I have a secret confession to make (which, given that I'm writing it down, won't be a secret anymore): I adore subscription boxes. It's like a present I buy for myself, with the added bonus that I still get the 'surprise' element of receiving a gift. Right now, alongside about a thousand other people, I'm eagerly awaiting a new subscription box. It's not just about getting surprised with new products like most of the subscription boxes I've tried: this one was created through a human-centred design process. If you haven't already heard of the 'You Need This Box' project, buckle up for a bit of a wild ride!
Edmonton's Shift Lab
As one of many social innovation/design labs in Alberta, Shift Lab uses a fairly simple methodology (as if there’s such thing as a simple methodology): gather people who share an interest in a systemic problem, establish guiding principles, connect with community to learn from existing research, initiatives and leaders, try to make sense of all the factors that make up a system, then move into creating several prototypes that help to address one or more of the parts of the system that could lead to transformational change. Then, test out the prototypes, fiddle with them, and try again until there's a product that might be useful enough to scale up to make change on a really broad level.
Edmonton Shift Lab’s current focus is on systemic racism. As they put it on their website: “Here’s the thing: Racism is unfortunately still around. Discrimination towards Aboriginal people, refugees and newcomers to Canada is especially a problem. Racism makes it hard for people to find good jobs, good housing, helpful services and feel a sense of belonging in community-Racism is preventing people from getting out of poverty.” In 2016, they brought together community innovators and changemakers to examine the roots and impacts of racism and its intersections with poverty that reinforces both.
Shift Lab is now on Round 2 (round 2 of what? The box? It’s existence?). One of the lessons they brought from that first round was to focus on one system at a time, so they’ve chosen to focus on racism. They’ve done a fantastic job documenting the processes that brought them to this decision for others to benefit from; you can see their process, materials and reflections, where they've created a comprehensive primer on their models.
Image: a triple helix blending indigenous epistemologies, design thinking and systems thinking, and a behaviour change wheel overlapping dimensions of behaviour change. From Shift Lab.
Subscribing to Anti-Racism
ShiftLab 2.0 came up with a series of prototypes which were each adopted and tested by a core team. One of those prototypes sought to create better anti-racism interventions that acknowledge everyone's humanity and create behaviour change. After spending some time with a behaviour change model and empathy mapping exercises to figure out exactly who would be the most effective target market for a product and what goals they hoped to meet, the core team, who eventually came up with the 'You Need This Box' project, decided that their best solution was to create a subscription box product. The You Need This Box (YNTB) team shared about their lessons learned with the Systemic Design eXchange in November, 2020.
By combining anti-racist and anti-oppressive based exercises with beautiful, fun and nourishing products from a diverse array of makers and entrepreneurs, the You Need This Box team aims to create a safe environment for the box's users. They have carefully designed the box keeping in mind 'the sleepy middle' of people who acknowledge racism is a thing, that are shocked by racist jokes, but "don't see colour" and are not often confronted with the effects of racism in their own lives. This audience has the potential to grow into allies who are aware of (and act on) different expressions of racism, but often feel uncomfortable or lost when they are confronted with the effects of unconscious bias.
The YNTB team recognized that a physical object has a lot more weight than a digital offering and is harder to forget about or ignore. Receiving a physical object means the excitement we all get when we have a surprise package, which puts users into a great frame of mind. The boxes contain exciting products created by diverse makers, plus a series of activities or exercises to look at bias and racism. The box has gone through several iterations of prototypes, trying to build an experience from the second the box gets opened.
Releasing at the right time
While the Shift Lab and the YNTB team started work on their prototypes in the fall of 2019, the world gave the YNTB team a horrifying catalyst. With the death of George Floyd on May 25th, the world suddenly focused on racism. Unignorable evidence of systemic racism started to wake up that 'sleepy middle,' and news broadcasts started to use words like privilege, anti-racism, white supremacy culture and fragility. A flood of individuals began looking to learn more about anti-racism, oppression and racial power dynamics.
At the end of May, the YNTB team were close to being ready to launch their product, but weren't quite there. Instead of tweaking more, they decided to launch their website a little early. Right up until going live, they tweaked language: before the death of Floyd, they worried directly talking about privilege would make people who otherwise could benefit from the box uncomfortable. Now, with these phrases used daily in the media, they could speak more directly. They launched their website. Within 48 hours, they had well over 1400 orders.
Lessons Learned from a viral hit
YNTB has never had to put any effort into marketing. In fact, they've had a hard time keeping up with their orders - especially since each 'wave' of orders sent out has resulted in 300-400 new subscriptions. They're currently on a pause as they tweak the design of the second box in the series, and work out the logistics of the (currently) 2700+ subscribers (whose boxes are currently paid for out of a grant with the Edmonton Community Foundation). So what can we pull from this response?
Make a specific solution for your specific problem.
YNTB doesn't mean that just any problem will be solved with a subscription box model. This isn't a recipe that can be duplicated to solve all other issues; starting from a model of how to change the behaviour leading to a wicked problem can - and will - create something that is very useful.
Scaling up means bigger problems.
A more painful lesson is the surprising pinch points in scaling up - I was surprised to hear that without a business number, the YNTB team was limited to copying in one address at a time to create batches of 50 shipping labels through Canada Post! To solve this problem, the team is working on building an official structure that will best meet their needs now without limiting them in the future. They're currently being stewarded by Skills Society Action Co-Lab (an anchor for ShiftLab), which is giving them the tools they need to 'build the airplane as they fly it.' The mundane and practical aspects of delivering thousands of boxes to subscribers while also developing a business model and creating/curating/prototyping/iterating their next rounds of boxes has been quite a busy mix.
Collect data wherever possible to shape your work.
Their spread and reach has allowed them the opportunity to get feedback from their participants, data from when their subscribers, and reflections from users on what inspired them to get the boxes. Feedback in the future will help them look at whether they have been successful in creating actual behaviour changes: will the postman who saw the box sign up to see what he'd delivered to a few houses? Will the people wanting to be able to have more effective conversations with family, friends and coworkers find that easier once they've used the box?
Be brave and bold.
Finally, there is a lesson in courage and bravery here. The team could have shut down the process when they reached their targeted 30-40 boxes, or within the first 24 hours when they realized their alerts were going viral. Instead, they leaned into the uncertainty this massive scale shift is bringing them, and have jumped into an opportunity to share tools across Canada. Being open to where the process would lead them has given them a very different set of conversations on how to best scale and bring this process to participants to create a broader change than they could have imagined.
Interested in learning more about the box and joining their waiting list? Visit their website. You can find out more about design labs across Alberta (including ShiftLab) by visiting ABSI's resource library page on labs. Do you have a viral hit that’s changing lives in Alberta? We want to hear about it! Email it to us here.