the making

of family

by family

Family by Family is the product of 12 months of co-design & prototyping with Families in the Marion area of Adelaide, South Australia. May 2010 - March 2011

When we developed Family by Family we started with people, prototyping practice and then designed policy.

Our approach blends design, social science & business.

radical

redesign

New outcomes

New team

Problem

New scenarios

New systems

New interactions

New solutions

2. LOOK & LISTEN

3. CREATE

4. PROTOTYPE INTERACTIONS

5. PROTOTYPE SYSTEMS

6. VALUE

7. GROW

1. GET READY

We started with this brief...

mental health

We met families in malls, supermarkets, and through door knocking. We found talking about ‘family stress’ to be a good conversation starter.

designer

We wanted to learn what family life was really like. So we spent mornings, afternoons, evenings, and weekends with families, observing what could be different.

sociologist

anthropologist

We came back to the studio to make sense of what we’d seen & learnt from the families we spent time with.

A key insight was that there were families who had been through tough times and were now thriving. These families were an untapped resource.

mental health

We brainstormed loads of ideas for how to tap into natural family resources. We tested an early idea called the ‘Family Exchange’. It didn’t catch on.

mental health

We went back to the drawing board and came up with the concept of Family by Family. Family by Family starts with what families want to change.

We decided to prototype Family by Family at a small scale for 12 weeks.

This meant going back out to supermarkets and malls to try & attract families to join.

We had to iterate our messages and materials 7 times before families engaged.

x7

mental health

prototype coach

prototype sharing family

We developed three prototype roles - seeking families, sharing families, and professional coaches. At first, people found the roles ‘different’ and ‘uncomfortable.’

mental health

We designed, tried, and then re-designed a weekend training camp for sharing families.

mental health

We came up with a way to profile & match sharing and seeking families. Then, we brought sharing and seeking families together to meet, plan, and do activities.

mental health

We created coaching sessions: a time for sharing families to brainstorm new ideas and troubleshoot. We found it challenging to keep the focus on creating change.

mental health

We came up with tools to help sharing and seeking families keep the focus on measurable change. We tested 13 different versions of our measurement tools.

x13

mental health

business analyst

Prototyping Family by Family helped us to learn about the value it creates for families, communities, & government and from there build a business case.

mental health

What next? Improving and spreading the Family by Family model and ideas across South Australia and beyond.

call 08 81109955

adelaide, South australia