Dundee GovJam 2018
- Rebecca Reid
- Jun 17, 2018
- 3 min read
Last week, designers and non-designers from around the globe participated in the sixth Annual Global GovJam. During the forty-eight-hour event, people from over thirty cities used service design and customer experience tools and techniques to help solve challenges within the government and public sector.
Dundee was this year’s Global Headquarters and designers, students and public sector workers from across Scotland came to take part at The Factory Shop on Reform Street. Service Designers Mike Press and Hazel White from Open Change led Dundee Govjam alongside their team of passionate helpers.
Open Change are at the heart of Dundee’s design community, inspiring real change in the city through their Service Design Academy in partnership with Dundee & Angus College.
Equipped with enough sharpies and sticky notes to sink a ship, jammers aimed to improve public services through observing problems and exploring and prototyping solutions.
To help us solve problems, the jam leaders introduced us to The Double Diamond Model. The method outlines the four D’s of Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver: Discover and Define the problem, then Develop and Deliver a solution. In the Discovery phase, we went out onto the streets in teams to observe people and define problems by engaging with them.
We then developed solutions by prototyping disposable, Lo-Fi models for services to quickly test them out. Prototypes can range from a video to a cardboard model and can be destroyed then improved to help understand citizens better and how best to serve them.
In many ways, Dundee GovJam was a prototype itself, temporarily transforming a formerly disused retail unit into a laboratory of change.
Despite all the positive change and reformation happening in the city, Dundee is not without its social challenges. GovJam helps to address these problems and develop tangible solutions for the delivery of public services.
The creative energy taking place within Dundee’s Factory Shop was part of a global effort to make services accessible and inclusive for everyone. The GovJam mantra of ‘think globally, act locally’ encourages you to take universal design principles and apply them to improve your own city.
To quote Mike Press, service design is all about ‘constructive discontent’ and never settling for less. A service designer will question things in a child-like way, asking why a service has to be that way and how it can be improved. And design isn’t just about being incredible at drawing or on Photoshop, it’s about people and how you can use design tools and approaches to improve their lived experiences.
Taking part in Dundee GovJam was an experience I’ll never forget. It introduced me to completely new ways of thinking by flipping things on their head. It teaches you that anything is possible; to challenge your assumptions, throw everything you know out the window and start from scratch. Most importantly, it teaches you to fail fast and fail often. Failure is often seen as negative and unproductive, but failure can actually be good, it helps you learn from your mistakes to improve in ways you might not have done otherwise. If you’re new to design and design-thinking, don’t let that discourage you from taking part. Anyone can create real social change when equipped with the right tools. Embrace the challenge and you’ll be surprised by what you can achieve in just forty-eight hours.
Interested in finding out more about the design activity happening in Dundee? Check out my posts on Dundee Design Month 2018 and the Open/Close Street Art Trails.
To find out more about Dundee GovJam, click here. To find out more about Global GovJam, click here.
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