Developing Solutions Methodology

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Introduction

o What is Kent Connects?o How can you use the guide?

1. How can you involve people in developing solutions?

Applytechniquesused in other disciplines to help people come up with ideas

o Show people what ideas are coming through to build momentum

Help people help each other develop solutions

o Coming up with ideaso Case study: What skills would you want to share?

Focus ideas on community outcomes

o Break up the stages of developing ideas in ways which are practicalo Case study: What would make your area a better place?

Test new ways of producing research

o Explore how you can use the competition to gather and analyse insightso Case study: How are we going to use the ideas?

Identify new technological trends

o What would make it easier for you to use technology?o Case study: How do you think about how to make services easy to use?

Show your organisation how the ideas can inform their priorities

o Categorise ideas put forward to your competitiono Support citizens to shift to online personalised serviceso Managing information to improve decision makingo Enable users to group together to solve problems

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2. How do you get people to take part in your competition?

Develop a stakeholder engagement strategy

o Work with your partners to engage and manage expectationso Get feedback from stakeholders to design the message and process

3. How can you ensure the benefits can be realised?

Create measures of success

Issue challenges based on local priorities

o Issue challenges that are relevant to your services priorities

Involve the public to suggest ideas

o Identify what resources you can secureo Collaborate with partners who can provide competition resources

Agree criteria to review ideas & prototypes

o Work with your partners and sponsors to design criteriao Provide a competitive element by securing sponsorso Select the most highly rated ideas to be developed into prototypes

4. How can you support people to come up with prototypes?

Explain what you mean by a prototype

o Tell developers what you want them to come up with

Define the specification to provide to developers

o Enable people to have the resources to help them develop prototypeso Make systems and data integrated and re-usable

Explain to developers how the event will work

o Invite external participants to describe what resources could be usedo Update people on how the event will work how they can prepare

Show developers how they can use open data to come up with prototypes

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5. How can you involve partners in shaping the process?

o Involve people representing your partnerso Define the challengeso Involve your staff to guide developerso Define the expertise you have that can help people

Use approaches to help developers come up with prototypes at your event

o Provide a combination of structure and flexibilityo Invite people who are willing to make the day work

Review the prototypes

o Select criteria that you would use to review your own services

Use the judging to learn lessons from the prototypes

o Identify gaps and assets you can use to develop the ideao Plan for future development of the prototype to ensure sustainabilityo Design the prototype around the needs & assets of the customer groupo Use specialist techniques to help develop the idea into a prototype

o Consider tools that make the user fully engaged with the prototype

Offer prizes for the competition

o Offer prizes to the winners of the best idea and prototypeo Provide non-financial prizes to help take forward the prototypes

Provide routes for ideas and prototypes who havent won

o Ensure that people can continue to work on prototypes togethero Report the event so others can learn from ito

Celebrate and recognise everyones contribution

Identify what could be improved after the competition

o Work through strong relationships and existing networkso What could we have improved?

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Introduction

With the financial constraints they face, public services need to explore more agileand efficient ways of making use of ICT.

Various councils have responded to this through launching calls for ideas orcompetitions, whether it's involving staff and users torethink ways of working,gettingideas for local budgets,developing banks of social capital orconnecting studentswith entrepreneurs to stimulate innovation.

Kent Connects coordinated Developing Solutions a programme to demonstrate anew approach to development - working with entrepreneurs to work up ideas andprototypes for ICT solutions to local needs.

We designed an approach focused on impact and sustainability by gettingentrepreneurs to build on community ideas and secured partners to get residents touser test prototypes and experts to support the winners to develop business modelsfor the applications.

Through the lessons learned from this programme, weve developed a guide to helporganisations who are looking to get

o ideas and prototypes that be used as applied research to informdevelopment of projects and services

o methods of engagement & access to digital entrepreneurs to explore

opportunities for future collaboration & joint development of solutions

What is Kent Connects?

