Maximise the well-being of Newham residents through creating an incentive system for more community participation
One in five people in Newham feel lonely and isolated. Furthermore, people experiencing well-being issues like housing and financial problems are more likely to experience this feeling, which prevents them from participating in community policy making.
Partner with
Newham Council, Newham Community Health Champions(CHC)
Services
Policy Making, Community Social Action
Skills & Tools
Field research, Desk Research, Persona, On-site Interviews, Journey Mapping, Service Blueprint, Ecosystem Map, Prototyping
The Challenge
How can we enhance residents’ awareness of existing services and how we can motivate people to help other residents with mental well-being issues to gain more participation?
The Process
Through desk research, conversation with residents and field observation, we identified 2 main problems that prevents their community participation, low awareness and lack of motivation. The insights lead us to the solution of creating an incentive system to recognize supporters and help the ones in need. We tested it out with residents and proposed it to the Community Health Champions(CHC).
The Proposal
To increase more community participation, Careone proposes the incentive system that recognizes and rewards the ones help the residents who have mental well-being issues caused by not receiving enough support from community services.
The impact
Careone allows unrecognized supporters who are helping residents with issues to get rewards from the council. This motivates people in Newham to help residents to improve their well-being. By solving well-being related issues and providing more support with public services, there would be more residents giving voices to engage in the policy decision making and having more sense of belonging .
Service Ecosystem for Careone in Newham
Step 1: Discover the public participation for Newham residents
Empathizing with the residents through in-depth communication in Newham
The field exploration drove us to the issues of health & well-being around Covid-19, especially the support for residents who are experiencing anxiety and loneliness.
After the online call with stakeholders CHC and 10 conducted interviews with residents and community staffs, we learnt that the pandemic motivated people to join volunteer services in Newham, residents tend to stick to intimate group and the lack of awareness of existing services.
Step 2: Identify residents’ key challenges with field research
Defining users involving in the system and existing problems
Key insights
Key problems
Step 3: Create service for users within current system
“How might we increase awareness of the participation academy initiatives through word of mouth?
How might we motivate more residents to help other residents by recognizing their actions?”
Ideating an incentive system to recognize the supporters
To answer the challenge, we mapping out all the connection and possibilities, coming up with the ideas of recognizing the supporters who help residents in need with rewards like discount gym membership. It’s a mutual benefit for residents who are seeking help service, leading them to the community service. It can become part of the existing service of Community Health Champion as part of participation framework.
Step 4: Evaluation with residents and staffs in Newham
We brought the storyboard to Newham area like library, community centre to the residents and shared the flow and service. With the feedback, we discussed the prototype with CHC and got some positive feedback on the action recognition aspect of our service, which can be needed to become part of the participation academy model.
Evaluating the ideas with our stakeholders together
Within 5 weeks, we were adaptable and flexible under a tight timeline to respond to the brief of tackling community participation issues. However, the struggling at the beginning of understanding the objectives fully, led to not enough iteration. More testing and communication with the council is worth to be developed in the future.
