On Friday we were proud to launch Design on the Inside (affectionately known as DOTI), a bi-monthly breakfast meetup in London for people designing services on the inside of organisations. Over the past year, we’ve been involved with a range of projects that focus on skill building and embedding design, and we felt it was now time to share our lessons and learn from others embarking on the same journey.

Why do we need DOTI?

Before Snook, our founder Sarah worked on the inside of Government and saw countless agencies come in and deliver insightful reports without building up the skills needed to make sure the findings were competently taken forward. It seemed they didn’t necessarily recognise the reality of the delivery mechanisms needed to ensure the design ‘solutions’ worked in real life.

We don’t see ourselves as consultants (even though we technically are) and therefore we want to buck the trend of traditional consultancies and do it the Snook way. For us, it’s about building capabilities and equipping those delivering services to better design their service – by themselves. We’re happy to ‘lurk in the corner’ until the day we’re not needed anymore.

Launching DOTI

Considering this background, we wanted to build conversations on how to create design fluidity in-house and make embedding design within corporations work. So last week during the Service Design Fringe Festival we hosted the first ever DOTI event and we’re happy to report it was a fun-filled morning of stories and pastry appreciation.

We heard stories and challenges from a range of sectors and from organisations, large and small. Our fabulous panel of speakers shared their experiences from working within Tesco, Thames Valley Housing, Reach Volunteering, the Government Digital Service (GDS), and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). We discussed finding service managers to land projects, building internal training programmes to develop skills in Government, thinking policy through networked design projects, and how small charities can harness the power of design.

Come along and continue the conversation

If this sounds intriguing to you – come along! Every other month we’ll be launching a new theme with panel speakers and facilitated questions, with opportunities to open up the floor to questions. We’ll also leave 30 minutes for networking and a task/feedback session for a particular project.

We look forward to developing the conversation, sharing stories and gaining knowledge with you. Our next event is on the 17th November, 8.30 – 10.00 at 15 Worship Street, First Floor, London.

Information on how to grab a ticket coming soon.