Kent Connects is the lead technology partnership for Kent and Medway. It hasalready invested in a single, county wide infrastructure (both technology and people)to enable its partners to join up and share their services delivery mechanisms in asecure, robust and cost effective environment.

Kent Connects is an extremely effective and productive strategic partnership

facilitating partner projects by providing advice and sharing best practice andresources.

If you would like to find out more about Kent Connects or Developing Solutions,please [email protected].

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How can you use the guide?

Please find below symbols to help you understand how to use the guide:

Categories Examples

Sections of theguide

Steps of the

process

Recommendations

Examples used inour competition

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1. How can you open up the development of solutions?

To open up the development of ideas and solutions to entrepreneurs,universities & colleges and public service staff:

Applytechniquesused in other disciplines to help people come up with ideas

o Applytechniquesused in disciplines like design & research or even fields likeart or community development such asblank canvasorskills dating- tostimulate people to come up with ideas

People might have seen something that uses technology in a really creative way.

Encourage them through the online platform to think about how these new ways ofusing ICT could help improve their neighbourhood or public services.

Show people what ideas are comingthrough to build momentum

o We blogged idea of the week tohighlight good ideas coming through

o To be open and transparent, wepublished thescores of all the ideas.

Help people help each other develop solutions

Coming up with ideas sounds really easy, but sometimes to get the simple but mosteffective ones, it's worth thinking about how to stimulate them. Breaking up the ideasmakes the process seem more meaningful to people taking part and more likely forthem to want to work together to develop the ideas.

Coming up with ideas

We started off by looking atwhat skillspeople want to learn and shareandthen ontowhat would make it easierfor them to use technology,howpeople want to make theirneighbourhood a better placeandhowpeople want to help each other.

What skills would you want toshare?

Fromshowing people how tocooktoencouraging young people into

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sportviaaccess to those with technicalskills, many of the ideas build onpeople's personal motivations to either

learn or share expertise with others.This is often the easiest way of gettingindividuals to help each other in theirneighbourhood.

Focus ideas on community outcomes

o Break up the stages of developing ideas in ways which are practical

such aswhat skills people want to learn and share,how people want toimprove their neighbourhoodandhow people want to help each other

What would make your neighbourhood abetter place?

We wanted to enable people to reflect on whatwould make their neighbourhood a betterplace. It was very striking how much peoplefocused on what physicalimprovements were needed, whether it wasmaking their streets cleaner or look moreappealing - and what behaviourchanges could help improve community spirit.

Test new ways of producing research

o Explore how you can use the competition in such a way that you cangather and analyse insightsandprototype waysto turn ideas into research

How are we going to use the ideas?

We explored how we could make sense of theideas people have submitted as new forms ofcommunity insight. We've beenprototypingwaysto make sense of the ideas put forwardthrough mapping a "neighbourhood ofideas" orcreating personas on how peoplewant to help each other.

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Identify new technological trends

If you want to understand how your service canadapt to the changing trends inhow people use technology and what tools they utilise, design approaches thatenable you to gain insights on how

o people can move to digital by defaultby focusing onwhat would make iteasier for people to use technology

o you can encourage re-use of your ICT assets and of your partners suchasopen data, customer relationship systemsanddevelopment environments

What would make it easier for you to usetechnology?

All of us will reject a way of doing things thatwe think will make us look stupid whether itslearning how to use technology or repairing acar. We worked withcommunity groups andstudents to help them come up with ideasthat can sprinkle their creativity into thecompetition and think about what makes iteasier for them to want to use technology!

Because when people come up with ideas involving technology, they will rarely thinkabout how the idea would actually work if it was turned into a digital tool. If they'revery tech-savvy they will think about how all the different features a digital tool couldhave without thinking about how these would be useful to support the idea itself.

How can you think innovatively abouthow to make services easier to use?

Many people put forward simplesolutions frombeing able to access

information in a single placetobeingable to contact people in yourneighbourhoodviagetting text alertswhen your bin needs emptying.

