different skills, ages, backgrounds and interests. People should have the option to choose their level of interaction with services. Save Money - A service must serve the provider as well as its customers. Therefor, this principle applies both to citizens and the council and must be part of the driving force for change. Educate - One of the most highlighted issues that kept coming up in our research was education around waste and social responsibility. Where does waste go? Where am I supposed to put it? People will need to learn and know what impact their behaviour is having on others in their neighborhoods. This will help re-address negative behaviours with a positive and mindful attitude. Openness / Transparency - In the spirit of open data we want to show people what the process is and what the data they generate can be used for. This will encourage people to trust the service and the process. Accessible data can also empower citizens, encourage experimentation and new thinking to improve their lives and the city. Be Visual - People take on visual information very quickly, it communicates a lot more then words. Our ethnographic research has shown us that the colour of the bins have meaning and this can be powerful if used in a simple and consistent manner. This is the first draft of our service principles, next step is to simplify them and connect them with real life examples. You can have a look at Government Digital Service Design Principles to understand what we would like to achieve.

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Communication and closed feedback loops between citizens and Councils

One of the recurrent themes and main problems that came out of our research is the lack of effective communication between citizens and councils. This causes citizens to be discouraged and demotivated.

When they try to behave responsibly and engage with council services for the good of the city, they feel their efforts are unnoticed. 

When discussing how to report potholes for example many people told us the process wasn’t very efficient. Many had the impression they were not being listened to and their complaints weren’t making any difference. Another example we came across was reporting fly-tipping or people not follow the rules on separating waste. 

Some citizens believed they should follow and photograph other people who were behaving badly and feel they were exposing themselves too much by doing so. In reality the reporting process is much simpler and can be done via the My Glasgow app, but nobody knew about that. Some services are available yet citizens are often unaware of them. If there was more clarity and transparency on these services, for example a clear visualisation of what the reporting process for potholes looks like, citizens wouldn’t get so upset if they are asked to wait for roads to get fixed.

Citizens need to be rewarded for their efforts, they need to feel that their complaints have been received, noted and acted upon. This could be easily done with social media, sending a small thank you message to those who signal fly-tipping for example. People need an ongoing dialogue with councils, they want to feel there is a conversation happening and that someone is listening to them. If this doesn’t happen people can easily get disengaged. Here are a few good examples of how this can happen in reality: Shaped by us  Technology platform and open innovation approach which makes it easier for local communities to put forward ideas to solve the county’s biggest challenges. A number of which will be co-produced with the Council. Simpl Platform Connecting local public services with innovators and ideas to solve social problems. Your County Your Way Programme to implement a cultural transformation within the council to listen and respond more creatively to the needs of its communities. MySociety Aggregator of a variety of platform to empower people and help them communicate with council and service operators.

(e.g. fix my Transport & Write to them )

Dearest Scotland Online and offline project born to engage citizens while asking them to write an open letter to the future of Scotland.

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Next steps. Discovery to Define

In our last posts we’ve talked about user engagement, approaching people on the streets to get their opinion on how to make Glasgow to become a better city. After that, we interviewed both bus and taxi drivers to listen to their views on road repairs services. Now we are coming to the end of our researching phase. So what happens next? After two months of user engagement and research we need to make sense of ideas, personal stories, issues, insights and information gathered. We have to identify main themes, service principles and technology that is currently available or will be available in the future. Finally we want to communicate and cooperate with other companies involved in this project, share insights, generate ideas together, help each other, gain empathy with their perspective and make sure we don’t cover old ground. We have designed an activities framework to structure our future exploration process and decided to invite different people, stakeholders and experts to join us for specific activities. Our idea was to define a module that could be adapted and exported to other similar projects that involve designing for future services in Smart cities. This is still a work in progress, we are testing it as we go and will modify it to make sure it works in the best possible way.

