Disability Disrupted: Data, Digital and DesignMartin Stewart-Weeks, Sydney, May 2014

Some examples

A bit of context

A bit of theory

And some speculation

Open data:

• Has a large potential economic value from its benefits, including increased efficiency, new products and services, and a consumer surplus (cost savings, convenience, better products)

• Enhances big data’s impact by creating transparency, exposing variability, and enabling experimentation

• Creates multiple business opportunities, such as the potential to raise productivity, to improve new products and services, and to enable entirely novel lines of business for both established companies and entrants

• Benefits consumers even more than businesses, by creating price and product transparency as well as new channels to provide feedback that improves the quality of goods and services (including public ones)

• Entails business risks, including reputational issues related to the potential release of negative information; the potential consumer backlash from aggressive open-data use

• Requires governments to play a central role by developing and implementing policies to mitigate consumer and business concerns about the misuse of open data and to help set standards that will allow the potential economic and social benefits to materialize

• Faces barriers, including privacy concerns and the need for legal and regulatory frameworks

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/open_data_unlocking_innovation_and_performance_with_liquid_information

The combination of data, design and digital is completely changing the way people design and use services, create and make choices and give effect to a deep instinct for agency and authority.

Strava Metro is a data service that allows planners to view routes taken by Strava members in a given urban area and use that data to improve flow and build infrastructure that serves cyclists and runners. It’s a broad departure from Strava’s primary service, which lets athletes track their activities and compete virtually against other users. “Our primary mission is motivating and entertaining athletes,” says Michael Horvath, co-founder and president ofStrava. “But when we began in 2009, we knew that once we collected enough data, there would be so much more that we could do with it.”

How could the airBNB concept (and the growing array of similar sites) of using digital platforms, plus aggregated data to match potential suppliers with potential customers, be adapted to impact people with disability? Micro employment opportunities, linking to rapid, agile service delivery and support...a new service model which sees users and customers as the capable core of the service, not passive consumers.

At the intersection of business, sociology and design

(Customers and sustainability, people and behaviour, prototype and test)

15

The safeguarding app

http://patchworkhq.com/

http://www.socio.com/disabilitydata.php

As they have in pretty much every other part of our lives, the combination of digital, data and design is shifting power, offering opportunities for more accountability and personalised control and changing the shape of many traditional institutions and service organisations.

The risk…

Relatively little use is being made of all the free data - this is a triumph of supply more than demand, at least so far. It's the latest in a long line of projects driven by clever engineers and technologists who became understandably captivated by what was technologically possible, but were not so good at understanding what problems would actually be solved, or how the technologies would interact with wants and needs.

: http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/will-open-data-be-damp-squib#sthash.7I8VeCce.dpuf

Knowing the problem you are trying to solve inside out, and enabling expertise to connect in new ways, are as vital as ingredients for success as the data itself when it comes to generating new value and impact from open data.

http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/beyond-open-data#sthash.maE0pZeE.dpuf

The opportunity….

The best projects engage with ‘experts’ who deal day-to-day with the problem being tackled, vitally including users, data experts, those who may be end buyers or commissioners.

http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/beyond-open-data#sthash.maE0pZeE.dpuf

What will data, design and digital do for, and to, disability in Australia?They will change the balance of power between people with disability, their carers and the people and organisations providing services and support.

It will fuel innovation, service improvement and a culture of user-centred and design-led services with and by people, instead of to and for them.

It will completely change the way we do policy by changing the relationship with those impacted most directly by the consequences of policy choices and design.

But it will have none of those consequences, and quite possibly make all of them worse, if we failt to get the sequence right between people, process, data and things.

The question always needs to be not so much what applications, services and platforms can digital, design and data provide for people with disabilities, but how can applications, services and platforms that are already being built make sure they can be as useful and usable for people with disabilities as they are for everyone else.

• Public Services 1.0 - transactional services, such as emailing your MP or buying your Tax Disc online.

• Public Services 2.0 - opening up public data and linking it in a way that allows others to build useful services. Over time, this data will become increasingly dynamic and hence useful. Data.gov.uk is a great start.

• Public Services 3.0 - merging public services with open public data and aggregated user/frontline input to deliver new types of public service. Services like Patient Opinion are moving the NHS towards this

http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/towards-public-services-30#sthash.AnbSBVMN.dpuf

Policy

Service design

Advocacy

Empowerment and choice