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New Radicals Dude

Posted on 21st February 2012 by Adil Abrar

We're pleased to announce that Sidekick Studios has been selected by The Observer and NESTA as New Radicals, a list of 50 "inspirational Britons improving the lives of people and communities across the country in radical and creative ways". There are lots of ace people and organisations on the list; some of them we know and love, like Iris Lapinski from Apps for Good, Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh from Sugru, We Are What We Do, and Livity; but there are lots more that we've enjoyed checking out, like PatientsLikeMe, Michael Acton Smith, The Brilliant Club, Access Space, The Reader Organisation and Maslaha, to name but a few. It's worth having a little look around the other winners here. Hats off to all of them. 

Here's a little bit more about the list from Geoff Mulgan, the Chief Executive at NESTA. 

"Last November, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) teamed up with the Observer to launch a call to find 50 of Britain's new radicals. We wanted to find people who were coming up with creative answers to the big issues of our times, working below the radar of national media. We wanted to celebrate people who were really doing good rather than celebrities famous for being famous. And we wanted to find examples of inspiration during a difficult time."

"Hopefully this exercise will prompt argument. If we aren't told of hundreds of people who should have been on the list, we'll be disappointed. If we don't prompt a debate about what it means to be radical, that would be a shame too. For me it means a willingness to deal with the root causes of things, to think and act in genuinely fresh ways. Two centuries after the word first came into use, and at least 150 years since some people started calling themselves new radicals, the word doesn't always mean being novel – many of the best radical ideas involve return as well as advance, like the many projects reimagining Britain as a nation connected to the land and food production. But it does require a willingness to challenge the mainstream."

"Being radical guarantees that you'll have to deal with enemies, obstructive vested interests and bitter setbacks. What makes the difference is whether you bounce back – as social activist Michael Young used to put it, treating "no" as a question.""

 

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Introducing League of Meals

Posted on 20th February 2012 by Adil Abrar

We're going to start doing Weeknotes for a new Sidekick venture we've been working on since last summer part-time, but which we're now ramping up. We can't promise that these will be complete, or even coherent. They'll be a reflection of what has happened in the week, and there'll be an invitation for feedback and help. Which I suspect we're going to need quite a lot of. 

Before we tell you what the idea is, we better start with the problem. 

A problem that matters

We're getting older. All of us. As a country. There are now 11m people over the age of 65. This creates all kinds of issues - not enough people working, too many requiring care, social isolation, intergenerational conflict...the list is long. The direction of travel has to be enabling people to stay independent, for longer. It's what the State needs, but it's also what the individuals need. We answered a competition call from the Design Council and TSB, who were particularly interested in how we enable people to keep independent through food, given that what people eat, when they eat, who they eat with etc is such a big part of life. 

Little-big idea

Our start point was based on my own real life experience. I have an older neighbour. Kathy. She's lovely. She lives on her own and she's fairly independent. But she doesn't have a car, and we do. Which means that we sometimes go pick up bulky items (washing powder, toilet roll) for her when go do a supermarket shop. Problem is, we need to know what she wants before we go, and if we just go, on the spur of the moment, we often think 'I wonder what Kathy would have wanted.' 

The little idea we had was a collaborative shopping list application. The older person uses a mobile or web app to create a list of the things they need from the shops at any one time, and all the people in their network can see what they need, and pick it up, if it's convenient for them. Simple. It's like a shared 'to buy' list. 

The big idea was what we called 'distributed care'. Taking its cue from the notion of distributed computing, where there are many, low-end computers, that share the processing burden, we loved the idea of Distributed Care, where there are many individuals doing a small amount of work, reducing the burden on any one person AND reducing the risk of a complete system failure. That sounded kind of cool, and we could see how we could start with shopping, but it could also be about sharing travel, or chores, or visits. We called it Pick Me Up (gettit? pick me up food, pick me up in the car, pick me up emotionally...it was a sweet name) and we played around with ideas involving using a stylus and a tablet, and sending updates to SMS not just smartphones. 

