Yesterday I was at the DIY Innovation workshop with Echo and Nesta where Theo Keane shared the story behind producing Nesta’s DIY Innovation Toolkit. Then we split into groups to give the toolkits a go.

I've known about the DIY Toolkit for quite a while now and have used similar approaches and some of the tools in my own projects, like the famous Business Model Canvas, Persona, and Experience Map. There’s also of course the Human-Centered Design Toolkit by IDEO.

Though I've always known about these great toolkits, I realised how little I was really making use of them to approach challenges from different perspectives. It was such a great reminder for me to really take advantage of them more regularly in my work to solve problems and simply make meetings more fun and productive!

With the help of lovely facilitator Gill from Upstarter and Maya from Darling Pictures, we worked on Evidence Planning tool for A Good Day. I've never used this particular tool before, and it was incredibly insightful. It requires us to really visualise the systematic change our idea can bring, and by doing that, I had even more ideas on how we can position the proposition to truly have the positive impact we ultimately want to bring. As Theo rightly pointed out to us, these are also the questions our potential investors will ask, and we’ll be much more prepared to answer those difficult questions now we've thought of them first.

Here’s what we came up with in about 15 minutes during the event:

We’ll definitely spend a bit more time to do this again and explore what other tools can bring us. Have you tried the DIY Innovation Toolkit before? What’s your favourite tool? I would love to hear from you!

If you want to know more about how we approached the Evidence Planning tool, you can always tweet me at @julietchen