As well as engaging users through the design and implementation of the project, you will need a way for all users and stakeholders to provide feedback. Complaints and feedback mechanisms will help ensure that you are engaging users and target groups and generating and receiving reactions, comments and criticisms. This is a critical mechanism for observing humanitarian standards and principles.

Humanitarian organisations have been using complaints and feedback mechanisms as part of ‘communicating with communities’ work for over a decade, and it’s vital for innovation pilots as well. Standard feedback and complaints mechanisms can be directly applied to innovation pilots.

We recommend using ALNAP’s ‘Practitioner Guide to Effective Feedback in Humanitarian Contexts’ to establish your feedback mechanism. This guidance is based on the results of an action research project that looked at different agencies’ experiences in setting up and using feedback mechanisms in operational humanitarian contexts.

The guide will help you to think through the design of the mechanism, how to set up appropriate channels, and how to analyse feedback, as well as how to develop a ‘feedback culture.’ You may also want to look at the DFID-funded feedback mechanisms reports and guidance.