To toolkit or not to toolkit? (part 1)
I do a lot of design for international NGOs, of which a good chunk of the assignments involve graphic designing toolkits. These toolkits are often created for purposes, such as:
To share knowledge and evidence around what works with the industry (for example, how to design youth refugee programs that develop their social and emotional skills)
To standardize internal processes for teams around the globe (for example, monitoring and evaluation standards)
To guide new implementers on how to deliver a tried, true, and tested program (for example, a women’s support group program for survivors of gender-based violence)
If I’m being truly honest, I often wonder, “Will anyone use this?”
I’ve noticed that the biggest challenge that organizations face is the knowledge transfer. People change jobs, people retire, or people want to scale (and scale efficiently).
There’s a plethora of toolkits (probably in the hundreds of thousands) that organizations make — and are still making, to transfer knowledge. It’s very similar to research publications created by academia.
There is just so much knowledge in the world, and so much of it gathering dust on the physical or digital bookshelves.
This takes me back to the project I gave in the example above. I was assigned to help program staff design youth refugee programs infused with more social emotional learning (SEL).
Through using human-centered design, we learned that program staff wanted and needed:
A professional development program
A program design tool that would “scan” and “fix” programs to integrate more SEL
A system of champions, mentors, and conferences to enable sharing, learning and consultation
What happened?
The leadership were only interested and able to fund a publishable, shareable “toolkit”, so we could only build the parts that didn’t involve connecting people with people.
But listen to what we heard:
“I always heard about SEL and there wasn’t anyone to give any direction.”
“There isn’t a person for me to go to… I feel like I’m guessing and just trying it out.”
There’s only so much knowledge transfer that a toolkit can accomplish.
People are interested in guidance from people because there’s value in someone else’s experience and there’s value in immediate advice that is given specific to one’s situation - one that doesn’t require reading a whole manual first.
I’ll finish this thought tomorrow.
Writing Challenge #2 of 100