The location was interesting because it was central, which was good for the workshops because people could go out and explore and ask the public questions. It was also the location for ‘Mangue Bit’, a big cultural movement in the 1990s. For me personally it was a really interesting location as the area had a lot of Dutch heritage and some of the people living there had distinctly Dutch features – I was on a Dutch hunt, and I did find what I was looking for – No he was a really good friend of Marcos from Voel! Look we are nearly the same colour!

The main reason why Mozaiko was invited to Expoidea was because the event organisers knew that in the cultural hub of Recife there are a lot of start up businesses who have an ambition to create the ‘Silicon Valley’ of Brazil, and Expoidea felt these businesses would benefit from an introduction to design thinking. We had 200 people apply for the workshop (which only had 20 places!) so there was definitely a big interest in our subject.

The central theme of Mozaiko (which is to produce social, cultural and sustainable responses to the question: ‘How can we help people in our local communities in Brazil to solve the problems that really matter to them?) has a lot in common with the agenda of the Expoidea.

We followed a similar to the first edition of Mozaiko, however this was a day-long workshop so the process was made more efficient and developed to fit the time available. We still followed the three step process of: Explore, Ideate and Prototype.

The workshop attendees were asked to go out into the ‘blue yonder’ of Recife to capture a day in the life of the local people in Recife, considering where social issues could occur and having those in the back of their minds.

The key topics that came out of the workshop, and the problems that really mattered to the group, were:

• Family: Time together and relationship
• Access to education
• Traffic system
• ‘Flanelinha’ http://bit.ly/IZVLLa
• Communities

Under these categories we generated lots of ‘what if’s that created a wall of possibilities. This led on to four ideas being selected to prototype. One idea combined two themes – providing access to education on local transport. The next idea was about a service to help mothers spend more time with their children, in order to be more connected to them. Another idea was a cultural event for families that was outside the centre of Recife, to reach into the local communities. The last idea was about relieving traffic problems by holding local events that would provide people with an opportunity to connect with their communities while finding people to car share with – one of the insights we found through this idea was that people in the area felt isolated and a system is needed to address this, but technology is not necessarily the answer and a more social event format would be better for them.

Everyone who participated enjoyed the process, and the feedback we got from Expoidea was really good. I’m learning so much here in Brazil, and here’s the main lesson I’ve picked up so far:

I’m also realising more and more how the first process of Mozaiko is really effective at finding problems and co-creating solutions, and in a really fast and low-cost way too. It is really addressing the question we set out to explore, and has given us really great insights into the way forwards to address problems in the local community in Recife – but naturally the sessions are not enough to validate any big decisions, and I know that more sessions exploring specific themes with the relevant parties is the way forward for Mozaiko.

Here is an overview of the events, strangely at the same time the British Council were doing a workshop at the same time – http://expoidea.com.br/2012/blog/pensamentos-criticos-e-inovadores-foram-temas-de-workshops-na-expoidea/

But thank you so much everyone for participating is was a great day! Especially, thanks to Eduardo and Marcos thanks for showing me a new city, great trip once again!

I was most interested in learning about the project from the prisoners’ point of view, and the representative of the Policy Lab really helped me to do this by asking questions for me in Portuguese so I could communicate with the prisoners. To really understand the context of the work I wanted to speak to everyone involved, so I also spoke with the guards and the director of the jail.

On arrival at Rio de Ponte Nova, we met with prisoners just outside the jail where they were part of the rehabilitation initiatives Movimento Minas (www.movimentominas.com.br) by planting trees. There was a lot of interest from local press during our visit, as it was a great opportunity for the government to share the new direction of their public policy and its connection with design thinking, which they more often referred to as ‘engagement’ and ‘co-participation’.

There were about 850 prisoners in the Rio de Ponte Nova jail, male and female but in separate sections. In the UK we tend to have single sex prisons, young offenders prisons, and prisons with different levels of security for different types of offenders – I have learned that it is similar in Brazil, but here prisoners who have not yet been sentenced stay in separate prisons to those who have received sentence.

