Design and research academy so far
The design and research academy is a 12 week course designed to teach people to be designers and researchers on public services. The academy aims to provide a pathway for entering design and research in digital for people who don’t have education or experience in this sector.
We have just begun week 5 of our very first design and research academy at Made tech.
There are three types of learning we use in the academy:
Academy learning sessions - online, group training and learning sessions. A combination of theory, activities and discussions.
Academy projects - 3 real projects that delegates deliver in a group
Self-directed learning - delegates can either choose a topic from a list of research questions or choose to learn about anything they’ve come across that they’re interested in. They document what they find and share it with a small study group for feedback. Learning is also guided by their coach.
Here’s some of our learnings so far:
Learning through doing
In all three types of learning described above, learning by doing is important. In academy sessions, there are lots of practical exercises and discussions. Self directed learning is very active in that the delegates take control of their learning experience. But the prime example of learning by doing is in the academy projects.
In week 3 our cohort ran their first projects, which was a mini discovery on some real-ish briefs. The groups spent the week working on projects, and had their final presentations on Monday morning.
After giving them feedback on how they all did, we asked whether or not having a project in week 3 was helpful - and we got an overall positive yes! The delegates all really felt like having a project so early in the course gave them a chance to put some of their learning to the test and learn through doing.
It’s difficult to boil service design down
In week 1 we did an introduction to each of the different user centred disciplines (content design, user research, interaction design and service design). We had a lot of confused faces saying “But what does a service designer actually do!?”
It’s really easy to boil the other disciplines down into a succinct one or two sentences, for example, at the highest level, interactions designers design forms, content designers do the words and researcher speak to our users.
But in the case of service design it’s a lot more difficult to boil it down - it’s a bit of all that and also a lot more!
Iterating the hiring process
Hiring for our first cohort of 12 was hard! Whittling down over 300 candidates was really difficult but we learnt a lot about what works best and how we are going to change it in the future;
1. The case study wasn’t that useful
We got everyone to complete a case study based on some research from the British Red Cross. We found in the long run people with experience or education in this field already did the best in the case study and that’s not who the course is designed for.
2. The face-to-face interviews
On our open days, we did individual interviews with each candidate but in the end, these didn’t prove that helpful. We understood and got a lot more data about whether or not people would be a good fit via the group tasks we asked them to do
We’ll be implementing these learning for the hiring of our next cohort.
Our next cohort
We have started the hiring process for the next cohort which starts in October.
We’d love you to apply and come join us here at Made Tech!
Mark & Clara