Overview
Large scale social innovation is needed to combat the climate crisis. Using Service Design methodologies, this project offers insight into the wicked problem of scaling-up the work of a volunteer group providing heating analysis and education for community spaces such as churches across Scotland to improve heating efficiency, thereby reducing carbon emissions and promoting conditions for space usage.
Heating in community spaces is notoriously difficult. The buildings are typically old, sporadically used, and have had years of new structures built on top of old. The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed appreciation of the need for low-to-no-cost spaces for people to exist, play, and be social. The added benefit of escaping the costs associated with running utilities makes these spaces even more important sociologically given the increase in cost of living. In this project I worked with an Edinburgh-based volunteer group carrying out thermal analysis in their local area to produce a service concept of a DIY-style kit that would bring the benefits of the group's work to remote community spaces throughout Scotland.
At its core, this project was about enabling those with no previous knowledge of the science of optimising thermal capacity to analyse and understand their spaces from the perspective of a heating expert. Broadly, the associated objectives were:
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Understanding the problem of heating in churches.
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Understanding HeatHack’s current offering and their internal processes for work.
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Understanding of the societal context of the service: who is involved in this area; what options already exist; what people and organisations will the service impact upon; what are the dynamics of change from a church organisational perspective. This is also important to understand the potential role of the service in disrupting existing parts of this ecosystem, both those that will benefit and those that may potentially be harmed.
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Understanding the needs and capabilities of the potential service users: their ability to perform the work of HeatHack themselves with guidance; their existing understanding of the science behind ‘thermal comfort’; the resources that are available and they are aware of. Also, determining the users’ need for a service such as this and their existing attitudes to their experience with heating.
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Exploring appropriate methods of Service Design for social innovation work that can be delivered virtually with users with varying degrees of IT literacy.
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Designing an informed service concept.
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Validating and improving the service concept with the involvement of service users and stakeholders in the ecosystem.
Audience
The problem of heating community spaces impacts a broad range of people. A large part of this project was first understanding who is involved in these spaces, mapping this ecosystem in a current state, and then working with stakeholders to provide a service that can create beneficial connections across the ecosystem. The volunteer group previously worked extensively with church buildings, and given the existing community structure, abundance of buildings, and changing role of churches in Scotland they were an ideal sample for the work in this project.
The broad range of stakeholders could broadly be divided into 4 groups:
- Domain Expert Stakeholders - Those with specific working knowledge and advanced training involved in the problem context such as: Heating Engineers & Architects;
- Organisational Experts - building managers, budget managers, committee groups.
- Community Building Owners- Those that have ownership of these community buildings, their maintenance budgets, and allowing access to the building.
- Community Building Users - Those that benefit from the usage of the building, e.g. pensioner groups, fitness classes, coffee mornings, faith congregations.
- Wider Society - included in recognition of the many benefits that these community spaces can bring on a societal scale such as increased sense of community leading to improvements in mental health and as social care hubs.
Role
I was the sole design practitioner supported by domain experts from the volunteer group. I was responsible for all areas of research and design from conception to delivery of the service concept. The project was completed as part of a Master’s Thesis.
Methods Used
Service Blueprinting, Generative Semi-Structured Interviewing, Affinity Mapping, Constructivist Grounded Theory (for surfacing insights), Stakeholder Interviews, Remote Co-Design Evaluative Workshops, Ecosystem Mapping, Quantitative analysis of participant samples, Qualitative techniques.
Constraints
MVPs & Wicked Problems
Community spaces are typically older buildings, with multiple lifetimes worth of structural changes all stacked on top of each other. Recognising this, the complexity of thermal analysis, and working in previously unmapped ecosystems defined this as a wicked problem - only by applying a solution can more be understood about the nature of the problem. Therefore, any service concept created would require continual research and update across its lifetime. Understanding this, the concept was aimed to be created with space to grow and change as insights were generated through user interaction and evolution of the ecosystem (a minimum viable product).
COVID-19
This project was carried out in 2021 during on-going responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This heavily restricted ethnographic research options as well as the ability to run tangible workshops with prospective users. To adapt to circumstances, all research was carried out remotely, though this limited participants to those with internet access, technological ability and socioeconomic status to use conferencing software (such as MS Teams, Zoom, etc). The methods of research were also impacted, requiring adaptation of co-design methods to leverage remote-collaboration software that could be visually understood by participants when on video conferencing software: using MS PowerPoint to create and live-edit service narrative prototypes in conference with participants.