Here is a visualisation of the activities framework:

So far we have covered the first four activities:

1.INSIGHTS SYNTHESIS After going trough our research individually to refresh our memories and get a good global understanding we shared our thoughts in a team discussion, analysed our findings and started mapping the main insights that emerged from our research. 2 & 3.POPIIE SESSIONS Once we distilled our research, we analysed it further. In the POPIIE session we started evaluating Problems, Opportunities, Principles, Insights, Ideas and evidence we already have or need to look for. We also tried to list which topics or stakeholders need to be explored further. In the second POPIIE session we clustered what came out of the first session to define the main themes, then refined Problems, Opportunities, Ideas and Principles.  Here is an image of our POPIIE sessions:

4.FUTURE PERSONAS BUILDING WORKSHOP For this activity we invited along three people from the Future City | Glasgow team, Ann Dhir, Scott Sherwood, Cyril Dyer and Ed Watt from O Street, one of the companies involved in the program, responsible for the creation of City Dashboards. We prepared a selection of eight personas based on real citizens we met in our research phase and explained their backgrounds. Together we chose the ones we thought were the most interesting and useful to develop. We placed them at the beginning of a 20 years timeline and started asking questions. We explored their lives, habits, their relationship with technology and what or who influences them. Then we moved them across the timeline, first 10 years in the future then 20 and repeated the exercise. The activity was very fruitful and left us with two fully built personas that we can use in the next steps of the project. This workshop worked really well and having external participants helped us getting fresh perspectives, explore facets we wouldn’t have thought about, share our working process and get feedback on it. We will now choose other three personas and develop them following the same process. Here are a couple of images from our personas workshop:

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Street Intervention, second attempt, success with free tea and cookies!

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GoPro, seeing the streets from a pedestrian perspective

How do potholes, damaged roads and waste affect everyday life? To answer this question we decided to record our daily journeys with a GoPro camera, we want to get the point of view of various road users and understand what impact these issues have on people's lives.

You can see another footage with a different point of view in this previous post: "GoPro, seeing the streets from a bike perspective"

Enjoy!

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Potholes

Background

Motorists in the UK spent £100m a year fixing damage caused by potholes, thats around £3 a year for every registered driver in the UK. Glasgow is famous for the state of its roads and almost certainly shoulders a more significant cost than any other city in the UK. In 2011, Scotland’s roads were branded the worst in Europe after watchdog Audit Scotland revealed it would take more than £2 billion to bring them up to scratch. 

Science

The main reasons behind the cause of potholes is the weather. Rain can get into cracks in the road and through a process of Freeze-thaw weathering and constant pressure from vehicles can have an adverse affect on the condition of the roads. 

Impact

Speaking to taxi drivers there where several insights that we uncovered

Busses are one of the biggest contributors to poor road condition. They also have a significant impact on road repairs as they degrade the repairs very quickly.

People are apathetic about potholes, and generally just accept that they have to live with them and the consequences. Most of the Taxi drivers I talked to live with the consequences even though they present a huge cost to their business in replacement shock absorbers and tyres

Claiming compensation for vehicle damage is extremely complicated and time consuming, it puts people off.

They all use the word ‘disgrace’ to describe cites road conditions

Pothole repairs break up quickly and spread gravel on the roads which is hazardous for cyclists.

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Jon Molyneux from Zero Waste Scotland shares his thoughts on Circular Economy, the Future of waste management and new business models connected to it. This video is an extract of the interview we recorded with him, you can read more about it in this blog post: Jon Molyneux, Zero Waste Scotland

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Street Intervention, first attempt!

Struan and Robin ventured out in the street of Glasgow to capture people’s opinions on how the Future of the city could look like, we asked about their hopes, vision and expectations. Although we managed to speak with some citizens, people were a bit reluctant to have their videos taken. We have planned a better strategy to get them involved, we will set up a temporary stand and offer hot tea and biscuits! Next street intervention is scheduled for this week.

Meanwhile enjoy this video, a brave student shared his opinion and was keen for us to record it!

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Second breakfast chat to share our project updates. Enjoy! Future City | Glasgow website: open.glasgow.gov.uk/ Snook website: wearesnook.com/snook/ Project blog: openglasgowsd.tumblr.com/ Twitter: @openglasgow @wearesnook #snookstudio #ogsd #futurecities

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Citizen to council relationships

As part of our discovery phase and reaching out to Glasgow citizens I attended my local Community Council meeting in Mount Florida.  I've been in the area for about a year nearly but never managed to make one yet and I decided it was time to commit to going to them as there are several things I'd like to change/improve in the area.  In addition to this, there are quite a few local business outlets and friendly neighbours so I'd like to get involved in doing something in and around Mount Florida.

Community Councils fascinate me, it's democracy in action at every account.  Opinions must be heard, and votes taken on discussed issues.  The guys running it did a really good job and I was informed that this is one of the fairly forward thinking community councils from some of the residents who have moved about and sampled various CCs.