Show your organisation how the ideas can inform their priorities

To understand the potential of this process to provide applied research to informdevelopment of projects and services, categorise the ideas put forward to yourcompetition by different types of approaches based on how they can improve the

capability of partners to deliver their priorities or inform the development of services.

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This will help you work out where to direct the ideas in your services and in whatareas your customers and partners would be enthusiastic in providing feedback on oreven shaping projects that you want to involve them in.

Types of approaches to improve the capability of partners

Over 40% of ideas support citizens to shift to personalised online services, whileclose to 30% show a desire to make the best use of technology assets owned bypublic services, while over a quarter could support them to solve their own problems.Slightly less popular were approaches to support people to group together to solvetheir own problems or to manage information to improve decision making.

See http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/types-of-approaches-2to visualise

Types of approaches to inform the development of services

Within each of the priorities above, there are various types of approaches put forwardin the competition which could inform the development of local services whetherdelivered by partners or communities.

o Support citizens to shift to online personalised services

The clear majority of ideas in this category focused on real time reporting of issues,transaction of services and updating of information for on-demand servicesexamples including community vehicle booking and bin alerts. A minority looked atmobile social networks to help citizens make choicessuch as location-basedcommunity chat. A few suggested ways to enable citizens to provide data on howthey spend their personal budgets or monitor their local environmentsuch as

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an online neighbourhood watch.

Recommendation:Make it easier and quicker for people to use online services

while theyre on the move, particularly those which help them get advice from theirpeers, while raising awareness about the importance of providing personalinformation to help them make better informed choices.

o Opening up technological assets to reduce costs

Most of the ideas on this theme were looking on how they could prototypeapplications in an agile way and white-label them to reduce costs and managetheir lifecycle. Examples included a 24 hour challenge to get people to developprototypes or a creative media experience.

There were fewer ideas around making use of open data to understand

community assets such as renting your car parking space or mapping skills,stimulating startups through community broadband or re-using digitalresourcessuch as crowd building, matching up support with early adopters andassisted digital service providers in the community to tackle digital dividesuch as visual gaming or even intelligence on ICT assets to help businesses andcommunity groups make investment decisions or meet needs such asconnecting IT projects.

Recommendation: Develop ways to enable developers to prototypeapplications which make use of public service ICT assets and provide betterinformation about what and how they could make use of such resources.

o Managing information to improve decision making

There were the same proportion of ideas in this area that used quality of life andeconomic intelligence to make policy decisions such as a neighbourhoodperception monitoring tool as there were on gathering real time information foremergency mappingwith examples such as a reporting heatmapping tool and roadwork delays app. A few ideas explored developing dashboards for people reportlocal issues on the communitysuch as mapping empty land and shops as well asdashboards for real time performance management indicatorssuch as parkingperformance app.

o Enable users to group together to solve problems

The majority of ideas in this category focused on helping citizens use quality of lifedata to make choices with examples from bulk buying websites to street healthapps as well as points based systems to reward volunteers. Other ideas were basedon developing online marketplaces for communities.

Recommendation: Open up data on quality of life and the economy andprioritise real-time geographic information, while incentivising the development ofdashboards to improve performance of services and help people support themselves.

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2. How do you get people to take part in your competition?

To ensure you can test out effective methods of engagement and access todigital entrepreneurs to explore opportunities for future collaboration & jointdevelopment of solutions:

Develop a stakeholder engagement strategy

o Work with your partners to ask questions you could use to understandhow to engage and manage expectations. These could include:

o What audiences do you want to reach out to?o Why would persuade them to take part in the event?o What content would appeal to them?o What content should you feature?o What format would appeal to them?o How can they contribute?o What tools can you provide that enable them to contribute?

