Designing a co-design workshop
The why, the what and the how
Why did we start planning?
In a recent project at frontìra, a Budapest-based strategic design consultancy, we decided to learn more about payment digitalisation by organising two co-design workshops with potential customers. The first workshop took place in Szeged, a small town in Hungary, while the other workshop one week later in Budapest, the capital, and recruitment for the project was managed by the same company.
What is Co-design about?
Co-design workshops are a space for “creative collaboration”. It is rooted in participatory design and user-centered design, and aims to involve stakeholders in the early phases of the design process — often referred to as “fuzzy front end”. The level of involvement can vary from informing the project to having the role ‘user-as-a-partner’ in designing, based on the idea that everyone can be creative. The emphasis is more on designing with the people rather than designing for the people. It is a tool for discovery and exploring opportunities rather than producing final solutions, and aims to start discussion among stakeholders, guide design decisions, for example by building concepts, which informs what should be designed and for whom. Usually design practitioners facilitate co-design workshops by guiding participants through the design process, and leveraging their expertise in the given topic.
What did we want to achieve?
Our objective for the workshops was to better understand customer needs regarding online payments. Additionally, instead of involving only designers and experts in the project, we were curious how actual users would improve their experiences and create a new concept. For this, we used fast-paced activities to generate ideas and construct rough concepts through prototypes. Beforehand, we had also conducted several interviews and we wanted to validate the insights collected through them.
How did we do it?
While organizing the workshop, our intention was to include quick activities, to cover ground, and get results fast. This is done to push boundaries and generate diverse ideas from people with different backgrounds.
The 2-hour workshop had the following, jam-packed agenda:
We started the workshop with a small activity to break the ice, unleash a can-do attitude and get participants in the mood for stepping outside of their comfort zone and daily routines. In pairs, they take the roles of a superhero and its sidekick. The sidekick brings up a problem (“Superhero, superhero, the city run out of water!”), while the superhero punches in the air, shouts “I know the solution…!” and responds with any idea from the top of their mind (“We will collect all the rain in huge water tanks!”). Then, the sidekick responds to the proposed solution with a problem (“Superhero, superhero, we don’t have enough water tanks!”) and the superhero responds with a solution again — and so on, and so on…
Next, we invited participants to describe one day of their lives. Three layers facilitated immersion and reflection on their emotions, how they felt like and why at certain points of their day.
3 Experience bank
Participants had to recall five good and five bad experiences they had with a company relevant for our project. Our goal was to quickly unload people’s experiences and avoid focusing on negative experiences during the rest of the workshop.
4. Introduction to the story
Facilitators explained the context of what we are about to explore through the workshop. We positioned the setting in the near future, not too far from today, where it is not possible to pay with cash and no paper bills exist anymore due to the increased expenses (of trees for example).
We used Story Cubes as conversation starters about the imaginary paperless world, and also to break the ice and let creativity flowing. Participants had to throw with three dice and create a story using each as 1) the problem, 2) the solution and 3) the effect.
6. World mapping
To map stakeholders, problems and their relations, we gave participants different coloured and shaped papers.
7. Crazy Six
During Crazy Six (or sometimes Crazy Eight), participants ideate individually and have 6x40 seconds to jot down a rough idea before jumping to the next one. The benefit of this activity is that it is well documented — on a paper, which was previously divided into 6 or 8 panels through folding.
8. Wild card
We introduced wild cards (modifying situations that bring uncertainty into a situation) for narrowing the problem.
9. Crazy Six
We repeated the idea generation but with a focus on the narrowed problem.
10. Remapping
Participants were putting ideas back on the map to place them in context.
11. Prototyping
Using Lego bricks, plasticine and other tools, participants had to create prototypes of the solutions they included on the maps. According to McLuhan’s tetrad theory, by transforming from one medium to another, the emphasis shifts from one aspects to others, changing the nature of the subject:one aspect might be more intense or enriched, while another changes or disappears completely.
12. Presentation + Feedback
Finally, the two teams presented their concepts to each other and participants gave quick feedback individually.
So how did it go?
Even though we had almost the same agenda to start with, we witnessed quite the opposite atmosphere from the two workshops. Certainly, there are demographic differences between the participants but we were surprised how characters of people affected each other.
If you have any questions, drop us a line! Let us know if you have used these methods, we would love to hear about your experiences and thoughts.
Acknowledgements
Co-authored by Gyöngyi Fekete (Product Designer) and Krisztián Komándi (Consultant) from frontìra, a strategic innovation studio where we work together with companies internationally to innovate their services and products for their customers to stay on top of their games.
Thanks to our colleague László Ruszty for co-facilitating the workshops and contributing to this article.
References
Sanders, E. B.-N. & Stappers, P. J. (2008) Co-creation and the new landscapes of design, CoDesign, 4:1, 5–18, DOI: 10.1080/15710880701875068
Sanders, E. B.-N. & Stappers, P. J. (2014a) Convivial toolbox: generative research for the front end of design. Amsterdam: BIS.
Manzini, E. (2015) Design, when everybody designs: An introduction to design for social innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mattelmäki, T. & Sleeswijk Visser, F. (2011). Lost in Co-X: Interpretations of co-design and co-creation. 4th World Conference on Design Research (IASDR 2011). Delft, The Netherlands.
