Be careful what you wish for: innovating through challenge prizes

Imagine you have identified a problem you do not know how to solve, but you do have some money to spend on it. You can then either hire someone to solve the problem for you – a designer or innovator – or you can organise a challenge in which people compete by generating solutions. The person who can find the best solution wins a prize. The latter is becoming increasingly popular, which is easy to understand. A challenge prize will give you more solutions than commissioning the project to an individual designer or innovator. But how do you make sure that this crowdsourcing results in something innovative and successful? On my recent trip to Europe I discussed this question with three ‘social innovators’ who each had wide experience in setting challenge prizes. In this blog I argue that the key to a successful outcome is in the framing of the challenge.

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From mystery to method: how to translate a deep understanding of a complex societal problem into innovative solutions

When people with a severe mental illness are going through a crisis, for example when they are having a psychosis, or are threatening to harm themselves or others, they are in acute need for help. In these situations they usually receive support from many different people, including their carers, police, ambulance, emergency departments, social workers and mental health units. Currently there are many problems within this complex crisis response system. For example, signs of distress are often detected too late, being transported to the hospital and staying in the emergency department can be very traumatic experiences for people with a mental illness, and there are often conflicts between service providers about responsibilities.

This is exactly the kind of complex societal problem we like to address through our design innovation methods. At first sight the fields of mental health emergencies and design might not seem to be related at all. Severe mental illness is a very serious problem and is design not some kind of fun and creative activity used to create things like fashion, iPhones and cars? The latter is indeed true, but there is increasing evidence that the way designers think is also beneficial outside this traditional design domain. This is called design innovation or design thinking. This means that design methods are not only used to design things and products, but also to design services, processes and policies.

One of the principles of design thinking is that to be able to generate innovative solutions designers need to gain a deep understanding of the problem. However, the process of translating these insights into solutions is often presented as rather mysterious and dependent on the ingenuity of designers. In this blog I will show how the frame creation methodology developed by Kees Dorst unveils this mystery by providing a clear method to move from insights to solutions, and how it helped us generate a very promising solution to support people with a severe mental illness who are in acute need for help.

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Hello!

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My name is Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer and I am a researcher, designer and educator in transdisciplinarity and human-centred & systemic design. I believe that we need to develop a better understanding of the creative and collaborative practices that are required to address today’s complex societal challenges – also called social innovation practices. In my role as Associate Professor at Delft University of Technology, I therefore study these practices, contribute to the development of methods and practices, and share this knowledge through my publications, website and education. As owner of Meerkat Consultancy I also provide training and advice about various social innovation methods and practices to public and private organisations. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to know more and/or would like to collaborate.

How deep is deep?

Ever since the publication of Henry Dreyfuss’ book ‘Designing for People’ (1955) there has been general agreement in the design field that gaining insights into what people need, supports designing products that meet those needs. The idea of design driven by these types of insights is one of the main elements of ‘design thinking’ that has been adopted in sectors outside the traditional design domain, particularly in the private sector. Roger Martin (2009) for example wrote in his book ‘The design of business: why design thinking is the next competitive advantage’ that deep, user-centred understanding is an essential tool of the design thinker, and many others have argued that deep user or customer insights contribute to radical innovation. Read More