Connecting Families: Sprint Notes from Inception
Communications and Design Manager | @tweetssavepaper
WHAT DID WE DO?
Met the five early years partners we intend to explore our digital exclusion 'challenges' with. The three challenges cover three areas:
Supporting early years home learning: For services that normally encourage home learning through contact with parents in nurseries, how can they support parents of under 5’s to try more home learning and play with their children using remote means?
Reaching new families without word of mouth: How can early years services reach digitally excluded families with the message of what they have to offer and how to receive support, since peer recommendations are so limited?
Delivering online support groups: How can parenting services that previously offered in-person support groups sustain the engagement of parents throughout the course of a piece of online support?
Shared the design process and how the double-diamond sprints will help develop this project
Held training sessions on how to use 'Miro'.
Wrote a blog about the start of the project and the reasons we're researching this area!
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?
Remember to recap what each learning step means for the entirety of the project. Some partners felt confusion along the way about exactly where they fitted into the work. We used emails and recaps to try and help them out.
Don't forget to prepare things in advance! we ensured we put 'hold the dates' in so that people have time to prepare for workshops and other events over the course of the project.
Keep the flow of communication open. We realised that some partners felt reluctant to ask questions, so we made sure they knew how to ask and who to ask if they were struggling, both during meetings and between meetings.
Physical activities are fun. We ended up doing 'draw your own face' icebreaker which was hilarious.
Check-in with each other – often. Everyone has been really, really busy this year. We’ve got lots to juggle and lots of plates to spin. On top of that, people are having to contend with home-schooling and all the difficulties that come with a lockdown. We’ve learned we need to keep checking in on each other, make sure we’re coping, and help alleviate the load if one of us is having trouble.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The five partners are going to interview the families they work with to get more information around their challenge statements and potentially recruit them long-term to help with prototype testing
We’re carrying out a literature review, to make sure our understanding of the problem and the prototypes we create build on the best available evidence.
We’re interviewing 5 experts on reaching digitally excluded families
We’re hosting a workshop with others in the wider early years sector, to make sure the ideas we cook up will be relevant and helpful for other organisations in the business of supporting young families.