Time (aka academic deadlines wait for no individual)
The project had to be completed in time to inform creation and submission of a dissertation. The project lasted 3 months during the summer of 2021.
Design Process
The project followed a linear process for the initial discovery phase before entering cycles of evaluative prototyping converging towards an ‘Minimum Viable’ service concept.
Discovery
- Preparatory Work
- User Interviews
Evaluative Prototyping
- Initial Service Blueprint
- Co-Design Workshops
- Final Service Design Concept
Discovery
Pre-existing Resources and Research in the area
As this is an existing space with many years of work, it was first important to understand the existing help & research available to those trying to heat community spaces. Most resources are books specifically on architecture & construction for promoting thermal comfort. Nothing like the service existed or had previously been attempted for this group at this DIY price point (heating engineers are available to hire but they are often too expensive for community groups to afford).
Understanding the volunteer group’s work
Submerging myself in the domain to gain an understanding of the work carried out by volunteers. Involving attending an analysis session in a community building in an ethnographic sense.
Understanding the ecosystem
Identify Domain Expert Stakeholders and make contact to begin exploring attitudes & constraints. Through a series of informal interviews and co-design conversations, the domain experts helped inform the shape of the service concept.
With an understanding of the relationships between actors beginning to surface, an ecosystem map was created to represent the existing state. This was used to identify opportunities for orchestration and made it easier to conceptualise the impact of any service concepts.
User Interviews
Using the ecosystem map, participants were identified and recruited from across Scotland. Scotland has a large amount of rural landscape, meaning that within the community group there would be unique challenges for access to internet connectivity & resources for those outside of populated areas.
The demographic for participating community & church centres for the sample is below on Scottish Government Urban Rural Classification and the SIMD decile (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation - used to determine socioeconomic status of an area).
User Interviews with participants from these churches were carried out over Zoom or MS Teams. To help users reflect on their response, I screen shared my note taking - I found the session with this generated much deeper insights as users would see their answers and generate further responses.
User Research Synthesis
Following Constructivist Grounded Theory, participant responses were plotted as sticky notes in the whiteboard software Miro and then continually refined and re-categorised until a saturation point was reached in the insights. These categories were then named and collated into 3 broad themes: User Information; Justification for Service Need; Factors Influencing Service’s Design.
Personas
From the user interview sessions, enough data was gathered to create 4 persons that could be used to inform early stage service blueprints and provide an abstraction for participants in the Evaluative Co-Design sessions
Evaluative Prototyping
Service Prototyping
As a starting point for co-design, I produce a service blueprint from the gathered user insights, stakeholder input, and the ecosystem map.
I’ve not included a copy of the real service blueprint here to protect the identities of individual actors and organisations involved. I would be happy to discuss the service blueprint over a meeting.
Co-Design Evaluative Workshops
To facilitate prototype evaluation and co-design, the most appropriate method for the participant audience was to extract the service aspects into a narrative storyboard. Similar to the remote interviewing technique, participants could add thoughts and discuss the service traversal to help inform the specifics of the service. These workshops repeated as insights caused the service blueprint to evolve.
Evaluation with Volunteer Group
The results of the co-design evaluative workshop cycle were presented to the volunteer group to ensure that the service concept was acceptable to them in its final form. The group also appreciated the insights generated as it could improve their in-person practices. An updated ecosystem map was produced to demonstrate speculation on the new relationships and changes that would take place among stakeholders due to the service concept being implemented.
Again, I’ve not included a copy of the real service blueprint here to protect the identities of individual actors and organisations involved. I would be happy to discuss the service blueprint over a meeting.
Retrospectives & Learnings
- As with all wicked problems, they are difficult to define holistically. One can only hope to better understand the problem by applying a solution. Given the wide ranging and disparate nature of heating analysis in community spaces, the constructivist approach focusing on adapting insight generation from users was successful.
- The project was deemed a success. The final service concept produced was used to inform an application to a funding body for funds to implement the project at scale. The service and its initial cohort of users is set to go live September 2022.
- A previously unknown ecosystem was mapped providing valuable groundwork. Future work in this space would be able to build on this and progress as the service generated changes.
- User Research during COVID-19 was difficult, especially with those with limited experience or access to technology. Ideally, in-person rehearsals of the service would have taken place to give potential users the opportunity to interact with the narrative in an embodied fashion. This would have been a superior test of any prototype but was unfortunately impossible at the time.