Strategy – Kevan D'Agostino

Developing a personalised in-store experience

Kevan — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:35:55 +0000

Developing a customer-driven personalisation strategy

Kevan — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 10:18:01 +0000

Supporting small and medium-sized businesses to reach net zero

Kevan — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 21:14:37 +0000

Government

Improving children’s social care through technology

How might we improve the tools and requirements social workers need when recording visits with families?

The Challenge

Social workers are a lifeline to young families and children in the UK, but can be held back by the systems and technology they work with, spending as much as 80% of their time on administration tasks.

The Department for Education (DfE) recognised a need to free up this time, allowing for more direct work with children and families in need. The DfE holds a unique role in the world of children’s’ social care, and hopes to improve outcomes for children by creating more functional environments and tools for social workers. Building on DfE’s strategic approach, the ‘Whole System Look’ of holistic understanding of the digital and technology landscape in children’s social care, DfE invited FutureGov to undertake a discovery into how we might optimise digital and technology for social workers and enable better information sharing between partner agencies.

The Approach

Our discovery began with a rapid literature review, and a research approach that drew on years of experience, from both DfE and FutureGov, within children’s social care settings with system leaders, managers, social workers, multi-agency partners and families. We also engaged with DfE policy and digital colleagues to understand the wider policy landscape.

This existing work allowed us to narrow our brief, develop a set of hypotheses around existing problems and a research plan that helped us not only test some core assumptions but also learn about the vast challenges within children’s social care. We spoke with front door staff, social workers, team managers, health visitors and police officers at councils across the country. We valso varied our research locations to reach a wide range of council types in different geographic regions with varied OFSTED ratings to develop the fullest picture possible.

The Result

We found that social workers’ current tools are not enabling good practice and result in time spent on less valuable activities, namely interacting with families and children. Facing complex caseloads and ineffective technology, it can be hard to prioritise tasks, record content and complete all visits and assessments.

We identified an opportunity to enable more effective recording for social workers to help with prioritisation of time, recording on-the-go and recording for different audiences, all through a trusted system. We also found that front door staff often need to make crucial decisions quickly. To do so, they need basic information but do not have access to verified databases that contain a more complete understanding of a child’s experience.
In total there were six opportunities for technology to help improve children’s social care outcomes for families, practitioners and local authorities: Gathering information at the front door, Timely sharing of information with partners, Improving information sharing, Enabling more effective recording for social workers, Enabling stronger relationships around the family and child, Aligning leaders and social workers on best practice recording

Defining what the big shop means for Canadian families

Kevan — Sat, 30 Jan 2021 17:49:44 +0000

Grocery Retail

Defining what the big shop means for Canadian families

How might we help a grocery retailer better understand the nuances and complexities of what the “big shop” means to Canadian families?

The Challenge

This National grocery retailer wanted to understand what made Canadian families choose specific grocery stores for their big shopping trips “big shops”

As more Canadian families look to both online and offline retailers as a one-stop shop experience, there is a need to understand what types of behaviours drive this. This National grocery retailer wanted to take these learnings and translate them into a brand strategy to develop a new way forward that would resonate with Canadian families, and help this grocery retailer attract customers into their stores.

The Approach

Because families were at the heart of this proposal, we recruited only couples to our workshops so we could get a better understanding of the dynamics, roles and responsibilities during big shopping trips.

We first hosted generative workshops in four cities across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to better understand the shopping habits of Canadian families, and what their experiences were when making big shopping trips. This workshop included activities that mapped out current-state shopping trip journeys as well as encouraged participants to ideate towards a better future. With our new findings from the GTA, we were asked to validate our results across the country through evaluative workshops, which brought us to Calgary, Vancouver and Montreal.

The Result

This research helped define their overall strategy and position their brand to be more aligned with attracting families looking to make big shopping trips in-store and online.

The result was a set of behavioural archetypes that helped define the roles of individuals within the shopping experience, a defined brand strategy that aligned with how they would win over Canadian families, and a set of provocative ideas that would get them started.

Building reciprocity between a hospital and its community

Kevan — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 21:22:58 +0000

Healthcare

Building reciprocity between a hospital and its community

How might we build reciprocity between a hospital and its community and understand what is desired to drive donations back to the hospital?

The Challenge

To develop a strategy that would help build reciprocity with its community and to be considered the donation vendor of choice for young families

They approached us to understand what people cared about in their community, how a healthcare authority could help support this within a fixed budget, and to understand the donation habits of this specific demographic.

The Approach

We conducted semi-structured interviews with a wide-range of community members, from working parents to community volunteers and leaders, as well as the public across several communities in Toronto.

We conducted in-depth interviews with ten community leaders around Toronto, focused on understanding what they believed was essential to a healthy community, and their perspective on how a hospital could be included. We also recruited a wide-range of community members, from working parents to those who work at community-driven organizations to volunteers who provide their time free-of-charge. Additionally, we also visited some of Toronto’s most community-driven events (e.g. farmer’s markets, outdoor events, recreation centres), and conducted over 150+ intercept interviews with community members.

The Result

This project resulted in a step-by-step strategy that provided them with a point of view on how they would build reciprocity with the community to how they would implement ways of impact.

The result included a set of four signature community programs ready for prototyping, a set of design principles that aligned with community needs, insight into essential rallying causes and opportunity spaces the community cares about, an ambassador program, a high-fidelity digital platform, and an initial business case that outlined their financial opportunity.