Cell Furniture Project. Design-Led Research in Prisons. Stint 2: Storyboarding and Pitch

Storyboarding

A storyboard is a sequence of illustrations that depicts a scenario. The point of this exercise was to visualise how the new cell furniture item (or items) would be used by a persona as they went about a daily activity. This exercise can uncover nuances of interaction that might provide additional insights about the design.

Pitch Presentations

In a 'Dragons Den' style format, participants got into small groups and decided which cell furniture concept they wanted to pitch in front of everyone including some additional guests from HMP and PSPI. At the end of the pitch, there was a Q&A and feedback.

Co-Design Day #4: Deliver

Activity #1: Storyboarding

Storyboarding as a visualisation tool

A storyboard is a sequence of illustrations that depicts a scenario or process of doing something specific. In this case, the scenario would occur inside the cell, utilising the cell furniture concepts. The point of this exercise was to visualise via narration and illustration how the new cell furniture item (or items) would be used by the personas as they went about a task or activity in the cell. This simple exercise can uncover nuances in the interaction that might provide additional insights about the design. Likewise, imagining scenarios of use in a step-by-step process can help identify elements of the design that need to be added, modified or removed long before testing the actual product.

In the activity that followed, the co-design groups pitched the furniture concepts to HMPPS staff and used the storyboarding principles to act out a scenario with the furniture prototype in their pitch presentations. The storyboarding template is pictured below and the co-design storyboard illustrations can be viewed in the attached pdf.

Activity #2: Pitch Presenation

Product Pitch to the 'Dragon's Den'

After four days of co-design workshops, the group had gone through a full design sprint from start to finish. The final activity activity of delivering a ‘Dragon’s Den’ style pitch was not only a nice way to wrap up the successful four days of co-design, but it was also an opportunity to give the prisoners some practical presenting experience. In small groups, the co-design participants decided which concepts they would pitch. DAC provided instruction on what the pitch should include, but the prisoners took ownership of the design work and pitched on their own.