We aren’t publicising all the details about how Granted works just yet. If you would like to see the full project, please contact me.
THE BRIEF
Long-term Thinking
Challenged with the question ‘How might we encourage people and communities to think and act for the long term?’, we examined issues like immigration, asylum, and intercultural diversity. How will the population of Ireland, once a nation of emigrants, change over the next hundred years?
Around this time, a forecast was released by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation which warns that over the next century, governments will rely heavily on working-age migrants to keep economies afloat. These migrants are at greater risk of becoming an exploited underclass with little public representation.
ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
Empowering Migrant Leaders
Today, nearly 13% of the total population of Ireland are non-Irish nationals, but many migrant communities are woefully under-represented in Irish politics. At the heart of local politics is community organising. Migrant-led community organisations promote social integration through participation. Empowering migrant leaders now creates role models, and a road map, for future generations. We spoke with migrant organisation leaders, integration specialists, immigration lawyers and designers about how we might empower migrant-led organisations to plan for longevity.
21 INTERVIEWS
2 CO-CREATION SESSIONS
Migrant community organisations should be given support to grow their capacity and influence, to advocate for the future of their community.
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Barriers To Long-term Growth
Through our interviews, polls, and co-creation sessions with The Long Time Project’s ‘Long-time Tools’, we discovered that migrant organisations find it difficult to plan beyond a year ahead. We identified three main barriers to an organisation’s longevity:
FUNDING
“Funding opportunities are announced throughout the year and you have to catch them. You can miss them. You have to be in the know.”
-Migrant Organisation Leader
CAPACITY BUILDING
“If you want to increase capacity, you have to do a lot more work. Community organisers are completely swamped.”
-City Council Integration Officer
HANDOVER
“Whenever a person leaves, everything is lost. Last year, all of the founders left. We had a six hour meeting to create a document on how to do a handover.”
-Migrant Organisation Leader
PARTICIPATORY DEVELOPMENT
Building Granted
How could we mediate the relationships between migrant organisations and other institutions in order to facilitate their growth and longevity?
3 PAPER PROTOTYPES
Because of Covid, Renata and I couldn’t be in the same room, we sent paper prototyping videos back and forth to express our ideas. This kind of iterative ideation allowed us to express ideas much quicker than with words or static images.
8 LO-FI PROTOTYPE TESTS
Then, we made a quick lofi prototype in a day, which we tested like crazy, and got excellent early feedback. It was clear that we needed to ease the cognitive load of all this bureaucracy. We were surprised at the depth of contextual feedback from such a quick prototype.
3 MID-FI PROTOTYPE TESTS
Armed with all this feedback, we moved to a more functional mid-fi prototype, and tested again. As the tests progressed, it became clear that, as this is a tool, our users wanted it to be familiar enough for them to pick up easily.