For me, the future city project has thrown up more questions than just how we consider the future of waste and road repairs within the city.  A secondary level which we always anticipated we would have to consider is what role citizens would like to play in future cities and what the social/relationship models will look like between citizen and council.

With open data, big data and the bridge of user friendly technology, our speed at communicating, delivering information, making informed decisions can be completely transformed.

With no disrespect to any community council, or the council, but our methods of communication are considerably out of date and the models we are using to capture, share, debate and take action between council hasn't changed for over years.  Fundamentally the model is still very similar, we just use powerpoint and email to discuss our opinions.

After a quick chat with the head of the Community Council 'Moflococo', who I think is called Craig, he talked about the want to create a Mount Florida app that could help log resident issues, points of interest and more.  This is something that future cities can absolutely lead on, allowing CC areas to log and discuss live issues.  Not a new concept entirely, many of these apps entered the market through My Society and in recent years there has been a tonne of civic apps supporting the public to talk to authorities.

Our shot was over 5 years ago when we launched MyPolice and piloted it in Tayside.  It was successful, the stats were good, we even had an affect on a parking law.  However, it wasn't the technology that was the difficult part.  It was a fairly simple forum attached to a google map, and feedback broken down into policing terms of reference.  What MyPolice, and indeed most groups who venture into the world of civic apps realise,  that these efforts are really about 20% tech, 80% service and embedding a new mindset.

The interest for me here with future cities, given they have some really talented design and developer teams including Tangent, Ice Cream Architecture, O-Street and Stipso isn't just in the design (although this is a huge part of making a compelling set of smart services, products and initiatives) it is in how the feedback loop and citizen to council communication will operate.

Not news to the full Open Glasgow team, I think everyone is fully aware of this relationship that needs developed but it's a good reminder and something we need to consider at all stages. It's something we're considering at all stages and digging deeper than pot holes and waste bins to really understand what the crux of a newly formed relationship between citizens and councils could look like

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Langside Library workshop

Glasgow Life put us in touch with Langside Library where we organised an interactive talk/workshop. We followed the usual agenda: presentation, User Profiles, Storyboards on personal experiences, Future Scenario Planning and thorough group discussions, all accompanied by tea, coffee and biscuits. The meeting was very interesting, we were lucky to speak with a group of highly involved citizens from different backgrounds, with strong opinions and very useful insights. Education: - Education is extremely valuable to improve social awareness and get people to care for the state of the city; - Gcc leaflets (to inform citizens on how to sort waste) are very clear, but a lot of people, seem to choose to ignore the guidelines. Often, waste service operators (City Council), collect bins and bags anyway, even if they are not properly sorted, this is a big issue; Different treatments in different areas: - Different areas in Glasgow receive different treatments, some better then others, this has a negative influence on both people’s behavior and the state of the city; - Some areas of Glasgow have old, bottomless, unpractical metal bins (e.g. Govanhill), other areas don’t have small grey bins for organic waste. If residents of these areas choose to recycle, they must make an extra effort, travel further and do it independently. Communities and the Council: - Participants felt a distance between citizens/communities and the Council; - The Council should engage with communities and listen to them because they want to act for the good of Glasgow; - People are willing to do more, if this can help improving the situation. - Citizens would be keen to hack bins in order to design ad hoc solutions for specific areas, buildings, tenements etc.. - Not everyone is aware that service like “My Glasgow App” are better then phone calls to communicate with the Council and report issues. Some people are still not comfortable using it. - Some waste related issues seem very simple to citizens but they are not fully aware of what happens from the Council prospective, for which solving these problems is more complex, more transparency would help and improve citizen’s perception of Council services; - Citizens would like to report inappropriate behaviors, but some feel they should follow people around and they are not comfortable with it. Actually this is not necessary reporting someone is not that hard, information can be found on “Community Safety Glasgow” Leaves: - Leaves are a massive issue in Glasgow; - Cleaning paths and drains from leaves should be included in regular streets maintenance, if this doesn’t happen it’s a waste of resources; - When requesting to clean an area from leaves, cleaners often focus only on that exact area, ignoring the surrounding streets, even if they clearly need to be cleared; This workshop was very helpful and we used some of the insights to formulate new, more specific research questions: - How can we work together as a city to design great solutions for Glasgow, taking in consideration different people, needs, areas and circumstances? - How can we improve people’s behavior, change their mindset and install pride in the city? - Should citizens take action and create their own solutions for waste collection? How could they do it? - If we can’t change people’s behavior, how can we use technology to minimize its negative impact on the city?

