New designs on digital support for parents
NCT is nine months into a partnership with design charity Shift, to create a brand new digital service to help …
Not broccoli, not even chocolate covered broccoli, just chocolate.
Duncan Brown, co-founder of BfB Labs, explains the thinking behind developing our video game to improve young people’s mental health, …
Applying Shift’s design approach to The National Citizen Service
The National Citizen Service (NCS) runs a 2-4 week programme for 15 – 17 year olds during their school holidays, …
Stealthy Healthy Changes: Designing tweaks to fast food outlets to improve health and maintain profits
It’s a bit of a special week this week for the food team as our first intervention tests have gone …
How to co-create the future of storytelling
In an age of Brexit and Trump, bridging divided communities might seem like a far fetched dream. But at Historypin, …
The Wartime Films Project: Narrowing the Focus of our User-Centered Design Pilot
5 Lessons in Developing Social Tech Ventures
Digital technology plays a powerful role in the response to social problems. Its doesn’t provide the answers to everything and, by …
The Question That Tech-for-Good Funding Should Care Most About
Grant funding has a vital role to play in social technology innovation. It can support the higher costs and …
The Next Frontier for Social Impact Investment
Featured in the Huffington Post
Can Consumer Product Design Really Drive Systemic Social Change?
A recent Forbes piece by Ashoka’s Michael Zakaras takes product design to task as a source of transformational social change. To provide an antidote to the fashionable fascination with “things” as the answer to all our social ills, the article uses examples like Toms Shoes‘ one-for-one model and the distribution of mosquito nets as evidence that products normally fail to engage with the roots of complex social problems.
A brand new version of our digital inclusion product, Buttons
We’re really excited to be relaunching our digital inclusion product, Buttons, this week, which represents a big step in the …
Designing for behaviour change: Tip 6
The sixth in a series of seven guest blogs for the RSA aimed at student designers. This one’s about User Value, Social Value and Financial Value. Creative Director Tori Flower shares her insights into how to approach designing for behaviour change.
Designing for behaviour change: Tip 5
The sixth in a series of seven guest blogs for the RSA aimed at student designers. This one’s about testing, improving and iterating your solution. Creative Director Tori Flower shares her insights into how to approach designing for behaviour change.
Designing for behaviour change: Tip 4
The fifth in a series of seven guest blogs for the RSA aimed at student designers. This one’s about designing around behavioural insights. Creative Director Tori Flower shares her insights into how to approach designing for behaviour change.
Designing for behaviour change: Tip 3
The fourth in a series of seven guest blogs for the RSA aimed at student designers. This one’s about identifying the designing interventions that facilitate, not communicate. Creative Director Tori Flower shares her insights into how to approach designing for behaviour change.
Designing for behaviour change: Tip 2
The third in a series of seven guest blogs for the RSA aimed at student designers. This one’s about identifying the motivations and barriers to action. Creative Director Tori Flower shares her insights into how to approach designing for behaviour change.
Designing for behaviour change: Tip 1
The second in a series of seven guest blogs for the RSA aimed at student designers. This one’s about identifying the Outcome, Actor and Action. Creative Director Tori Flower shares her insights into how to approach designing for behaviour change.
Designing for behaviour change: 6 tips for students
The first in a series of seven guest blogs for the RSA aimed at student designers. Creative Director Tori Flower shares her insights into how to approach designing for behaviour change.
Technology and Behaviour Change
How do these products and services work? Can they really encourage people to ‘be better’ long-term or do you need to change the system and society in other ways? ‘Who’ decides what’s better anyway? And when does behaviour change become coercion or something more controlling?
Tech for Good TV explore this in their latest podcast, featuring our Research and Evaluation Director Kathleen Collett, supported by Bethnal Green Ventures and Nominet Trust.
Shift’s development process for social ventures
Nick and Tori explain the process that shapes and structures Shift’s work designing social ventures. As part of our three year partnership with the Nominet Trust, we have intended to codify and share this process more explicitly, both for our own benefit and in the hope that other mission-driven designers and social entrepreneurs find it useful.
Why Social Entrepreneurs Need to Be Better Than Their Commercial Counterparts
Featured in the Huffington Post
Most Mindfulness Products Miss Those That Need Them
Featured in the Huffington Post
How can we bridge the gap between what people want and what’s good for people?
Talk by Tori Flower at TEDxKCS. She shares insights from her background in advertising and as a designer for behaviour change, including the importance of looking at the world from the point of view of your customer and designing things people actually want.
Why Social Entrepreneurs Need to Be Better Than Their Commercial Counterparts
Successful commercial entrepreneurs have to prioritise building two types of value within their ventures: user value and financial value, but social entrepreneurs need all three.
From We Are What We Do to Shift: a new name for a different approach
Our work in behaviour change started 10 years ago, as a social movement that inspired people to use their everyday …
The 3 strands of value vital to social tech ventures
This article has been written by Nick Stanhope, CEO of We Are What We Do, and Dan Sutch, Head of …
Three values
On the surface, the language and practices of Silicon Valley and other tech investors have brought the social sector a greater focus on ventures, accelerators, fast-growth innovations, of startups, incubators and investment…
RSA Workshop: Designing ways to improve Everyday Wellbeing
Mental health is a major issue affecting the UK population. 25% of people in Britain will experience mental health problems every year…
Refining our social innovation model
In April, when we set out on our first year of our research and development partnership with the Nominet Trust, we had in place a pretty robust six stage social innovation model, which we had been evolving and refining over several years of work in behaviour change and product design…
Unconditional Leadership
David Robinson eloquently and honestly distils 35 years experience of starting and building inspiring local, national and international charities and social enterprises, drawing out lessons on unleashing people’s potential that have application across business and government.
I’m Still a Plastic Bag
Our 2007 I’m Not a Plastic Bag project with Anya Hindmarch was, at the time, hugely successful. We applied our product-centric …
A bit of new radicalism
It has been great for We Are What We Do to be included in the Britain’s New Radicals list, launched …
The Incidental Effect
Hello. This first one is going to be very short, because what it refers to is quite long and I …
Research
Designing products that empower parents
Insight report exploring the parenting journey, the associated feelings, thoughts, desires and behaviours, a review of the sources of support throughout. Plus …
Research
Driving continuous improvement: Insights from funding social tech
Commentable version here. Report giving a set of 5 insights and 8 practical recommendations on how funders and social organisations can …
Research
5 ways to use the Social, User & Financial Value Model for social innovation
Paper by Nick Stanhope, in partnership with The Nominet Trust, exploring five specific ways in which the Social, User & …
Research
Taking a User-Centered Design Approach with the US National Archives
Historypin began working with the US National Archives in 2014 to take a user-centered design approach to cultural heritage and …
Research
Survey of products and services which promote wellbeing
Evidence for interventions to improve wellbeing (mindfulness, gratitudes, awe and optimism) and examples of products and services which facilitate these. …
Research
Survey of Existing Consumer Products and Services which Reduce Food Waste
Report broken down by the six stages in the domestic food cycle including summary highlighting common themes and relative effectiveness, …
Research
The Incidental Effect
Paper exploring new methods in behaviour change.By Nick Stanhope
Research
Reconnecting
Paper exploring new methods in behaviour change. David Robinson