DIN Autumn Network Meeting - Part Two - “Think big, start small, test often, scale fast.”

After lunch, next up was Matt Brooke-Smith, Founder and CEO Future Workshops. Matt and his team have been working closely with the NHS with a product they’ve developed called App Rail, which has been making incredible progress with making everyday life easier for the likes of Nurses, Midwives and Paramedics.

Matt picked a scenario of ‘Fly Tipping’ to demonstrate how easy App Rail was to use. With a few drag and drops into a workflow, the app was made within minutes. It allowed someone to report a case of fly tipping, attach a picture, location and send an email directly to the person required. It blew my mind how quickly it was available to use, and lots of ideas popped into my head where a simple app could make some beneficial changes to our services.

Mark Birch joined us (Head of ICT at Broacres) to discuss how his organisation had partnered with Salesforce to develop a platform for their money advice service. Mark talked about how easy it was to work with Salesforce to change their unintuitive platform they currently had in place. With starting small they were able to deliver their new platform to their money advice colleagues, and how it instantly made their work lives easier, more flexible and saved them hours of their day by integrating things such as secure sign option. Broadacres are working with Salesforce to change some of their other service platforms, which sounds like they have some exciting projects in the mix

Next up with had Ed Greig from Deloitte, I mean Ed could have won the day for the fact he bought ‘Chip the dogbot!’ Although a little creepy, I must say! (I mean Chip, not Ed!

Check out Chip below!

Ed talked about their manta which is very familiar to Bromford Lab “Fall in love with the problem, not with the solution”, something we have stuck by since starting the lab back in 2014.

Ed told a great story about a little girl called Phoebe who was born without a hand. Phoebe was given a standard prosthetic from the hospital, which she would hardly wear. Ed and his team at Deloitte worked with phoebe to design her own prosthetic using a 3d printer. Ed sent Phoebe a white plastic prototype, along with a set of pens so she could add her own designs to really keep her involved in the whole process. Ed and his team then created two more versions, with Phoebe helping to design the theme of each one. Her ideas – Princess Poppy from Trolls, coloured plastic & snowflakes. I think Princess Poppy was my favourite! Phoebe loved her new prosthetic and even started to match her outfits to her new stylish hand, and as Ed said there is no innovation without adoption and clearly from this story Phoebe embraced the whole process and gave her so much more confidence. Such a sweet story.

Ed enhanced a few subjects we quite often talk about in the Lab like; being user centred, truly designing for your end user and consider the whole picture from end to end. Being Iterative, if it doesn’t work first time, what have you learnt, how can you adapt? You need to create a culture that isn’t afraid to fail. Be collaborative, by keeping your cards close to chest holds no benefits for innovation, talk, network, and reach out to people who could help with your idea.

“Think big, start small, test often, scale fast.”
— Ed Greig - Deloitte

Overall, I came away from the day feeling enthused and reinventive. The whole day was intriguing, thought-provoking, and passionately engaging! 

I’m grateful that Bromford are members of DIN and that we get to learn from the wealth of knowledge shared in these events. Huge amount of takes aways from the day with lots to process, tons to share and heaps to talk about.

Until next time!

@Katie