Charitable designs for life

Phil Shoesmith and Said Dajani from the Alzheimer's Society are implementing the winning design

Like most charities, the Alzheimer’s Society has a tight IT budget, and new projects must often compete for scarce resources.

Last year, new media manager Said Dajani entered DesignIT, a competition run by Microsoft and supported by Computing, that invites IT professionals to submit designs for new IT systems to address a need in their chosen charity.

Dajani won the prize - £15,000 to design an application that helps people suffering from senile dementia by collating digital content into an on-screen representation of the patient’s life.

There are more than 100 different types of dementia, with Alzheimer’s disease the most common type, affecting almost 417,000 people in the UK.

“We had been thinking for a while about the field of dementia care reminiscent therapy ­ basically, putting life into context for people suffering from dementia,” says Dajani.

“The idea was to use photos, videos, emails, texts and other material into a digital scrapbook to make a timeline, usually in conjunction with that person’s friends and family, to be used mostly when the person enters a care home.”

The system is still being developed, but has already undergone tests at Microsoft’s offices involving both people suffering from dementia and their carers.

Dajani is now assessing a number of different companies that may like to use the software, and plans to include a web site that will help family members and friends share their timeline content.

“We would like to have a beta version out in time to demonstrate at this year’s competition,” says Dajani, who will be one of the judges.

“But the most important thing is to get it right. We also hope to use the Alzheimer Society’s online resources, such as its active bulletin board and forum used by 5,000 members, to get user feedback.”

Winning the prize was a bonus, as limited funds are generally allocated to must-have applications, such as a new content management system or intranet.

“The Alzheimer’s Society has so many competing demands,” says Dajani. “There are always lots of other key priorities for new media development, and it would have ended up as something we would like to do, but not necessarily something that would get done.”

The biggest challenges for Dajani involve structuring the application to interact with third-party web sites and photo-sharing sites, and building a simple to use interface that enables all family members and friends ­ no matter what their age ­ to contribute to the scrapbook.

As well as Microsoft, Dajani was helped by the Alzheimer Society’s own IT department, headed by Phil Shoesmith, which caters for the needs of about 1,500 staff, many of them volunteers spread across 250 branch offices.

“We are essentially a Microsoft shop, because Microsoft runs a good scheme for charities which means the licensing is not as expensive,” says Shoesmith.

“Also, our existing user skillset is based around standard Microsoft applications and the benefits of migrating away from those are not clear enough to justify invoking the costs.”

Shoesmith is working on a number of other projects for the Alzheimer’s Society, as well as bedding in a new content management system, Jadu, that offers the same interface for both internet and intranet access.

“The advantage is that we can use the same vendor for support and deliver web-based communications to volunteers at 250 branch offices,” he says.

Most of the software in use at the Alzheimer’s Society is off the shelf, rather than bespoke. But the IT department still has work to do in building application interfaces and consolidating email use.

“Staff have historically had web email accounts, such as Yahoo or Hotmail, but we are moving everyone to a centralised personal information management system,” says Shoesmith.

“We are also looking to commission a customer relationship management system to help with fundraising.”

Apply to DesignIT 2008 - How to enter your IT design for charity

Now in its third year, Microsoft UK’s DesignIT 2008 competition aims to help a UK charity by encouraging IT professionals to design a system that addresses a specific IT problem within that charity.

The winner gets financial assistance from Microsoft, plus the software giant’s consultancy and development expertise, to help turn the idea into a real product.
They also get the satisfaction of applying their knowledge and skills to help out a worthwhile cause, and develop an IT system that would otherwise be unlikely to get off the ground for financial reasons.

For 2008, Microsoft DesignIT has teamed up with four leading UK charities, Global Action Plan, Leonard Cheshire Disability, Fauna and Flora International and the NSPCC.

Each charity has suggested a problem they would like to see addressed, although entries are not restricted to these problems or these charities. IT professionals can enter designs for any charity they choose and solve any problem they wish.
The winner will be chosen by public vote and Microsoft UK will invest £15,000 towards implementing the winning system design. The four runners-up will each receive £1,000-worth of Microsoft software. In addition, the top five entries will receive a free ticket to Microsoft’s IT Forum 2008 conference in Barcelona.

To enter DesignIT visit: www.microsoft.com/uk/designit