My first impression of the prisoners on meeting them during the tree planting was that many were shy and very withdrawn, lacking the energy I have come to associate with Brazilians – although there were some who could be very communicative (although I couldn’t understand their Portugese). When talking to the prisoners who were working with the trees, they were very happy at being part of the new initiative. One individual told me ‘I’ve destroyed a lot of lives, it’s good to be creating life’. The general opinion in this group was that they were really happy, and I believe what was most important to them was learning new skills and teaching them to other people.

We moved inside the jail to continue our tour, and saw prisoners making raincoats, and also furniture and birdcages using old damaged wood. The prisoners make a salary from their work on such projects, and these initiatives were partnered with commercial businesses in Belo Horizonte. The birdcages were a very successful product in the area, and I also tried on one of their raincoats that the female prisoners were making:

Another initiative was a seed-banking program to protect endangered species of plants and trees being run by the prisoners.

Over lunch I had the opportunity to talk to the director of the prison, to find out what some of their main problems were. The main issue was that the justice system takes a very long time to make decisions about prisoners’ sentencing and release, and also whether they are allowed outside the prison walls to participate in the rehabilitation programs, which can cause anger. The other big problem, which was reported by both the prisoners and the prison staff, was that on their release from the prison they can slowly slip back into their ‘old ways’ because friends and family see them as they were before and might not accept or understand that they have changed through participation in initiatives like the rehabilitation program.

My general sense from the visit was strange, as I actually felt safer inside the jail than when I was out on the streets of Belo Horizonte! Everyone in the prison was relaxed or busy with work, they had structure to their day and there was no tension. People were engaged in creative activities and enjoying them.

One thing I do know is that, from all the people I met on the day, trying to introduce a design thinking mindset into such a vast context with so many people involved presents a lot of barriers. For me as an outsider, I did not know what crimes these individuals had committed and my instinct was to see things from the prisoner’s perspective and have empathy for them.

The representative from the Public Policy Lab shared with me the value she sees in the design thinking mindset, as we see things from the participant’s point of view through tools like storytelling and prototyping. Once you’ve created a public policy, it’s hard to change it – so prototyping is likely to become more and more important in this field.

More and more, I am feeling that I need to move outside of design to really understand it’s value and experiences such as this really give you a mindset where you can understand things from different angles. I also feel a real need to understand public policy – I know that design thinking alone can’t change things, it needs to be linked to public policy and a network of individuals that can change things for the better.

When I visit these new and unfamiliar situations, like the large organizations I visited in Oslo as part of my work with DesignThinkers, I do feel very far removed from the people I meet. I think that it’s too easy to be judgmental in these strange situations, and the real value to be gained is in making the effort to really understand the context as much as possible.

If you’d like to find out more about Movimento Minas, check out the following information about the project:

http://www.agenciaminas.mg.gov.br/noticias/detentos-e-agentes-penitenciarios-recebem-formacao-para-combate-a-incendios/

http://www.agenciaminas.mg.gov.br/noticias/detentos-fazem-plantio-de-mudas-em-estrada-de-ponte-nova/

You can also keep in touch with news about Movimento Minas through the following channels:

Website: www.escritorio.mg.gov.br

Facebook: facebook.com/EscritoriodePrioridades

Twitter: twitter.com/escritorio_gov

‘How can we help people in our local community to solve the problems that really matter to them?’

The workshop was set up to answer one question: how to occupy the downtown area with cultural and social initiatives, and we explored this question with people including designers, start-up businesses and representatives of government and NGOs – all of whom wanted to learn about design thinking, and saw value in applying its methods in their own fields.

The structure for the 2 days of the workshop was to first of all take the participants through an exploration of the context of the downtown area. The second day would then focus on synthesising those ideas into real business ideas or initiatives that could answer our big question.

I started the workshops off by introducing the group to my inner chicken.

Discovered in Amsterdam while I was at DesignThinkers, my ‘inner chicken’ is a symbol of finding ways to engage with people by helping them have fun! The chicken was born when I kept misspelling business KPIs as KIPs (which is Dutch for chicken). It became a fun office joke to talk about chickens after that, and when my friend Louise visited Amsterdam she turned me into a chicken using post-it notes! You can now see my inner chicken on my Twitter background and in the logo of the Design Doctor – it represents how important I think it is to find the right ways to engage with people, which usually involve having creative fun!