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As mentioned on a previous post, we decided to film our daily commutes to show how roads and waste are perceived by different kinds of people and what impact they have on everyday lives. Here is a short movie of myself, walking to work in the morning in typical Scottish weather, getting distracted by a particularly damaged back alley with a few overflowing bins…Enjoy!

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Another short video of one of the participants of the workshop at Nan McKay community Hall, sharing her thoughts on young people’s negative behavior connected to littering in the city....and how citizens can help improving it!

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Here is a short video of one of the participants of the workshop at Nan McKay community Hall, sharing her thoughts on young people's negative behavior connected to waste in the city.

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Nan McKay Community Hall waste Workshop

Today we had the chance to meet another community thanks to the support of Glasgow Life. We held a workshop at Nan McKay Community Hall, a community centre that has been run by volunteers for nearly 30 years and offers services and resources to improve the quality of life for all the residents of Pollokshields. We met a group of 12 people, aged 50/90 years old, all Pollokshields residents, brought some cakes and fruits, had some tea and started an interesting conversation around waste, recycling, citizens engagement and people’s Behaviors. Right after presenting ourselves and the project we moved into filling out User Profiles, the average age made it a bit hard for people to understand what we were talking about and what we wanted to know from them. To make things easier we tried a different approach and started a conversation with the whole group asking questions around the main themes that have been emerging from the previous workshops. Some insights: We asked if and how people recycled, half of the group was trying their best to follow the council guidelines but the others, found it impossible to recycle. Those residing in flats seemed to have only one option, putting all their waste in the same black bin and throwing it in rubbish chutes. They hardly ever see the big communal waste containers. Other people found it hard to properly sort out waste because of the way bins are designed. They don’t seem to fit the design of old houses, they are too big to be taken out through narrow corridors and to be stored in their small gardens. We talked about organic waste, explaining how it can become an important resource. People agreed but told us that even though a lot of small grey bins (for the collection of organic waste) had been given to the community the hardly ever saw them outside on collection days. This made them doubt how many people were actually using them. We then asked how much people were reusing, recycling, repairing or simply throwing away. Most people agreed that in the past repairing objects and using them for longer was a matter of necessity, they also believed things were made to last longer. Today they tend to go for the cheapest option, so if repairing something is too expensive or asking an estimate is too difficult, they go for a new product. The mindset of people has changed throughout the years, taking good care of objects and invest time in maintenance to make them last longer doesn’t seem to be the normal anymore. Everyone recognized how dirty the city is and most people were keen to do something, but if you are old it’s not easy to go up to someone telling them not to throw rubbish on the street, be responsible and care about Glasgow! They were afraid to confront younger citizens and believed people, especially young kids should be educated to become more socially responsible.

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Zero Waste

The problems around waste are almost endless. As our interactions with citizens increase our list of problems grows. But when does waste become waste? Before, it had an important function. whether it was to transport food, preserve a perishable, charge your phone or provide eye catching graphics to promote its contents.

We recently had an interesting chat with Jon Molyneux from Zero Waste Scotland. Zero waste is a philosophy that encourages the redesign of resource life cycles so that all products are reused rather than thrown away.

Jon spoke to us at length about the circular economy and how that recycling, although a social good, was fairly long and inefficient process. To reuse an item for what it was originally intended is much more efficient than throwing it away after limited use. This process can be helped by getting manufactures to design reuse and longevity into their products. 

There are two key waste resources that have value, organic material and recyclable materials such as glass. The challenge to recycling though is getting the waste properly separated without contamination.

A 2008 report by WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) listed four main barriers to recycling. These where:

• Physical  – when containers for collecting recycling are unsuitable; when there is no space for storage, when collections are unreliable; when people have no way of getting to recycling sites.

• Behavioural – if people are too busy; if they struggle with establishing a routine for sorting out recycling; if they forget to put it out.

• Lack of knowledge – not knowing which materials can be recycled; not understanding how their local  scheme works.

• Attitudes and perceptions – not believing recycling is good for the environment; not wanting to sort waste; not feeling personally rewarded for recycling.

Following this these insights we have decided to focus some of our workshops on ‘re-use’ and waste reduction rather than the symptoms of waste generation.