Presenter: Dr David Ireland Global Innovation Lead -ThinkPlace

1. Presentation by
Dr David Ireland
Global Innovation Lead - ThinkPlace
Building Smart Villages
through Human Centred
Design and Innovation

2. Research
commercialisation
- Helped academics turn
ideas into impact
Research
- Dual PhDs in innovation
and medicinal chemistry
- Poct doctoral research
Foresighting
- Futures and horizon
scanning
- Public and private sectors
- Chair Australian govt
horizon scanning
committee
Policy design and implementation
- Head of Innovation and
International @ CSIRO
- Domestic and global advisory
roles
Human Centred Design
- Consulting in strategy, innovation,
and entrepreneurship
- Developed and developing world
contexts
Entrepreneurship
- Co-founder and / or
investor; fintech, digital, oil
& gas, agriculture &
aquaculture
my journey

3. Our design
Projects
Our design
Process
Our design
Philosophy

4. Our design
Philosophy

5. 5
Our design
Philosophy

6. If you want to
understand how a
lion hunts, don’t go
to the zoo.
Go to the jungle.
Jim Stengel Chief Marketing Officer of P&G
Our design
Philosophy

7. Design is
learning
Design is
visualisation and
making
Design is
empowerment
Design is
inquiry and
constant
questioning
Design is
dancing with
uncertainty
Design is
recasting
knowns and
reassembling
unknowns
Our design
Philosophy
As designers, we fundamentally believe

8. Our design
Philosophy
Design thinking looks at complex things
from the perspective of the people who
will use or be affected by them.

9. Our design
Process

10. Design
approach
that fails fast and
early in front of a
few people at a low
cost, that learns,
listens, and
progressively
improves and
succeeds?
Traditional
approach
that is methodical,
rigorous, cautious,
avoids risk, invest
significantly early on,
works behind closed
doors then potentially
fails in front of millions
of people?
DO YOU WANT THE…
Our design
Process

11. Our design process draws on theory and tools from areas including:
Understanding
and designing
dynamics at the
system level
Empowering all
individuals in the
system to co-
design solutions
Ideating and
innovating to push
boundaries of what
might be possible
Understanding and
influencing
motivations and
behaviours that drive
change
Chaos and
Complexity
Theory
Systems
thinking
Design thinking
Human-centred
co-design
Innovation
Prototyping and
‘lean’
methodology
Sociology
Behavioural
science
Our design
Process

12. Time
Spatial
Understanding the system
Our design
Process

13. Time
Spatial
Empathy
Understanding the system
Our design
Process

14. THINKPLACE DESIGN SYSTEM
Our design
Process

15. THINKPLACE DESIGN SYSTEM
Understanding user
needs and empathy
with users
Our design
Process

16. CO-DESIGN
is an approach to designing that
actively engages multiple and
diverse perspectives in the design
process, making the solution, to
ensure that the end result
meets their needs.
Our design
Process

17. 18 |Our design
Process

18. If Henry Ford had asked people what
they wanted, they would have said
“faster horses”
Our design
Process

19. THINKPLACE DESIGN SYSTEM
How do we generate
ideas?
Our design
Process

20. “IF AT FIRST THE IDEA IS NOT ABSURD,
THERE IS NO HOPE FOR IT.”
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Our design
Process

21. THINKPLACE DESIGN SYSTEM
How do we build
ideas and test them?
Our design
Process

22. 23 |Our design
Process

23. “The essential part of creating is
not being AFRAID to fail.”
Edwin Land
Our design
Process

24. PAPER PROTOTYPES
Our design
Process

25. STORYBOARDS
HDB Interactive Smart Spaces
Our design
Process

26. LOW-RESOLUTION MOCK-UPS
Embrace Baby Warmer
Our design
Process

27. 28 |Our design
Process

28. Source: d.school
WHY WE PROTOTYPE
Our design
Process

29. THINKPLACE DESIGN SYSTEM
Our design
Process

30. Our design
Projects

31. Mchanga & Gates Foundation
How might we amplify fundraising behaviours in low income Kenya, in order to create more
financially resilient communities, and increase the capacity of informal financial support networks?
Our design
Projects

32. Using Technology to Amplify a
Kenyan Tradition
Harambee literally means ‘all pull together’ in Swahili.
Rallying Cry for a Newly
Independent Country
Symbol of
National Pride
Common Practice of
Assisting Others
(Crowdfunding)
Our design
Projects

33. How to amplify value within existing
behaviour?
Communities are already forming financial support groups & are more resilient because
of them.
We wanted to amplify this behaviour, which is more advanced than in Western culture.
Resilience comes from being ‘indebted’
to others in your community.
Resilience is perceived to come from
being financially independent.
Cultural Norms
in Kenya
Cultural Norms
in Western Countries
Our design
Projects

34. Learn by playing games with your users
Here we designed a bespoke game to facilitate our research. This game helped us appreciate how
rural Kenyan women make decisions about spending and contributing to a fundraiser. Our insight
was that reciprocity was the main driver behind decisions, not altruism. These donations were only
given in high-trust relationships.

35. Users are the best designers.
Giving women in rural Kisii prototyping materials to build their ideal SMS fundraising product. Here,
two mothers are designing a product which allows them to contribute non-monetary items (such as
goats or food) to support a fundraiser when they have no financial support to offer.

36. Sometimes ‘smart’ looks ‘dumb’
In this work, we discovered how technology does not necessarily need to supplant existing norms
and mechanisms, but it can actually amplify existing behaviours which are already effective and
culturally meaningful for people.

37. CHN on the GoThe design journey

38. project intent
A more motivated frontline
health workforce, resulting
in better quality of maternal
and child health care,
through mobile technology.
Our design
Projects

39. Provoke empathy in us.
Build trust with them.
Co-create together.
design
research
100 participants
60 community health
nurses
18 pregnant/nursing
women
12 frontline supervisors
10 GHS stakeholders
Our design
Projects

40. storytelling
Our design
Projects

41. experience
mapping
Our design
Projects

42. “The supervisors say we are not
working, that we are lazy and
incompetent, but we are trying
our best – a congratulations
sometimes or a you have done
well would go a long way.”
“Our supervisors call us
names, even to our faces,
and this really hurts us.”
“My pay is three months late, it is
already low enough, why can’t
they at least pay it on time?”
“If you are not wearing a
green uniform and in a ward,
then you are nothing.”
Our design
Projects

43. “Before you get to my community,
there is a big bush, then there is
sexual harassment, and then there
is snake bite”
“It sometimes feels
like I am being
tormented at work.
I don’t want to do
this anymore.”
Our design
Projects

44. personas
Our design
Projects

45. Respect me
Reward me
Teach me
Inspire me
Inform me
Connect me
Equip me
Believe in me
the opportunity
Our design
Projects

46. the concepts
Our design
Projects

47. The supervisors now see that
this is what you have
planned for the day and you
have carried it out. So they
really see that in fact we are
doing our work. But at first,
they thought we weren’t
doing anything.”
“You feel good…you
feel that whatever you
are telling the [client]
is not a lie. What you
are saying is the truth,
so you yourself will
not have any doubt.”
the result
“has changed my
life in a way,
things that I don’t
know before, my
eyes are opened
to [them] through
this phone”
“it has given [me]
the opportunity to
get in contact with
colleagues”
Our design
Projects

48. Thank you.
David Ireland
e: david.Ireland@thinkplace.com.au
p: +61 411 698 559