Themes
Service Design x Design Futures
Speculative Services
Drugs and Substance Abuse
Duration
6 Months
October 2024 - February 2025
Final Presentation at the Ministry of Justice
A team of 5 extremely talented creatives, whom I had the best synergy with.
The team included a mix of people from different backgrounds.
Alia Omer
10 years of experience in the social sector
Pamina Schilton
A mix of law, marketing and design experience
Sriram Ganesram
A through and through service designer
Hyungwoon Choi
Graphic and UI Designer
Nivedita Narasimhan (me)
UI/UX Research and Designer
Team
THE GOOD PLACE
Giving offenders a path back to society.
When is it offered?
The program starts during their last year in prison, carries onto the probation period. These offenders have existing skill-sets in dealing with logistics and finance which can be leveraged.
Who is it for?
Primarily for drug dealers who are in prison as this program aims to address one of the main reasons drug dealers tend to reoffend
- financial requirements.
(They’re usually not set up for proper employment opportunities post prison and probation and tend to reoffend to earn money quickly).
OVERVIEW
What is the Good Place?
The Good Place is a speculative service that reimagines prison rehabilitation in 2040. It’s a program that offers employment opportunities for drug dealing offenders in prison, through VR Training, AI Skill Matching and partnerships with companies.
We scanned almost 200 signals and classified them through the PESTEL model which we then covered to entire walls with and mapped out any connection physically on the wall as it was a lot easier to visualise them physically.
1
A 4 day work week becomes the norm and hence, these offenders in the program can do their internship on the 5th day of the week.
2
The perception of drugs has changed with drugs being widely consumed for medical and therapeutic purposes ( eg : Cannabis being legalised)
3
We foresee the world of drugs being influenced highly by AI in the future, with AI assisting with the creation of new drugs.
FUTURES WHEEL
The Probable Future
Using signals, trends and the direct and indirect consequences of these, we created a few future scenarios that would be probable in 2040.
Forming trends and selecting our Cohort
(my second favourite phase!)
We combined signals into emerging trends, explored their long-term direct and indirect consequences, and then selected a cohort that’s most impacted and aligns with our interest and knowledge of the justice system.
We chose drug dealers as our cohort since their main reason for reoffending is financial, which we wanted to address.
One of my skillsets lies in conducting vast amounts of research and bringing out insights from the data and hence, I took a lead on conducting initial research and building our understanding of the justice system.
Our Process
Initial Research
(my favourite part!)
Build our understanding of the UK Justice system as 5 international students.
Scan for signals (100s of them) and gain an understanding of the current state of the world and the factors that affect the UK justice system. (PESTEL)
The Final Service
Storyboard
Our Process
An ideal member of the committee running the program
Our Process
Ideating and Designing the Service
We then, started ideating on our service and what would be the most effective in 2040 - Another thing that I enjoy doing is bringing a team together and making everyone feel comfortable to ideate and put out their opinion in a productive way and hence, I took a lead in facilitating the brainstorming session.
SO WHAT DOES THE WORLD LOOK LIKE IN 2040?
New Drugs Made with AI
New methods of dealing - Crypto and Decentralised social media
Changes in perception towards drugs -
Widely consumed for medical and therapeutic purposes and the legalisation of cannabis.
Chris
Ex-Probation Officer
Judah Armani
In House Records
Matthew
Ex-Probation Officer
Stakeholder Input
Simultaneously, we also spoke to 2 ex-probation officers and a tutor who works with people on probation, with these being their key points.
Our Process
PRESENTING AT THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE
In February 2025, we got the opportunity to present this project at the Ministry of Justice to their futures department. Throughout this entire project, we had feedback sessions at every stage from the futures department with guidance on how to approach projects where we don’t engage with our target audience themselves (the offenders).