I shared my inner chicken with the Mozaiko workshop participants, and we all started out the day with a good laugh – which was very helpful when there was quite a language barrier between me and the mostly Portugese-speaking audience. As the day went on we captured lots of really fascinating stories, there were visits from people who had held successful cultural events and it was interesting to note that they really knew a lot about the downtown area because they occupy it sporadically but use the spaces everyday. Later we went outside to capture stories and create personas, and everyone came back really excited with lots of new stories to share. The day resulted in a ‘wall of possibilities’, a range of what-if scenarios to work on in the next day of the workshop.

The second workshop day began with sharing the key themes from the ‘what if’ scenarios. We grouped the scenarios together and identified four key areas that could be explored and prototyped. These key areas were:

• Occupying local cultural spaces to relieve isolation
• Hygiene facilities for homeless people, allowing local people to better see the movement of homeless people and think about their needs
• Cultural events that connect with, and bring alive, local history
• Skill sharing in public spaces

For the rest of the 2^nd day people prototyped, created value maps and customer journey maps to develop and prototype the new services. At the end of the workshop everyone presented their projects, and it was really good to see that they had gained value out of the process and could see ways of applying what they’d learned in their daily lives.

The next step for the Mozaiko project is to capture the ideas from the workshop, find the projects and develop the business plans behind them, and start partnerships to start bringing these things together.

It was great to be with such a fantastic mix of people bringing so many viewpoints together, and that’s what made it such a fun and exciting workshop for the two days.  The fill write up of the event can be found on centoequatro’s blog – see the Portuguese version and English version, more picture of the workshop can be found here. Thanks everyone for making it such a great 2 days – the next edition will be http://expoidea.com.br/ in Recife.

Last week I started to get really homesick after getting food poisoning – I was really craving a Sunday lunch or a fry-up, as I’m living with vegetarians! But also I was really missing my friends and family back home.

Simone’s advice for my homesickness was: first, eat lots of Brazilian chocolate. Second, realize that the people at home are missing you more than you miss them. Third, it’s really important at this stage to laugh at yourself. And fourth, realize that you will make friends for life here. I thought that Simone must have been on to something when I was in Amsterdam and she told me about the W Curve, or the stages of culture shock. I didn’t really experience homesickness while I was in Amsterdam – I didn’t really get the chance! As my family and friends kept coming out to see me and I knew I could just get on a plane back home very easily.

The W Curve begins when you are very excited about the new culture, and also very naïve. You think everything is wonderful because it’s so different. For example, the bins here are raised off the ground and look to me more like postal boxes or basketball hoops! Things like this can fascinate you, but then you hear about parts of the culture that you don’t really like or understand or things that don’t go with your values. After you experience some of that you start to feel homesick, because you’re so out of your normal environment culture is affecting your behaviour. You’re now at the first dip of the W, and at that point you have to really start understanding the culture. Researching the W Curve led me to tweet a quote I’d found by Gandhi:

“Let my house not be walled on four sides, let all the windows be open, let all the cultures blow in, but let no culture blow me off my feet.”

I know a lot about European and US history but very little about Latin American history. After visiting Ouro Preto I saw two sides of things: really beautiful buildings but, under each building, a place for the slaves to live. I decided to buy a book called ‘The Open Veins of Latin America’ by Eduardo Galeano. After reading this book I have come to understand the country has, over the years, been overwhelmed by people coming in and taking their resources away to Europe and the USA. My question was: how can these people be so happy, given this history? My only perception is that they are really happy and friendly people, much more so than Europeans. When you have a business meeting in Europe it’s always ‘Hi, how are you?’ and then down to business. But here in Brazil there’s much more focus on talking about yourself and understanding each other’s personal lives. I know that bringing emotion into business makes it difficult for companies who come into the area for commercial reasons. This also relates to how Brazilians go about solving problems – they’ve always had limited resources because other countries have taken them away, and they’ve always had to fix things that other people have broken and find creative ways to do this with those limited resources. A lot of the time Brazilians will say ‘Oh we’ll fix it, it’s okay, no problem’ – they’re relaxed about solving problems because they’ve had a long history of problems to solve. They’re really proud of their attitude of ‘jeitinho’, which Wikipedia describes as:

Jeitinho: Brazilian expression for an informal mode of action widely accepted, that relies on improvisation, flexibility, creativity, intuition, etc.

