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Exploring opportunities for impact

This exercise is about broadening our definition of our target audiences to consider the positive and negative impact of our products and services along the length of our value chain.

As a team, discuss and record your assumptions against each 

of the questions below. Ensure you capture any differing opinions. Depending on where you are in your design journey, your answers may be based on hypotheses at this stage, or you may be able to evidence them.

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Start by sketching your own value chain, thinking about who typically will benefit the most, and who might benefit the least from how you design and deliver your service

Point of use
(where your product / service meets the world)

Primary user

Secondary user

Nature/ environment

Wider society

Customer team

Product team

Supply chain

Problem
What problems are we solving, and who stands to benefit?

People
Who will be affected/benefit along the length of the value chain -  users, customers, supply chain workers, local communities, employees...

Impact
What impact do we believe we can have? What's in our power to influence, what isn't?

  1. What is the situation we are working in? What is the problem we are trying to solve?

  2. How simple/complex are this problem?

  3. How long will it take us to solve it?

  4. Does solving this problem involve solving other problems first?​

  5. Are we best placed to solve this problem? Who else might have the knowledge/skills to do so? 

  6. What's motivating us to solve this problem? 

  1. Who are all the people who might be positively or negatively impacted by how we design and deliver our service, along the length of our value chain?

  2. What do we know about their needs and where the needs are greatest? What don't we know / are less sure about?

  3. Who stands to benefit the most and who stands to benefit the least from how we design our service? 

  1. Given the above, what impact do we want to have as a team/organisation/group of people? 

  2. What power and privilege do we hold? Are we best placed to work in this space? Who should be involved/who should we be working with? 

  3. What organisational constraints are we navigating? E.g. budget, time, resource based constraints? 

  4. Given the constraints we have, how deeply can we embed our impact aims into our product or service design? What won't we be able to influence or change?

  5. What legacy do we want to leave long after the service has been in use?

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