Get feedback from stakeholders to design the message and process

Feedback provided suggested we should focus on the following:o Can do something for the good of the publico People are willing to go the extra mileo Create commitment by the councils to work with the developers to get the

apps adoptedo Signposting to the website & marketing the appo Focus on market share, content and reach

We worked with existing networks toidentify and invite 1230 local1 and over5000 national2 members to take part

o invited over 370professionals & groups inKent working in the ICTsector3

o partnered with local colleges

and organisations to hostworkshops to enable 140users4 to submit ideas to thecompetition

o promoted the competitionat

1Community Action Network (100), Kent Association for Young Entrepreneurs (30), Kent Invicta Chamber of

Commerce (100), Kent Literacy & Reading Forum (20) and Voluntary Action Maidstone (100), Parish Councils inKent (80), Kent Trust Web (600), University of Kent School of Computer Science (200)2

Innovation Leadership Forum (100), Social Enterprise London (2400) and DotGovLabs (1700), Local Leadership(50) , Transition Institute (50), Urban Forum (100), Womens Entrepreneurs Network (50) and Open KnowledgeFoundation (100), UK Developers Group (100), London Datastore (50), Net 2 Local (50), Global EntrepreneurshipWeek (200), Centre for Creativity (50)3 Including 80 university/college lecturers focused on technology, 60 local digital businesses and 30 online developergroups4

Mid Kent College (20), Thanet College (100) and Turner Contemporary (20)

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key facilities including 12 Libraries and 9 Gateways, as well as to 120delegates at the Kent Connects Conference

o issued press releases to 90 media outlets and got press in UKAuthoriITy,

The Register,LGCand theGuardianand received High Impact Status fromtheGlobal Entrepreneurship Weeko secured participants to the event from across Kent and beyond with 40

delegates attending

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3. How can you ensure the benefits can be realised?

Create measures of success

Before identifying any indicators that come to mind, start up with exploring thosemeasures of success which can show how (well) youve achieved your objectives,managing the balance between qualitative and quantitative metrics.

Objectives Measures Targets Actual %Over/UnderTarget

Methods ofengagementand access todigitalentrepreneursto exploreopportunitiesfor futurecollaborationand jointdevelopmentof solutions

Number of onlineviews for IdeasPhase

3000 4280 +43%

Number of onlineviews overall

6000 16,229 +171%

Number of pressfeatures

5 6 +20%

Number ofPartners

5 5 +0%

Amount ofsponsorship

2500 3000 +17%

Number of

Supporters

10 17 +70%

Number ofpeople directlyengaged

5000 6710 +34%

Number ofcomments

100 254 +154%

Number ofpeople attendingyour event

50 40 -20%

Ideas andprototypes thatbe used asappliedresearch toinformdevelopmentof projects andservices

Number of ideassubmitted

50 77 +54%

Number of ideasreviewed byjudges that ratedan average of3/5 or higher

15 25 +68%

Number of ideasthat rated anaverage of 4/5 orhigher

5 4 -10%

Number ofprototypessubmitted

8 7 +14%

Issue challenges based on local priorities

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To ensure that the entrepreneurs you engage can produce ideas and prototypesthat can be used as applied research to inform development of your projects

and services, design approaches that:

o Issue challenges5 that are relevant to your services priorities andaccessible enough for the public to relate to and where you can provide ICTassets to developers to use

What were the challenges we issued?

There are two challenges we invited people to submit their ideas to on how the use ofdigital technology can

1. Help people help each other in your neighbourhood

There are many opportunities for how the use of technology could improve peoplesneighbourhood, whether it's to help people find a voice, share skills for a good cause,or even organise community cleanups.

2. Make it easier for you to report issues to your council

There are many ways that technology is being used for people to report issues,whether it's reporting a pothole that needs fixing, texting in a photo of waste on thestreet orsharing your experience with frontline staff. And that information can beused in really creative ways. But there are issues which people cant report easily.

Who was eligible to participate?