I think there’s a relationship between innovation, and the history of how people in a country have solved their problems. For example Finnish people, who tend to live in isolated areas, typically solve problems on their own. They don’t like to give feedback, and they don’t like to criticize – they’re used to being self sufficient due to their geographic isolation, and so the idea of sharing isn’t really in their culture. I’ve found that people in Norway are embarrassed to share their ideas – innovation rooms are locked away with no windows, as if they feel exposed when they share ideas. The people of Amsterdam like to solve problems collaboratively, possibly because they’ve had to collaborate to create their physical landscape. I’ve heard that the people of India just tend to go ahead and do things – it may cause chaos on the way, but they try and solve their problems quickly through prototyping. I’m quite excited about my upcoming visit to India and the possibility of experiencing some of these rapid prototyping techniques, and I think the culture there may have developed in a similar way to the ‘let’s try and fix it’ attitude I’ve found here in Brazil.

When chaos is there all the time, as it is in Brazil, you can’t really plan because things change so you have to live more and more in the moment. When you have such limited resources, all that you really have is the relationships and emotions that you share with people. You don’t get distracted by material things like iPhones and laptops. When I went home after working in Amsterdam, I actually felt overwhelmed by the amount of belongings I had, and felt the urge to have a big clear out! Right now I only have one suitcase of belongings with me, and I am finding that I actually feel more happy with less stuff. Below is a picture taken last week on the same street as Voel – lot of cable that have been legally placed and had falling down, to illustrate how I see lots of chaos on a day to day basics.

One worry I have is that I see the American culture making its way into Brazil a lot, even though America has already taken so much from the country. I wonder if this culture coming in will change the way Brazilians are. I hope that they can maintain their sense of warmth when other countries are becoming more interested in their land. I feel that its important that people find ways to maintain their culture and values while taking part of other cultures on. This in mind I have been advise to read ‘The new Capitalism Manifesto‘ by Umair Haque,  that talk about understand the new values in future Capitalism society. At DesignThinkers I had a question, realtioning to this, that would be a bit off point, but would like to share it with you:

‘What if shopping street and big stores understand that is it about delivering really value that really to human needs and dreams?, What would it look like, and what would the experience be?’

No sure at the moment – but still thinking about this question.

Below is a picture taken on my iPhone of a place we went to drink in Belo Horizonte that reminded me so much of America.

I think my experience of homesickness has really kickstarted my learning process on a different level. Since completing my PhD I didn’t really want to engage in so much information, although I always have to remember that learning, and sharing that learning, is the big ‘why’ behind my International Design Walkabout.

But there’s another reason, which is specific to the people of Belo Horizonte (as I’ve been told the people of Sao Paolo walk extremely fast!). Here is my explanation:

I’m really not sure how safe the place I’m living is, I only know that the mindsets of the locals who I talk to are always switched on to security. I haven’t seen any violence or robberies anywhere while I’ve been in Belo Horizonte, and I’ve been told it’s okay to walk the ten minute journey to and from my Pilates class at night, although I do sometimes see homeless people on the streets searching for food and I have to use 5 separate keys to get into the place I’m staying!

Something last week made me question the security mindset of the locals. It was nighttime and I was waiting on the street outside the main security bars of my ‘casa’, just standing still waiting for a lift from one of the Voël team. Some people started shouting at me through the bars from inside, they were on their way out to get into a waiting car and told me ‘Get back inside it’s not safe’. I asked myself ‘How is it okay for me to walk to class at this time of day, but not okay to stand outside on the street?’ This is my street:

The next day in the design studio I told my Voël colleagues what had happened and asked them, ‘Should I really be walking to Pilates by myself?’ They explained to me that if you stand still outside your home you are seen as ‘a target’ for robberies, but if you are moving then you’re not a target. I asked them to tell me more about their security mindset – I’d noticed that they walk slow, and they told me this was ‘mindfulness’ to allow them to take in the context around them. If they see something on the road they’re not happy with they’ll switch roadsides and then come back. They also told me that if you walk too fast you don’t take in the context around you, and you stand out when everyone else is walking slow.

I think the reverse of this is true in Britain – we’re always rushing to get to the next place and don’t take in the context around us, and it’s the slow walkers who appear suspicious!

