A pattern emerges

We’ve been doing some brisk soul-searching at Nesta to really figure out what it is we can offer people.

At an away day last week all Nesta staff were asked to bring a picture which for them summed up what Nesta does. Here’s an example of one of the slightly chaotic posters we created:

A turbulent Nesta mindmap

(Ruth had the best explanation with her Transformers picture: “We may look a bit boring at first glance, but we can transform into something cool – honestly”).

All this fed neatly into my website discovery process, as I could start to map what Nesta thought of itself with what our brilliant non-Nesta card sorters thought of what we actually produced.

Over the past week we’ve had some really helpful and creative people who have given up their lunch hour to help me and Sara (my trusty deputy) figure out the Nesta information puzzle.

Card sorters gallery of fame

Matt Clifford and Alice Bentinck and their team from Entrepreneur First were brilliant, and slightly ruthless, in sorting out the Nesta brain. Alice at one point shouted out: “You guys do a lot of really random stuff!”. Exactly.

James Lush from Biochemistry Society, Alice Clay from City of London Festival and Peter Feltham from Ethos Valuable Outcomes were great at piecing things together, and coming up with creative solutions for the IA – especially the idea of a random button that summons up a random article from the archive.

And finally design researcher Svenja Bickert, artist Carys Davies and creative professional Dina Gitziou found some interesting patterns in what we did and grouped things by looking at what outputs and take aways we produce.

The card sort, correlated

I promised you I’d share everything with you as I went in this project, so here is the final correlated Excel spreadsheet showing how all the cards got sorted into standardised categories. (WARNING: I found standardising is the hardest part of a card sort – don’t oversimplify your categories if you can help it).

Let me know what patterns you see:

Card name	Projects	About Us	Advice	News and Features	Resources	Events	Reports	Apply
Things we are currently funding	29%	57%						14%
Skills Review	14%				57%		29%
Mentoring programme for creative businesses	43%		29%			14%		14%
Destination Local	86%				14%
Your ideas		57%	43%
Impact Investment Fund – ageing	43%	29%						29%
Ways to get assistance		43%	43%			14%
Find out what we do		100%
People-Powered Health	86%						14%
Creative Councils	71%	29%
Press Office		71%	29%
Gallery of top 50 social innovators	14%	14%		57%
Predictions for the future	14%			57%			14%
Cycling challenge	86%	14%
Plan I	43%						29%
High growth firms	43%						43%
Collaborative Consumption	14%				71%
People in our organisation		100%
Information about us		100%
Innovation in Giving Fund	86%	14%
Digital Education	100%
Innovation news				71%	14%
Do-it-yourself guide to innovation	14%				71%
Opportunities to work with us		57%	29%					14%
Opportunities to work for us		71%	29%
Areas of expertise		100%
Current projects	71%	29%
Past projects	43%	29%			14%
Registration for Superhuman event				14%		71%
Venue hire		86%	14%
Newsletter		71%	29%
Join us		71%	29%
Find us		100%
Feedback		57%	29%					14%
John Whatmore’s blog		14%		57%	14%
Partner organisations		86%				14%
Innovation report				14%	29%		29%
India’s innovation system	14%			14%	14%		43%
Our mission		100%
News about innovation				71%	14%
Success stories	29%	29%		14%	29%
In converstaion with Mike Lynch	17%			33%		17%
Advanced prosthetics event	14%			14%		57%
Innovation in Labour market programmes	57%			14%	14%		14%
Big Green Challenge project blog	86%				14%
Expert’s view				71%	14%
Creative Enterprise Toolkit	29%				71%
Fashion Toolkit	29%				71%
Radical Efficiency booklet	14%				86%
Trustee biography		100%
CEO biography		100%
Impact Investment Fund – young people	67%	17%						17%
Nesta in Manchester		29%				71%
Hot Topics						83%
In conversation with Stephen Emmott	14%			43%		14%
Working papers		14%			43%		43%
Co-production catalogue	57%				29%		14%
Neighbourhood Challenge summary report	43%				43%		14%
Infratechnologies report	14%			14%	29%		43%

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