For three days, the design museum of V&A Dundee was the host of EduJamUK 2022 and welcomed us generously with its astonishing atmosphere. However, one of the most eye-catching objects of the place was not inside the museum itself. After years of operating on the sea, the RRS Discovery is a barque-rigged auxiliary steamship located just next to the V&A. You see the Discovery and the Design in one single frame!

It seems that developing a product or service with a high level of quality like the V&A building is not possible without having the discovery element by its side. Thus, it was not surprising to see a considerable part of the EduJam concentrated on the first half of the diamond model, reminding us to dedicate enough time to understand the challenges rather than jumping to the ideation process. During the event, we realized that gathering around a table and thinking deeply might not help us to be innovative. We had to leave our comfort zone to talk to our target people, and obviously, we were rejected multiple times. It was unpleasant initially, but everything changed after receiving the first responses, which enabled us to see the challenges from other perspectives.

Using the invaluable tools, we have been given, we managed to analyze the insights of the discovery stage and define the exact issue to be addressed.

Just when we had thought we were done with the hard part, the second phase of the double diamond was equally exhilarating. The process of ideation had us knocking every working cell in our body.

It involved us channelling all the thoughts and instances collected from the task of talking to people and forming a generalized question to symbolize a trend noticed from the interviews and target that cause. It pushed us to draw insights on various levels of how a choice can play a major role in education. We gathered data from people about how it is extremely hard for some people to make choices and how it has impacted them. We further noticed that most people are scared of making the choice because it could be wrong. It was then that we learnt that the push to make a choice is what people need without worrying about the outcome too much.

Next came the prototyping phase in this we brought our ideas to life. A big thanks to Andy de Vale for pushing us to leave all the insecure thoughts of not being creative or artistic behind and inspiring us to just pick up a pen and sketch our vision. The outcomes were magical. The presentations of all group ideas and solutions blew our minds. It was a great end to a beautiful weekend of successful jamming. The learnings from this weekend will be carried forward a long way ahead. It genuinely changed us as people overall.

After organizing an exciting event on the 16th of March 2022 and analyzing the collected data, the Good Place Innovation team has prepared a report highlighting the key insights. Yesterday, we invited the Lancaster BID manager, Tony Johnson, to the studio to share our ideas and learnings with the BID. The keynotes of our presentation are highlighted as follows:

• The lack of stores on campus, particularly grocery shopping and having meals, encourages students to go to the city.
• On the other hand, transportation between the university and the city is time-consuming and expensive.
• Furthermore, Lancaster could offer the students a larger variety of leisure activity options to keep them in the city for further exploration. Even the available options are not announced effectively among the students.
• Partnership with Stagecoach to offer more student discounts, appointing student ambassadors to communicate the events, and presenting the concepts such as the “Night Bazaar” as a seasonal event may improve the current situation.
• The university would love to invite local businesses to explore the campus and offer them an ideal benchmarking opportunity for local businesses to analyze their competitors on the campus.

After the presentation, we delved more into the available recommendations to enhance and turn them into feasible options for future actions. It was really fascinating to see how the collaboration between the researchers and the Lancaster BID manager improved the initial ideas and led to generating more practical ideas and next steps. We are all super excited to witness the changes our ideas can initiate and are proud of ourselves to help make contributions to the city we now call home.

The final version of the presentation is available for download.

BID Event Presentation

 

On the 16^th of March, Lancaster University and Lancaster BID together hosted ten local city businesses at LUMS.

We, as research fellows, had this opportunity to have eye-opening conversations with business owners as well as participating students to understand their perspectives on the relationship between students and businesses. It was fascinating to see how business owners and the university’s students collaborated to facilitate entrepreneurial activities in Lancaster.

Many great conversations appeared in the activity! Business managers obtained significant insights into the students’ behaviours who either live in the city or at the university’s campus as their would-be customers. Students also learned a lot about the local businesses’ strategies and approaches for promoting their products and services. Many of them became good friends! Both business managers and the students looked forward to participating in similar activities next time!

We managed to collect a considerable amount of qualitative data. So, in the upcoming month, we will analyze the data and provide both businesses and students with a detailed report of the event. It is quite a lot of work, but we are very excited and enjoying the task! It is a delight to be on board and working with the team. We cannot wait to continue this journey to facilitate the collaboration of Lancaster University and the Lancaster business district. See you in our final report and presentation!

Authors: The Research Fellows (Xiaoxi, Lekhana & Farshad)