On the back of this, Design Council and TSB were good enough to offer us a small amount of feasibility funding. 

No plan survives contact with the enemy

Our next step before we built anything was to go out and find out if anyone actually wanted it, and would anyone pay for it. We did a bunch of workshops, interviews and rapid prototypes, and we found the answer. No. 

There are too many reasons to go into but the main one was this. There were some people who really felt they needed this, but they were also the same people who had more complex needs, and who were already 'dependent' on others. They also tended to be older and more tech averse. Meanwhile, those that were still independent - we called them the young-old - they hated it. They really hated it because it treated them like victims, and as we know from The Amazings, it is far better to focus on what older people could do, as opposed to what they can't.

In this instance, these people loved shopping, they knew what they wanted better than anyone else, they knew how to get it cheaper than anyone else, and going to the shops was actually a really good reason to get out of the house and er, be independent. Our solution - well meaning as it was - was more likely to make people more dependent. 

Problem-solution fit

But in the process of telling us how much they hated what we were proposing, they did tell us what they really wanted and what they were good at.

They wanted social food opportunities. Special occasions when they eat with other people. These moments were not just more enjoyable, but these were times that they tended to cook nicer, healthier food. And the best thing was that these people had something that others don't have - knowledge of heritage recipes. They can cook. They can cook things that the rest of us have probably forgotten or don't know how to cook. Everyone loves nan's cooking. And nan's cooking was at the heart of keeping nan active and independent through food. 

The new idea was simple. Eat Better Together.

It was a digital service that brings together friends, families, and communities together to enjoy heritage recipes cooked by older adult experts. Importantly, the emphasis is squarely on the meal occasion. We're not trying to create a database of recipes, we're trying to create social interaction and wellbeing.

Hence, The League of Meals. 

Here is a high-level user journey / user story that we created. I especially liked the idea of nan snapping her recipes written on scraps of photos, and people in the network transcribing them. That would have been sweet. 

Product-market fit (hypothesis)

We loved the idea of bringing families together to eat nan's delicious food. We could see how it solved the problem. It sounded like something that people would want to engage in. And it felt just fun enough for people to get behind it. 

The key issue - as it always is - was the customer challenge. Who was going to pay for it? Would older people pay for a service that enabled them to cook for others? Doubt it. Would others pay for a tool that helped them organise meals? Maybe, but why not use Facebook? Could it be something that a local authority would pay for? Possibly, but we have to be mindful of the current climate of cuts. Potentially, it could be an education project where young children are invited to connect to their elders as part of Home Economics (is that what it's still called?). Another thought we had was around reminiscence therapy for people with early stage dementia - there was some evidence that we came across which suggested that helping people with dementia remember the things that they could remember, such as recipes, could be an important part of their treatment. 

That brings us to where we were at earlier this month, and where the lovely Johanna Kollmann joined the team to help us unpick the product and turn it into an amazing startup that solves a problem that matters.  There's been a number of developments since, but I'll leave it to the team to pick up the story. Hope you enjoyed the read and the thinking so far. We're pretty excited by where this leads. 

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Brain explosions and how to have them

Posted on 8th February 2012 by Nick Marsh

I often ask people who come to interviews where they get their inspiration, or who inspires them.

I am always looking for answers that aren't obvious, and that say something about the quality of a persons curiosity more than the quality of their RSS collection.
 
If people struggle you can ask them 'which companies do you admire?', 'what products do you love?' and so on, but by then they've already got minus points.
 
I especially like it when people give you a real blinder like, 'so, where do you get yours?' (as long as they've had a good go at answering it first. Otherwise it's just lazy.)
 
Which is why I'm writing this.
 
If course, it's impossible to say exactly where your inspiration comes from. Its always the sum total of all your experiences.
 
