In Finland, The Ministry of the Environment guidelines on safety and accessibility of built environment will be updated soon. What new could they bring in along the update? Shifting Gear is a project aiming to assist The Ministry of the Environment in supplying guidelines with material that opens up the need behind the regulations. Provided with the ‘why’ in the regulations, planners will have a better chance to empathise with the final user. This concept proposal focuses on changing the process of guideline development, opening it up to more active citizen participation. Current ministry guidelines are widely misread on various stages of building process. In the end final user may get hurt and businesses might lose money on unnecessary municipal restrictions. To guarantee the new guidelines to be as clear as possible ministry may focus on two simultaneous processes: development of the guideline per se and reinforcing partnership network via the dialog with the actors. There is a need of not only ministry reaching out to the publics, but general common understanding in between process participants. The actors will avoid fear of change, if it is clear why the change is suggested. This is important since to proceed any projects need internal ministry approval, and this approval is only granted when support of the publics is evident. Many of the problems of current regulations are already well known in within the Ministry and the work on improving the situation is going to take place. The idea is to create guidelines that are elaborate enough to be understood without a need for further interpretation. Shifting gear is a concept of the possible communication strategy that allows The Ministry of Environment to produce valid guidelines independently from regulation writing process. Proposal embraces the idea of creating a long term strategic partnership the wider groups of actors. Particular attention in the project was paid to quick prototyping of solutions and rendering systematic vision of the field. Traditional process of communication that Ministry executes is missing the link in between the government and publics. The Ministry of Environment is seen as a main client in this concept proposal. Information input and output from the Ministry itself were chosen as points of intervention with the major intention of suggesting an alternative to monologue style of legislative affairs. Alongside with this procedural change in within the Ministry is being suggested. You can read more in http://shiftinggearproject.tumblr.com/

1. In this presentation you will see how ministry communication works around access. issues today, how regulations and guidelines impact the end result of
building construction and what ministry might need in order to get better productivity.
a process to accessibility guidelines

2. The Ministry of Evironment guidelines are going to be updated soon. R&G are the tool for the ministry to communicate with builders and publics to
improve the built environment and bring in safety and accessibility.

3. People participating in the process understand the role of R&G differently. What you see here is the regulations coming from ministry, municipality, NGO's
and commercial producers

4. Because of this misunderstanding the end physical solutions today meet regulations but it is not good enough, there is a lot of information missing and
only the bare minimum is done.

5. This is a common case around the world. Here is a NY regulation for venders that was redesigned. Better understanding reduced the faults therefore
reduces the fines and allowed street sellers to stay in business meeting the law.

6. There is an opportunity for improvement in the guideline itself and the way the guidelines are made. Today we will follow the chapter on safety regulation
to prevent falling and misstepping in the stare cases. What new could we bring to the system?

7. In order to have such change you need partners, and the partner in this study case is the Ministry. When ministry is working is working on the guidelines
there is information coming in and out.
OUR PARTNER IS
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8. This is how the ministry impact is realized today. First the regulations are done for construction companies, they build the building and public receives it as
a final user.
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9. This way communications coming from the ministry is linear. It is a monologue
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Source: The Brand Gap - Marty Neumeier

10. What if it is a dialog
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Source: The Brand Gap - Marty Neumeier
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Source: The Brand Gap - Marty Neumeier

11. The product of the ministry are regulations and guidelines that today perceived as bonding. A new set of guidelines is released every 10 years today.
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OUTPUT
Source: The Brand Gap - Marty Neumeier
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12. What if we could separate regulation and guidelines and break the link of perception. Could in this case the guidelines react on changes sooner and be
released more often.
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WHAT IF?WHAT IF?
Source: The Brand Gap - Marty Neumeier
OUTPUTINPUTINPUT

13. This is how the processes go in construction now, people included in different stages and never meeting all together. Our challengeis to establish
communication among all the actors. The most beneficial part open up the process of guideline development for public participation.
CHALLENGE

14. Work with the ministry begins with separating regulations and guidelines from each other and starting a dialog in between the actors and the government.
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15. What if we could connect actors like this

16. So the trust will be build in between publics and governments as well as in between gov. and pro enablers. Our suggestion is to target these three actors
separately keeping in mind their way of communication.
TRUST

17. What we did to initiate a dialog with citizens is a sticker campaign called #iisimeno. Participants can mark accessibility spot physically and share the
experience online.

