Life-based design for technical solutions in social and voluntary work

Abstract

The Social and Voluntary work sector operates outside the organised boundaries and systems of normal business, financial and government organisational institutions. My target during this research has been to develop an optimum solution for decision support towards committing and accepting resources in the Social Work and Voluntary sector. In initial part of this monograph, I have traced the history of Design Thinking from the time it was ‘art and craft’ until modern times where multiple approaches are tried, tested and implemented for solution development. For the actual application development, I have chosen the Life-based Design conceptual framework. Three design iterations were made in the application development process- Early Design Phase, iReach 1.0 and iReach 2.0. Usability tests measuring performance and focus groups giving insights about the perception of the solution were conducted with each iteration. The key-insight during the design development journey was that the users do not want a solution to make a decision for them. They expect to be presented with easily visible. searchable, sortable and filterable tool that provide emotional cues about the choices available. Multiple stakeholders influenced the decision making process and no single individual makes the decisions. This led me to choose SilverLight PivotControl tool for presenting data instead of using standard components. Post the application development stage, I have recommended a new software development lifecycle model (SDLC) based on the actual development experience of Life-based design conceptual framework implementation. I believe that traditional SDLC models either lack ability of combining the long- term planning approach or flexibility, with each of them focusing on either end of the spectrum. On the other hand, the traditional models have a strong engineering approach while lacking a human-solution-oriented approach. The model that I propose leverages the benefits of traditional approach of waterfall, prototyping and agile models and uses them at different stages of the development process to optimise the output and do so in a cost effective way, deriving full benefits of the Life-Based design approach using practical usability engineering tools.