This competition is open to any UK resident. To facilitate the free exchange of ideas,all visualizations and other contributions you make to this challenge will be coveredunder the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

Involve the public to suggest ideas

o Identify what resources you can secure to enable you to involve people to

suggest ideas online on how ICT could be used to tackle those challenges inadvance of the event you invite them to

Collaborate with partners who can provide competition resources

Kent Connects partnered with DotGovLabs to develop an online space for thecompetition at http://bit.ly/submityouridea, securing over 16,2296 views on thecompetition website, 254 comments with 8 prototypes put forward.

51. Help people help each other in your neighbourhood and 2. Make it easier for you to report issues to your council

6The most viewed challenge onhttp://dotgovlabs.direct.gov.uksince it began in 2010

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The proportional increase in people engaging in the competition showed that thedevelopment and stimulation of ideas built strong momentum for getting peopleexciting about the process.

What is Dot Gov Labs?

Dot Gov Labsis an online innovationcompetition platform which has over1700 entrepreneurs, developers andusers of public services. Public serviceagencies (so far including DWP, NHSand Cabinet Office) put forwardchallenges they require ICT solutionsto and people are invited to submit

ideas to these. Each challenge willhave different criteria and prizes, butruns through the same process.

Dot Gov Labs is a HM Skunkworks programme run by the newGovernment DigitalService. The GDS is responsible for ensuring that there are appropriate forms ofsupport for people who cant access or use digital services, improving the waycitizens can interact with government online, freeing up information and facilitatingthe use of new tools, as well as accrediting third party identity to facilitate digitaltransactions. These include projects such as DirectGov and the ePetitions website.

We also obtained venues & organisation of eventsby Mid Kent & Thanet

Colleges, Turner Contemporary & Gravesham DC with 200 people over fourworkshops.

Agree criteria to review ideas & prototypes

o Work with your partners and sponsors to design criteria that means youcan use the ideas to inform the development of projects and services

o Provide a competitive element by securing sponsors7 to provide awardsto the best ideas and prototypes developed

Select the most highly rated ideas to be developed into prototypes

The two winners of the best ideas - a civic entrepreneur developing a way toincentivise peopleto look after each other and local students making it easier for theirneighbours to use their smart phones to access services - demonstrated the keyprinciples weve been encouraging community spirit and simplicity.

The ideas put forward to both Challenges were evaluated by the Judges based onthe following criteria:

7Sponsored by Kent Business School, Lagan, Geovation and Ordnance Survey

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o How well could the idea help people help each other?o How easily could the technology suggested be used by people?o How well could this idea offer volume of take up that would deliver a profit?

The ideas with the highest ratings overall were:

o Challenge #1 Help People Help Each Other: Sunshine Bank Onlinecommunity of young people and others who earn virtual tokens of recognitionfor posting the things they do to take care of themselves, other people andour world developed by a digital entrepreneur

o Challenge #2: Make It Easier to Report Issues: Abbreviation 999When afriend asks you for a number for the doctors but you don't know the number,use this app. When looking for a good taxi service but you can't rememberthe number, use thisdeveloped by a group of students from Thanet College.

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4. How can you support people to come up with prototypes?

Explain what you mean by a prototype

o Tell developers that you want them to come up with visualrepresentations of what the person is putting forward (i.e. a website, app,etc), but these dont need to be working applications. Prototypes thereforecould be wireframes, screenshots, mockups, prototype websites, etc.

To give you an idea of prototypes developed in similar circumstances includedRewired State,CityCamp BrightonandSI Camp(all developed over 48 hours).

Define the specification to provide to developers

o Enable your digital entrepreneurs to have the resources to help themdevelop prototypes that could work with your organisations systems.

Make systems and data integratedand re-usable

We provided developers with a datarequest facility from

www.openkent.org.uk and provision ofthe Lagan Open 311 Environment fordevelopers to create apps that link theirsites, social networks or mobileapplications direct to council customerrelationship systems.

