Before assuming we need a better message, it can be useful to understand how the people we're trying to reach see the issue themselves, and what might make a message meaningful to them.

Example: Design Council / Essex County Council - Climate Action

Essex County Council was developing a Youth Climate Ambassador Network, but early research suggested climate action was not a strong priority for many students. Rather than starting with climate messaging, I supported council officers to work with 15–18-year-olds and their teachers to explore what a positive future for Essex meant to them.

Through futures exercises, storytelling and systems thinking, we developed ten themes for climate action, five of which were prioritised by the group. The work shifted the starting point from “How do we get young people interested in climate?” to “What matters to young people, and where does climate action fit within that?”

When a behaviour change initiative isn't being used, the issue may not be the intervention itself. It may be that we're asking people to act without understanding the wider conditions shaping what is possible, practical or meaningful for them.

Example: Design Council / London Borough of Hounslow - Climate Action

Hounslow's Net Zero team wanted to build community participation around climate change in one of the borough's most deprived neighbourhoods. An early idea was a parklet focused on air quality, transport and access to green space.

I supported the team to explore the idea through design and systems thinking, including a ward walk to understand local assets, barriers and everyday routines. This highlighted factors including underused existing green space, low incomes, extensive working hours and high levels of crime.

The work shifted the focus away from a predetermined intervention towards building the conditions for community participation first.

Sometimes the most useful question isn't how to improve the established approach, but what it might be overlooking. Looking at a problem through a different lens can reveal possibilities that are difficult to see from within the usual frame.

Example: World Health Organization - Public Health

WHO programme leaders asked me to explore whether anything might be missing from existing graphic health warnings on cigarette packaging, following concerns about audiences becoming desensitised to established health-impact messaging.

I explored the question through a behavioural lens - Schwartz's Theory of Basic Human Values - and analysed 574 graphic health warnings from more than 37 countries to identify opportunities for more culturally relevant tobacco-control communication.

The research generated new questions for country-level practitioners to explore, with findings published in the 10th WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic (page 19).

Getting people in the same room doesn't automatically mean they're starting from the same place. People from different sectors and backgrounds may arrive with different priorities, language, assumptions and ideas about what needs to happen and how, making collaboration difficult before the work has properly begun.

Example: University of Bath & Bath & North East Somerset Council - Economic Development

The Living Well Now and in 2050 project explored the potential adoption of Doughnut Economics as a regional economic development strategy. People came to the framework with different levels of knowledge, professional interests and perspectives, and engagement remained largely siloed.

I developed a nine-week readalong, 24 workshops, a public lecture and an urban photo walk to create opportunities to build the shared understanding needed for more productive participation.

The work identified practical conditions that supported cross-sector dialogue locally: informal and preparatory spaces, creative framing, sustained relationship-building, and ways of connecting evidence, lived experience and policy goals.

Ideas such as sustainability or regeneration can sound straightforward at a high level, but become much less so when we try to apply them to a particular profession, organisation or project. The useful next step is often to explore what the idea actually means in a particular context.

Example: Lumsden Design - Enterprise Innovation

Lumsden Design was facing growing expectations from clients and its team to engage more confidently with social and environmental impact, but had mostly encountered sustainability through a reductive “eco” lens that limited understanding.

I mapped the team's existing knowledge and experience and built a shared foundation around the global definition of sustainable development. We then explored what was already present in the practice, what was missing and where new opportunities might lie.

The team recognised that sustainability was much closer to their existing strengths and interests than they had expected. What had initially felt like a constraint became an untapped creative opportunity, with specific areas to research and develop.