The Hidden Women of Design initiative showcases and supports women working in the field of Design. In July, they hosted …
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, …
Research
0–2s: improving infant emotional development
A review of the factors that contribute to the healthy emotional development of infants in their first thousand days of life. …
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 …
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
Summary report: 0–2s, Improving infant emotional development
A summary of the factors that contribute to the healthy emotional development of children in their first thousand days of …
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, …
Comparte Tu Rollo on Social Media
Comparte tu Rollo
Radio show about the Comparte tu Rollo project in Columbia, teaching basic tech skillls by digitizing history of rural libraries.
Research
BfB Labs Trial Summary
An evaluation report describing the results of the five trials of Shift’s emotionally responsive biofeedback video game, conducted to investigate …
The Wartime Films Project: Narrowing the Focus of our User-Centered Design Pilot
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 …
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 …
Research
Playing with emotions
An evaluation report describing the results of a test of BfB’s biofeedback video game with two primary schools in Hackney, …
Research
Healthy Fast Food: Evaluating a new approach to improving the food environment
Evaluation Report Naomi Stoll, Kathleen Collet, Duncan Brown and Sean Noonan
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 …
Death by Social Media
Jon Voss runs Shift’s US operations, with a major focus on Historypin. Our deep intergenerational work has pulled us recently …
Research
IMLS Focus: The National Digital Platform
On April 28, 2015, the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) convened library, archive, and museum professionals to, in the …
Ten best uses of Buttons, our new digital inclusion tool
In February we launched Buttons, our new and improved digital inclusion tool, which helps you make lists of websites you …
Historypin & LODLAM at EuropeanaTech 2015
This talk at the National Library of France from February 2015 highlights some of the ways Historypin is being leveraged to increase access to cultural heritage content and strengthen local communities. I also take a quick look at the growing culture around Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives and Museums and how data sharing may soon be the new norm for cultural heritage.
Research
From Crowdsourcing to Knowledge Communities: Creating Meaningful Scholarship Through Digital Collaboration
In this paper, we share some of the findings of our Mellon-funded crowdsourcing research with Stanford University, with a focus …
The Next Frontier for Social Impact Investment
Featured in the Huffington Post
Research
Harnessing the power of games to improve wellbeing
An evaluation report describing the results of the first test of Shift’s biofeedback video game, which uses the player’s heart …
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.
Research
Historypin in the Community: 2013/2014
In the last couple of years, we’ve seen Historypin used to connect generations in Japan, to draw in rich life stories …
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.
Research
Leading in the Digital World: Opportunities for Canada’s Memory Institutions
Jon: “I was fortunate to be a reviewer on this important publication examining the future of Canada’s memory institutions, though the …
The Next Frontier for Social Impact Investment
Social Impact Investment is explored by Nick Stanhope.
Successful commercial entrepreneurs have to prioritise building two types of value within their ventures: user value and financial value. The job of creating value for users is hard. It relies on a profound understanding of the intrinsic motivations of the target audience. It requires the time, investment and experience…
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
Research
Encouraging Reuse of NARA Wartime Moving Image Archives: Steps Toward Meaningful Engagement
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.
The First World War Centenary on Historypin
A home for local community First World War projects. Today we’re excited to launch the First World War Centenary hub on Historypin, a home for local community groups running First World War commemorative activities.
We’re nominated for an Urban Food Award
We’re excited to tell you that our project that puts healthy fast food outlets in areas dominated by unhealthy options, …
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 …
Project
I’m Not a Plastic Bag: Reducing single-use plastic
“We strongly believe that encouraging customers to shop with reusable bags is the best solution, and this oneoff Anya Hindmarch …
Project
Historypin: bringing communities together though local history
“I’m besotted with it. They’re calling it a “digital time machine” and, this being the age of Wikiality, anyone can …