After this conversation I saw another example of the security mindset when the design team insisted that I setup a username and password on my Mac, as I hadn’t set this up. I’ve also noticed that people don’t take too much money out with them in the evenings, so that if they are mugged there is less to be taken. The Voël team will also put my bag on a chair or somewhere raised up after I leave it on the floor, because it’s considered safer for things to be more visible.

So far, this is what I have seen of the Brazilian/Belo Horizonte security mindset. When I was mugged in London it made me take my personal security more seriously, and I would say that people’s sense of security heightens when they have bad experiences. But sometimes I think this security mindset can stop people from exploring new spaces – when I arrived in Belo Horizonte I was advised not to visit a whole half of the city, that’s a city of two and a half million people, four times the size of my home town of Newcastle.

So: the reason the people of Belo Horizonte walk slow and don’t stand still is because of their security mindset. I think that, as things are changing here, people are starting to question this security mindset, and they don’t know if their perception of their security is the actual reality. Last weekend in our Mozaiko workshop I asked the participants to go out and talk to ‘extreme users’. Julius from Voël visited an area that is considered potentially unsafe, and spoke with a person who had been involved in a lot of violence during their life – but this person described their local area as ‘tranquil’. This is an example of how different people’s perceptions can be, and I think there is a lot of learning to be had from the people who live in these areas. It’s only when people have conversations about these issues that things might change.

I’ve been learning a lot of things: firstly, how to make a caipirinha! (See my Youtube video below, and give it a go yourself). I’ve learned that the Voël team can help me get up to a lot of mischief – see the pictures below.

Moving to different countries and immersing myself in different cultures has made me realise how you become familiar with them within a period of 3-4 weeks, when your ‘fresh eyes’ are gone (or at least they’re not your freshest eyes any more!)

Being in Brazil with a group of relaxed people from Belo Horizonte is really good for my dyslexic brain, because I know I have to communicate very directly and only say what’s important. I don’t have the opportunity to speed up and go off at tangents, so my brain is very relaxed and by the end of the day it’s not necessarily going as fast as it usually does! I really think the work-life balance here is really good – they do work hard, but their relaxed nature means they walk and talk slowly, taking time to enjoy life. I’ve been told that working life in San Paolo is not like this, it’s unique to Belo Horizonte and places more out of the commercial sphere. But when you move up north the people walk and talk even slower! Because of all the different colonial people here, there’s a very different mix of culture in each areas including Japanese, Indian, Dutch and Portuguese people. They manage to live in some kind of harmony, and have developed a unique sense of empathy and ability to listen to each other.

Taking a long lunch break to drinking coconuts milk at Praça do Papa

Road trip with Voël to Ouro Prêto, Minas Gerais

Road trip with Voël to Ouro Prêto, Minas Gerais.

A fun day at Voël

At Voël we exercise every day!!

One thing I have noticed is that there’s a lot of big people here. I’ve been told this wasn’t the case 10-20 years ago, and with the growth in the economy more people have cars meaning less walking and more big people. I’ve also noticed that the diet here is very heavy in sugar, and when you go to the checkout to pay for your food there is always sweets at hand, much bigger display stands than in the UK, and everyone always indulges in sweets and chocolates. There’s a big diabetes problem here too, so Brazil is catching up with the US and the west in bad ways as well as good.

And one last thing, I’ve been taking Pilates and Portuguese classes and in each case they’ve told me to ‘open my mouth’, which I’m sure will help me with my pronunciation of English instead of ‘Geordie’ English! Although I might not make it to the US on my Design Walkabout, I may well come back with an American accent! As in Brazil the people speak with a US accent because their teachers do, and in Amsterdam they spoke US due to television programs. So I may come back with a bit of an American twang – and also speaking louder, as I have to ‘open my mouth’.

I still can’t quite believe that I’m on my Walkabout and experiencing all these things! My next post is going to be about social innovation, my work with Joyce Yee and Lauren Tan on the ‘Design Transitions’ book and how it connects with my work here in Brazil.

The ‘why’ of Mozaiko is: exploring the following question in the context of Belo Horizonte:

’How can we help people in our local community to solve the problems that really matter to them?’

