Scotland

My experience as a Nesta intern

Ruth Watson - 13.07.2012

I have been the Scotland Programme’s Design Intern here at Nesta for a few months now, so I thought I would take this opportunity to reflect on life before Nesta and my experiences in working with the team in Scotland.

My background is in jewellery and metalwork, and design as a transferable process. I have experience in hands on design and making with metal and plastics. Since 2010, I have worked on group projects, employing co-design methods, prototyping and presenting. Before joining the Nesta team, I did a brief internship with Glasgow based social design agency, Snook, working on their 'Start Up Street Stirling' project which aims to redefine the numerous empty spaces on the high street. I also worked as an Editorial Assistant at Brightsolid Online Publishing on the content for the re-launch of their social networking site, "Friends Re-United".

During my undergraduate degree I was involved in a start-up scheme teaching jewellery making skills to people recovering from mental illness. The participants of this programme gained some jewellery making skills, but primarily they developed a greater confidence in themselves and what they are capable of achieving. I enjoyed this experience as sharing my skills with others gave greater meaning to them. This led to a revelation; I did not want to design products or be a self-employed maker.

In 2010, I enrolled in the Master of Design course at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee to broaden and develop transferable design skills to increase my employability out-with metal design. I learned about the potential of design in different fields; for example designers working with police and medical practitioners to create better products or services. I became involved in a forensic jewellery project; a collaboration between Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification to specifically research how jewellery could be used more effectively in disaster victim identification (DVI).

Jewellery has the potential to be the best type of personal effect for identification as it is worn on a daily basis, is individual to each person and jewellery materials, such as gold and silver, are more likely to survive in extreme conditions than clothing or shoes. The barriers to making use of jewellery as a possible identifier are that descriptions of the same item can vary dramatically and the item being described by a family member may not be in the same condition post-mortem. The current system used for identification fails where, for example, a victim's family describes a platinum wedding band with a solitaire diamond, and the post-mortem examiner describes the same item as a white metal ring with a round white gemstone. When these descriptions are entered into a database, the match is not made. This makes identifying the victim a much more lengthy and difficult task.

Through working with forensic anthropologists, family liaison officers, psychologists, disaster management specialists and applying a host of design methods, such as personas, scenarios, case studies, flow diagrams and interviews, we achieved a holistic insight into the DVI process. This allowed a user-centric solution to be designed which improves the use of jewellery as an identifier in the wake of an international disaster.

At the beginning of this research project, I was unsure of what I could bring to such a serious problem as I had no prior knowledge of DVI, but through the project I learned that it was about observing what already exists and offering a different way of working. I had a skillset that could be applied to a problem and find a more refined solution. A more visual classification system was created, alongside a self-administered interview for use by family liaison officers. These outcomes will be tested by UK family liaison officers in the near future.

Here at Nesta, I have been immersed in projects such as R&D Scotland, Age Unlimited Scotland and the Creative Enterprise toolkit. During my short time at Nesta, I have gained a great deal of confidence in myself through the challenging responsibilities I have been assigned. I have designed, organised and hosted workshops for high profile programmes. Through workshops and other events I have attended, I have expanded my professional network extensively. I have developed better skills in writing, creating and computing skills from excel to film editing software. I have learned about my own processes and ways of working as a designer within a large, established organisation. I am very lucky, as an intern, to have had these opportunities within one organisation.

All of the projects I have been working on at Nesta are about finding innovative solutions to problems. I would like to continue to work on thought-provoking problems and apply design in different areas not usually associated with it. Everything that is not natural has been designed, and has the potential to be re-designed to better suit the needs of its users.