Course Description
Open Lab – Re-designing Collaboration
Our work environments are seeing massive changes. How can we adapt our collaboration inside and outside the workplace to be successful, human, and sustainable? How might we be able to shape the future of collaboration?
This new Open Lab format offers a playful space to practice your design thinking and design doing skills in a low-stakes environment. In this prototype of a regular series of open labs looking at different challenges, our first Open Lab will look at “(Re-)designing collaboration”. With a diverse group of participants, we will spend 1.5 days going through a quick-and-dirty first iteration of the design process. We’ll research and reflect on key motivations, needs and pain points of collaboration today, identify opportunities, and build and test first prototypes, leading us to newer, smarter questions as well as deepened understanding. Even though the Open Labs are mainly about growing your design skills, we still expect the shared workshop documentation to be a first valuable resource for future work for your own practice or organization.
*Special price of prototype session € 99
Early Bird Price
€99
Homework
No preparation time
Language
English
Standard Price
€300
Involvement
2 days, 7 hours a day
Course type
In-person
Who is Open Labs designed for?
You have done training in Design Thinking but need some more confidence to be able to embed your leanings in your work environment. Convincing colleagues about the value of Design Thinking could still difficult. You want to practice your Design Thinking muscle and want to do this on an industry or specific challenge-related topic. This makes the confidence you have built directly transferable to your actual work environment.
How you work
Work in small groups
Experience design approaches and co-creation in action
Connect with peers
Enjoy a mix of action and reflection
Share with other professionals guided by world-class experts in co-creation
Explore the future of collaboration in a fun, relaxed environment
Suitable for
Anyone who would like to practice their design thinking skills
Anyone interested in design and how to apply it to a concrete topic
Designers (service design, design thinking, innovation), user experience, and customer experience professionals who want to do a first immersion into the topic of "re-designing collaboration"
Requirements
No special experience is needed.
If you have physical challenges, please let us know before the course. We will make sure the course fits your needs.
Language
English, with German assistance available.
This Open Lab will bring you?
The Open Lab strives to bring you a space to better understand the challenges and opportunities of “re-designing collaboration” through Doing, not Talking, perhaps to prepare yourself for an upcoming project. It will also provide you with a space to practice and train your design skills in a low stakes environment, allowing for playfulness and experimentation – your boss or your clients won’t be watching. Lastly, you will be able to exchange with other people from different backgrounds.
The Open Lab is a prototype by WorkPlayExperience and the DesignThinkers Academy in collaboration with CoCreation School. That means we are still working on parts of it, and it may not be fully polished. However, we are sure that you will get value from it – and you will be the first people to see it. In recognition of the prototype quality, we offer the event at a reduced price (but not for free, because paying is part of the experiment). In return, we will ask you for more detailed feedback on the event.
Program
In this 2-day high-energy program, here’s what you can expect.
Day 01 - Immersion
13:00: Light Lunch
14:00: Welcome and Kick-off
15:45: Coffee break
16:00: Research activity
17:00: Insights / Sense making
18:00: End of day 01
19:00: Evening activity
Day 02 - Prototyping for Cocreation
09:00: Welcome
09:30: Ideation and concepts
10:30: Coffee
10:45: Prototyping
11:30: Testing (part 01)
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Sense making, finalize prototypes
15:00: Presentations & reflections about next iterations
16:00: Soft close, end of day 2
Background
The Open Lab is
A space to better understand the challenges and opportunities of “re-designing collaboration” through Doing, not Talking, perhaps to prepare yourself for an upcoming project
A space to practice and train your design skills in a low stakes environment – your boss or your clients won’t be watching
An opportunity to refresh your memory about that design thinking course you did a while ago
An introduction to –but also an exploration of– different ways of ways of working playfulness and experimentation
Inspiration to go deeper
Exchange with other people from different backgrounds
Becoming part of an open and diverse group of people interested in the same topic – through doing, not talking
The Open Lab is NOT
a course on the methods of service design or design thinking. While you will use and experience some methods along the way, the focus of the Open Lab is the challenge theme, not the methods we use to explore it.
an academic introduction to the field of “collaboration”. We will research and explore that challenge together and there will be plenty of take-aways. If you prefer an academic approach, we suggest you do some reading in advance, then use the session to find out how actionable the content actually is.
Meet your coaches
Adam StJohn Lawrence
Service Design & Customer Experience Expert
Adam is co-initiator of the world’s largest service design event, the ‘Global Service Jam’, and co-author of ’This is Service Design Doing’. A renowned facilitation specialist, he is also a professional comedian and actor, and Adjunct Professor at the top IE Business School in Madrid.
Markus Hormess
Service Innovation Expert
Markus is co-initiator of the world’s largest service design event ‘Global Service Jam’ and co-author of "This is Service Design Doing". A world authority on service prototyping, he is currently exploring the use of AI in service design projects and teams .
Tim Schuurman
Co-Owner DesignThinkers Academy Amsterdam
As co-owner of DT Academy, Tim has extensive experience in designing and implementing concepts, holding a MBA & MSc in Business and Financial Management.
Jeroen van der Weide
Partner DesignThinkers Academy Amsterdam
Jeroen is a Partner & Senior Facilitator at DT Academy. He is a driving force when it comes to facilitating teams, designing creative processes, and brainstorm sessions. He has an MA in Dutch Theatre, Film & Communications.