In the beginning was the City of Melbourne’s Open Innovation Competition on Accessibility. I put a post out on social media to see who was interested in forming a team with me, and some friends and strangers said yes.

And so we formed a team. 

Our team took a multi-step process to identifying and designing a solution to enter into the competition.

We started by brainstorming problem areas we had personally encountered across the CBD. This ranged from being unable to find toilets to being unable to hear tour guides and tram driver jokes. Our ultimate problem point was finding a venue where we could all have lunch together and be comfortable. We could not think of more than a handful of places that ticked all our boxes (mobility, auditory, visual and cognitive accessibility). For us, this was the biggest opportunity in the city that we were missing out on.

We used a double diamond design process, starting off by exploring the issues that underpinned this problem. We spoke to restaurant managers and owners (Miznon on Hardware Lane and Foglia di Fico on Spencer Street) about what their barriers and motivators were. We dug deep into the data sets provided, and looked at news articles and research reports around the world. We identified a single core problem – that the hospitality sector lacked knowledge about disability accessibility.

From there we brainstormed multiple options we could take to solve this particular issue. We also tested our ideas with a contact within the Sandhill Road group (which owns multiple pubs within Melbourne, including the Waterside Hotel, Flinders Street and the Garden State Hotel, Flinders Lane).

And that was how we landed on our idea.

We sent our submission into the competition, and gnawed our fingernails waiting for a response. Finally, we found out we made it into the finals!

The finals were a nerve wracking experience because we had to pitch our idea to a judging panel and a large audience. It was also incredibly fun and the energy in the room was revitalising. 

Guess who made it to third place, winning the $3000 prize and a workshop with Fjord Accenture? 

Since then, the team has changed, the name of the idea has changed, and the way we are approaching the idea has changed.

But one thing remains the same – our desire to create a more accessible Melbourne.