However, I think I can pinpoint two really important types of inspiration, both of which are kind of brain explosions. When you get really good ones, its amazing. 
 
The first type is the type that pushes whole sections of your brain forward, and gives you lots of new ideas across all the things that you do, and in my experience it always comes from sources outside your current interests. You know when you see this inspiration because you suddenly see things differently. I'm going to call this brain explosion inspiration.
 
The second type is the type that consolidates lots of the different things floating around in your brain already, crystallises them and helps you tell a story to yourself and others that had been lurking there for a while. You know when you see this because you suddenly start explaining things differently. I'm going to call this brain implosion inspiration.
 
There is a third type, which is the more mundane, everyday inspiration, that is often less about ideas and more about artefacts - wow, that's a beautiful poster. Or, I'm going to copy that interface component. These are really numerous. I'm not writing about these today.
 
So, what are some good brain explosion and implosions I've had? I'll list a few:
 
 
 
Wow. This is a killer book. Its about science, but its also deeply philosophical. Its perhaps the greatest ever treatise on the importance of having strong ideas but holding them weakly. Kuhn takes this concept up to the meta level, and shows how science is an ever evolving description of the truth behind Nature. This book makes you feel both in awe at mankind and also deeply empowered as a human to better understand yourself and nature. Amazing. 
 
Brain Explosion #2 - Understanding Comics.
 
 
Double wow. As a kid I grew up reading and drawing comics. I also loved art, and reading stories. Still do. But reading Scott McCloud just BLEW MY MIND, as suddenly, there on the page in a beautiful meta method was a super concise explanation of how drawings and words can come together to tell the most sophisticated stories ever. This book is absolutely required reading for anyone working in any field that requires them to explain things to other people. This book pushed me forward in so many ways.
 
Brain Explosion #3 - The Ascent of Man.
 
 
Triple wow. Brunowski's legendary series was introduced to me on a summer camp I went on with a bunch of other designers. Its a beautiful, polymathematical explanation of what makes human beings unique in the world. he takes us on a tour of science, but also all human history. You just have to watch it. What made my brain explode was not just the content but also the amazingly daring way he connects together different ideas. The final scene of him wading into a marsh outside a concentration camp, up to his knees in water explaining how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies to human affairs as much as atoms is just mind blowing.
 
Brain Implosion #1 - The Story of Art
 
 
This is a beast of a book. But amazing, as it connects together all artistic traditions into one super narrative. You can quibble with the method and who's in and who's out, but what is so cool about it is that it creates a shared tradition for all creative thought. It made me realise that everything I do is connected to everything that other people had done before me. Which is a profound thought, and something I'm always aware of when designing.
 
Brain Implosion #2 - In the shadow of the moon
 
 
This film basically makes you cry with happiness at being a human. Its amazing. Interviews with all the surviving people who have walked on the moon. Its a epic tale of what humans can achieve if they work together. Its also a fantastic look behind the scenes about how complex systems and products are designed, and what it takes to bring things together. It makes you proud to be person, and it puts every endeavour in perspective - if you believe you can do something, you probably can. 
 
Brain Implosion #3 - Lean Startup
 
 
This is my most recent implosion. Eric Ries book and ideas have brought together so many different threads of my work over the pat few years - user centred design, innovation, startups, mixing strategy and delivery, growth, getting people with different skills working together, the power of great product and service design. Wow. Its really consolidated so much of what I was saying, and just made it all stack up. Its so good. Please read it.
 
The post of this title is a bit misleading, as I haven't explained how to have good brain explosions, but in writing this I realised that the answer is less interesting than examples. Its probably something about making sure you are always meeting new people, reading widely and trying to work on stuff that you haven't done before.
 
Anyway, what are your greatest brain explosion/implosion moments? How can we have more of them? Do you want to have too many? What order should they come in? Can you have a simultaneous brain explosion with someone?! All good questions, I'd love to hear your answers!

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