EXPLORE

An 8-week digital exploration programme. Helping charities to improve their websites and adapt their services.

Programme overview

Programme phases

The Explore programme lasted 8 weeks, covering:

Discover

Understand the problem space, user needs and organisational needs.

Define

Develop and sketch a range of solutions. Test and validate initial ideas.

Develop

Develop a prototype or make changes to your website or service.

Organisations involved

Cohort #1

Theme: Making websites accessible - Explore how to improve your website so that people can find your organisation and your services.

  • Right to Remain 
  • Asylum Welcome
  • Therapy 4 Healing
  • Bristol Refugee Rights
  • Kent Refugee Action Network
  • Welcome Churches

Cohort #2

Theme: Adapting service delivery - Explore how to deliver services using digital technology or how to build a flexible delivery model.

  • Fairbeats
  • AVID
  • PRAXIS
  • New Routes to Integration 
  • Maryhill Integration Network 
  • Sheffield Hallam University Refugee Family Reunion

Cohort thoughts

"The impact on our service will be huge once we have worked on everything that is now on my list!" - Liz, Refugee Rights Hub
"I have just finished the first phase of the Explore programme; my focus was how New Routes communicates with our participants. While the process of working out our challenges to adapting our services post-covid has taken longer than expected, we are confident that we are on the right track." - Amelie, New Routes
I have gained so much confidence through this project that I am confident I will do a good job – and if things start going in the wrong direction, I have support available." -Tanja, KRAN

Resources

Programme materials helped the cohorts to discover, define and develop solutions. Activity worksheets and a presentation template made it easy for charities to frame their thinking throughout the process.

View and use the curriculum

The worksheets and presentation template are Google Docs. You will need to make a copy of these before you can use them.

View the curriculum

Learning

12 charities attended 2 sessions per week for 8 weeks. Learning was experiential and hands-on; participants worked through the activities to produce tangible outputs at each stage.

  • Week 1- Planning: Introductory activities and framing the design challenge.
  • Week 2 & 3 - Discover: Research, talk to users and understand the problem from their perspective.
  • Week 4, 5 & 6 - Define: Turn insights into ideas, find inspiration and start to sketch solutions.
  • Week 7 & 8 Develop - Develop: Turn ideas into tangible solutions, so we have something to test and validate.

Community

The Explore cohort chatted on the Community Slack Workspace and met twice a week on Zoom to discuss their ideas, progress and challenges.

Some Zoom sessions were open to the wider sector such as

These sessions were shared on our Meet Up page.

Get in touch

If you have a question about Explore, please email Pascale at Refugee Action. We aim to reply within one week.

Email Pascale