Policy redesigned

[unknown_author]

[Editor note: The following notes were made by @lucian during the “Policy redesigned”, of OpenVillage Festival (19th October 2017). Quotes are not verbatim but summarize what was said. If you feel something is mis-represented, please tell us in a comment or with the “Flag → Something Else” feature and a mod will fix it. – @anu]

@Lucia

(from City Council of Milan)

I would like to share with you our observations. One thing is that civic awareness is increasing a lot. When I started working in Milan, it was top down, but now tensions are growing. In Milan we started a crowdfunding: 1300 became donors. They accepted to be engaged. They want a dialog with the public administration. And they aren’t used to that. We didn’t at first know how to manage that, to speak to citizens in a rational way, as a productive practice.

Something else, public policy, especially top down is very dangerous. In these days, you talk about regenerating suburbs – it is a public emergency. In the 60s, there were big blocks, without shared spaces, this approach was not public-centric.

Third, traditional political parties can’t afford a top-down approach, they have no future if they can’t talk to people. Civic movements will replace them. Like in Turin & Milan, they are ruled by civic movements. If they want to survive, they are obliged now, to change their approach….

Our spinoff of OpenCare, is called Open Rampette this is a use case.

@Matteo

(City Council Member, Milan)

Open Rampette is the spinoff of Open Care and is funded by Horizon 2020. We are publically funded. OpenCare is about the research that put together the collective intelligence…. We Make [a local makerspace] & Milan partnered together to talk with the community. Our scope was to figure out what was working, what wasn’t, and what was promising. We co-designed, and used the brain of makers in that process of co-designing.

We focused on Article 77. The problem here is that regulation was designed without consensus or consulting the community. The office that designed it, didn’t talk to the constituency, and other offices. There was a 10% compliance rate, which is practically a failure. The way to enforce.

We started thinking about how to rewire, This group put together a strategy for co-designing. And started to look for why people weren’t complying. [See mapping for stats]. In my opinion, we still thought that we were thinking top-down. We deconstructed the policy to figure out the bugs in the policy.

This was the first step [missing notes]
The 3rd step was co-design session to find solutions, and to possibly fix it. We were ready to go back to the city council, and to talk with them if the solution we provided was implemented, if it was replicable & scaleable.

@Constantino

(We Make, La Rampette): So I set up this mess to have Francesco join us.

@RK

Is this being recorded?

@Constantino

Yes [Francesco appears on projection and shows us slide in Italian, bc of the local population.]

We are trying to going from the very specific to a more general solution. What is very interesting, we at We Make, you can build products and stuff. The first idea we had was to actually produce custom ramps. But this wasn’t the main point. It was fast prototyping, how it can be applied to fast policy. The open care project allowed us to [missing]…

To me, this not a failure. The online platform needs to bring…. We created two roles to impersonate the shop owner and a person who wants to enter the shop. We frame the … [missing]

‘La procedura’ is the bureaucracy. ‘La chiamata’ is the moment in the user experience in which the user rings a bell for the shop owner to open the ramp. The rule in Milan now is that the buildings need to be accessible, fullstop. These rules say that if the building isn’t under renovation, that they need to have at least have a temporary ramp, like an aluminum one. To call this ramp, you must ring the bell.

We went into the process of meetings, in the neighborhood, touching base with all the local associations. The meetings were from 7-9pm, so we offered a drink to the participants. You can go through the pictures on Flickr. They were held at a community center, near to a garden, where many people go to with the their children.

‘La Chiamata’- is the user experience of the call. We went through different scenarios [of the user]. We found that a temporary ramp was not the best solution. But right now, we need to cope with this. We need to improve this. 2nd, we need a physical [missing] … We analyzed the comments from post-its, etc. then came up with a process. ‘Campanello’- a bell near the entrance, and we designed some technology with bluetooth. And feedback. The little rope was to experiment if there were other kinds of physical interfaces. We created these 4 sub-prototypes, including the stickers.

An IoT object, was protoyped using arduino, and cheap components and we are working on the documentations on Instructables.

The other part of the prototyping was part of the material, information architecture, the graphic design of the PDF [documents]. Many of the competencies could be transferred from the physical to non-physical.

We did user research, and created interactive prototypes of mockups. There is a checkbox, a little calculation that the shop owner needs to make for the slope. This process is a lot, and may be a lot for each procedure, but this is something that shows what can be done.

To show that you are compliant, we created a sticker that was visible. In these few[?] months, we met 3 different challenges [missing]…

Being focused, you can be scientific, instead of talking in an abstract way, you can talk in a very practical way, and can introduce facts into the conversation. [Nadia interjects saying no more ‘presentation’ time]

@Francesco

[Audio from Francesco brought in] Matteo translating Francesco (a user tester)

He was eager to join rampette…’The restart from bottom up is revolutionary. Not even the association that helps the handicapped deals with this kind of process. What was amazing that the reps for disabled were able to add on a cultural level, not just technical level. This is important, that the reailer in Milan has enthusiastically joined the program. From one side, the techical… on the other side, open rampette, makes it possible for those without limbs to activate the bell. This is the next step, I hope that it makes it possible for a universal shopping experience. Also, we hope that there will be a smarter interface.’

###Questions and answers

Article 77

Problem with Au Quai (where we are at present):
Francesco (from Milan) could have been invited, but it was not accessible

“Think about the new consumers if it is accessible”
Reputation effects.
Milan council: different districts have different reputations.

Recruiting: went through associations
Accessibility not just an issue for the disabled, also e.g. parents with strollers

Q: Was there resistance in the different departments?

The policy was clearly top-down, designed without consulting audience. New buildings respond to universal accessibility. Defensive attitude in drafting the appilication of the policy. Convened meetings bring sides together to discuss language etc.

Challenge about competences: if engineers wrote policies, they are not skilled in service design. Team is trying to foster and hybridise competences.
Departments are silos.

@albertorey

how do you get people to comply for old buildings?

Isola district is limited part of the city, good compliance
Intention within the project does not include scaling up for city policy
Law applies only to shops on the ground floor.

They try to be transparent in the design process.
Needed to simplify and focus collaboration with the user.

@albertorey

Do others have experience of blending roles?

Community research, theory of commons … Barriers between people. How can the rampette be considered a public good, as street lighting is already? Prototyping the policy is the challenge. Related to participatory action research?

[quote=Nadia]
Favourite public art pieces: “capitalism works for me” buttons one was yes one was no, in public space, press buttons. Another methodology from Dutch “Kennisland”(?) putting the research where people are.

@albertorey

Getting as much feedback as possible is good. Paper or digital survey to take away.

Bringing local people into the design process. Go from the particular case to the general case. Online community building shared knowledge.
Bridging between case studies for particular issues and scaling or scaling up?

What general things have we learned about top-down policies?

Tried a participatory approach for e.g. sharing economy. Started from draft document on Google Drive. Invited people to modify and comment the document. Final document was approved by the city council. Less nice: participation of 250 people in a city of over a million inhabitants. It was made as easy as possible, but many challenges.
Very relevant for the Edgeryder community.

Also important to pre-design the participation process. Should be developed through the process itself. No one method of participation that works in every situation.

• Unpredictable.
• Multiple factors
• Need to be able to change the approach.

Redesigning playgrounds of schools … difficult to communicate … e.g. sharing photos was too boring. They just went out to play, and tried things out. Threw out preconceived ideas and just watched them playing.

Referenda cost millions of Euro.