Many thanks to all the good sports who attended the CILIPS 22 conference and participated in our People-Centred Design event.
We always think that you understand things better when you have a chance to try them, so we asked the delegates at the CILIPS conference to participate in one of our visioning exercises. As you can see from the slideshow, they took to it with great enthusiasm, and even though this was a demo, the information that they selected has yielded some interesting insights.
We are excited to be speaking at the CILIPS Annual Conference 2022 on the 7th of June in the Apex Hotel Dundee. We will be introducing our approach to People-Centred Design processes and challenging everyone to join us in a co-design activity. It should hopefully be fun and informative – fingers crossed!
We have worked on academic and public libraries across the Uk. Still, it has been a while since we worked on a Glasgow public library, so we are super excited to have been appointed by Glasgow Life to work with the staff at the Mitchell Library to carry out a critical review of the current services and spaces. The study will inform the future development of the building’s layout and fabric and the services delivered within it and online.
Creative Informatics, (www.creativeinformatics.org) recently awarded us a grant to develop a web app based on the knowledge and insights we have gathered through our practice to date.
The Pandemic has accelerated much of the evolving thinking around education and workspaces and forced institutions to rethink their spaces once more. Many public bodies and Universities are now questioning the types of spaces required to help support a blended delivery method and the new ways people are studying/working.
The Learning People/Places App is based on data drawn from over 15 years of practice and 30+ projects. It is designed to assist educators and other interested parties in understanding the people who use their space and how to create better places for those people.
We are delighted to confirm that we will be working with OnFife to design and develop a community engagement and co-design project. The project aims to develop their library services in response to local needs, hopefully changing how people perceive and use their local library.
We will be engaging with the communities in Cowdenbeath, Cupar and Templehall and specifically working with three identified groups, young parents, older men and lapsed borrowers.
The project has three tiers
+ Discover
+ Develop
+ Design
The goal is to ascertain the activities and services each of the target groups would like to find in their local library, focussing on tackling social isolation and positively impacting mental health and wellbeing.
Our Toolkit for SLIC (Scottish Libraries & Information Council) is complete and launched in libraries across Scotland.
The Forward Toolkit represents the collected knowledge and creativity generated via one to one Interviews and ‘Questionshops’, our online creative workshop process.
The Toolkit comprises three Facets, People, Services and Space, surrounding a set of Core Questions. Each Facet contains information, advice and printable worksheets to challenge users and help them answer the Core Questions, ultimately guiding Libraries to create their future models.
The process is designed to be organic and non-linear, allowing users to choose to engage with the Toolkit as a whole or select Facets to explore individually. Each section or Facet can be printed and pinned up, creating a ‘studio’ of ideas for Library teams to review together in their own creative workshops.
It is always good to see something that we created working in action. Part of our project with ECB was to create a series of artworks based on the experiences, stories and dreams of the ECB staff and a system to roll these out across their spaces.
As the artworks were to be installed in three very different buildings, there had to be a degree of modularity, so we created the ECB Super Graphic system. The Super Graphic system comprised a repetitive brick pattern (the exact dims of the Euro note) that could be reduced or increased depending on the degree of opacity desired in each space. This pattern was combined with blocks featuring recipes, song lyrics, top ten lists and other employee contributions, numbers and large stickers illustrating significant European icons.
Recently our client in Germany sent us some photographs illustrating the rollout of these artworks. We were delighted to see that the system not only works but that they have fully embraced this and are continuing to use it even after several years.
Those who know us will be aware of our passion for artwork that connects with the people and place for which it is intended, and it is good to see ECB showing their Super Graphics such love.
We started 2022 with a question – What is the future for your workspace?
In the wake of the pandemic and its changes, we wanted to help people think differently when considering their space, so we wrote a postcard to our clients.
In this, we share a bit about our people-centred collaborative process where we work with the intended spatial users to challenge this question and develop specifically tailored solutions to unique issues.
We hope you enjoy these insights and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
This year we wanted to treat everyone to a little gift – our studio Christmas playlist. We hope you all enjoy and have a very merry holiday season and a happy New Year! Click the link below to access our playlist.
We are excited to announce that the Scottish Libraries and Information Council (SLIC) have commissioned our creative consultation experts to explore the future of the public library post-COVID-19 with library community members from across Scotland.
The project titled FORWARD will be included in the National Strategy Document that SLIC plans to release in 2021.
The local Library has long been one of our most important shared civic spaces and our communities’ centre-place. Over the last few years, libraries have been working to reassess and improve their future service offering to ensure that they are relevant and fresh by embracing digital and technological innovations.
The current COVID-19 situation has pushed this issue to move faster and further than previously imagined with many libraries forced to find innovative ways to provide their services remotely during lockdown. Now, as we move towards opening some spaces again, libraries must begin to understand how our new shared Landscape might look and what each place can offer to support their local community. Including the community in this process is an essential step.
Naturally, the pandemic has hampered our usual processes with are very much based upon person-to-person contact, and we have been forced to innovate. As a result, we have come up with a series of Questionshops, a mash-up of questionnaires and online creative events, and we are excited to see the results. The project will include interviews with key stakeholders, our Questionshops and prototype testing.
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