Leapfrog Co-Designers See the Finished Tools for the First Time

In August, we ran a series of co-design workshops with a group of con­sul­ta­tion experts from the pub­lic sec­tor, referred to within the project as the ‘ser­vice deliv­er­ers’, who engage with young peo­ple in their work to inform things such as the devel­op­ment of pub­lic ser­vices, spaces and pol­icy.  The aim of these work­shops was to imag­ine new ways to engage with young peo­ple and improve how ideas are trans­lated between the young peo­ple and the pub­lic sector.Many ideas came out of the work­shops but three were selected by the ser­vice deliv­er­ers to be devel­oped fur­ther by the Leapfrog project.  The tools that were cre­ated are called The Right Ideas, Word­play and Every­body.

This week, the ser­vice deliv­er­ers Helen, Jen­nifer, Juliet and Sue joined us to see and expe­ri­ence the tools for the first time. Fol­low­ing a recap of the process with pho­tographs, the group dis­cussed about what they thought were the best bits, what was most chal­leng­ing and if any­thing had sur­prised them.

Jen­nifer Mil­li­gan, Con­sul­ta­tion and Engage­ment Offi­cer said:

“…the process showed us that we do have those ideas, they are in there some­where. It helped pull them out and gave us that space.”

The group agreed that the oppor­tu­nity to come together, in a dif­fer­ent space and go through a detailed co-design process had really helped them to pull out their ideas.

The reac­tion to the three tools was pos­i­tive and an oppor­tu­nity to play with the tools and see exam­ples sparked ideas for ways that they could use them with groups of young peo­ple and also ways in which they could adapt them to bet­ter fit their needs. For exam­ple, they talked about how they could pre-load Word­play with ques­tions and then give groups a per­son to con­sider the needs of, such as an active old per­son.   They also dis­cussed how the Every­body sheet could be enlarged for a big group to draw on and add their com­ments in the three shapes and how it would be use­ful to make a sports ver­sion with more active fig­ures.  See­ing the tools gave Jen­nifer and Sue, who are cur­rently plan­ning a day­long event for 17 to 20 year olds at the end of Novem­ber, some ideas that they could eas­ily use to engage the young people.

The group were keen on the use of exam­ples and tem­plates to make prepar­ing for events eas­ier and less time con­sum­ing; there­fore we hope that exam­ples will be cre­ated and shared on the Leapfrog Tools Face­book group and believe this will pro­vide moti­va­tion for oth­ers to try the tools.

We will be in touch with the group again in the New Year to find out what they are inspired to do.