RSA : 2 — Groundwork
The RSA Student Design Awards is a global competition that challenges students to apply their skills and creativity to tackle today’s most pressing social and environmental issues.
The RSA
No biggie.
To tackle a complex problem space like, the world…. it’s useful to remember the question “How do you eat an elephant?” ; which of course is bit by bit.
Breaking down the briefs
“To understand is to know what to do.”
— Wittgenstein
As mentioned in the previous post, we were thrown into this project blind to each other. So the first step beyond establishing a relationship & workflow, was to analyse all the briefs. This was not only to help us understand the larger themes at play, but also to feel out what really resonated with each other.
Using the Redistributing health brief as an example (as it was in the end our chosen brief), our breakdown looked something like this:
Redistributing Health
How might we design systems that provide seamless and cost-effective access to quality health services for underserved communities?
Translation- Health exists, but there’s a bottleneck between it and some people, fix it.
The questions that arise from this simplistic understanding are:
- What is health?
- Who are the people?
- What is a bottleneck?
- How can we fix it?
What is Health?
Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.
George Bernard Shaw
The most common or garden framework Designers use for conceptualising health is most definitely Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. As we are a pair of common or garden designers, it suited our needs down to the ground. Even though Maslow himself admitted that there was little scientific evidence to support his theory it nonetheless provides an ample framework from which to categorise health needs into hierarchical typologies.
Who are the people?
“Imagine all the people”
John Lennon
As human centred designers, starting with the person is obviously a key component to the process. There are various ways in which to subdivide the human race into various cohorts in order to find some people worth designing for. We chose 4 ways, as it’s a solid number… moving on.
What is a bottleneck?
“Bottlenecks are usually at the tops of bottles”
Ed Bliss
In the simplest definition, a bottleneck is a work stage that gets more work requests than it can process at its maximum throughput capacity. That causes an interruption to the flow of work and delays across the production process.
In a nutshell — A Point of congestion in a system
In the context of health distribution, how is it created?
- Workloads arrive too quickly for the production process to handle.
- Flaws in the process or system
- Lack of resources
- High cost of care
- Inadequate health insurance
- Lack of available services
- Lack of culturally competent care
- Shortages of medical workers
- Facilities and equipment
- Low income
- Extreme isolation
- Cultural divides
- Single parent families
- Media perception
How to identify a bottleneck?
- Backlogged work
- High stress
- Long delays
- Unmet needs
- Financial burden
- Preventable health issues
- Hospitalisations
- Poor mental health
- Deaths, reduction in QAL
How can we fix it?
- Increase efficiency
- Widen a bottleneck by increasing resources
- Decrease input or reduce input to the bottleneck — could processes be done elsewhere?
- Systemic redesign
- Lower costs
- Reimagine healthcare facilities
- Using advanced technologies such as AI and telehealth
- Adapt to changing needs
- Personalised care that addresses not only treatment but also prevention
- Encourages individuals to prevent illness and thrive
Deciding on an underserved community
Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint.
Michel Foucault
In order to decide on an underserved community we created four constraints to help us decide:
Vulnerability
We took a procedural approach to give us a broad overview of the various health problems facing each of our named communities. We took each group from each Cohort category and then applied Maslow’s hierarchy. Using our brain so as not to get lost in google, we asked what health needs they might have, and highlighted the most vulnerable groups.
The most vulnerable groups from this process were:
- Low income
- Tribes & Isolated communities
- Victims of Human trafficking and sexual exploitation
Accessibility
One thing that became clear to us from working together is that we share a penchant for adventure. As appealing as thoughts of a Design expedition to the Kalahari to meet the Bushmen, or the aboriginal inuits of Alaska seemed to us, our current mobility limitations (Covid) & financial constraints (forget the Kalahari if your diet consists of largely of Koka noodles & Tesco Lager), accessibility was something we considered important.
We came to the conclusion that we have to be able to access our underserved community here in Ireland.
Feasibility
We both wanted to Design with the potential of it being a feasible idea. Tackling something as broad as systemic poverty would surely drag us below the sanity line and prove impossible.
Therefore our solution had to be possible and implementable.
Resonance
As mentioned in the beginning and in the previous post, mutual interest and resonance was something we were actively searching for.
Feeling a deep empathy for our community was of paramount importance.
Our Underserved Community — Victims of Sex Trafficking
“You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.” — William Wilberforce
Vulnerability
Human trafficking is modern day slavery. At any one time, there are more than 4 million victims of sex trafficking globally. Our initial vulnerability procedure produced this table:
Accessibility
Ireland is on a tier two watchlist according the TIPS annual report in Human Trafficking. According to Escort-Ireland there are on average 800–1000 women working in the sex trade in any given month. The numbers on how many are victims of trafficking there are, is unclear.
Feasibility
This is a problem that exists on our doorstep, therefore an interesting problem space to look at. Also due to the lack of resources towards the area, we felt that our work could have a real world impact.
Resonance
The more conversations we had surrounding this topic the more emotions it brought forth, it has been a rollercoaster. Hurtling from anger to sadness to disgust in a matter of minutes is the kind of power this topic has. The fact that it produced these feelings in both of us made it an area worth looking at, as we were both extremely engaged.