18. Participants of our campaign showing in a positive, negative or suggestive way the changes that could be happening in your environment. This is quick and
easy for any group of citizens to participate. It allowed us to work with seniors and severely disabled wheelchair users, as well as with the regular publics.

19. And the use of digital media makes it common for the public to access the results of such campaign. You do not have to be a user of any particular social
media platform, when you use a hashtag. As well as you do not have to invest any money in media support.
#IISIMENO

20. This is how #iisimeno fills in communication gap via connecting actors across different processes. To the new guideline the campaign brings stories
allowing to grow empathy and understanding of the reasons behind the law.

21. Another dialog initiated was with professional enablers: such as regular architects, accessibility experts, municipal planners. We asked them to read
guideline about stare case safety out loud and comment on possible interpretations.

22. These comments help to develop the layout design for the new guideline that you see later in the presentation. There is a chance to involve all the actors in
helping to make the guides as readable as possible.

23. In order to initiate the dialog with the government. We developed a game board tool, where people from the ministry or municipality go through the board
and describe each step themselves, saying which actors go with them there. Inside the game board one can in an easy way express the fears on each of the
steps and envision compelling future. Using this map you can see that the process has its beginning and the end.

24. The comments received through the game board give insight into the actual process. Any complex public sector organization (like Aalto building planning
office, for example) can also make use out of this method.

25. We spoke about the dialog and now we will talk about the guideline development.
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26. When you build a new guideline with common understanding you build trust in between prof. enablers and government even stronger.
TRUST

27. In order to develop guideline for better understanding you need to consider reordering the layout and content revision. Today guidelines address what you
do, how you do it and do not mention why is it so.
WHAT
WHY?
HOW

28. What we did first was rearranging the guideline layout physically by cutting out and and placing back the
elements in the way that allows you to read easily.

29. To include the "why's" (the actual reasons) into the guideline, we suggest tangible storytelling method. Which will allow the professional to decide
themselves upon better building solutions. We got the "why's" from dialog with professionals and publics.

30. When we took all those things together our first prototype of the guideline was ready. New regs are gonna be in a separate book, and to accompany them
this prototype can be used.

31. So you might think that the processes go one after another in time.
1 2 3
TODAY TOMOROW AFTER

32. in fact the processes are simultaneous.It depends on your situation at work where you begin and how you continue.
CHALLENGE
DIALOGUE
GUIDELINE
DEVELOPMENT

33. The processes we suggest are blending into what is already working in the ministry, which is workshops. Today the workshops with all of the stakeholders
are happening to plan the ministry papers.
CHALLENGE
DIALOGUEWORKSHOP
GUIDELINE
DEVELOPMENT

34. In order to reach a compromise between all of the interested parties, you need to repeat each of the processes few times.
FINDING
COMPROMISE
CHALLENGE
DIALOGUEWORKSHOP
GUIDELINE
DEVELOPMENT

35. Finding compromise means getting an agreement among the interested parties about what do you take in consideration from the data you collected and
where you apply it. In our experience: Content from guideline reasons goes from iisimeno, layout suggestion come from the perception comparison and the
roadmap method is connected to planning. Note that the only thing that iterates is a guideline not the law, so we can release new guidelines more
FINDING
COMPROMISE
DIALOGUE
GUIDELINE
DEVELOPMENT

36. Thank you

37. To open up the conversations, just to remind you this is how communication takes place after the concept is implemented