We also opened our technical andenterprise architecture to SMEs toimprove front/back office integration withexternal apps (as demonstrated by

developers being able to use Open 311and OS Open Space) and created openAPIs8 - as demonstrated by the APIs ofEvents & Activitiesdata and overallopen datafromOpen Kent.

8Like Mumsnet using Directgov tools built on standardised interfaces to provide their users with official up-to-date

information on schools and family services

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This enabled developers to come upwith prototypes in under a day fromwire

frames, apps to mashups to outlinespecifications.

Explain to developers how the event will work

o Invite external participants to describe what resources could be usedtohelp people develop prototypes.

o Update people on how the event would work and how they couldprepare in advance of the dayby describing thechallengesand whatdevelopers could consider whenbuilding on ideas

We hosted atwitter chatto discuss any queries people had about the event.

Show developers how they can use open data to come up with prototypes

Local public services also have ICT assets that could be re-used by entrepreneurs.There are amazing opportunities for open data to be used. Competitions organisedacross the world have shown how effective they are at illustrating the opportunities itcan offer to the public. You can see a selection of themhere.

We know that open data is a very new area for the public. Most people will neverhave heard of open data, let alone used it to create visualisations. Others howevermay have used tools to turn data into new web applications. They are also usingAPIs from customer relationship management systems in asimilar way. Thats whyits an opportunity for public services to stimulate use of open data by encouraginginnovators to use datasets to turn ideas into new ways of using technology.

o

Work with relevant partners who could sponsor and support the developmentof the winning prototypes

o Get senior stakeholders within the partners organising the competition toreview the prototypes to give them ownership over the process

o Involve officers with different types of skills from our partner organisations toact as critical friends

o Profile the winning prototypes to provide them with kudos and credibility

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Show prototypes that have been developed through similar competitions

We reviewedprototypesthat had been developed through similar competitions anduses of open dataandopen 311to show people taking part in our competition howthey could prepare for developing prototypes on the day.

The best entries aren't necessarily the technically brilliant applications. It ismore about making something that is provides a fresh, useful way ofpresenting existing data, or that makes it easier for people to make use ofan existing service. These are the things that caught our judges' collectiveeye.(Jim Morton, an Applications Architect for Warwickshire County

It is a great opportunity to be really imaginative and yet produce somethingthat will have a solid local impact. It helped to create a network ofindividuals and agencies interested in app development and open data(Kevin Malley, fromBristol Futures)

From the point of view of the campaign, winning GeoVation was

enormously important insofar as it brought a huge amount of credibility and

kudos to the London Cycle Map proposal.(Ben Irvine,London CycleCampaign)

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5. How can you involve partners in shaping the process?

o Involve people representing your partners to review the ideas andprototypes basing the criteria on financial and social impact

Define the challenges

We defined the challenges for developers in a much more technical way than we didfor local communities:

o Challenge 1: Help people help eachother in your neighbourhood, theywill be asked to develop a prototypebased on an idea submitted by thepublic in that challenge and use OSOpen Data.

o Challenge 2: Make it easier for youto report issues to your council, they

will be asked to develop a prototypebased on an idea submitted by thepublic in that challenge. They will alsobe able to use the Lagan Open 311Integration Toolkitif they wish.

Define the expertise you have that can help people

o Involve your staff to advise and guide developers on how their prototypeswould work in a public service environment, as well as learn new techniques

themselves.

The expertise provided by the critical friends for Developing Solutions includedo Designing wireframes and mock-ups of user interfaceso Interaction design or user experienceo Creating applications using OS Open Data or OS Open Spaceo Developing software prototypes, database design, APIs or outline codeo Managing customer focused projects

We learnt from the approach of

partners, such as Geovation we hadpurposefully built relationships with togain expertise on how to develop

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competition-based prototypingchallenges. We are now helpingGeovation shape its forthcoming

challenge the first ever focusing onlocalities

Use approaches to help developers come up with prototypes at your event

Just as you can learn from other disciplines to involve people to come up with ideas,use approaches like agile development - that can help developers come up withprototypes in an easy and effective way

o Provide a combination of structure and flexibility to create anatmosphere of purpose

