The Pod Model
Service Design
2019-Project Ongoing - BACI Design Team
Many of us have the freedom to set goals, to pursue what we wish, and to grow and develop, but for many people with cognitive disabilities their support services limit these opportunities. With a mandate from our ED a team of two designers and two managers set out to imaging something different for people receiving group based community services.
Sector Background
The Burnaby association for Community Inclusion (BACI) provides services to individuals with cognitive and developmental disabilities. One of the largest services is centre based community day programmes which are key for some people who have limited government support funding, so service providers will bundle hours together and offer services in groups to stretch peoples hours. In the traditional model this left people grouped together with different staff and people as schedules permitted. The sector focuses deeply on planning for individuals but didn’t often consider how creating more intentional groups could lead to stronger interdependence, and potentially could allow for staff to take a back seat in the structure of the group.
Best laid plans
The project was started in 2019 doing a dive into research, with our pilot set to start in April 2020, this however never came to be. The pandemic upended all day services, and when looking at how to reestablish services, we made the decision to run with our experimental idea. While not a perfect implementation this fast scaling made us work fast to design new roles and routines.
Core Idea
The pod model aims to bring folks with disabilities truly into the community by creating more consistent staffing and grouping, so supports act more as a community and less as a service.
My Role
On the team I was one of two designer supporting the project. Early on we were designing tools and workshops for teaching the larger staff team about user centred research, and lead through rounds of sensemaking and segmentation. A lot of our work is planning and designing different interactions and meetings always focused on how best to make that engaging and accessible for the people being supported in the programme.