Medium article GLOBAL GOALS JAM 2018

— this is a template for all teams participating in the #globalgoalsjam (www.globalgoalsjam.org)

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This is just an example, to provide you with some structure and inspiration. Feel free to adapt the tips to your own purposes, and if you want to write in your mother tongue, please do! The main goal of this article is to tell a story about your Jam and design experience: share your main learnings, advice, tips and tricks. Let’s fight design waste!

📸cover photo [choose a nice cover photo that summarises your project — could be of your prototype, process, team etc.]

Introduction: the context.

• First of all: why did you join a Jam? You can describe a little bit who your team is, what organisation is hosting the Jam, the reason you and your team are here. (and where are you by the way?)
• What goal and challenge did you work on? Maybe there are some resources you want to share or some extra context you want to explain to the reader
• Was your challenge brought in by a partner? Maybe you want to share a little on his/her organisation, and why they are part of a Jam or why they brought in the specific challenge.
• Maybe you want to include some images here that show the context you are working in?

The process

Give the reader an insight into your process. You can describe it per sprint, or zoom in on some key decisions or moments that shaped your Jam experience.
For example:

Sprint 1

What happened in Sprint 1? What tools did you pick, how did you work with them? What did you learn, which design decisions did you make and why?
What important learnings can others take from this?

Questions that can help with Sprint 1 in particular (you don’t have to answer them all, just see which one help you with your story!): On the challenge 🎯💡

• what was the initial challenge question, did you debrief / change it and why? How did that go?
• who are stakeholders involved in your problem and why?
• any best practices for this phase of Experiencing the Problem? Any Do’s or Don’ts?
• 📸 🎥 share some pictures that show you or your team diving into the problem, or even a video if you have!

Sprint 2 (or 3, 4)

You can do the same for the steps taking in sprint 2–4. make sure however that it doesn’t become a repetition of the story; be sure to take your reader along in interesting, surprising, challenging, or frustrating moments. What is valuable to share from your process? Don’t just write something that sums up things after each other.

Questions that might help:
Sprint 2 — on your ideas 🦄

• how was the process of brainstorming coming up with ideas?
• what helped to get into a creative mindset? What hindered the team?
• how did you move from a lot of ideas to selecting a couple or a final one? here you can share also some ideas that didn’t make it to the end, but might be interesting for the reader to know, for example.

Sprint 3 — on making it real 🚀

• how did you make your idea tangible? What was hard about this phase, what was easy?
• explain your choice of prototype. 🛠 if you have any material of your prototype (photo/video 📸 🎥), now is the part to show it! You can also link to youtube if your prototype video is there for example.

Sprint 4 — on sharing and communicating your idea ⚖️

• how did you test your idea? How did you find people to test it with?
• what did you learn from testing/refining? Did (or would) you change anything about your concept? Why?
• 📸 🎥 maybe you have pictures or videos of the process of testing? some reactions of users?
• if you have any quotes or feedback of users, a nice way to highlight them is to use the quote option like this (select your text and click “ ):

“I found that the idea really blablablabla” — John Doe, sustainability expert

• how did you share/pitch your idea? What were the reactions or questions from the audience? (if your pitch was filmed, you can link here to the full recording for example)
• what would be a first next step to take now? (if you uploaded your idea to the platform of 1% Club you can also refer your reader to go there and contribute, for example)

General learnings

This is the part where you can reflect on the Jam as a whole, share what you have learned (from the process, the toolkit, the team, the challenge, your idea etc.). If you would do it again, what would you do differently? Any advice for the next edition? What do you need to continue with your concept, and what would you do to have it create tangible, short term impact? What are questions that remain unanswered?

Closing: Call to action, contact details, references

Don’t forget to include a call to action to your reader (be it to reflect on certain issues, help you with a next step on the platform, or reach out for knowledge, network or suggestions). Be sure to include how/where they can contact you if they want to. And maybe you want to use this part to thank certain people or refer to further readings, resources or activities.

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