Ensure the process of the day challenges people to prioritise and iterate exclusivelybased on the criteria of the competition, focusing on value to the business and thecustomer.

o Invite people who have a willingness to make the day work while havingdifferent experiences to build trust amongst each other

Enable people to self-organise into teams. Beyond the people who put forward theprototypes, invite people who can provide their cross-functional skills to help developthe prototypes. This challenges them to work out as a team how to take decisions

and responsibility for specific tasks to produce the prototype.

The structural elements for me included the competition (giving our activityan edge and excitement), the time-bound nature of the day (we had topresent our work at the end of it), the identified roles on hand to help us out(are there other roles that could help with the process perhaps groups?)and Johns style of facilitation (which made everyone feel heard).(Participant on the day)

I think the main ingredient for me was we discussed without prejudice:everyone expressed their opinions and that view-point was as valid asanyone's; and reasoned argument was the name of the game. The dayworked because we had a belief in the goal. (Participant on the day)

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Review the prototypes

o Select criteria that you would use to review your own services orproducts. This will mean the prototypes that have been developed caninform better ways of designing and developing your own ICT applications

SubmissionQuestions

Judging Criteria Score (1-5)

Weighting(1-5)

OverallScore(Score xWeighting)

Whats the idea? How well the idea wouldachieve the objective ofthe Challenge selected

5

Who would it

help?

How well the idea put

forward would benefit andhelp the selected targetaudience

2

What technologywould it use?

How well the technologyput forward would be ableto implement the idea in away that could help thetarget audience

3

How wouldpeople use it?

How well the process touse the idea would workon the technology put

forward and could be usedwithout difficulty by thetarget audience

4

What would youcall the idea?

How well the idea couldbe understood to thetarget audience?

1

What is thepotentialcommercialvalue in this idea

Does this idea offer thevolume of take up thatwould deliver areasonable profit overcosts?

3

Use the judging to learn lessons from the prototypes

Eight prototypes were developed below. The most popular type of outcome theprototypes were trying to achieve was to help citizens use quality of life data tomake choices, including bothSunlighting in Kentand theLearning Gamewho wonthe prizes for Best Prototype.

The criteria gave us some ideas to work with, rather than determiningwhat we produced. (Participant on the day)

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You can see the individual evaluations of the prototypes hyperlinked below. Here is asummary of the key points

o Identify gaps and assets you can use to develop the idea

o Learn from entrepreneurs working in public services on what gaps exist inthe market to spin out online services

o Build on existing work in opening up specific datasets, making it morelikely to make the prototype up to date and sustainable

o Show connected difference, by combining elements of innovations fromthe civil society and technology sector

o Link up with competitors who are developing similar ideas anddifferent skills to explore opportunities to join up your idea with theirs9

o Plan for future development of the prototype to ensure sustainability

o Enable the flexibility for data from beyond the sector to be includedinto the application, incentivising other stakeholders to provide data

o Look towards the future, on how to position the prototype with externalstakeholders as well as how it could be used by people withinorganisations

o Design the prototype around the needs & assets of the customer group

o Strip out all the complexity of the idea and focus exclusively on the needsyoure trying to meet

o Tackle unmet needs with specific customer groups using existinginfrastructure and explore how the technology could be used in new ways

o Work with young people to build apps for the future that can improve thecustomer experience

o Use specialist techniques to help develop the idea into a prototype

o Demonstrate clarity of purpose, tapping into what people might bethinking when theyre online

o Use personas and scenarios from user design methodologies to describethe prototype to people that can develop it

o Consider tools that make the user fully engaged with the prototype

o Provide the platform for people to take action using the assets displayed

9As there were some similarities with Paul Brewers I can help solution, we met to share ideas. From evaluation of

Sunlighting in Kent

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o Make it usable by default, working off-line as well as online

o

Think of the user by focusing on embedding mechanisms to build trustonline

Offer prizes for the competition

o Offer prizes to the winners of the best idea and prototype of each of thechallenges you issue for your competition and explore if you can get themjointly sponsored by suppliers or other organisations.

