Design Sprint for the Ageing Challenge
Last week I participated in the “Design Sprint for the Ageing Challenge” organised by the London College of Communication and in collaboration with the Design Council and Centre For Ageing Better.
My team and I were initially given the following brief related to the theme of fulfilling work:
How might we get employers to adopt age-friendly practices so people can work for as long as they want to, free from age bias and discrimination? And how might we help those who struggle to get back into the labour market?
We started off by conducting both primary and secondary research to discover what other services are out there and better understand the needs, goals and pain points of people in later life.
Key insights from secondary research
- A 2015 Eurobarometer report found that 42% of people regard age discrimination against older people as “widespread”
- According to the Centre for Ageing Better report on Employment support for over 50s, the 50–55 age group is reckoned to be the most receptive to intervention since they are likely to have the most recent employment histories, less out of date skills and comparatively high motivation
- The same report also says that jobseekers with managerial and professional backgrounds were not well served by programmes offered by job centre plus and other organisations
Key quotes from our user interviews
Grace who is in her late 50s and used to work in property and sales lettings said: “When I was young I wanted to change the world, but now I only have 10 or so years to make the right decision”.
Richard now 63 but retired at 53, having worked in numerous roles during his navy service said: “When I left it was inconceivable the I couldn’t get that job…surprisingly no one wanted that package of skills”.
So, after several iterations we refined our How Might We statement to:
How might we help the 50+ in professional occupations utilise their existing skills, knowledge and experiences, so that they can continue working in a fulfilling way?
To address our refined problem statement, we knew there were certain challenges we needed to be mindful of, when designing our service concept, including:
- Make people aware of the range of transferable skills they have built throughout their careers
- Create an inclusive service that works for a variety of professional occupations and personality types (i.e. extroverts and introverts)
- Maintain transparency whilst minimising bias and age discrimination
Our Service Concept
With the above in mind, we developed a service concept that helps people aged 50+ identify, develop and capitalise their existing skills and knowledge by matching them with SMEs who need their expertise.
Those over 50 have an incredible amount of life and work experience, but currently don’t have a service which:
1. Helps them realise the value they can bring
2. Supports them to transition into a new sector, environment or working style
3. Or matches them with those in need and values them the most
On the other hand, SMEs have a specific need for the skillset and experience that those over 50 can bring. Many of these businesses have limited access to individuals who want to work flexibly, but also bring an experienced and strategic mindset to their businesses.
Our Prototype
What follows is a walk-through of how Samantha, our target persona, might experience our service. It comprises of both an offline and online experience, so to see the website prototype click here
Samantha is 55 and works as a senior manager at a big financial institution. She is stressed at work due to long hours and a heavy workload. She wants more flexible work opportunities that involve a different environment and perhaps sector.
Upon searching online, she comes across our service and decides to visit our website. The minute Samantha lands on our website, we want to raise her awareness of the range of skills she has accumulated throughout her career, and it’s a simple as typing her most recent job title and we visualise the top 5–10 key transferable skills we think she possesses.
She then gets to find out more information through an explainer video as well as a downloadable brochure that gives her a more in-depth overview of the service and its benefits, the type of training she would receive and the companies she could be coaching.
Intrigued by what she has read, she then returns to the website and decides to sign up and start filling in her profile. In the mean-time, she receives access to our welcome webinar via email, ensuring she feels as comfortable as possible throughout the on-boarding stage.
She will then be invited to attend some training either online or in-person depending on her preferences. This training is mainly designed to achieve 3 outcomes:
1. Learn how to be a coach — ensuring everyone has the coaching toolkit they need at their disposal
2. To help build her confidence, because as found from our research, people may think they just aren’t well-suited to work with SMEs or startups, despite their wealth of experience.
3. To give people even those that are confident, more context of what working in an SME environment is like because it can be very different from other organisations.
After she receives her training, Samantha is now ready to explore what companies our part of our service.
At this stage she has the option to do so either online, offline or both. For the online option, she would begin viewing companies’ profiles, to find out more about them, their needs, team etc. and has the option to either message the company for any further clarifications, or submit her profile to them if she is really interested and ready to work with them. Once her profile is submitted the company will review it and get back to her within a week or so.
For the offline option, she could attend one of our speed networking events too as meeting face-to-face was something that both older people and SMEs valued, according to our research.
And as shown from the image above, our events would be designed in such a way that is comfortable and accessible for older people, by having larger opens spaces with privacy areas, so there is less noise.
At this point, she would be matched with an SME and start working with them in a coaching capacity. We would continue supporting both parties, from setting up their first kick off meeting, managing expectations, to creating a brief that both can work towards.
When Samantha and the SME have worked together until the end of the brief, we would celebrate her achievements as well as take feedback from the SME to help us improve Samantha as a coach.
And that concludes the prototype walk through! Hope you enjoyed it :)
Overall, it was an intense and fun experience, and I look forward to running or facilitating more design sprints in the future.
See our project at the exhibition EMERGENCE: Service / Social / Sustainable Design from 14 September 2019 to 16 October 2019.
Location: London College of Communication, St George’s Rd, Elephant and Castle, London SE1 6SB, United Kingdom.
