Remote Innovation Workshops
Yes, another blog post about making things remote…
With so many things moving online at the moment, we’re having to move our innovation workshops into the remote bubble too. There are many blog posts and forums currently discussing this, but what I thought I would share today is the existing format of our innovation workshops and how each of these stages could work online.
1. Problem Ideation
Coming up with problems around a specific area is the first stage of our innovation process. We ask participants to write down, individually, on sticky notes as many problems or issues as they can relating to the workshop theme.
Before: Write down on a sticky note.
After: You could still ask participants to write down their problems on sticky notes, and then send photographs, or you could ask them to spam the chat alongside the call with their problems.
2. Categorisation
Once all the problems have been created, we then ask the participants to categorise their problems, when in person, this normally involved asking them to come up with problem areas/categories as a team and then to sort all their problems under these categories, physically with the sticky notes.
Before: Combine and categorise the sticky notes.
After: Here we can do a similar activity but perhaps with a Trello board or similar software — maybe even a shared spreadsheet. This will hopefully just be a digital version of the sticky note piles!
3. Solution Ideation
The aim of this area of the innovation workshops, is to allow participants to ideate and come up with solutions to actual problems. Innovation can take many forms and come from many inspirations such as new technologies, something to make life easier or to fix a problem. In the past workshops we have run, it has seemed that using problems as a starting point does lead to all three of these innovations being created.
Before: Individual ideation on sticky notes using the list of categorised problems as prompts.
After: As before, ask participants to use sticky notes then send photographs, or spam the chat again.
4. Consolidating and Ranking Ideas
The next stage involves consolidating ideas (as participants are working form the same list, sometimes they will have come up with similar ideas — so it is good to merge these, and flag as being popular) and then ranking them between “really helpful” and “would be nice”. Remember — there are no bad ideas!
Before: A lot of rearranging of sticky notes.
After: Instead of this being a physical activity, focus more on the discussion. Ask the participants to discuss each idea and then to select their top three.
5. Design the Favourites
Now the participants have selected their top three ideas, ask them to design these.
Before: This would normally again be on a large sheet of combined paper, where they all grab a pen and start designing.
After: You now have a choice between group design and individual design. For group design, you may want to use an online design tool, such as Figma, but not all participants may know how to use this. There is also the option of giving participants one minute for each of the three ideas to draw themselves in front of them how it would work.
However, this design takes place, have the participants present their ideas to you, and then the next steps of innovation can begin…
Practicalities in Numbers
Other blogs such this one by Figma, have suggested that break out rooms are a solution to help aid more focused discussion, however, many student-written publications have written about their dislike for breakout rooms, so these will be avoided. And instead, to focus the discussion instead of having between 6 and 10 participants per group, we will run more groups with only 3–4 participants.
