It’s been yet another turbulent year with major disruption in the technology sector, economic pressures on businesses and people, and increased unrest around the world.

I’ve been reflecting on how 2023 went for SPARCK and I feel privileged to report that, despite everything, we’ve managed to grow, learn and progress.

I know that’s not how it’s been for every business in the technology sector. Every time I dip into the trade press or log into LinkedIn I hear about another round of lay offs.

So, I really do not take for granted that we’ve been able to thrive in the midst of all this chaos.

It is truly a testament to the great people, creativity, and collaboration that I see every day across Sparck and BJSS.

The rise of generative artificial intelligence

You can’t talk about 2023 without mentioning AI, after ChatGPT and Midjourney took the world by storm at the end of 2022.

As a result, AI has moved up the agenda, and lot of clients have been talking to us about what AI means for their businesses, now and in the future.

This isn’t new technology to us. BJSS and SPARCK have invested heavily in cloud, data and AI over the past decade. But the excitement around these new tools has brought our design and technology teams even closer together.

Design thinking and creative minds have a lot to offer when things get complex and ambiguous. We have countless examples this year where our designers and techies have worked hand in hand to solve problems and deliver great value in a very short time.

Again, being realistic, we have to acknowledge that the AI revolution is also destabilising, and causing some anxiety among people who wonder what the downsides might be. One way we’re dealing with that is by talking about it, in the open. That tension and debate makes us stronger.

I also really enjoyed a blogpost by Paul Bailey, SPARCK’s brilliant head of design, on the power of optimism as we navigate the permacrisis:

“History shows that when human beings come together, they have an incredible ability to overcome what seem like insurmountable problems... Human qualities like resilience, curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking enable us to imagine better futures and create meaningful change.”

Read the rest of Paul's blog post

Is the era of design thinking over?

The year the Design Council’s double diamond turned 20 also gave rise to the question of whether design thinking is now a thing of the past.

At SPARCK, we certainly still see that design thinking has its place and is a really important approach to solving problems and delivering value.

Clients now expect design thinking as part of a digital delivery. But 20 years on it’s no longer a novelty – and they expect us to deliver value, fast. And that has always been our stated aim: we design to deliver.

Going back to AI, it’s easy to be excited about the tech but we need to not lose sight of the “Why?” What is the value, what are the risks, why are we doing this? Should we?

Design thinking, and a commitment to the principle of human-centred design (HCD), helps us engage with new technologies without ever losing the focus on the user, and the impact the innovation might have on society.

Rapid and responsible innovation has been a major theme in 2023 and will continue to be critically important in 2024.

Read Terry Dixon's blog post about the Double Diamond at 20

Designing for complex futures

The economy also introduced a lot of pressure and complexity in 2023. This sense of instability underlined the importance of planning ahead, and confronting the possibility that things might not go to plan.

In 2023, under the leadership of Matt Mullan, we grew our futures thinking capability and activity, creatively engaging with future scenarios and the “What if…?" This is highly strategic, imaginative, inspiring work.

Learn more about futures thinking in Matt's blog post

Having used the techniques of futures thinking internally with leaders from SPARCK and BJSS, and had our eyes opened, we were able to go to some of our larger clients and say: “You need to try this.”

Through interactive workshops we were able to help them think about the future in new ways, and therefore make better decisions, now. The feedback has been incredible and we’ll be doing more of this in 2024.

Several of our clients have also embraced design and are building it into their core operating model. We have helped them do this in ways that are proven, and that scale, increasing the capability of their teams and “teaching them to fish”.

You can read more about that in this post from Simon Penny, who has done some great work on design capability building in the past year.

Futures thinking and capability building are both highly relevant in the current economy, amid the rise of generative AI and other technologies that will radically change the world.

We continue to grow and deliver

First, let’s look at some hard numbers for 2023:

  • 44 clients.
  • More than 85 projects.
  • 50 new colleagues across the US, UK, EU and Australia.
  • 138 SPARCK team members in total.

It is a real privilege to work on projects that impact millions of peoples’ lives every day, including:

  • Customer experience (CX) improvements for Specsavers.
  • Capability building for the UK Hydrographic Office.
  • Service design and user-centred design at the Driver Standards Agency (DVSA).
  • Rapid innovation for a hospital charity.
  • A service redesign for a major airline.

As we go into 2024, we’re also, for example, doing some innovative proof-of-concept work using computer vision and AI to help people who are blind or have vision loss to enjoy better experiences when shopping.

And of course, we continue to work with our public sector partners like NHS, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Met Office, and many others, designing critical national services that help people with their health, finances, and everyday life.

Explore case studies of SPARCK design projects on the BJSS website

The 2023 SPARCK Academy

One of the best things that happened this year was another round of our Academy, offering career changers and those early in their careers a way into the design industry.

The process was designed in collaboration with our engineering colleagues from BJSS. The Sparck contingent was recruited with a focus on user research, though with plenty of flexibility for how their careers might develop.

Rebecca Laycock, who led on the Academy for SPARCK, wrote about the Academy recruitment process for our blog:

“Do you know how many people applied for the eight available places on the SPARCK Academy this year? An amazing 335... It seems funny now but before the process kicked off, I was worried we wouldn’t get enough applicants... One key driver of inequality and exclusion is the requirement to be ‘in the know’ to find opportunities. I really wanted to avoid that and make sure the broadest range of people (a) heard about the Academy and (b) felt welcome to apply.”

You can read another take on the process from Chloe Wybrant, one of our new Academy graduates, who describes the process as “empowering”. That’s what I like to hear!

Culture of creativity

The key to our culture is creativity and learning. We want to always be better, to learn new skills, and discuss stimulating ideas.

This happens all the time in practice meetups, fireside chat sessions, lunch-and-learns sessions, and all sorts of other forums.

This year, we structured our learning activity around themes, including wellbeing, progression and, most recently, AI. Our AI quarter included a bunch of talks and workshops, with guest speakers educating us, and challenging us to think deeper.

We also mobilised the futures thinking approach I mentioned above to run a series of ‘AI jams’, getting people together across BJSS offices to work together on big problems over pizzas and drinks.

We’ve also committed to learning and working in the open, sharing ideas and insights with the communities we are part of, not least through our growing library of content. Some highlights include:

We have also been on the road, hosting and contributing to events.

For example, Paul Bailey has been a key player in Service Designers Connect, a regular meetup of service designers at Nottingham Trent University.

Anne Dhir has delivered her brilliant talk on “killing” services at multiple events, including Agile on the Beach, and Kerrie Hughes has also been sharing her equally wonderful talk about the importance of emotion in designing customer experiences.

As well as speaking, SPARCK people have also been attending events and sharing what they learned. Charné Tromp was at UX Scotland, for example, and Annike Leick had a great time at the Behaviour and Design conference.

Looking forward

I have no doubt 2024 will bring more turmoil and disruption, and it will certainly continue to be a tough market.

But we are well placed to continue growing, just like we did this year.

We will continue to listen to our clients, keep an eye on the future, and combine our technology and design expertise deliver value to our clients, at pace and scale, every day.

2024 will be exciting, too, for sure. There is so much to be curious and optimistic about.

Written by Rasmus Koefoed-Jespersen - Head of SPARCK