Event Details

Presented by Australian Evaluation Society with Auckland Co-design Lab, The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), Developmental Evaluation Institute, and Clear Horizon Consulting This special two-day event explores the proposition that the disciplines of design and evaluation, when combined, hold promise to deliver social impact more effectively and rapidly. The event includes two pre-event workshops for designers and evaluators respectively, then a “converge” day where we come together to explore the topic “We are better together! Design and Evaluation for Impact.”   Monday: pre-event workshops

• Codesign and evaluation for social innovation, presented by Penny Hagen, Auckland Co-design Lab, The Southern Initiative, Auckland Council, OR
• Evaluation across the design cycle, presented by Jess Dart, Clear Horizon Consulting

Tuesday: converge We are better together! Design and Evaluation for Impact We are seeing a “design revolution” as predicted by the Harvard Business Review in 2015. But what does this mean for us as evaluators and designers? Across Australia and internationally, there has been a huge growth in design for social impact. We’re seeing government departments set up design units and commissioning large-scale design projects. We’re also seeing service providers and communities also turning to design as a collaborative way to solve complex challenges. With the promise of design also comes the challenge of how these ideas are implemented, spread and scaled for impact. What if the long established field of evaluation could help here? What if combining design with evaluation could add fuel to the design revolution – to ultimately contribute to a fairer, more inclusive society? We think it can. It’s here. And we’re starting to see the power of it. This converge is for people who want to explore and progress the possibilities and challenges of bringing design together with evaluation to create greater and lasting impact. This full day event is convened by Jess Dart and Anna Powell from Clear Horizon with guest speakers including:

• Penny Hagen, Auckland Co-design Lab
• Chris Vanstone, The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI)
• Kate McKegg, founder of the Developmental Evaluation Institute

The day will kick off with a panel of two designers and two evaluators, talking about the real-life realities and future possibilities of integrating evaluation and design. In the afternoon we will zoom in on some key design-evaluation hotspots and explore how we might more effectively bring the disciplines together. These will be a co-created breakout sessions – we’ll be asking you for your input on the hotspots and examples you’d like to focus on. Topics like:

• Scaling across different contexts and working with complexity through principles based design and evaluation
• Evaluators’ insights into Theory of Change – how this can be applied across the design cycle
• Evaluating prototypes – how evaluation tools can help add more rigour to prototyping
• Practice based evidence as opposed to evidence based practice

Come along and be part of this exciting and powerful opportunity!