Categories
We’re all about prompting change. Change in what people, professionals, and policymakers say, do, and want. Most behavior change theory starts with the premise that unless you recognize a gap between what you say and do, or between what you do and want, there’s no reason to change.
That’s why recognizing and closing gaps is the basis of our Working In & Between Approach.
Naming
Our approach starts by naming a group of people, in a particular place, who are stuck, left out, or faring poorly. Like women transitioning out of domestic violence shelters in Apeldoorn. Or homeless men in downtown Toronto. We move to that place, and assemble a local team to reach out and get to know folks. In their contexts.
This looks like:
- Reading newspapers, government reports, academic articles
- Compiling local data sets & visualizing trends
- Selecting a neighborhood and exploring the area
- Forming an interdisciplinary team with a mix of design, social science, and local know-how
- Hosting introductory community meals
This can take:
Anywhere from 2 weeks to 10 weeks
Understanding
In our first phase of work, we find the people experiencing the social challenge(s). Along with people who have come up with their own work-arounds. We spend loads of time with people. In their homes, cars, queuing at the benefits office, going grocery shopping. We also spend loads of time shadowing services and existing interventions. To better understand the gap between what people, professionals, and policymakers say and what they do.
This looks like:
- Building pop-up stalls in front of supermarkets, pharmacies, parks
- Running free neighborhood events
- Reading literature & extracting constructs
- Creating visual prompting materials
- Spending days, evenings, and weekends with people
- Observing service interactions, case management meetings, etc.
- Collecting artifacts (e.g meeting agendas, case notes, policies)
- Analyzing narratives & discourses
- Writing-up stories
This can take:
Anywhere from 2 to 12 weeks
Challenging
In our second phase of work, we open-up conversations about what people want versus say. Because people don’t know what they don’t know, we expose them to what could be. Using stories of people, film clips, audio recordings, and examples from around the world. We bring people, professionals, and policymakers together to explore, debate, and – where possible – come to a shared idea of what’s a good outcome for whom.
This looks like:
- Playing back stories with people in their homes & workplaces
- Curating a library of video & audio clips
- Compiling international case studies
- Hosting exhibitions
- Facilitating socratic debates
This can take:
Anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks
Creating
In our third phase of work, we generate ideas for closing the gap between what people want and what they do. We compare and contrast people who are close to where they want to be with those who are far away, and identify enablers & barriers. Enablers & barriers might be at an individual, relationship, service, or policy level. That means our ideas span lots of different settings and user groups – from families to neighbors to professionals to politicians.
This looks like:
- Running generative brainstorming sessions
- Compiling inspirational practice from around the world
- Segmenting people & building theories of change
- Going on field trips for lateral inspiration
- Visualizing scenarios
- Creating storyboards
- Role playing & improvising
- Mocking-up touchpoints to test on paper
This can take:
Anywhere from 3 to 8 weeks
Testing
In our fourth phase of work, we test whether our ideas actually close gaps between what people want, do, and say. This is called prototyping. But we don’t just make styrofoam models. We run live versions of our ideas. So if it’s a new role, we hire and train multiple people. If it’s a new network, we recruit & match folks. If it’s a new policy, we write different versions. We’re trying to learn what mechanism within the role, or the network, or the policy creates change and for whom. Only then do we try to figure out how to spread these mechanisms – how to shift hiring, training, procurement, and quality assurance processes to enable the new intervention to exist and spread.
This looks like:
- Creating marketing materials
- Recruiting people to take part
- Building websites
- Hiring for new roles
- Developing new kinds of training
- Facilitating different conversations
- Designing tools & backend systems
- Writing rules & regulations
- Measuring what’s changing
This can take:
Anywhere from 6 to 24 weeks
Mobilizing
In our fifth (and ongoing) phase of work, we mobilize champions & help build the backbone infrastructure to take the prototyped interventions forward. A backbone infrastructure consists of a trained local team – with dedicated resources & methods – who can ‘enroll’ more and more people into the prototyping process. Until people can identify the gaps for themselves and see that change is possible and preferable, they won’t fully buy-in. And we think buy-in is key to sustained change. This means our focus is not on productizing and spreading prototypes. Our focus is on supporting local teams who can deepen and widen the reach of the prototypes in their own community.
This looks like:
- Codifying principles & practices
- Creating business cases & persuasive materials
- Storytelling, roadshows, immersive experiences
- Fundraising & advocacy campaigns
- Growing teams & routines
- Setting-up feedback mechanisms
This can take:
Several years