The Voël team’s ‘why’ behind the project is that they see lots of social problems in their local community in Belo Horizonte, and they see them as their own problems to solve rather than being someone else’s problem. Voël would like to create a ‘social lever’, which is a means to explore and find solutions that will have real long-term impact. They see design thinking as the key to revealing people’s real problems in context, and core to their strategy is the development of a local and global network that provides genuine value to everyone involved. I can see clear parallels between their work and the likes of the Project H local approach to solving problems, Uscreates’s methodologies (learn more), and the work of Desmeem in the Lebanon connecting the right people to solve social problems.

I am very much looking forward to seeing how Voël develop Mozaiko to act effectively, and I believe that they can develop a platform with long term impact because of their ability to educate and connect with the local community. Although they are thinking local about this project, they also see how they can contribute to the wider international debate on how best to reveal problems and provide sustainable solutions. I know from the work of Josephine Green (see video below) that people are now searching for new ways of innovating and providing real value, because the current pyramid-shape of working is stifling innovation, and in a context of Brazil they tackle problems together and enable their own networks to find the solution – and I think there is a lot to be learned from this approach.

I’m really looking forward to running the first Mozaiko workshop on the 14th and 15th April 2012, where we will get to introduce the project and tools to an audience including entrepreneurs, representatives of NGOs, local charities, artists and design thinking enthusiasts. We will be really kickstarting this initiative and it would be great if you can come and join us! The location for the workshop is in the fantastically central Centoe Quatro.

In this video I share reflections on my move to Brazil, talk about the fab team at Voël and Mozaiko, a great social innovation initiative that I am very honoured to be helping them to develop. If you want to follow the progress of this initiative you can find it on twitter @mozaico_cc .

People had told me that Brazilians people are really warm and friendly, but I did not realise just how true this was until I started working and learning alongside the team from Voël. I’m really overwhelmed by how friendly and thoughtful they are and their enthusiasm to immerse me in their culture – thank you guys for a great first month! I am sure during the upcoming months we will be learning a lot together and having lots of fun along the way.

From talking to friends and colleagues I know that they are very interested to learn more about Brazil, so I’m going to do my best to share the learning I gain in this amazing country. I’ll soon be uploading videos reflecting on my time in Amsterdam with DesignThinkers, but for now here is my fifth video all about my move to Brazil to work alongside the inspiring group of designers at Voël.

A few people have asked me how I made contact with Voël, so here’s the story of how we first crossed paths.

In late 2011 I approached Voël to see if we could explore opportunities for me to work with them in 2012, and they soon got back to me with an offer to be involved in their new project Mozaiko: a local social innovation programme which is a space to connect people around learning from and sharing their experiences to solve local problems in Brazil. Voël could see value in me helping them to develop and deliver design thinking workshops. We met up through Skype and, although there was sometimes a language barrier, I felt a connection with the team and felt that I could have lot of fun with them in Brazil.

Over the last couple of weeks having spent some time getting to know Voël, I’m overwhelmed by their friendly, relaxed and open nature; their willingness to share their culture with me; their continuing drive to improve their knowledge of design, and their ability to spot and tackle social problems in their own distinctive Brazilian way – using ’Jeitinho’ of course!

They have certainly made me feel at home and I am honoured to be helping them kickstart the Mozaiko initiative and inform the development of their design thinking practices. As I reflected on my first weeks with Voël they shared with me the three reasons why they wanted me on board:

1) To learn about each other’s culture
2) Share design knowledge
3) Experience new things

I’m excited to share with you all the things that Voël and I learn, share and experience together over the next few months – I’m sure it will be a great adventure!

In a book called “Design Transitions” Joyce Yee (@jsheau) and myself seek to capture and share inspirational stories of how design companies practices are evolving.

So we are now on the hunt to capture new and untold stories from across the globe. We are looking for practices who are challenging the traditional notions of designing and are operating in new design spaces.  It may results in new responsibilities and outputs as professional boundaries expand into management, strategy and policy areas. Examples may include designers working as innovation, service or user experience consultants.

If you know of design companies with inspirational practices and their stories not been told yet we would love to hear about them – all you need to do is comment below.

As comments are posted I will visually map the design companies people are inspired by and why. Follow the development of the book on Twitter: @DesTransitions.