How we work
The design team takes a collaborative approach to guiding projects through the diverging and converging processes.
The design team has a variety of meetings and communication channels, each with different agendas and purposes. These purposes include:
- Combining research activities: we often have multiple teams trying to solve problems for similar audiences. For example, we are currently supporting several initiatives to help small and medium businesses in NSW. This means we can engage with business owners to discuss their pain points, understand their processes and test multiple prototypes. The findings can then be shared efficiently across designers and researchers who work together to test ideas.
- Improving the effectiveness of research: there are many ways to approach research. By bringing research practitioners together on a regular basis, it provides an opportunity to identify research processes that are working well and those that are not. This gives us an opportunity to create an action plan to improve the efficacy of research. Our research practitioners have a varied background and experiences, so they’re able to provide feedback on a range of approaches to research.
- Design communities: before designs go through the governance and approval process, there is an opportunity to consult the design community. This encourages our designers to self-organise and establish a forum for informal conversations and early feedback. The outcome is a community of practice that shares knowledge, builds better practices, and contributes to organisational collaboration. Our design and research communities require structure, leadership and support to be effective. The communities are broken into small groups of designers, so it is less intimidating. The communities use online chats and meet remotely to discuss ideas