I first led this co-creation workshop with Chris Baum at UX Week 2017 in San Francisco, CA.
Description
Today’s complex design challenges require that designers be able to effectively collaborate in real-time with people from diverse backgrounds and experiences. When facilitating co-creation sessions, designers need to be able to “hold the center line” and see and hear clearly, free of preconceived notions and ideas. This workshop teaches practical techniques to help designers acquire the skills needed to successfully co-create with others to generate breakthrough ideas.
Topics Covered
Setting the stage
-
The meeting space as a three-dimensional, shared scratchpad
-
The importance of context to creative thinking
-
The importance of people to the process
-
The tools: Markers, stickies, projectors, etc.
-
Ideal layout for the space
Capturing and generating knowledge
-
Speed vs. accuracy
-
Choosing the right level of granularity
-
Choosing the right words to represent concepts
-
Formulating open-ended questions
-
Conceptual modeling
Creating an opening for insight
-
Interpersonal dynamics
-
Accommodating humans — when, how much, what?
-
Technology — when, how much, what?
-
Establishing a rhythm for the session
-
Sharing learnings with people who weren’t in the room
Workshop Exercises
-
Live capture and synthesis of conversation
-
Managing sketching sessions and capturing the stories behind sketches
-
Facilitating conversations
-
Observing the dynamics in the room
Participant Take-Aways
-
You’ll learn how to run a co-creation session
-
You’ll improve your collaboration and facilitation skills
-
You’ll find out how to carry the momentum from the co-creation session into your day-to-day practice
You May Also Like:
- Dec 19, 2018
Goldilocks Workshop Spaces
Successful design workshops call for various things. For one, you must pick the right focus: select problems to work on that are relevant to participants and at the right level. Speaking of which, successful workshops also include the right participants: a good mix of folks at different levels of the organization, degrees of expertise, etc. Another important component to successful workshops is the space in which they happen. That’s what I’ll focus on here.
- Jul 20, 2018
Switching Modalities
Whenever I’m in the process of working on something, I find it useful to switch modalities. By this, I mean going from one way of working to another; seeing the work from a different perspective.
- Jan 30, 2017
From Strategy to Structure (and Back Again)
The products and services you design should address the needs of your organization and of society as a whole. As a designer of information environments, you need to think beyond the user interface to the underlying structures that bring order and coherence to the artifacts people interact with.