Design Principals, individual case study, Hyper Island UX upskill program
Design a creative workshop to solve a major problem, using design thinking tools
Background
During Covid pandemic the culture in Sweden had to close down or partly close.
Since I have been working with the beautiful art hall Artipelag as a freelancer for several years, I felt an urgent need to ideate on solutions for art halls in similar situations that had to close or partly close during the pandemic. I wanted to discover if the collective power in a workshop with digital design thinking tools, could find ideas to create a revenue stream even when the art hall was closed.
The challenge
Choose a major problem that needs to be solved.
Frame and formulate a problem statement.
Create a 30 min virtual workshop in Mural to help a team of 4 to start solving a big problem, applying digital design thinking, whilst providing an engaging experience.
The process & why
I find the fact that you diverge and converge within the two diamonds in the design thinking process most powerful. In this project it was actually done three times, first when empathizing and defining the problem statement, and then twice during the workshop. The second part of the second diamond was not included in the assignment, but I suggest a follow-up step after the workshop.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How might we help a Museum of Arts to create a COVID proof sustainable revenue stream when the Art Hall is closed.
The workshop
The purpose of the workshop was to find out if the collective power could generate ideas that would turn a main problem into future opportunities when applying Digital Design Thinking methods. Why design thinking? Because it has a human-centered approach and a designer’s toolkit that integrates the needs of people, the possibilities of technology and the requirements fo business success.
At the check-in I wanted the team to get a taste of the topic by drawing a quick selfie sketch to reveal their inner arty-party-soul and getting warm for the creative challenge.
This resulted in laughs and made the team relax.
The second part is important for creating a unified understanding of the problem that needs to be solved. I described the background, the why, the customer journey and the eco system – why people visit the art hall.
“In order to be irreplaceable,
one must always be different.”
— Coco Chanel, House of Chanel (Wheeler, 2012)
By starting the ideation with an energizing quote, the hope was to inspire the brainstorming activity. Individually zooming in during the ideation, to avoid being influenced by the group and bringing the mindset of a beginner to the session boradens the opportunities for unexpected solutions.
Result on the test run: 18 ideas in 6 minutes! Impressing!
The voting session resulted in two winners. No problem, I decided to go ahead with both diverse ideas! A quick fix in the Mural board!
Next step: “Yes, and…” The opportunity to empower innovation and creativity, and also take the ego out of the idea generation by encouraging the team to build on each other’s ideas is most powerful. One of my absolute favorite! The team got 16 new ideas in 6 minutes!
Time for validating and prioritizing the ideas on impact and cost of execution. This makes it easier to choose what idea to go ahead and prototype and test.
At check-out I wanted the participants to rate their experience on a scale.
SUMMERY
34 ideas in 30 minutes – validated & prioritized
The workshop was tested on 3 people at Hyper Island. I was impressed of the amount of ideas that was generated during the short time of 30 min. The ideas generated was diverse and creative. The second idea phase “yes, and…” where the participants build new on each others’ ideas is very powerful and takes away eventual signs of ego.
Before my test run I was afraid that it would be too complicated to both ideate on creative solutions and have the revenue stream in mind, but that worked brilliantly for this team!
LEARNINGS
Our industry leader, Ross, emphasized the value of testing early, which recognize as good advice to keep in mind for future projects. The 30 min length of the workshop was a challenge, but the feature with built in alarm clock in Mural helped.