Provide non-financial prizes that can help winners take forward the prototypes

The User Testing Workshop will be hosted by Tunbridge Wells Council bringingtogether a selection of users of their services to test out the winning prototypes. Thewinners will also be invited to gain vital feedback on how to improve usability.

The Prototype to Proposition Workshop will be hosted by Kent Business Schoolwhere a cohort of its MBA students will work with entrepreneurs on developing abusiness proposition that will help them take their prototypes to market.

Provide routes for ideas and prototypes who havent won

o Ensure that people who submit ideas that are not selected to go forwardto the next stage of the competition can continue to work on themtogether online. Indeed these prototypes could be beneficial to other localareas and public services.

Social reporters are valuable not just to connect these ideas and tools betweencommunities, but to get people with those ideas to discover and link up with people inother neighbourhoods with similar issues!

o Report the event so others

can learn from it

The Big Lottery Funds SocialReporting Programme was present atthe Developing Solutions Camp tocapture insights on the day as well asconnect ideas with other projectstheyve been working with.

They filmedvideo interviewsandreportthe event on new models of councilssupporting civil society using existing

resources.

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o Celebrate and recogniseeveryones contribution

By participating at the event, allparticipants received a Certificatevaluing their collaboration in helpingdevelop prototypes and they will beable to work with professionals with arange of digital and technical expertisein designing and developing prototypeson community-based ideas.

By profiling the ideas and prototypes,weve provided the kudos and

credibility toencouragepeople who putthem forward to pitch them to othercompetitions, such as ComputerWeeklys Awards or NESTAsInnovation in Giving.

Identify what could be improved after the competition

o Work through strong relationships and existing networks to signpost thegroups to organisations related to their challenge area that the eventorganisers have a strong relationship with. Recommend encouraging groupsto make use of their own relationships to take forward their prototypes.

Seehttp://oursociety.org.uk/profiles/blogs/frameworks-for-thinking-about

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1. Portals: With councils striving to move services todigital by defaultandspinout services into new forms of organisation needing to attract other forms of

investment, the join us mantra has never been stronger albeit for differentreasons than before.

How can these agendas encourage organisations to shift their focus away fromdepending on the shop window approach to move to join in and join up modes?

In other words, if your council wants to make it easier to get people to use their onlineservices, what will they focus on more, improving the top tasks for their website andhow to get there, or collaborating withtrusted online communitiesorlocal servicesoreven within social networks where you can be amongst friends?

2. Clusters: Where a number of organisations might collaborate to provide

complementary services or indeed a number of individuals who could pitchfor a right to bid.

How can people involved in projects which are working towards similar objectives butrunning in different geographic areas join in together to create & share assets?

In other words, servicesworking on co-producing communicationscould identify howtouse techniquesto start conversations in the community in return for how to embednew approaches within corporate structures.

3. Mesh: Joining up networks from sociable events designed for developingand sharing innovative ideasandby developing the practice of social

reporting to not just uncover but tothread conversations together.

How can activities working on similar issues but operating in different areas join upto connect up people and ideas?

What could we have improved?

We could haveo Fed in the new forms of community insights as well as background evidence

from our own services to the entrepreneurs developing the ideaso Provided the priorities on user experience to the entrepreneurs so that the

feedback from communities was hard-wired into the judging criteriao Mapped what other digital assets our partners and suppliers could make

availableo Targeted developers or designers with specific skills based on what the ideas

required or based on what staff from our partners may need to learn fromo Organised more facilitated sessions during the event to provide a more

structured process for people to develop the prototypeo Focused the event more on communities and developers working together on

the day to provide greater interaction between the two